Tarantism
2007 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
9,17 min
Joachim Koester
Tarantism is the name of disease which appeared in southern Italy, resulting from the bite of a spider called Tarantula. This bite caused various symptoms, such as nausea, difficulty to speak, delusion, excitability and agitation. The victims suffered then from convulsions and the only way to heal them was to engage in a frenzied dance, as it was believed. Called “Tarantella”, this dance, appeared during the Middle Ages and was danced all along the 19th century. To make this video, the artist asked a group of dancers to perform this uncontrolled dance in order to explore this borderline mental and physical state, close to a trance. Tarantism represents a transition in the artist’s work, who brings a story back to life simply through the movement of these completely disarticulate bodies, without referring to images extracted from reality, thus exploring a purely mental territory.
With a keen interest in the stranger corners of the long human story, and a persistent interest in the supernatural, the transcendent, and the psychedelic, Joachim Koester’s work follows the artists own undying interest in physical and psychological limits. While exploration was a matter of crossing geographies before the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, hastened by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in visualizing specific events—those forgotten, overlooked, or suppressed by the official historical record—in order to reintroduce them into collective memory. Using 16mm documentary films, photographic series or books, his work transforms stories into images and vice versa, appearing as a quest for the invisible and the vanishing.
Colors:
Related works featuring themes of: » Architecture in Art, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Dreams / Altered States of Consciousness, » Film/Video, » Danish
© » KADIST
Vincent Leong
2012The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
© » KADIST
Jiang Pengyi
2008Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...
© » KADIST
Will Rogan
2007Shot in the streets of Tokyo, Collapse , is a meditation on the passing of time and on the complicated way in which we are smashed between the past and the future...
© » KADIST
Luisa Lambri
2002Lambri’s careful framing in Untitled (Miller House, #02) redefines our understanding of this iconic mid-century modernist building located in Palm Springs, California...
© » KADIST
Lin Yilin
Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...
© » KADIST
Rodney Graham
1991Ponderosa Pine IV belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that live in Northern California...
© » KADIST
Cerith Wyn Evans
2008Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...
© » KADIST
Barbara Kasten
2008Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
© » KADIST
Zarouhie Abdalian
2010The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it...
© » KADIST
Mario Ybarra Jr.
2009Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model...
© » KADIST
Yin-Ju Chen
2011This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
© » KADIST
Tina Modotti
1927Modotti’s Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D...
© » KADIST
Mark Bradford
2012This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
© » KADIST
Will Rogan
2014Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees...
© » KADIST
Will Rogan
2010MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...