Where Body Meets Building

Three selected frames from the single-channel video artwork Where Body Meets Building (Year) by Le Xi, showing bodily silhouettes acting as transparent keying windows over moving architectural grids.

Selected Frames from Wheelchair Where Body Meets Building 

 Where Body Meets Building is a single-channel video artwork exploring the boundaries of existence through the superimposed relationship among the human body, architecture, and digital imagery. Using a smartphone to record intuitive bodily actions such as swinging arms and stretching, the artist employs digital keying to transform the dynamic silhouette of the body into a transparent "somatic window," inverting the relationship by bringing the architectural facade inside the flesh.

Within the frame, an architectural grid composed of countless arrayed micro-windows continuously moves upward and scales inside the "somatic window." This counter-directional motion against the stationary silhouette creates an optical illusion of the body endlessly falling.

Operating through a mechanism of inverted double windows, the artwork disrupts traditional boundaries of viewing and being viewed: the body ceases to be a passive observer looking out through an architectural frame or digital screen; instead, it becomes the active, dynamic window that confines and redefines the architecture itself. The organic curves of the body cut across and overlap with the cold micro-windows within, relying on the visual tension between softness and rigidity to forge a fragile, delicate connection between somatic flesh and urban frameworks.

Watch the complete work

Technical Information

Artist: Le Xi
Title:‍ ‍Where Body Meets Building 
Year: 2020
Medium: Single-channel HD video, color, silent
Duration: 1:06 min (loop)
Dimensions: Variable

Edition of 3 + 1 AP