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20 14:44
 Within a
universe
of body
an introduction
Jonathan Echeverri
own own body own is a two-year collaborative effort
(January 2018 – December 2019) that connects two
cities: Medellín (Colombia) and Hamburg (Germany).
It was conceived by Brenda I. Steinecke Soto, chore-
ographer with a degree in philosophy, and Kirstin
Burckhardt, visual artist and psychologist. The
main research question dealt with body boundaries
and ways to reach beyond them It is hard to think of a
bounded and self-contained subject, one permanently capa-
ble of owning itself and grafting to itself –to some internal
coherence– as it engages with its surroundings. Movement is
inherent to the human condition. Liquid, solid, gas and electric
impulses circulate inside the body, absorb and release into the
outside. A bounded silueta, a line that marks the contours of
a body, blurs if we are able to see how the body exudes heat,
how it emanates an aura and peels off layers of skin and hair.
Jonathan Echeverri, spelling/spilling out possession, 20193.
The present publication is not a documentation in
the strict sense but rather another point at which
this research-based project materializes. Here, the
visuals and the texts obtained from the process are
newly combined on 20 pages of paper, serving as
a companion through the many layers this project
has taken.
Body ownership and belongingness to the body are
inexhaustible topics “Owning” your body, its sensations
3 All texts in this font are collected from Brenda and Kirstin’s
research, if not stated otherwise. they conducted outreach workshops and interviews,
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 2
and its various parts is fundamental to the feeling of being
someone. Thomas Metzinger. The ego tunnel: The science of
the mind and the myth of the self. Basic Books, 2009. When a
song gives you goose bumps; when a blow to your
head makes it swell and you lose bits of memory;
when you stretch to reach a surface whose rough-
ness attracts you, there is your own body giving
you ground to hold on to or disowning you dis-owner-
ship: when I give others the power over my body. possession:
to be afraid of sharing. belongingness: I hear myself. Yasmín,
workshop on Body Dis*Ownership, 2018.
Within a universe of body, Brenda and Kirstin
picked various strands that they threaded through
the eye of “Body Ownership”. They collected and
connected seemingly far apart materials, the
combination of which reveals the many facets of
what it means to belong to a body. They moved
and filmed in urban scapes What connected Hamburg
and Medellín were our own bodies and our decision to move in
both cities with the same intention/attitude towards other
bodies in public spaces. We decided to make no difference
and that’s what we see in the videos: Hamburg and Medellín
become one urban space. Is it right to assert that Hamburg is
a less violent city than Medellín? What kind of violence are
we talking about? Brenda and Kirstin, conversation, 2019,
they connected gaze and touch Tasten (German) =
(especially with hands stretched out) cautious, searching
movements to find contact with something. Duden online, 2018,
22.01.20 14:44
 asking about feeling threatened or safe, feeling
Body Dis*Ownership, trauma and vulnerability I
remember the day when my father said to me: You are gay, and
if you are gay, I am going to kill you. A friend, note, 2018, about
sexuality and gender Queerpo: the combination between
“queer” and “cuerpo” (“body”). Lilith Border, interview, 2018.
A thought experiment with a friend at an early stage
of the project marks an arch from beginning to end:
“Imagine you are a horse and the owner of the horse
at the same time”. It turned into an entry point
for interviews and conversations in Hamburg and
Medellín. This image, also used by Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari4, reflects on multiplicity and
becoming, serving as a tool to think of the bodies
of performers and audience and the ways in which
they gather and separate in kinetic constellations
exceeding subject boundaries “One Thousand Plateaus”
entered the Project; the image of the pack. The ‘pack’ offered
a departing point to the process of self-organization in the
performative actions. The result was an ongoing negotiation
between us as movers, as colleagues, bodies and persons. And
of course, between all those variations of us and the audience.
Brenda, notebook, 2019.
Method-wise, the project conjures up different tech-
niques for research and creation: visual art, perfor-
mance, choreography, and qualitative research,
which represent gateways to dig up, mess, softly
take over and flesh out bodies. Combining these
techniques, the project took on three different parts:
They developed the visual art component in close
