Vika Kirchenbauer is an artist and writer currently working and residing in Berlin. 

In her work she explores opacity in relation to representation of the ʻotheredʼ through ostensibly contradictory methods like exaggerated explicitness, oversharing and perversions of participatory culture.

Her work has been exhibited in a wide range of contexts in about forty countries and has won prizes at festivals in the United States, South Korea, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Norway, Slovakia, Poland, Bosnia and Italy.

film link:

like rats leaving a sinking ship

(24’33”, exp. documentary, germany, 2012)

synopsis:

Lyrically poignant yet contained, ‘Like rats leaving a sinking ship’ is an intimate piece that combines personal subjectivity with the clinical objectivity of medical reports, challenging the very notions of these categories.

The film is partly based on the author’s psychiatric assessments diagnosing her with ‘Gender Identity Disorder’, in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases. Along with the discourse of the legally mandatory documents for transgender people are her own personal writings that reflect upon the nature of memory – the present interpretation of the past – and question the possibility of any coherent biographic or filmic narrative.

As evocative images inconspicuously blend with found family footage, a multilayered reality emerges in which the distinction between what is true or false becomes unimportant and obsolete.

Although in line with topics such as general assumptions of gender, or ‘popular knowledge’ of transgender people, ‘Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship’ is, in fact, a deep reflection on the relation of ‘abnormal individuals’ to authority apparatuses such as state, law and psychiatry.

filmography:

You Are Boring!, 2015
Please Relax Now, 2014
Kingdom Come, 2014
Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship, 2012

homepage: http://www.vk0ms.com/