Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura is a still life performance that started as a collaboration between an eye and a wounded body. Intimate close-ups were captured with a camera in one hand and a light in the other. The body is portrayed as a container of memory, identity and history. Its surface carrying ever changing signs and evidence of past events. The surrounding wall, a witness of human action with its own cracks and scars; layers of peeled off paint, wear and tear, a long gone nail, was investigated using the same tools. Inside a room, the visitor encounters a black alcove in which a body is resting; the light from a slide projector, operated by Jensen, alternately illuminates the front and back of the living torso. Projected close-up images of folds, scars and marks on the skin, and cracks in the wall, are transforming this still life in front of our eyes. Spectators have the sensation of looking at the body for the first time. Poetic and hypnotic, the encounter lasts for four hours between the photographic eye of Vibeke Jensen, the body of Orietta Crispino, and the public.