cooperation with the filmmaker Oscar Molina. Creat-
ing the 3-channel video installation titled 1-2-3,
the project followed the premise of forming a two-
body creature that upset subject boundaries. Each
body that composed the creature was equipped with
a go-pro camera; a third eye harnessed to the center
of the chest. A two-headed, six-eyed hydra was
born – more than one but less than many. A creature
that touches the surfaces of urban landscapes and
interacts with the gazes of pedestrians. In the video
installation that records its roamings, it crawls
4 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, London 1987 talk to one another and interrogate the viewers.
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 3
and caresses coarse tiles and bricks, it turns urban
scapes upside down, circumvents gazes, runs away
and chases what ended up being the motor for its
movements: the cinematic eye of a third camera
that records it When I watch you, I long so much to be part
of you. I want to dive into what I’m recording. Oscar, Brenda,
Kirstin, conversation, 2018.
The performance component followed the premise
of horizontality proposing an anarchist choreogra-
phy of sorts that veered from the idea of a leading
figure telling performers how to move. A second
premise for this component was finding cautious
and delicate ways to take over another body. A third
premise was to approach the act of ‘looking’ as a
performative action which became part of the move-
ment repertoire. The piece that came out of this
performance component faced two additional chal-
lenges: weaving a conversation between performing
bodies and video and extending the premise of hori-
zontality to the audience. A sharp live soundtrack
and light, vertical screens – strategically distrib-
uted in the circular room – shaped the space in
which the bodies of audience and performers moved.
Lastly, qualitative research was based on ethno-
graphic tools – interviews, journaling, and sharp
observation – and gathering written sources. Its
main premise was to contrast biographies and
extreme experiences with the body. Carefully
listening to people in Hamburg and Medellín,
Brenda and Kirstin collected a vast inventory of
stories, phrases, chat conversations and scribbles.
Three of these life stories were particularly strong.
They dealt with gender, war wounds and psychic
trauma and showed that Body Dis*Ownership always
emerges in relation One thing was to understand that
Body ownership always implies a relation: between me and
the environment/community (belonging), between me and
agency (possessing), between me and creation (making). And if
there is no ‘me’? Note, 2019 and deeply shapes the body.
Carefully intersecting the interviews and thereby
revealing their connections, the protagonists of
these stories (resulting in the video VOICES) address
the audience individually, but they also “queerly”
22.01.20 14:44
 Throughout the two-year process of the project,
I have been the witness during its every stage –
through midnight conversations, reading
recommendations, workshop participation, and
post-performance reflections preparing the final
exhibition and program. For the final exhibition,
I participated with a conversation extract A body
can enslave and be enslaved by another body. A body can
lure itself into enslavement to another body, to the image of
another body (on a screen, for example) or to an event that
leaves an invisible trace in the body, deeply ingrained in the
unconscious. Spelling/Spilling out possession, 2019 about
possession Capitalism makes it possible to possess our
bodies. Because it gives us the opportunity to individualize,
to separate from the others, the community, to be by our self.
The body and its functionality are not anymore something
to earn money with, but the way a body looks, how it repre-
sents something that has a (market-) value. Felix Ruckert,
The Living Room Tour - Creating Sex Positive Spaces, Berlin
Lecture, 2018 in non-Western societies. From that
closing moment of the project, I found particu-
larly provoking that the audience expected sharp
contrasts between so-called First and Third World
and instead it offered subtle threads of continu-
ity B: Even though it takes place in two different cities, it
is not saying: Here is the dangerous city and here is the safe
city. We didn’t want to fall into these commonplaces. And if
you don’t cultivate the assumption that this place is danger-
ous and this place isn’t dangerous, then the place behaves
accordingly. spaces are constructed by people, how they
relate to these places and how they move within them. K:
Just the fact that they are there – That a street is not empty
but populated. B: And that it is populated by people who are
not afraid of each other. Brenda & Kirstin, conversation,
2019 between Hamburg and Medellín.

