LARS SILTBERG
Watching Lars Siltberg's latest videos, it seems appropriate to quote from Spinoza's Ethics: "[No] one has yet been taught by experience what the body can do merely by the laws of nature." Siltberg's attention centers on the Cartesian problem of the body and the mind, investigating both their functions and limitations, but also their extreme possibilities—much of which remains to be discovered. In Single Head (all works 2006), a severed head crawls on the ground aided only by its jaw muscles. A less grotesque exploration of potentiality is manifest in Ambidextrous Performance, a video featuring the artist sitting on a tall stool facing a blackboard, wielding pieces of chalk in hands and in feet. The artist laboriously investigates his own mental and physical limitations by writing letters (not full words) with each of his four extremities simultaneously. A third video, Skin Scan, slowly and closely tracks the surface of a seemingly boundless, monstrous body, scrutinizing hair, moles, scar tissues, dimples, and orifices, all pulsing with life. Repetitive experiments in fantasy, body, and soul have become a Siltberg trademark.