Realizing the Image
By Svala Vagnsdatter Andersen, MA Visual Culture
When Kristina Steinbock sets the stage, the boundaries between
fact and poetry are blurred and dissolved. Rather, Steinbock
works with establishing broad, overlapping interfaces between
theatricality and identity, between individuals and categories
and between documentation and fiction. There, in the middle,
where everything remains uncertain and undecided, she plays out
scenarios that, precisely because they are set in a borderland, can
accommodate different forms of authenticity and documentation.
In terms of method, Steinbock takes an anthropological ap-
proach to the realm of art, using field research to collect factual
information about environments and the people she portrays.
Steinbock consistently uses amateur actors, but these actors
possess a different kind of professionalism: they have a lifelong
familiarity with the role they have been assigned. Her fascination
with the idea of ‘real’ human beings intensifies the relationship
between performer, director, and thematic presentation. Similarly,
the mental and psychological preparatory work that goes into
getting to know and recognize the amateur actors’ individual
masks and personal narratives increase the gravitas of the films.
In addition, it makes the works balance defiantly between what
may be described as broader categories and individual cases.
This methodical and thematic balancing act constitutes a steady
reminder of our affiliation with that which is categorical and
idiosyncratic.
Steinbock gives a voice to authentically involved individuals
who get in front of the camera and express themselves over the
microphone. Especially blind people share what it is like to live
without their eyesight in a world full of images – and of images
of what it means to be blind. Her work focuses not only on the
properties of the blind body and its alternative mode of being
in the world, but also on sighted people’s ideas about blindness
which manifest themselves in language and culture. This gives
Steinbock’s works a documentarist quality in that they imply a
deconstructivist cultural critique, yet also seem to introduce the
docu-art genre as a hybrid form of expression: the documentarist
traits are emphasized by an aesthetical, sculptural and performance-based approach.
As a genre, docu-art deals with reality as a true co-creator whose
story deserves to be told on its own terms. As we have already
seen, Steinbock maintains a vigilant anthropological eye, never
afraid of being affected by the stories, of being too involved or
getting her hands dirty in the field. At the same time, however,
docu-art constantly insists on its status as art, accentuating its
artistic and documentary aspects through double exposure. First
of all, it does so by not only pointing to an outside reality but by
positing that reality in the midst of the aesthetic context, asking
provoking questions such as whether we are still quite sure of
what is real. Secondly, it uses artistic and aesthetic devices to
increase our understanding of documentary representation,
honing our senses and our awareness by making us uncertain as
to which interpretative approach we ought to rely on – the one
we usually apply to art or the one we use to read documentary
and biographical material.
Gently bearing in mind the notion of blindness, and with an
almost palpable, phenomenological approach to unfathomable
invisibility, Steinbock’s works decenter vision in favor of a more
tactile aesthetics. At the same time, a pervasive sense of light and
color makes the works visually artistic, insisting that this is a work
of art. Thus, these are works that subtly intend to inspire debates,
and which address an audience of sighted people, who are invited
to acknowledge the privilege of sight through beautiful visual
stimuli. There is so much we do not understand, so much we do
not see – because we are not blind. Steinbock’s works open our
eyes to new perceptions and create new notions through visually
aesthetical enjoyment.
By constantly challenging the integrity of the film medium,
artistic methods and of our expectations regarding genre make
Steinbock’s works potent contributions to the evolution of con-
temporary art film, opening new windows on alternative ways of
viewing the ever complex relationship between art and the world.
The visual sensuousness of film is challenged by the endeavor to
document pleasurable senses other than that of sight, causing
the film to navigate a powerful paradox: how does one overturn
centuries of visual dominance through the one medium most
strongly associated with sight? Underpinned by this energetic
premise, the films unfold subtle reflections on the always-charged
encounter between gaze, language, phenomenology, and inter-
personal encounters.
