Milva Stutz

We are very excited to show the first solo exhibition with Milva Stutz (*1985, Zurich) and to premiere the artist’s latest video ‘For Real, for Real, for Real this Time’. The exhibition with the same title focuses exclusively on the artist’s video work, for which she typically combines traditional, hand-animated Stop-Motion animation with digital 3D animation as she examines gender dynamics and the human body in space.

We are very excited to show the first solo exhibition with Milva Stutz (*1985, Zurich) and to premiere the artist’s latest video ‘For Real, for Real, for Real this Time’. The exhibition with the same title focuses exclusively on the artist’s video work, for which she typically combines traditional, hand-animated Stop-Motion animation with digital 3D animation as she examines gender dynamics and the human body in space.

‘For Real, for Real, for Real this Time’ (2021) explores possibilities of the female body to appropriate digital technologies and the digital space. Inspired by the literature of Luce Irigaray, Sadie Plant und Paul B. Preciado the video is questioning the myth of the immateriality of the digital space by means of anthropomorphizing, sliming and feminizing it. We see an older, naked woman entering a room made entirely of marble, with marble sculptures and an oversized sofa in the middle of the room. The room is part of a server farm, the embodiment of the digital space. The woman moves slowly but visibly happy with her body. She places a snail on the sofa, who starts moving across the sofa and from there across the space, slowly sliming the space with a transparent, shiny slime. The woman’s aging body and the slowly moving snail are confronted with the dead physique of the server space and the marble, although the question is asked whether the marble as a constantly changing element should be seen as ‘dead’ or ‘living’ body. The title ‘For Real, for Real, for Real this Time’ refers to a song by the Afro-American Rapper Tylor, The Creator about the ambiguity of gender identities in the digital space.

‘My Dear Lover’ (2019) tells of a figure’s yearning for touch and the impossibility of bringing that about. While one hand is trying to get into contact with the surface of an amorphous body, a voice in the off is reading a love letter. The longed for lover might well stand for an imaginary body, upon which insecurities around human / non-human as well as digital / analogue relationships are played out. The personal experience and feelings of a person and the intimacy between two bodies is turned inside out and raises the question of the extent to which touch – who or what touches each other and how, or does not touch each other, and how long, how intensively, how often and in what place – can be politically formed or formative.

In ‘Bay of plenty’ (2018) a virtual island platform is the setting for a group of inhabitants and some plant-like objects. Ocean and island are characterized by an artificial smoothness and are done with digital 3D animation, while all living creatures have a sculptural body. The characters are made of orange plasticine and show traces of manual fabrication. In four scenes set on different parts of the island, the “lilits” act out rituals of (self-) discovery, of making contact and of encounter. While the “lilits” merely have female sexual characteristics in the beginning, they turn out to be sexual beings whose body language and gestures make them curious, experience-seeking and reflective subjects as the story evolves. Their ability to transform their bodies, to change their sexual identities and create new, temporary forms, leads to almost slapstick-like situations. Early, rather clumsy attempts to communicate with the island’s plants are followed by increasingly intense body fusions and transformations, until one of the “lilits” expands her body significantly and transforms into a viscous, swirling mass. The bronze coating overlays the ocean’s surface, before spreading out virally into the universe.

Milva Stutz has graduated with a Master in Fine Arts from Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK) in 2019. Her work includes video, drawings and sculptures and focuses on the ambiguity of gender and the body in real and in digital space. Her videos have been shown in many international festivals including Annecy International Animation Film Festival (Off-Limit Competition), France; PÖFF Black Nights Film Festival (Rebels With Their Shorts Competition), Estonia; New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival (Int. Competition), Japan; Fantoche International Animation Film Festival (Swiss Competition), Switzerland; Stockholm Animation and Experimental Film Festival, Sweden; Schamlos!Queer-Feministisches Pornographie Festival, Swizerland; Guanajuato International Film Festival, Mexico; Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival, Brasil; Porny Days, Film Kunst Festival, Switzerland; Kyiv International Short Film Festival, Ukraine; Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema, France; GAZE International LGBT Film Festival Dublin, Ireland and more.