Stefanie Knobel’s practice comprises a polyphonic breathing that echoes the technogenic substances in our alienated bodies. What finds form in her work as choreography, poetic text, or installation refers to performance in an extended sense: Performances in which everyday situations suddenly become noticeable through slight hesitations or stumbling; performances that tell many-voiced and controversial stories; performances that let the past resonate in the present, that look back to the viewer through distinguished images or allow the textile and the tactile to appear as more-than-human; performances that put present value systems at stake and manifest themselves fleshly, in a passage of resistance.
“Writing the body with the body” consists of fragments taken from performance texts by Stefanie Knobel, which are juxtaposed with a series of pictures created for this volume – that of a geochemical earth conditioned by colonial excesses, one that begins to speak to a world that cuts through geological materialities along coloured lines. An omnipresent technological surveillance tool has eyes without eyelids and looks at the viewer without interruption. Rendered in rhythms and in twelve manifestations for the quasi-public, words and images are woven into a new fabulation: a performance as a book.
“Writing the body with the body – Essays, Texts and Performances” contains contributions by Samrat Banerjee, Najrin Islam, Ines Kleesattel, and Stefanie Knobel as well as the collected performance texts, short descriptions of selected works and image inserts with photos of exhibitions, installations, and performances.