Susanne Ohmann
Artistic Research & Performance Art
Panty Girl (Selfie, 2016)
Beijo de Anastácia (Kiss of Anastácia, 2017) Photo: Ricardo Barreto Biriba
VII Mostra de Performance: Imagem Negra e Dissonâncias Contemporâneas
The series of Selfies entitled Kiss of Anastácia (2017) was selected for a group exhibition, taking place at Art Gallery Cañizares, in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. In the context of the 7th performance festival, organized by the fine arts department of the Federal University of Bahia. At issue was contemporary black art, slavery, and power structures in general that create artistic and cultural indigence that are still present to this day.
Kiss of Anastácia makes reference to a well-known depiction of Escrava Anastácia, a popular saint venerated in Brazil. In an engraving of Jacques Arago (1839) the female slave is wearing a punishment facemask.
The university’s performance collective A-FETO has a long tradition of participating in this annual performance festival. Since 2012 Susanne has participated in this event several times as a performer. However, in recent years some of her Selfie series were commissioned for the festival’s art exhibition. Thus creating an opportunity where two tenets of Susanne’s research, namely life-performance and still-photography, shared the exact same physical space and were in dialogue with each other.
Two research questions motivated Susanne’s photo- and life performance at that time:
1) How to move (with) blackness? And, 2): How does whiteness move itself?
Susanne Ohmann and Ciane Fernandes in a performance at with collective A-FETO (APrópriAção, 2017)
Photo: Christina Siqueira
Performance Art / Marina Abramović
Performance Art is an inspiration that has informed Susanne's work. Meeting with performance artist Marina Abramović was a significant moment in Susanne’s artistic development, when she participated in two workshops entitled “Cleaning the House”. Through days of silence, fasting and intense mental and physical exercises, Marina's goal was to take her students to higher states of perception, resulting in artistic work. Susanne created two solo works under her guidance: Emptiness (1995) and La Chasse (1996), which were presented to a small audience.
Emptiness (1995) was performed at the conference “Connected Body?” at the SNDO, Amsterdam. The idea of the piece was conceived after 24 hours of slow-motion movement and being blindfolded.
La Chasse (1996) was filmed in/as performance during a retreat at the Domaine de Kerquéhennec, France. After 5 days of fasting and strenuous exercises, each participant performed an artwork. Susanne ran into the woods on all fours with a video 8 camera strapped under her belly and the audience followed her into the thicket.
Abramović regularly showcases La Chasse in her lecture demonstrations. In 2021, the video clip is also featured in Sky Arts’ TV production entitled Marina Abramović Takes Over TV (see link).
La Chasse (with Marina’s commentary) is at 58:46 min - 1:00:13 min.
Password: MATV2020
Susanne Ohmann (59) is a German performance artist, dance therapist (MA), and Performing Arts researcher (PhD), living and working in the Netherlands since 1986. She has a Bachelors degree in Dance, and worked for more then 20 years as a freelance dancer with diverse choreographers and dance companies. Susanne also created various solo performances, as well as video installations and dance films. Next to her artistic and academic occupation, she works with elderly people suffering dementia in a care home in Amsterdam.
Susanne’s doctoral research project explores the artistic Selfie as a vehicle to encounter “the other” within and to bring that to expression in/as photo-performance. The project rests on a life long quest to articulate projections of personal identity, and the feminine in particular. Her aim has been the transformation of stereotypes in order to move in the direction of authenticity, self-acceptance, and embodied identity. Much of Susanne’s performance work is infused with a pinch of humour or irony. She investigates notions such as the grotesque and the abject and does not shy away from embodying the exaggerated and even monstrous aspects of eroticism often assigned to the feminine.
Emptiness (still image from video)
La Chasse (still image from video)
Artistic Research in the context of Dance Therapy
The direction of her studies in mental health, and her experiences in that field started to find expression in her art and performance work. Looking for an ideal combination of fieldwork and artistic research in the context of dancetherapy, Susanne was commissioned to live and work in the artist in residence program “Het Vijfde Seizoen”, situated in Den Dolder, The Netherlands. The residency is part of Altrecht, a large psychiatric institute.
Link: http://www.vijfde-seizoen.nl/en/artists/susanne_ohmann
During her three months stay (spring/summer 2009) she created three short video portraits of an elderly bipolar woman who had spent 30 years in psychiatric care, and the dance film GoDDoG, in which Susanne performed herself.Meeting the inpatients inspired the movie. The story is about a woman that escapes the confines of her mind and the restrictions of an isolation cell in a whirling dance that takes her deep into a forest where she encounters and explores her instinctual animal nature. The dance in the movie is a reflection on madness, the split of the human soul, somewhat situated between the animal and the divine.
GoDDoG (still image from video by Chris Fawcett)
Dance Film
One Ride Pony is a collaborative project of dancer/performer Susanne Ohmann and visual artist Alex Vermeulen.
With her solo performance 'One Trick Pony' Susanne won first prize for 'Beste Body Act' at the 1995 'Festival aan de Werf' in Utrecht. Ohmann approached Alex Vermeulen with the idea of developing 'One Trick Pony' into a short movie. Together they wrote the script. Vermeulen incorporated various elements from Ohmann's work and introduced a dramatic plot in the scenario. David Shea wrote the music for the film. One Ride Pony was produced by the by the Dutch broadcasting organisation NPS and premiered at the Nederlands Film Festival, Utrecht, in 2000.
One Ride Pony (2000)
One Ride Pony (still image from film by Benito Strangio)