Rapiebar Enraptured Hingerissen - Myriam Thyes

To be and to become enraptured – an experimental cinematic production based on a quote by Augustine of Hippo (from “Confessions”, between AD 397 and 400): … et non stabam frui deo meo; sed rapiebar ad te decore tuo, moxque diripiebar abs te pondere meo, et ruebam in ista cum gemitu; … (And yet I was not stable enough to enjoy my God steadily. Instead I was transported to you by your beauty, and then presently torn away from you by my own weight, sinking with grief into these lower things.)

Images

Removed from its religious context, the sentence articulates a general human condition of life. The video finds architectural, sculptural, performative and poetic images in a world of thought that deals, sometimes humorously, with different forms of “being enraptured” and “being torn away”. The occasion for the collaboration was the exhibition ‘Doppelzimmer’ (Double Rooms) at the Hugenottenhaus in Kassel in the summer of 2021. The Hugenottenhaus is a place where history and the present are visibly fused. The video footage was recorded both there and at the studio. The filming process and post-production both benefited from the combination of such different artistic fields as sculpture (Maria Anna Dewes) and video art (Myriam Thyes).

Augustinus quote spoken by Barbara Fernández, Matti Rouse