The first video in the project Korporal Labyrinth.

Korporal Labyrinth is a work in progress, an account of a visceral journey in different stadia, expressed in a series of short videos. The artist’s drawing of the labyrinth was the starting point for the project, together with a bunch of footage taken mainly from July to October 2013.
In her Korporal Labyrinth, the artist explores several ways of walking through the labyrinth – there is no absolute truth, every possibility is worth trying and leads to new experiences and points of view.

title: In the Beginning was the Word
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 3’25”
year: 2013
© Maria Korporal

all about the project Korporal Labyrinth, incl. 4-minutes trailer

“… and the Word was Sun” is the second video of the project Korporal Labyrinth, and gives the answer to the first video “In the Beginning was the Word”.
On the day her mother Ariena died, the artist was waiting for a sign. In the Dutch hospital where her mother lied, she discovered the art work “Walters Huis” by Gerhard Lentink, a small chapel build with wooden letters, which compose a poem by Paul Eluard. The artist played a little game she had done two weeks before in a similar installation costructed with metal letters, the “Christian garden” in the Gärten der Welt (Berlin): which is the first word I notice? In Berlin it was the word “Sonne” (German for “Sun”), and now in the hospital she noticed the word “Soleil” (French for “Sun”). Then the artist realized that it must be the word “Sun”, the sign her mother left her while she was breathing her last breath.

Gauži raud saulīte
Ābeļu dārzā.
Ābelei nokrita Zeltābolītis.
Neraudi, saulīte,
Dievs dara citu.
No vara, no zelta
No sudrabiņa.

The Sun cries bitterly
In the apple orchard.
The apple-tree has lost
The golden apple.
Do not cry, Sun,
God makes another one
Of gold, of copper,
Of silver.

(text from the Latvian Apple-Tree Songs)

title: … and the Word was Sun
technique: Video sperimentale e animazione
length: 5’47”
year: 2014
starring: Astrid Astra Esther Indricane and Maria (Felix) Korporal
locations: the village of Sant’Oreste (Rome) and the “Christian garden” in the Gärten der Welt (Berlin)
music: Prologue of the Latvian rock opera “Lāčplēsis” (1988)
video, sound design and all other artwork: Maria Korporal

all about the project Korporal Labyrinth, incl. 4-minutes trailer

In this third video of the project Korporal Labyrinth, the artist performs a ritual walk from the place where her mother died to the place where she was born, crossing the Merwede, the river from both their childhood. On the top of the bridge, the artist throws the nightgown in which her mother died down into the waters. It flows away with the stream, and it reappears on the banks of the river Spree in Berlin, where the artist actually lives. She takes it out of the waters and in her hands it transforms into a labyrinth, which is filled with water. “The water has memory” – the words whispered by the artist in the ear of her lover tell the essence of this video: the story of a life is memorized in the water and flows around the world.

title: Where the Waters Flow
technique: Video sperimentale e animazione
length: 4’26”
year: 2014
starring: Maria (Felix) Korporal, Astrid Astra Indricane
locations: the “Labyrinth” in the Gärten der Welt (Berlin), the railway and bridge on the Merwede (Dordrecht-Sliedrecht), the Spree (Berlin)
background sound recording: “City river ambience” (London) by Chris Reidy
camera: Maria (Felix) Korporal, Jurgen Korporaal
video, sound design and all other artwork: Maria (Felix) Korporal

all about the project Korporal Labyrinth, incl. 4-minutes trailer

In this fourth and last video of the project Korporal Labyrinth, the artist performs a ritual on the beach of Hoek van Holland, the place where the waters of the large river area, where she and her mother were born and grew up, flow into the sea. The artist tears the petals out of a big rose – a rose that will revive in the following scenes, out of a rosebud nipple via a labyrinth of light into a Rose of Jericho, which blooms again and transforms itself into a leaf. A leaf which has been found by the artist’s brother, two weeks after the death of their mother, with her initials R S (Rinie Slieker) incised by an insect. While the artist whispers the bible text about love from 1 Corinthians 13, a text her mother read to her when she was young, the lines on the leaf are filled with blood and the words popping up in her mind are written down.

title: … the Rose will always Bloom
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 4’15”
year: 2014
starring: Astrid Astra Indricane, Maria (Felix) Korporal
locations: the beach of Hoek van Holland, the artist’s studio and the regions of her mind
beach sound recording: © www.eelkedekker.nl
video, sound design and all other artwork: Maria (Felix) Korporal

all about the project Korporal Labyrinth, incl. 4-minutes trailer