TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER (deprived of the shell)

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miriamdöring

mere limen

Recalling Caenis

TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER
(deprived of the shell)

YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD CARRY THE CELESTIAL VAULT

REDDENED BY FIRE
ASM (abdominal self massage)
neg

sd
EVACUATING UPWARDS,
EVACUATING DOWNWARDS
—OR IN ANY OTHER NECESSARY DIRECTION

Clepsydric Lungs (— until her hands will loosen)

Stimulus / TPSMS

repressiv

Spannung (die)

TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER
(deprived of the shell)2024

TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER (deprived of the shell) unfolds as a poetic investigation of permeated bodies—a porous topography of rigid architectures and fragile membranes oscillating between vulnerability, physical integrity, and protection.

The work is an invitation to a spatial experience in which a group of sculptures, together with light and heat, high-frequency vibrations, and arrhythmic, pulsating bass beats, directly affect visitors’ bodies. Forms bend and bulge, convex and concave, as a result of external forces or increasing internal tension. Sheer walls, shifting between shed skin and protective armour, challenge the limits of fragility. Waxed, greased, and reflective surfaces, thermoplastically deformed material, and the interplay of density and transparency create an atmosphere that wavers between exposure and enclosure, between the moment of touch and the impulse to create distance. Each element emerges from—and returns to—a radical bodily presence.

The installation explicitly draws on the architectural and performative logics of the sixteenth-century anatomical theatre: circular, hierarchical spaces in which the interior of the body was displayed as public spectacle. These choreographed dissections, anchored in the authority of the male scientific gaze and in institutionalised dismemberment, shaped early modern notions of health, pathology, and bodily normativity—laying the foundations for biopolitical modes of governance that resonate in contemporary regimes of surveillance and control.

Interwoven with these historical references is the eponymous myth of Marsyas from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The satyr, who challenges Apollo to a musical contest, is flayed alive after impelling people to dance ecstatically with his flute playing. The narrative not only points to the incarnation of power but also engages with a ‘transcorporeal body’¹ and the autonomy of its vibrant matter.

TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER (deprived of the shell) invites us to inhabit spaces that generate and juxtapose counternarratives and embodied memories through and with material agency. By challenging the ambiguous politics of permeability, the work offers a polyphonic field in which knowledge emerges via lived experience and sensual encounter. Between clinical aesthetics and mythical resonance, between installation and staging, vulnerability appears as a source of empowerment and strength—a trembling force that demands care and connection as much as resistance.
1) Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment and the Material Self (Indiana University Press, 2010)

Installation views
TREMBLING VEINS QUIVER (deprived of the shell)
Berlin University of the Arts
2024

All photographs © Moritz Haase

NOW THIS SITE SITS IN THE CENTER OF MY CHEST AS I SHATTER ITS WALLS
Sound (recorded cardiac arrhythmia) on subwoofer, 20:16 min, loop
2024