The Body Electric is the first comprehensive survey of video artist
and filmmaker Theo Eshetu's extensive body of work. Eshetu examines the
imagery of the collective unconscious, exploring cultural identity and
challenging official media narratives through a complex interplay of
signs and symbols. Throughout his prolific career, spanning over
thirty-five years, he has created a distinctive poetic visual vocabulary
using abstract rhythmic montage and hypnotic syncopated collages of
images to create experimental films. Both philosophical and whimsically
playful, Eshetu's videos possess a dreamlike quality in which gestures,
fragmented actions, and the mirroring and multiplying of images into
kaleidoscopic patterns question the very reality of what an image can
reveal.
This publication provides an in-depth exploration of Eshetu's engagement
with a variety of genres and media, including experimental cinema, essay
and documentary films, large-scale video installations, and live
performances. Alongside documentation of his work, this book provides a
critical contextualization of Eshetu's practice since the late 1970s:
video-art historian Wulf Herzogenrath engages with Eshetu's early work
in the context of experimental video making in the 1980s; writer and
curator David Elliot provides an in-depth analysis of three of Eshetu's
feature-length films; curator Okwui Enwezor talks to Eshetu about the
role of music, montage, and the representation of Africa in his films;
and Monika Szewczyk provides a commentary on his work for documenta 14,
Atlas Fractured (2017).
Copublished with Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD
**Contributors
**Ariane Beyn, David Elliot, Okwui Enwezor, Theo Eshetu, Wulf
Herzogenrath, Monika Szewczyk
