Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being
2025 - ongoing
To address questions of creativity’s complex and at times problematic relationship to (self-) destructiveness, we use a solarization technique on images of the human body as a metaphor: the extreme solarization process is one of destruction, whereby images are heavily damaged through over-exposure during development, burning and fading them to black. When this exposure happens under the right conditions, however, a new form may emerge where the original image was lost.
This project involves a collaboration: the solarization technique developed by Teo Moutsos for his project Fall, which considers the possibilities of destruction as a creative process, is used on motifs photographed by Jessica Musler for her project The Fragile Blade, which explores the role of art, power dynamics, and sadomasochism in how we can relate to our bodies. As dancers or performance artists may push the boundaries of their bodies for the sake of their art, the solarization process can only find its result by pushing an image “too far” - encountering a great degree of risk and uncertainty.
What can we make of the image that appears from its own destruction? Taking inspiration from the psychoanalytic concepts of the death drive and sublimation, we are curious about destructiveness and pain in relation to the artistic process and the risk this process entails.
Will destructiveness open artistic possibilities, or simply annihilate them?
The Fragile Blade
Book project
2021 - 2025
The Fragile Blade is a project which considers how we can relate to our bodies. This project began during my practice as a studio photographer, where I portrayed performers: dancers, artists, and members of the kink and fetish scene. These performers engage with the body in dynamics of power and control, beauty and vulnerability.
The body is a contested space, personally and politically. It is full of contradictions, impossible to cleanly and neatly express. It is intimately and inseparably entwined with our very being, our perception and our memory.
Thus follows the question: Whose body is this?