The inclusive deconstruction
One of the most important factors in culturally bound conceptions of blindness which most of us tend to ascribe to is that of
language. Through language, we categorize the world in order to
navigate in it, and we ascribe meaning to phenomena. The body
and language are closely connected, and abstract notions such
as knowledge, faith, and perception are often tied to bodily and
sensuous aspects because they render abstract notions more
tangible. The bodily metaphors we live by on an everyday basis
have consolidated themselves as invisible structures of language,
and they tend to be based on hierarchical scaffolds that prioritize
a universal, whole, capable and ungendered body. Art exposes us
to that which we take for granted in our everyday interaction with
idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms, and expectations of other
people. The works are based on categorical understandings that
have become second nature to us, and at times they do this by
literally repeating our categorical understandings, saying them
back to us, and thus letting the works surprise us as by challenging our expectations. The deconstruction of representations and
understandings thus cooccur on a factual level and on a conceptual level that essentially takes a social constructivist approach.
The works present, challenge, subvert and aestheticize ideas of
blind people’s being in the world, and repeatedly includes the
sighted viewer. It is never just a matter of informing disinterested
members of an audience. The audience is constantly included in
the work itself.
Blind
phenomenology and visual media
By Piet Devos, PhD in Modern Romance Literature
Like every disability or reality people fear,
blindness has from times immemorial been burdened with prejudices, clichés and
stereotypical imagery. In our Western society where since Antiquity vision has equaled
knowledge and faith, blindness was tantamount to the pitiful darkness of
ignorance. In the Bible, for instance, the blind’s main function was to
symbolize unbelief. In general, the loss of a person’s eyesight was considered
to be the worst imaginable fate or the punishment for hidden sins, even if,
such a miserable life in the dark was compensated by an exceptional talent.
This is what we may learn, for example, from the tragic myth of Tiresias who
was blinded after peeping at Athena in her bath, but to whom the merciful
goddess also granted the ability to see the future. Hopefully, poor Tiresias
found some comfort when he thus foresaw that, thousands of years later, new
generations of blind people would stand up and speak for ourselves, as to finally
contradict all the nonsense that has been projected onto us. Perhaps, Tiresias
would have been even more pleased when leafing through the present catalogue of
Kristina Steinbock’s artwork, which demonstrates that a visual artist too can
make a great effort to put all preconceived notions aside and engage with
blindness as a truly lived experience.
Indeed,
much has changed since the days of Ancient Greek seers and the blind beggars
from Scripture. Having gone blind at the age of five in the late 1980s, I was
among the first group of visually impaired youngsters in Belgium who got the
opportunity to go to a regular school. Around the same period, similar programs
to stimulate the social integration of the blind were being set up in most
parts of Europe, Canada and the United States. As a consequence, our active
participation in social life has notably increased over the last decades. A
crucial impetus for this development also came from new technologies such as
computers equipped with braille displays, magnifying software and speech
synthesizers, which ensured that we could equally partake of the digital
revolution.
Like every disability or reality people fear, blindness has from times immemorial been burdened with prejudices, clichés and stereotypical imagery. In our Western society where since Antiquity vision has equaled knowledge and faith, blindness was tantamount to the pitiful darkness of ignorance. In the Bible, for instance, the blind’s main function was to symbolize unbelief. In general, the loss of a person’s eyesight was considered to be the worst imaginable fate or the punishment for hidden sins, even if, such a miserable life in the dark was compensated by an exceptional talent. This is what we may learn, for example, from the tragic myth of Tiresias who was blinded after peeping at Athena in her bath, but to whom the merciful goddess also granted the ability to see the future. Hopefully, poor Tiresias found some comfort when he thus foresaw that, thousands of years later, new generations of blind people would stand up and speak for ourselves, as to finally contradict all the nonsense that has been projected onto us. Perhaps, Tiresias would have been even more pleased when leafing through the present catalogue of Kristina Steinbock’s artwork, which demonstrates that a visual artist too can make a great effort to put all preconceived notions aside and engage with blindness as a truly lived experience.