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 Let us imagine two key approaches to understanding how bodies and spaces
relate to one another. According to the first approach, the world in which
the subject is embedded is an entailment of her premises, views, methods,
plans, in short, the subject’s will. The second approach departs from the
idea that subjects are an effect of relations. They are in relation. Will is
not enough to explain lived experience. One needs then to seriously think
of how spaces shape bodies. Through the many layers of own own body own,
differences between Hamburg and Medellín, the two cities where research
for this project was conducted, are not evident. Instead, there are multi-
ple threads of continuity. What to make of this? The methods Brenda and
Kirstin chose for the project contributed to produce similar outcomes
in Hamburg and Medellín. However, other factors that both cities share
certainly contributed to that outcome. Urban space, artistic-alternative
social milieus and consumption, among others, are global dynamics that
produce similar experiences of the body even if a so-called First World/
Third World divide separates them.

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 Bodies
coming
together
apart
Cutting something into two
reveals that it once was one
Collaborative material collection,
Medellín
• Exposing ourselves to interac-
tion. Do you like me for the way I look or
for the way I look at you? Moving and
filming in urban spaces.
• How do ‘Body Ownership’ and
‘gaze’ go together? If I had another
image of myself, would I look different?
• The body camera (GoPros) offers a
gaze that is both fascinating and
challenging to look at, it’s deli-
ciously confusing.
• Which story are we going to tell
about the relationship between
the I-perspectives (body cameras)
and the third-person perspective
(external camera)?
• Body Ownership workshop at Casa
de la Cultura Pedregal: Partic-
ipants described losing Body
Ownership mostly in violent situ-
ations. Experiencing Body Owner-
ship, however, was something
unspectacular and in the every-
day, e.g. “taking a shower”, “being
on my own” or “drinking a good
coffee”. We were touched by the
stories of being with the body not
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 6
as something heroic or even effort-
ful – it is about being in the expe-
rience as it is. Not as a cognitive
act, but as one that takes roots
into the soil.
Collaborative material collection,
Hamburg
• Our expectation was that the
images in Germany and Colombia
would be different. But the ima-
ges were more or less the same,
because they were generated in
both cities in an equal way. We had
made the active and (as we only
realized later) the pivotal decision
to move in both cities equally, and
thus the cities reacted in quite
the same way to us, too. Is it the
place itself or its reputation that makes
you Feel fear? And still, differences
remain You’re telling me about your
friend being shot at a café last week and
my stomach turns. What can I say? Kirstin,
note, 2019.
• Searching for the tension
between ‘many’ and ‘one’ during
our rehearsals: Can we move as
one (organism) without relying
22.01.20 14:44
 on chorographical synchronies?
Resistances. Note to self: listen care-
fully.
• Replacing the image of the
organism with the animal pack.
How we move is a response to
other bodies. If I want to share my body
with you, will I lose something?
• When we move as performers,
how can we make the audience
feel part of the pack? How can we be
contagious?
• Sound is crucial for the pack.
Tobias and his self-made music
machine played by touch. Touch is
an action of two.
Combining the material
• Struggling to find rules for edit-
ing, then realizing: We need to
build our storyline from the body
cams, not the outside camera.
Working from the first person plural.
Finishing editing process: When is
a piece done? Making decisions.
• We decide on the interac-
tion between bodies, videos,
and setting for the performative
video-installation: We peel out
from the audience, come together
as a pack and go through differ-
ent social relations – forming a
group, excluding and including
its members, and creating duets
in the group. The audience can
walk through the space and sit
on the stage. Everyone needs to
move heads and bodies to actively
decide which screen and which
person to look at. We as perform-
ing bodies relate to each other,
the videos, and the bodies of the
audience members – either by
proximity or by direct eye contact.
Can looking be a dance movement?
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 7
Performative video-installation
• Every evening is completely
different from the other and yet
they all appear as parts of a seek-
ing whole.
• Premiere: People either loved
or hated it. Did we try to get into this
new logic of non-control or did we try to
regain control? What are we holding on
to?
• Second show: Contemplating,
reordering. Can an artistic project be a
social experiment without overreaching
ethical boundaries?
• Third show: Everything is flow-
ing. Great timing. Plurality of
the one. Taking over a body was
a scary experience. We pinned him to
the ground. We took over. We were the Boa
that slowly encircled the jumping thing.
And we curled around him. But the weird
thing is: He wanted it that way, right?
• Two film screenings and audi-
ence discussions of the film “Nine
Shots” by Jorge Giraldo at Abaton
Cinema, Hamburg.
Reflecting in the in-between
• Skype conversations: Brenda,
Kirstin, Oscar and Jonathan. We
talked about how we tried to
do things and how they came to
be. We found words for the many
folds we were dealing with. Body
Ownership is a channel we use to
do*talk*think about how we are
constantly zooming in and out of
the body, getting dizzy. The gaze
that forces edges on what was about
to dissolve joyfully. We are always
negotiating seemingly contra-
dicting, yet co-existing pulls. A
thousand-headed hydra trying to keep a
sense of self.
22.01.20 14:44
 • The body as a camera and the camera
as a body – two-day workshop with
Oscar in Medellín with a mixed
age group of artists and non-
artists. Strapping the cameras to
different body parts, we dislocate
our locus of seeing. This is fun and
challenges our habits of seeing.

