StartPoint Prize 2016

Nils Alix-Tabeling

The video-installation titled Mélusine draws on a medieval French legend of a magical being – half woman, half serpent. Alix-Tabeling, however, takes this mythological source onto a number of other levels revolving around the antipode of a passive silicon head which becomes both camera and projector in the ultimate exhibition installation. The viewer, confronted with the destiny of the head through its own doubled vision becomes the target of Mélusine’s manipulative and confrontational monologue. The surreal setting of a rugged, windswept seashore as well as the mutant props draw one right into the midst of the riveting narrative revealing a form of love that is both ancient and multifocally contemporary, both terrifying and ravishing at the same time.