Melanie Manchot

High up on an alpine glacier, a photostudio produces portraits of an endless stream of visiting tourists, most on their grand European tour from Middle and Far Eastern countries.

Snow is precarious, unstable, elusive. Its aesthetic and symbolic register often refer to notions of the romantic. Snow reduces the colour palette drastically, often turning environments into near black and white. As a material that surrounds other materials it has its own sonic spectrum: fresh snow muffling sounds, cold snow and wet snow creating distinctly different tones. Village (Veil) is a single shot video filmed during a two-week period of intense continuous snowfall in January 2019.

Blending cinematography with choreography and powerful sound design, a film that explores dance as a language and a conduit for people to find connection through shared physical expression. Originally inspired by the proliferation of extraordinary choreographies by non-professional and professional dancers, performed to camera and distributed online, created specifically for social media.

Between dusk and dawn, ‘in the shadows of time’, a series of women, who all perform night-time labour, take us on a tour of sites linked by history, economics and events shaping the post-industrial landscape of the Ruhr region in Germany. Known for its coal mining history, the region has long been dominated by stories of male achievements. Hence the work aims to celebrate the everyday contributions of a group of cross-generational local women, amongst them a tram-driver, a factory-worker, a baker, a pole dancer, a nurse and a world-champion wrestler.

An argument, taking place on a train platform between an elderly couple. The couple seems completely absorbed in their exchange, their gestures and facial expressions full of the passion of their respective points of view. As the camera approaches, gradually and hesitantly, it becomes increasingly quiet - and eventually apparent that the spat is carried out in sign language.

'Kiss' (2009), which concentrates on one of the gestures most intrinsic to cinematic language: the kiss. The work is filmed as an uncut ten-minute observation of a seemingly endless kiss on the top deck of a London double-decker bus. Disengaged from their immediate environment, a young couple begins an intimate game of desire. Over the course of the film their exchange of embraces gathers intensity, growing increasingly passionate and demanding. The camera follows waves of desire, at times verging on pain and aggression then again full of joy and lightness.

A docu-fiction hybrid following Stephen Giddings, a man from an addiction-afflicted family, who auditions for and takes on a film role, while transforming his life in the real world, blurring the lines between fact and fiction to examine addiction and recovery.

A physical exchange, taking place between a young cycle courier and an aged Hells Angel. While absolutely different physically the two men are equal in strength and the dynamic of the piece is built on their respective waves of aggression and withdrawal. Filmed on a steadicam, the act of looking itself feels embodied as it observes the event from constantly changing vantage points, approaching and withdrawing just as the two men keep performing a dance of aggression around each other.

The short video loop starts with a blank page. White. No orientation, scale, dimension. Until the edge of the frame is broken. From an aerial viewpoint we see a dark horse being led into what now reveals itself as a blank snowy landscape. Walking in a circle, it inscribes a trail of footprints into the snow, creating a kind of drawing.

The post-industrial city of Marl, Germany carries the scars of the economic depression following the mining industry’s demise. City squares are filled with public sculptures bearing witness of past wealth surrounded by public buildings that are Brutalist masterpieces. Here, a horse stands alone. The horse is almost static, but in spite of his relative fixity, it remains the only source of life present in this deserted urban environment. The work looks at the archetypical forms of equestrian public sculptures and more broadly questions the use, codes and authority of public space artwork.

Deep in the night, eight machines draw shapes into the soft ground, patterns and designs. Illuminated only by their own lights, they move in conjunction, at times as pairs, then in long lines, forming circles, figures of eight, loops. Based on traditional, regional alpine folkdances, the choreography presents the machines as both cumbersome and agile, creating a luminous dance inscribed in the snow.

In the high Alpine Valley of Engleberg, the film (split into two parts, A & B) follows two different teams of mountain workers, people who day in and day out perform the same tasks to make the mountain safe and pleasurable – they are the hidden labour that allows the mountain industry to function.

In the high Alpine Valley of Engleberg, the film (split into two parts, A & B) follows two different teams of mountain workers, people who day in and day out perform the same tasks to make the mountain safe and pleasurable – they are the hidden labour that allows the mountain industry to function.