Obstructions

2012, 01:27 min.
Looped animation: 52 Sec.
Size: variable Dimensionen
Animation: Diana Menestrey
Sound: Christoph Bruns
Production: Academy of Media Arts Cologne

As an animation the work Obstructions is persuasive and fascinating in its simplicity: a person who tries to reach his own reflected image but never does. A Sisyphean situation that is an almost palpable and certainly audible experience. The animation functions only in the installation: a mini projector beams the animation onto a surface positioned at a right angle to a mirror, creating an intimate situation. Quivering and twitching, the hand-drawn figure moves across the surface, making noises, struggling and stretching to the limit. As a drawing it seems very light and easy, but it is laborious in the narrative. Most importantly the installation creates the framework of the narrative, thus setting up the struggle of the drawn figure as well as the encounter of the viewer.

Presented both in virtual format and as an animated installation which can only be experienced in the space, this installation at filmkunstkino is a special situation. The film exists first in a filmed state, in an observed state. The animation manifests itself only in installed form, and at the same time observation functions as its own layer in the animation. The film shown at filmkunstkino can also be experienced in its intimate installed form as documentation, as the work was seen during the KHM Rundgang student exhibition in 2012.

Diana Menestrey on her work
Language appears to us as an important point of departure in searching for the definition of words. It is a fundamental axis around which to structure and define those human relationships and reactions that interest me. Though terms like untouchable, untranslatable, unpronounceable, or unseeable seem to create a chasm between their definition and their graphic form of expression. The drawing in motion proves to be a fitting tool in my work, in order to be able to interpret this terminology from a point in time and space; and to distort the reality in such a way that the unreal is seen as real or on another level of reality.

_{Text — Karin Lingnau / Diana Menestry}

Diana Menestrey was born in 1985 in Bogotá, Colombia. She completed her studies in fine art with a focus on painting technique and new technologies in Colombia. From 2010 she was a postgraduate student at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, in the art department. In 2014 Diana Menestrey completed her studies in media arts (Diploma II).

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