Video still © Kim Dotty Hachmann
series animal: territory III, 2006
revier III culminates in a crescendo of two animals confronting each other with hisses. In a forest clearing, the artist fights against herself, as if the enemy were not to be found outside, but within ourselves.
Animal films on television often trivialize their subject matter into a bland, didactic idyll. Magazines for pregnant women or young mothers remove the teeth and claws from their subject matter, i.e., all emotions that disturb the idealization. And while children generally feel closer to animals, putting up with them far more than adults do when it comes to pets, adults usually react with fear, distress, or alienation to their private animal kinship when it reappears in their dreams.
Kim Dotty Hachmann says that her pregnancy awakened instinctive urges in her that she had not previously been aware of. This experience is captured in video sequences in which the exceptional situation of animalistic existence, of helpful animal instincts, is projected into the field of art with analytical reflection. The provocatively naked, erotic body with its furry charms evokes fashionable clichés of domination, but is confronted with the animalistic in sexuality and with simple creatureliness, and the latter is defended or protected aggressively or tenderly. serie tier articulates that moment when the human relies on instinctively remembered feelings that we can share with animals with relish.
Video loop DV 4:3, 1:10 min., Location: Garage, animal enclosure
Text: © Prof. Ursula Panhans-Bühler
Website: kimdottyhachmann.de
