Goran Majcen

Urbanity is finally erased by mythical rituals, which is determined by the very title of the video film: menhir, an upright stone block from the Neolithic, which was used for sacral rites. Man and woman are Adam and Eve, created in front of us by electronic transformation (morphing) and marked by blood. This element also marks all other elements of the video image: the murder of an individual by the menhir or trinity (politics, church, army), the bodies of the dancer. Blood, murder and death are overcome by only the second basic element: the stone, which is flooded with blood the very next moment. The fight of natural elements is also served by electronic tricks that turn power holders from flesh and blood into stone and wrong.

The author continues with her main themes: the relationship between man and woman, the intrusion of the mythical into the rituals of everyday life. This video uses many electronic image processing options. Most fascinating are the scenes with "morphing" (electronic transformation), in which the character on the canvas is transformed into an identical figure on the video surface, or the latter "freezes" into a character in a still image. Once again, the author insists on a real natural environment, which deforms it and thus equates it with the artificiality of the video image.

Tajga was shot after the performance of the same name, performed at the international festival of contemporary arts City of Women in October 1995 in Ljubljana. The viewer enters a dark atmosphere dictated by dramatic vocal-electronic music, passing anthropomorphic and waxy zoomorphic figures, and camera movements. When the author establishes the landscape, she places a wrestler and a drowning woman in it, and with these scenes she further increases the suspension. At the height of the dramaturgy, the set stage collapses. The waxen guard dogs dissolve and the soldiers retreat. Naked female characters appear, announcing the transition to a period of warmth and peace, accompanied by softer music.

The author constantly depicts the duality of human nature: the same horror occurs in both the mythical and the real world. She illustrates all this with the use of electronic tricks that can, for example, petrify a human face or wall up a human being in just a few seconds. With an electronic trick, even human figures dressed in extravagant costumes return to nature: a man in a costume reminiscent of a bird turns into a real bird. At the same time, the scenes are shot from a bird's eye view, which, as always, emphasizes man's smallness and his loss in his own world and nature.

In the video works of Ema Kugler, mythology is inscribed in the rituals of everyday life, this time it is the theme of Hydra with many faces. It is illustrated by individual scenes with actors in leather costumes (the author's creations), which restrict their movement and thus already emphasize the separation of man from nature. The last trace of connection - the ritual relationship between man and bull, which is again based on human cruelty to animals - ends with blood, which on a symbolic level also pervades the whole image.