The Cremaster Cycle

Inhalt

Der Film-Zyklus wandert wie eine Kunstausstellung von Stadt zu Stadt und wird in jeder Stadt circa sechs Wochen gezeigt werden.

German
Der Filmzyklus besteht aus fünf Teilen, die Barney zwischen 1995 und 2002 drehte. Es handelt sich um eine gefilmte Performancekunst, in der Barney fast immer die Hauptrolle spielt. Musical, Western und die keltische Sagenwelt fließen hier zu einem modernen und ästhetischen Kunstwerk zusammen, dessen Direktheit mitunter sehr provokant ist. Thematisch hat sich Barney um die Biologie des Menschen gekümmert und zeigt eine besondere Vorliebe für die geschlechtliche Differenzierung während der Embryonalentwicklung.

Filmstarts:
Berlin: 5. Oktober 2005
Köln: 12. November 2005
München: 28. Dezember 2005
Hamburg: 5. Februar 2006
Stuttgart: 1. März 2006
Frankfurt: 12. April 2006

English
Matthew Barney's epic Cremaster cycle (1994–2002) is a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films that explore processes of creation.

The cycle unfolds not just cinematically, but also through the photographs, drawings, sculptures, and installations the artist produced in conjunction with each episode. Its conceptual departure point is the male cremaster muscle, which controls testicular contractions in response to external stimuli.

The project is rife with anatomical allusions to the position of the reproductive organs during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation: Cremaster 1 represents the most "ascended" or undifferentiated state, Cremaster 5 the most "descended" or differentiated.

The cycle repeatedly returns to those moments during early sexual development in which the outcome of the process is still unknown—in Barney's metaphoric universe, these moments represent a condition of pure potentiality. As the cycle evolved over eight years, Barney looked beyond biology as a way to explore the creation of form, employing narrative models from other realms, such as biography, mythology, and geology.