Riot and revelry! That seems to be what Anna Steinert’s 16-minute experimental film The Strange Rites of Dr. Arabeskeis all about: the viewer feels as though they are witnessing a séance. A horde of unhinged art students lays waste to the orthodox Freudian practice of the neurologist Dr. Arabeske. Yet the dismantled furniture reassembles itself, and the carpet comes alive as a tangled swarm of masked mythical creatures.
Looking at further works—such as the Dada-esque montage Hypochondriacs in Dialogue or the mini road movie Mosagrima—a recurring motif becomes apparent: the mask. Steinert explains: “For me, the mask is important as a kind of toy. As a tool, it makes it easier to let go while remaining unrecognised by digital facial recognition.”
The painterly dissolution of the motif, particularly of the face, is a recurring theme in Steinert’s work. She cites two intellectual icons as sources of inspiration: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, whose A Thousand Plateaus is no easy ascent even for professional thinkers. Yet Steinert does not see herself as an intellectual; she hides her Roland Barthes on the bookshelf somewhere between Martin Kippenberger and Tracey Emin. Nevertheless, she enjoys combing through art history in search of motifs: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Surrealism—all in pursuit of inspiration for new monsters and fools.
As she puts it: “It bothers me that the grotesque is far too underrepresented in the art world, where everything is polished smooth. I’m much more interested in what resists. The grotesque sticks its tongue out at hierarchies; it reveals the abyssal, the destructive, the demonic. It holds up a fool’s mirror to the world.”
Thus, behind the garish mask of the agitator—who rails against social conditions, omnipresent “zombie influences,” and the “old, mouldy Doctor Freud”—one may also discern a cheerful enlightener.
