Aktbesprechung oder Inverses Selbstporträt

The video »Aktbesprechung oder inverses Selbstporträt« [Discussion of a nude or inverse self-portrait] shows the heads of young women talking about a male nude, Peter Weibel, who is not seen in the picture. All of the women have worked previously as a nude models. The video work seeks to reverse the history of the nude as the pleasure of male artists. Art history is full of nude drawings and nude paintings of female naked bodies. A man looks at the woman and paints what he sees. Weibel has turned this setup around in various ways. First, the nude is talked about and not visualized. Second, the naked model is a man and not a woman. Third, a woman describes what she sees, but what the viewers do not see: the naked male model. Usually, the viewers look at the naked female body from the point of view of the male artist. Here, contrary to the usual viewpoint, the purely linguistic description of the nude creates identification of the viewers with the invisible model. The viewers gain the impression, the women describe it.