HAARLEM.- The focus of the international group exhibition ‘Body/Space Mechanics’ is the complicated relation between the human body and its surroundings. Six artists present in film and video works their views about identity and the fraught relation between the individual and the collective. This exhibition in De Hallen Haarlem has been organized to accompany the Madness & Arts Festival, and can be seen through 5 December, 2010.

In ‘Body/Space Mechanics’artists respond to the body as a site of conflict and resistance, a place where prevailing norms are opposed, assailed and breached. That happens in the course of performances, recorded on video, in which the boundaries of the ‘normal’ are intentionally sought out.

In some of the works shown, such as those by Charles Atlas and Kouneski/Williams Gamaker, the body is primarily employed to explore limits which have been established in advance. Other works (Jesper Just, Markus Schinwald) have a more cinematic and narrative character, in which the uncanny and suspense play an important role. Territorium (1999) by Aernout Mik is also being shown. In this exhibition it serves a pivotal function: both within Mik's own oeuvre and in the exhibition, it is a sort of mid-point between a neutral recording of a performance and a more narrative conception.

The exhibition ‘Body/Space Mechanics’ was organized to accompany the Madness & Arts Festival 2010, which after Toronto (2003) and Münster (2006) will be taking place in Haarlem from 24 September through 3 October, 2010.