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Der Tod
Ist Ein Skandal
Ist Ein Skandal
German artist Lise Van Wersch (Kiel) works with the body as a site of memory and resistance. Her practice is structured around contradiction, where control and loss of control, violence and tenderness, coexist.
The work Der Tod Ist Ein Skandal is a small-scale relief on a metal tray. It is part of the recent exhibition Fremdkörper(Foreign Body) in Hamburg at the Fabrik der Künste. In this context, Van Zersch examines the body’s relationship to modern medical discourse and its social framing.
The work Der Tod Ist Ein Skandal is a small-scale relief on a metal tray. It is part of the recent exhibition Fremdkörper(Foreign Body) in Hamburg at the Fabrik der Künste. In this context, Van Zersch examines the body’s relationship to modern medical discourse and its social framing.
Hypochondriacal motifs emerge from a dietary-cultural environment entangled with "heroin chic," in which the male body is positioned as normative and the female body as deviation. This produces a persistent doubt: is my body itself a foreign body?
In Der Tod Ist Ein Skandal, a symbolic attempt to exert control over the body, glossy normativity collides with supposed ugliness. Radical empathy—understood as the refusal of disgust—operates as the work’s final proposition. Vulnerability is not treated as a deficiency. Distrust and fear do not prevent an affirmation: the body remains the site where life, in its excess and instability, unfolds.
In Der Tod Ist Ein Skandal, a symbolic attempt to exert control over the body, glossy normativity collides with supposed ugliness. Radical empathy—understood as the refusal of disgust—operates as the work’s final proposition. Vulnerability is not treated as a deficiency. Distrust and fear do not prevent an affirmation: the body remains the site where life, in its excess and instability, unfolds.
Below are the instructions for use written by the artist for this work:
Indications:
For the treatment of acute discrepancies between expectation and finitude.
Indicated in cases of sudden confrontation with irreversibility.
Dosage:
As needed. In situations of increased reality exposure, effects may occur uncontrollably.
Effects:
The preparation destabilizes common assumptions about order, fairness, and closure.
It may lead to an abrupt loss of explanation.
Side Effects:
Inappropriate clarity. Indignation toward the given. Silenced social withdrawal.
Note:
Not suitable for restoring meaning.
Indications:
For the treatment of acute discrepancies between expectation and finitude.
Indicated in cases of sudden confrontation with irreversibility.
Dosage:
As needed. In situations of increased reality exposure, effects may occur uncontrollably.
Effects:
The preparation destabilizes common assumptions about order, fairness, and closure.
It may lead to an abrupt loss of explanation.
Side Effects:
Inappropriate clarity. Indignation toward the given. Silenced social withdrawal.
Note:
Not suitable for restoring meaning.