Peter Weibel

The video installation »Vulkanologie der Emotionen« [Volcanology of the emotions], presented on nine monitors, is the reconstruction of a body performance of the same name that took place in Vienna in 1971. Here Weibel deals with the body language of humans, their behavior in space, and the basic principles of human emotions that can be read from it. For Weibel, the actions of humans in space is a mirror of their emotional constitution. The more complex the geometric relationship of the body to space, the more expressive, or pathological, the respective emotional expression is perceived. A more complex geometry of body poses leads to more complex emotional expressions. Body poses in space can thus be understood as a direct expressions of emotions. It is a non-verbal language created through the process of evolution, which can be analyzed according to criteria of language criticism and examined for the knowledge stored in it.