Four-day Body Dis*Ownership

Program

• At Frise Künstlerhaus Hamburg:

exhibition, performances, film
screening and workshop. I mix solids
with my liquids / I dissolve tears with my
drool / When it’s dry, I moisten / I don’t
obey because I’m wet. Excerpt “banho”
by Elza Soares. From the album “Deus é
mulher”.

Publication

• How can we join the many layers

of the project into one? We decide
to use two fonts: one for the
descriptions and another for the
personal notes, quotes and testi-
monials that crossed the seman-
tic field like birds or lines in the
landscape of our research on Body
Dis*Ownership. Coexistence as a prin-
ciple.

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OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 9 22.01.20 14:44
 Making images + making bodies = videos
How can we visualize Body Ownership? We connected Body
Ownership with an I-perspective, looking for images that
uncover the multiplicity of the ‘I’ First person plural. Strapping
two body cameras (GoPros) to our chests, we move in direct
body contact. Our premise is that both I-perspectives of the
cameras are at interplay with each other, showing that gaze
is never produced by a singular entity. Instead, it is the result
of bodies touching and reacting constantly to each other.
The body cameras are joined by an external camera – a third-
person perspective. While it may hold a position of power as
the one who frames the image from the outside, it desires to
dive into the collective I-perspective. BE-LONGING. At one point
the gazes of the I-perspectives and the outside camera meet –
they look at each other looking. Gazes conjoined with bodies. Body
is spatiosocially bound, is situated.

1-2-3, 2018, 3-channel audiovisual installation, 40 min, 16:9, Full HD (in collaboration with Oscar Molina)

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 1-2-3. A body opens its eyes in succession. The black surface of the image rips open - blink by blink. I can see hands. They are trave-
ling the surfaces of blue paint-chipped walls, goose-bumped skins, wave-like ripples. Watching the hands touching the visible.
Tastender Blick.
1-2-3. These hands are attached to limbs. Distance - the length of an arm. Further down, a leg travels through the air. It is sprouting
from the body from which I am looking. That weird angle called I-perspective on the screen. Learning to see a body emerging part
by part. I blink. The shadows melt both bodies seamlessly.
1-2-3. Shift> First-person perspectives are joined by another moving eye. The outside camera is a body, as well. Looking for its iden-
tity between framing, zooming, following, playing, submerging and arriving. It is the first time to see faces. And these faces are
looking back.

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 Making body + being body = live performance
The performative arrangement was based on four assumptions:
(1) We do not want to represent Body Ownership – we want to
exercise it. (2) To do this, we propose that we as five perform-
ers negotiate our own wishes and movements in real time. (3)
We consider ‘looking’ a performative act, i.e. we work with
the intention that how we look at and through the bodies as
performers and audience is a performative action. Looking
has the same status as lifting an arm. (4) We are aware that
there is control and loss of control through the fact that the
specific movements and constellations of the performers are
not predetermined by a fixed choreography. The choreogra-
phy unfolds for the performers and audience equally from
moment to moment. This can be scary and exhilarating at
the same time.

