Episodes of Starlite I-V

Pictures projected on a woman’s naked body and on untouched landscapes act as the stage for the battle of the sexes.

The film Episodes of Starlight I-V by artist and film maker Frances Scholz is based on a fantasy-tale by the American science fiction author Mark von Schlegell. In five episodes the film illustrates the concept of a matriarchal monarchy threatened by male opponents. The scene of the story is a fictional continent shaped like the body of a goddess. As inspiration, the naked female body repeatedly emerges from the various zones of the overlaid projections.

The episodes demonstrate the stages of the creation of a myth by combining elements such as musical performance, theatre and light and documenting them. In irregular sequences, the tale shows extracts from the making-of of a mythical, imaginary film, while fragments of the original tale can be heard off-camera. The work modifies archetypes of fantasy genre by showing them from the perspective of art and of the female sex. This abstract film attempts to develop its own iconography separately from the traditional art-historical role. Its purpose is to reverse this, to show it “as a fantasy of pure light, pure filmic art and painting” (Frances Scholz), free of gender roles and idealised pictures. (Veronika Kornas und Sabine Schiffer)

* We can only show an excerpt of this work in the online archive. For the complete version, please contact the artist and Sprüth Magers Berlin, London.