© Mika Rottenberg & Jon Kessler

Mika Rottenberg & Jon Kessler

Mika Rottenberg (1976, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a New York-based artist known for her video installations that view the female body as a site of contestation regarding issues of work, class and materialism.

New York-based artist Jon Kessler (born 1957, Yonkers, New York) is best known for his kinetic sculptures that leave the mechanics exposed to the viewer.

Mika Rottenberg often presents in her films enigmatic work processes through which human “waste” such as sweat, blood, hair, nails or tears – in some cases mixed with salad or make-up – generate new products. Through almost surrealist scenes, she comments on the preconceived ideas about the power of women to determine their own fate, the idealization of the stereotypical body and the condition of workers in a globalized capitalist economy.

Seven (2012) is a multimedia work resulting from the video performance and installation made in collaboration with Jon Kessler for “Performa 11” in New York. As in most of his works, the artist explores the relationship between body and work, both in its representation and in its productive function. During the performance, a mechanism called “Chakra Juicer” allowed the sweat of seven artists to be collected during a continuous cycle of 37 minutes. The audience, summoned at specific times, could thus follow the collection of fluids mixing both the kinetic sculptures of John Kessler and the absurd videos of Mika Rottenberg.

Seven combines filmed time and real time to create a complex laboratory that stages body fluids and colors.