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 Notes on rehearsals (before entering Mojo Club):
The pack is a metaphor for the multiplicity of oneness.
DAY #1 Good start: No rule at all.
DAY #2 No rule but conflict. Too much talking.
DAY #3 Where are the rules? One of us cries. Rehearsal ended
earlier. Moreover, when looking for direction it is difficult to
keep movements aimless.
DAY #4 Imagine you are a horse and the owner of the horse at the
same time – that works. I stayed outside and watched. Someone
looking transforms the group.
DAY #5 Interacting with video installation and music. Being crea-
tor and audience at the same time.
DAY #6 Becoming: pack – tribe – ritual – club.
DAY #7 Interview fragments from VOICES – words through the body.
DAY #8 It is possible to carry someone without touching?
DAY #9 James: Exchanging molecules of body. Crossing bodies,
giving and receiving information through touch. I become a bit of
you. So, the question for me is: What am I now? Lisa: The visiting.
Inviting and still having an own place. What do I gain and what
do I risk? To be there and to look. Viktor: To listen in order to be
able to be there. Inner core, to clean up, to de-construct barriers.
Kirstin: How to bridge and how to deal with wounds. How to deal
with weight.
DAY #10 To stay human: Making a movement without making so
much out of it, without so much secret. But secrets are interest-
ing. If there is no secret, there is no need to stay.
DAY #11 To build something up and then let it collapse.
Don’t produce! WHY NOT?
To put someone in a box, to catalogue them is a form of posses-
sion.
DAY #12 Gestures of possession: King-Kong. What are we inviting
people to?
Stage/Performance => to look / to be there / to pay => what for?
To share an experience / to take something home. Viktor: What is
the floor? What is the space to share our knowledge? What is the
frame to move freely? Lisa: What do we need in order to take care
in the face of many variables
DAY #13 Did we manage to take over the other body? Integrating
and Hunting.
Notebooks, Brenda, 2018.

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 Language + (image & body) = voices
“What is Body Ownership to you? Do you have, make and/or
are you a body?”, we asked three interview partners: Jorge
Giraldo, a former sergeant in the Colombian conflict and film-
maker, Lilith Border, a trans* activist and folklore dancer in
Medellín, and Gwen Schulz in Hamburg, an anti-stigma educa-
tor and mental health worker drawing from her own experi-
ences in psychiatric institutions. We edited their answers to
the video VOICES. It is a polyphonic narration on losing and
regaining ownership over bodies. Their words give shape to
the relationships between societal gaze and body configura-
tion. While listening to their voices, Jorge, Lilith and Gwen
stand silently in front of the camera, open to meet the gaze
of the viewer.

VOICES, 2018, 3-channel audiovisual installation, duration variable, 16:9, Full HD

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 J: Look, every time a person dies, there is ALWAYS a sound. Maybe
it’s the soul coming out, the spirit or just the last offshoot of
energy that’s left in the body. But it’s a sound, like [breathes out
loudly = khaaa], a very strong sigh that I’ve never seen in any
movie.

G: When I can’t feel the border of my body anymore, there’s this

truly physical urge to wear 5 coats on top of each other … to
cushion this space between me and the world … to make it grow
thicker … because it’s also a space. And I want to prevent the
world from entering so fast.

L: I was wearing a yellow dress at my graduation ceremony for my

anthropology degree, because yellow is the first color the human
retina notices and that was the idea: To be at the center.

L: I am developing this notion of “queerpo” – the combination

between “queer” and “cuerpo” (“body”). It’s the strange body, the
faggot body, the crooked body, the abject body. But at the same
time, it’s the glorified body, the claimed body and the “owned”
body, as you both called it.

J: In all of my first battles I never saw ... what to call it ... I

never saw the ‘other’ ... The jungle is very thick, there is [making
sounds of bullets = pra pra pra chu chu chu], but you don’t see
who it is, until things appear bit by bit. And I could see that
they were forms, human bodies identical to mine. We were all the
same – boys amongst boys.

J: And then to feel my bowels, to feel the feces of my companions,

because there were feces, fluids, many things. Meeting a person
on the outside and then meeting them on the inside is very ugly.
But there is something very human about it, too.

G: I am a body when I’m in strong pain. Then I feel my body.

It’s not empty, there is something there that’s hurting – and air
can’t do that. To me, the body itself isn’t that important. All that
really matters is that it has a border.

G: I only need to make a body when meeting someone else …

because I don’t need to make it for myself.

J: I am a body when feeling emotional outbursts, because there’s

something very fetal to me in that. It’s when I feel vulnerable.

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 (making + being) space & bodies = exhibition
Four-day program: June 13–16, 2019: exhibition, performances,
film screening, workshop
• Opening and performance by Brenda I. Steinecke Soto and
Kirstin Burckhardt with the introduction “kicking question
around” by Jana Seehusen (IKF–Filmuniversität Babelsberg).
• Film screening: “Nine Shots” by Jorge Andrés Giraldo Antía
and audience discussion.
• Workshop: “Who decides over my body?” Guided visit through
the exhibition, discussion and exercises around losing Body
Ownership as a pleasurable experience.
• Closing and performance: “spelling/spilling out posses-
sion”. Text by Prof. Dr. Jonathan Echeverri (Universidad de
Antioquia). With Brenda I. Steinecke Soto, Kirstin Burckhardt,
Jessica Owusu Boakye and Jonathan Echeverri.

