Tarantism

2007 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

9,17 min

Joachim Koester

year born: 1962
gender: male
nationality: Danish
home town: Copenhagen, Denmark

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:



Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

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Exquisite Eco Living (executive Properties series)
© » KADIST

Vincent Leong

2012

The 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...

Process of Blowing Flour
© » KADIST

Koki Tanaka

2010

Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour ...

Walking Through
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Koki Tanaka

2009

Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...

A poem written by 5 poets at once (first attempt)
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Koki Tanaka

2013

This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...

7-headed Lalandau Hat
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Yee I-Lann

2020

7-headed Lalandau Hat by Yee I-Lann is an intricately woven sculpture evoking the ceremonial headdress worn by Murut men in Borneo...

Until It Makes Sense
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

2004

Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art...

No World
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Fang Lu

2014

No World is an action-filled video work filmed inside an abandoned museum in the Songzhuang area outside Beijing...

Fridge-Freezer
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Yoshua Okón

2015

Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
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Rodney Graham

1996

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura (1996) belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that lives in Northern California...

The Result of 1000 Pieces
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Lin Yilin

1994

All his artworks utilize the use of body – the artist’s own body and that of others...

Silencer #16 & #17
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Will Rogan

2010

MUM , 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...

Destilaciones
© » KADIST

Ximena Garrido Lecca

2014

Destilaciones ( Distillations , 2014) is an installation composed of a group of ceramic pots, presented on the floor and within a steel structure...

Collapse
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2007

Shot 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...

Canned Laughter
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Yoshua Okón

2009

Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...

Canton Novelty
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Fang Lu

2016

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China...

Untitled (Schindler House, #01)
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Luisa Lambri

2007

Rudolph Schindler’s designs, part of a practice he called “Space Architecture,” marry interior with exterior and space with light...

Ammo Bunker
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Mario Ybarra Jr.

2009

Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model...

Wherein one nods with political sympathy and says I understand you better than you understand yourself, I’m just here to help you help yourself
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Yee I-Lann

2013

Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...

Untitled
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Mark Bradford

2012

This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...