by Tony Payne
Elisabeth Wörndl´s work "Body – Spaces" invites us to seek connections between many contrasting concepts: between the city and the body; the surface form and the underlying function; and between the virtual and the real. Overlaying images of the city and the body prompts immediate thoughts of a superficial similarity of functions. Between the circulation system of arteries and veins and that of roads and motorways. How superficial is this similarity and how meaningful? We are all familiar with the dendritic patterns on road maps of towns and the countryside, but what processes guide the development of such patterns. Do these processes have anything in common with those which govern the development of these other transport networks? A second set of questions hinted at in the work is between the development of patterns in nature and as a consequence of planned human intervention. To what extent do processes of chance and inheritance from generations past counter the supposed logic of the industrial society? This search for the cause of patterns in the environment and the identification of the processes which cause them are both traditionally the concern of the art or science of Geography. Geographers seek fundamental similarities in the way manmade and natural environments are arranged. The essential question is whether spatial patterns are forced into place by some over-riding, governing process or do they evolve as the consequence of minor, local interactions. These ideas borrow much from the fields of biology and ecology, and see the environment as an evolving system. With them comes some sense of life cycle. Perhaps Wörndl`s work also evokes this and questions the perceived immortality of the city. Does the city also have a life cycle and where, approaching the millenium, are we in this life cycle? Do the cities which have characterized our society over the last millenium have a role in the next? The work also contrasts the extremely personal realm of the bodyspace with the impersonal city. The body is represented in these images by an ultimate in scientific abstraction, based on the scanned form of the body: precise in geometric detail but entirely without a life. One nonetheless still has a sense of intimacy. There is also an intriguing contrast in the abstraction of the bodyspace floating on a bed of clouds, as in images of the soul released. There remains an ethereal quality despite of our awareness that this image is merely a volumetric representation of the self. In this sense the artist is questioning our perception of ourselves: which elements of the self are virtual and which real.