The program offered insights into our research. It consisted

of two performances, a film screening and a workshop that
took place in the context of our exhibition. The exhibition
spanned three rooms and presented our video works (1-2-3 and
VOICES) and an installation made up of a labyrinth of half-
transparent papers, hanging from the ceiling, printed with
collected quotes, academic text fragments, testimonials from
conversation partners, workshop participants, and working
notes. Surrounded by this spatial archive, the visitors could
move along and in between these fragments, finding their
own connections and readings.

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 How do we work? What is research to us? Testimony of a
messy/messying research. It is not the microscope but the
boot that we seek – something to step into, something
that can be walked, experienced and even endured in the
in-between. It is about the stretches, not the destina-
tions. We stretch our muscles, giving our bones slightly
new shapes? In all – our performative and video works, our
movements through language and translations, our inlays
and main texts – sometimes, it is only through proxim-
ity that one makes a research finding to enjoy. We ask:
¿How would you translate Body Ownership into any of your
languages? Here, translating is like falling rocks. The
word splits. We lose and find.

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How to
IMAGINE THAT YOU
ARE A HORSE AND THE
OWNER OF THE HORSE
AT THE SAME TIME?
Jana Seehusen
Notes on an artistic research practice in the field
of Body Dis*Ownership.3
a: Am I a body? Do I have a body? Am I making a body? 4
b: Which body belongs to whom in which context?
c: Which boundaries are being touched, which layers of history
are being traversed?
d: What is stored in my body?
e: What is on the surface? What is underneath? Who decides?
f: Do I claim my body when I make it available to you?
g: Will I offer my body?
h: Do you want me to own your body?
i: Do you like to get lost?
»Am I my body? Or do I have my body?« Gwen
Schulz asks, thus placing a question at the open-
ing of an answer, mirroring the interview situation
in which she was speaking. This single question
cannot reflect the abundance of questions around
the two-year artistic research project own own body
own by Kirstin Burckhardt and Brenda I. Steinecke
Soto, which revolves around the neologism Body
Dis* Ownership. These questions also remain silent
in the three-channel audiovisual work VOICES,
which is part of the performative video-installa-
tion of own own body own (2018–19), but the fragmen-
tary blend of statements that follow make us catch
3 The German version of this text can be found at:
www.ownownbodyown.com
4 All questions are based on the collection of questions by Brenda
I. Steinecke Soto and Kirstin Burckhardt. Curated selection by Jana
Seehusen.
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 18
a glimpse of their possible biographical origin
– they are personal questions, questions on the
boundary between self and body, body and environ-
ment, owning and feeling. As psychophysical ques-
tions pertaining to Body Ownership they oscillate
between ›possessing‹ and ›belonging‹, the power
of disposal and affiliation, image, consciousness
and active re*presentation, all partaking in the
performative construction of subject renditions.
Interviews were one of the four starting points of
their artistic research. Combined with movement-
based explorations (starting in the studio then
moving into public spaces), visual arrangements,
and community workshops in Medellín (Colombia)
and Hamburg (Germany), the artists added the prefix
dis* to ownership and explored the concept visu-
ally, linguistically, and performatively. »Am I a
body? Or do I have a body?« they asked every inter-
view partner. Choosing simple questions to open
doors to conversation, their third question linking
all interviews, »Do I make a body?,« evades a dual-
istic way of thinking for the purpose of pointing
to the power that resides in the speech act itself.
Using a collaborative, intersubjective approach,
having and being is joined by making. Following
Haraway’s method, with a small ‘m’, the agential
power of language generates the formative poten-
tial of subject renditions. It is not representational
but relational when Gwen Schulz says that making a
body only occurs when meeting someone else. »It’s
not that I have or that I am a body, but that I’m
doing something – but what?« She tosses the ques-
tion back to her interview partners: »When do you
make your body?« Research begins with a question.
»But questioning the questions lies even before the
beginning: questioning and rethinking go hand in
hand«5
j: What does my body store?
k: Where does shame fold into my body?
l: What do the lips of the vulva say when they speak?6
m: If my self-image would look different, would I look
different?
5 Mieke Bal, Lexikon der Kulturanalyse, translated from English by
Britta Pohl, Vienna 2016, 129.
6 Note by translator: In German, “lips of the vulva” literally trans-
lates to “shame lips”.
22.01.20 14:44
 n: Can Body Ownership be compared between Germany and
