the earth so soft, a place to be in - Patricia Meier

Patricia Meier's 2-channel video “the earth so soft, a place to be in”, a kind of film diary, unfolds a multi-layered and fragmentary narrative on complex themes such as vulnerability, family and illness. Two screens mounted next to each other show shots of everyday scenes that seem disjointed at first glance: the artist and her father tidying up, a bed frame being dismantled and carried into the garden, dogs playing, a wheelchair being pushed through a hospital corridor, an excavator piling up freshly cut branches.

The images show dualities: public and private, human and non-human, care work and artistic work, daughter and mother, life and death; poles that organically interweave in the rhythm of this skilfully edited video. The camera - most parts of the video are filmed with a smartphone - serves Patricia Meier simultaneously as a medium of distancing and the search for closeness. For example, in the last part of the video, she is filmed performing a song in a staged close-up. The text of this composition subtitles the preceding shots. Patricia Meier is a musician and artist and brings her two different artistic approaches together in this work. In her diploma thesis, she succeeds in reflecting on existential themes as well as issues relating to artistic authorship in a convincing and accessible way. She is thus able to translate a very personal topic into a universal narrative.

Eva Vögtli