Chrischa Oswald

M(O)USE, 2015

M(O)USE is questioning the role of subject/object, reflecting affection/relationships (to others/ to art) in our digital age. It's about surfaces & superficial satisfaction and inspired by iconic video-works like “Art must be beautiful” (Abramovic) and “Fly” (Y. Ono). The title refers to a muse which can either be the digital male torso or myself as the performer but also to the technical device, the computer mouse, that serves as an almost prosthetic extension of our body, to perform everything: even the intimate, the touch. There is an interdependency between the screen that mirrors the movement of the performer (in the form of the computer hand symbol). The work is also hinting at art and the artist as economic objects rather than someone/thing to love (and in this way to economically perform). The power relations between object-subject can be looked at from diverse angles. It's constantly in flux who has what role, who is in control of whom, in this game of virtual and real. Even more, when an observing public is becoming part of that intimate correspondence.

Mother Tongue, 2013

MOTHER TONGUE is about the very special relationship between mother and daughter and about reclaiming our animal heritage. It is also about exploring our senses in a different way and (re)discovering actions beyond their societal interpretation. Eventually in its simple form it is a complex nexus of performance, mother-daughter-relationship, society's expectations, fears and affection.

Angel Wings, 2005/11

The videoperformance “Angel Wings” is a metaphor for our eternal longing for ultimate freedom, for the desire to fly away like a bird. The try to sew feathers on my skin to resemble a bird and become an aerial creature is foredoomed to fail. Fatal pathos. A modern Icarus. Meditation of physical and emotional pain. The sound is based on a German children's song whose actual lyrics and sound got altered a bit and adapted to the video's message. The easy melody is contrasting the rough picture. In its endless repetition the sound gets a mantra-like quality and the picture and endless torture that is nevertheless poetic.

Asylum, 2016

Exercises For Restoring

We all live in our own kind of asylums (that we were put in or built ourselves)... We all know certain kind of walls and struggles, the desire to connect, the unability, the necessarity to restore something in our "houses" and I think it all starts with restoring hope and learning to trust that we can find beauty within something that is worn down.

As the video is titled Asylum it is also about this question, if I`m the doctor or the patient (also when making art of course, but also in general)... or both... or... However, when we fight for that, to restore, some might not understand why we put a piece of art inside first, before covering the walls or decorating the house, some might think it's mental. For others it's the kind of soul that brings it back to life, a reason to hope (while it's also important to acknowledge things that are broken, to experience this, with a kind of tenderness...getting close, touching it, not be afraid of that..). And then, in general, where do you draw the line between sanity, insanity, between those who are seen as sane or normal or whatever and crazy... who erected these walls...

The house becomes as a metaphor for ourselves and the "houses" we live in, in a psychological sense, the narration is oscillating between physical and mental/psychological body/architecture.

Mercy, 2014

A shuttered room, somewhere. There is the air of an arena. The chairs on the tables suggest a ghostly audience. It's not so clear what's dream and what's real, what's memory and what's actually happening. In the middle of the room sits a man. He's the antagonist in a game that is about power – physically but also psychologically. It's about the fine threshold where things get uncomfortable, where the game becomes fight, where joy becomes pain. He is trying to catch a young man and a young woman, who are crawling around him like big cats. The relationships are not exactly clear, one can only guess. Alternating with sounds from outside a whistling tune supports the strange atmosphere that has different layers. The division in 3 channels supports the spatial aspect as well as the relationship of 3 people.

Bed, 2014

It's a farewell. A farewell to a life, a farewell to a fear, a farewell to mourning.
My granny who died in March 2014 has always loved her garden, it was a part of her. Now she is part of a bigger garden. The memory of her is the seed that I'm planting in her bed with this performance.

I'm not planting any seeds then but I'm bedding myself in the earth, thinking of her and her bed in the earth. I'm joining her in spirit, I'm joining her sleep – with her old linen that I've filled with earth. The white sheets get dirty, they get transformed, they become part of the bed, of the garden, of nature.

Polish, 2012

The videoperformance „Polish“ deals with our desire for optimization and perfectioning. Appearances are deceiving and rather poisonous polish than real improvement or value. The expectation of a god-like human-being is a conceited deception and its polish will spall at some time. Our desperate urge to improve things is quite often destroying their actual quality.

The apple is not only symbol of seduction but also symbol of our lost innocence in many ways.

THE WORLD, 2013

The World is a video-loop humorously reflecting on the dichotomy of man & nature as well as dealing with the restrictions of the nature of human beings that man wants to overcome while knowing that in some way we're puppets on a string regarding physical restraints. A landscape of trees is the stage and backdrop for this drama of lights and darks that is only revealed in its body of fun.