Colombia?
o: Are we asking the wrong question when we try to compare?
p: What does that have to do with you?
q: What does that have to do with me?
r: Is the term Body Ownership cool?
Questions like these can neither be reduced to
›questions of knowledge‹ nor to merely rhetori-
cal ones, or those defined otherwise and classified
in the grammar of language. Pointing in different
directions, they move in ambiguity, on the border
to an answer. However, »on the border [...] ›is where
the strangest creatures always lie‹«7. In the exhibi-
tion of own own body own, they turn haptic through
an arrangement of auditory and visual set pieces.
39 transparent papers, dangling from the ceiling of
the central room of the exhibition, web a labyrinth
in which the visitors are invited to stroll and read.
The texts consist of diary notes, interview frag-
ments, lexical entries, Skype transcripts, excerpts
from scientific journals, rehearsal protocols, ques-
tions and much more. While crossing through the
papers, I can hear single sounds and sentences from
the other two rooms. A photograph catches my eye;
words conjoin drawings, video images, and objects.
It is here that research, in the sense of a tracking
gaze, unfolds into a heterogeneous ensemble of a
carefully selected arrangement.
Conversations connect, making joining links.
Language repudiates and instead becomes a surface
for transformations. Questions such as: »What is
stored in my body?« alongside: »Where does shame
fold into my body?« propel further questions: »What
do the lips of the vulva say when they speak?«
Between lip and shame lies the betweenwith8 –
evoking Hélène Cixous’s artistic-scientific figure
of thought. As a procedure and as material itself,
language solidifies here between image and body
»[i]n concepts of information (the gaze reveals), in
concepts of relationship (the gaze is exchanged)
7 Joseph Vogl, Über das Zaudern, Zürich / Berlin 2007, 105.
8 Hélène Cixous: Das Lachen der Medusa, in: Esther Hutfless, Gertrude
Postl and Elisabeth Schäfer (Eds.): Hélène Cixous: das Lachen der
Medusa: translated from French by Claudia Simma, first edition in
German, Vienna 2013, 39–61.
OWN-OWN-corrected final Images 01.indd 19
and in concepts of appropriation (through the gaze
I touch, I reach, I move, I am moved)«9. That which
constantly is seeking, meanwhile does not stop at
the process itself.
s: Why did we strap the GoPros to our chests? Why was that so
important to us?
t: What do you see when you don’t look at me?
Using two body cameras (GoPro) and an outside
camera that documents their movement research,
Burckhardt and Steinecke Soto have shaped an own
aesthetic method that implies the power of gaze,
control, and the delivery of control. Interconnect-
ing a technical gaze with embodied research in
public space connects to the notion of film as
research, beginning in the late 1960s and early
1970s, exemplified with performative explorations
by Dan Graham, Ulrike Rosenbach, Valie Export, and
others. The question »Who is speaking?« translates
visually into a divided gaze. In montaging their
movement research, these perspectives multiply,
creating complex layers and overlaps. Fragmenta-
tion and multiplication as a connecting, subject
rendition stabilizing figure? Here, the concept of
diffraction10, borrowed from Haraway, takes hold
as an optical metaphor translated into an artistic
research practice. “Identity understood as the tran-
scription of a process that continues as it is being
transcribed.”11
...xyz: IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE A HORSE AND THE OWNER OF THE HORSE
AT THE SAME TIME!12
9 Roland Barthes, Auge in Auge (1977), in: Roland Barthes: Auge in
Auge, Kleine Schriften zur Photographie, edited by Peter Geimer and
Bernd Stiegler, translated from French by Horst Brühmann, Dieter
Hornig, Dieter Hoch, Agnès Bucaille-Euler, Gerhard Mahlberg, Maren
Sell and Birgit Spielmann, Berlin 2015, 200–204.
10 Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Diffraktion statt Reflexion – Zu
Donna Haraways Konzept des situierten Wissens; DOI: https://doi.
org/10.25969/mediarep/2547.
11 Eran Schaerf, Wer ist Wo? In der Postproduktion des Alltäglichen,
in: Sabeth Buchmann et al. (Ed.), Wenn sonst nichts klappt: Wieder-
holung wiederholen, in Kunst, Popkultur, Film, Musik, Alltag, Theorie
und Praxis, Hamburg/Berlin 2005, 99–107, 104.
12 This is the leitmotif of the exhibition own own body own in the
Künstlerhaus Frise, Hamburg June 2019.
22.01.20 14:44
 own own body own is an international and interdisciplinary co-production between Kirstin Burckhardt (visual arts
and psychology) and Brenda I. Steinecke Soto (choreography and philosophy). For two years, they worked artistically
on the term Body Ownership. The material collection took place in Medellín (Colombia) and Hamburg (Germany) and
encompassed movement research and filming in public spaces, community workshops and interviews. The project
materializes in different formats: a performative video installation (Mojo Club Hamburg, September 2018), a four-day
Body Dis*Ownership Program (Frise Künstlerhaus Hamburg, June 2019) and the publication you hold in your hands.

