Following studies in philosophy, Laurent Goldring turned towards the arts of photography and video in relation to dance and collaborated on choreographic creations. The raw material of his work is the human body, which he models and reduces to pure sculptural form, devoid of any signifier. Goldring's closely framed black-and-white photographs and films capture one or several nude bodies contorted in unusual positions and hinting at incongruous movements. These movements are miniscule: the contraction of a muscle or the slight twisting of a limb. The framing and the still shot, as well as the positions assumed by the models, strip the body of its basic features which would permit the immediate identification of a human being and, to some extent, fragment it to the point of creating a new, practically inhuman form. 'Pictorially, this is neither about the ignobility of the body nor a rediscovery of its nobility. That's not the question. It's about a body that is not yet human, that is infra-human, at the moment when it succeeds in ridding itself of the saturation of signs that constitute it. The human body cannot exist without that saturation of signs, but the point is to make those signs disappear without doing the same to the body. . . . These forms that suddenly emerge are the body shorn of connotation, the body without meaning.' [1]

Through his work, Goldring explores the image of the body and analyses the history of its representation (the perfect body glorified by the Nazis, the bodies of the concentration camps, the trenches, Hiroshima and so on) [2]. For him, what is involved is observing these bodies and deconstructing the codes of representation through the image. 'Each image represents a body in motion, within an absence of space. The posture, the movements, the absence of intention all make the connotations and significations of the human body disappear: each image is like a demonstration which deconstructs the overall representations of the human figure by rendering the imposed identities uncertain. The identities of the great ethnic and sexual divides as well as the identities of the anatomy which, from Vesalius to Charcot, can't let go of the eye's reign. The twenty-four images interact to offer proof that the recurring hypothesis of the exhaustion of the possibilities of representation does not hold up, that we don't yet know what the body can do and what the eye can still see in it. And also proof that if the body can shape itself, it can also dissolve itself in shapelessness to shape itself once again, and that excarnation is endless. In opposition to the efforts of Muybridge and Bertillon, a brief anatomy of the image which comes back to what the work of the painters brings out: they saw (they make visible) what is usually attributed to style.' [3]

The models Goldring uses to develop his artistic works are dancers and choreographers. Nonetheless, his approach to the body is diametrically opposed to the image it is given by traditional dance. Rather, it has to do with  a new dynamic of contemporary dance, one which is not formatted and designates bodies previously repressed, censored [4]. Goldring has collaborated in the creation of choreographic projects with several of the dancer-choreographers who have posed for his installations: Xavier Le Roy in Blut et Boredom, Ectoderme et Self-Unfinished (1996-1998), Benoît Lachambre in L'âne et la bouche (1997) and rrr… (reading readings reading) (2001) with Saskia Höbling, as well as Maria-Donata d'Urso in Pezzo 0 (due) (2002).

Goldring continues his work around the portrait, with the same expectations and effects. In 2004 he collaborated with choreographer Germana Civera to create Figures (Faces), an 'attempted self-portrait on stage, a lecture-sculpture on Germana Civera's face'. While images of her deformed face appeared on a screen and her pre-recorded voice was heard giving a fragmentary account of her life, the choreographer remained seated, silent, staring into the darkness of the hall. Between an installation and a performance, Figures constitutes an 'archaeology of the face' or, as Civera would say, 'an archaeology of the cranium'. Following their collaboration, Goldring made Travailler avec Germana Civera (Extraits d'expos) (Working with Germana Civera [Excerpts from exhibits], 2008). This film shows bodies shot against a black ground: 'in this work on the disturbance of representation, outside of any dramatic art, any narration, the artist has sought where and how a body escapes the usual perception of the body, thus making it take on another dimension.' [5]

In dance as in his own works, Goldring raises the question of the body before raising that of movement. As choreographer Maria Donata d'Urso explains in relation to her work with him, 'the body does not draw trajectories in space but becomes the site where forms and movements are connected or taken apart, the site where the different paths to be followed or lingered upon are discovered.'

Emilie Benoit
Translation: Miriam Rosen

[1] Jacqueline Caux, ' Les bodymade de Laurent Goldring, The body, Just the Body,' Art Press no. 242, December 1999, p. 40.
[2] 'It was very important to understand that the same ones were at the origin of the trend of  the magnificent body, overinvesting and reinvesting. The Nazis are at the junction of the absolute glorifications of the body, sports, dance: there's a whole history of contemporary dance which goes in part through Nazism, for example with people like Mary Wigman, Laban, Albrecht Knust; and on the other side, there are the bodies of the camps. In terms of the images, the idea was to show how an overinvestment in the self-production of the body leads to something at this junction, so that, in front of the images, it's not very clear whether we're seeing the body of an athlete accomplishing a feat or on the contrary, something totally formless, a bodily wreck.' Laurent Goldring in an interview with Cyril Beghin and Stéphane Delorme, Balthazar no. 5, Spring 2002.
[3] Artist's statement.
[4] Cf. Laurent Goumarre, 'Pour une esthétique de la posture,' Art Press no. 282, p. 41.
[5] Irène Filiberti.