Where Body Meets Building
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.
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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