TEAM
Andrea Acosta (printed matter consulting & design / Colombia & Germany)
Brenda I. Steinecke Soto (concept, artistic direction, production & performer / Germany & Colombia)
Gwen Schulz (video-performer / Germany)
James Santiago Rodriguez (live-performer / Colombia)
Jana Seehusen (publication author & speaker / Germany)
Jessica Owusu Boakye (live-performer / Germany)
Jorge Andrés Giraldo Antía (video-performer / Colombia)
Jonathan Echeverri (publication author & live-performer / Colombia)
Juan Fernando Londoño (sound recordings & transcription of interviews / Colombia)
Lilith Border (video-performer / Colombia)
Lisa Rykena (live-performer / Germany)
Kirstin Burckhardt (concept, artistic direction, production & performer / Germany, USA & RSA)
Maria Lina Bulaich (assistant / Argentina)
Luis Bustamante (editor & VJ / Colombia & Germany)
Oscar Molina (cinematographer, dramaturgical consultant, teaser & trailer editor / Colombia)
Swanhild Kruckelmann (photographer & field producer / Germany)
Tobias Gronau (live sound space & soundtrack videos / Germany)
Viktor Braun (live-performer / Germany)
Frank Wagner (technical director & lights / Germany)
Photo and video documentation: Daniel Montenk, Gabriel Ortiz, Guido Wilken, Hernán Arango, Jessica Owusu Boakye, Juan Pablo
Muñoz, Lilli Thalgott, Lina Bulaich, Marko Mijatovic, Oscar Molina and Robert Schlossnickel. All image rights lie with the image-
takers and own own body own.

www.ownownbodyown.com
Thanks to: Leif Nüske, Christina Scholten, Anika Kraus, Max Asmussen, Florian Wienbreier and the Mojo Club Team. To Kirstine Hansen,
Thorsten Ries, Zakia Sewell and Arne Köppen. To Andrea Giraldo, Pilar Calderón, Daniel Mora, Daniel Shakur, Thomas Poveda, Weimar
Muñoz and the Pequeño Teatro Medellín. To Christiane Stange and Tango Matrix. To Pedro Steinecke and the Burckhardt family.
To Hanna Kayenburg, Ingrid Baireuther, Anna Sabrina Schmid and the Elbkulturfonds team. To Ilka von Bodungen and
the Hamburgischen Kulturstiftung team. To the teams of Alcaldía de Medellín, Goethe Institut Bogotá and Bezirksamt
Altona. To the teams of Bewegungsraum (Gängeviertel), K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg, Abaton Kino Hamburg and ViaAltona.
To Nis Knudsen and the artists of Frise Künstlerhaus Hamburg. To ‘Goldrausch’ Berlin and its participants 2016. To Tina
Steiner, Lenka Brandt, Hans Laich, Daniel Montenk, Ann-Marie Herold, Maxie Schulte, Alex Frías, Nina Kleineidam, Hernan Arango,
Marco und Ana María Marin. To Tina Uebel, Claudia Nethge, Julia Metropolit. To Johanna Marg, Anna-Lena Wenzel, Dina Öhler-
Lindström, Marius Henderson, Lisa W Carlson.

own own body own is a production by Kirstin Burckhardt & Brenda I. Steinecke Soto.

With the kind support of:

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