M HKA Ensembles

Series, box: 40 x 30 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7508_M351).

Using her early performances documented on film as a starting point, Rebecca Horn has since the late-1970s developed more ‘staged’ films, including *Der Eintänzer*, *La Ferdinanda, Sonata für eine Medici-Villa* and *Busters’ Bedroom*. They are bizarre stories, full of unexpected, surrealistic twists and turns. In these films the objects take on an ever growing autonomy, they perform like actors alongside living figures: hammers hammer on their own, empty swings swing back and forth, until – with unexpected power and violence – they come to rest. Inanimate objects acquire human animation, and humans become monster-like machines. The mechanized sculptures become images of vulnerability, impotence, aggression or desire. Conversely, figures in the films lose their initiative and individual capacities, caught up in machine-like obsessional behavior. Rebecca Horn likes to use symbolically loaded elements and materials like lead, mercury, feathers, eggs, snakes, electricity and ink: an iconography that makes one think of alchemists and wizards. Horn refers to the world of myth, fairy tales, superstition, alchemy and (in large measure) to art tradition. Forging new connections between these sources, the artist makes room for new meanings. Recurring motifs are energy, emotion, communication and eroticism. Her interest in transmutation, the process of transformation from the one sort or state into another, is found again and again in her films.