The Rebel Body

Angels Gate Cultural Center is pleased to present The Rebel Body, a solo show by Johanna Breiding. The Rebel Body, brings together multimedia works and various collaborations to explore historicized accounts of political persecution.

Main Galleries I and II will feature The Rebel Body. The central work, The Rebel Body, is a video installation that takes the story of Anna Göldi, the last European witch to be executed (1782), as a point of departure and considers the ramifications of hearsay and storytelling. Highlighting the role of the witness, the work documents the landscapes that contain—and subtly recount—buried histories of injustices. The video is made in collaboration with Shoghig Halajian, and partially narrated by Silvia Federici (author of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation), with sound by Dorian Wood and editing by Katrin Ebersohn. The exhibition includes Demonstrative Score, a two-channel video installation that uses an archival compilation of acts of protest that aim to dismantle public monuments of European historical leaders and Confederate soldiers. Archival footage offers a visual score for choreography, performed by Taisha Paggett. The work responds to recent iconoclastic events that demand revisions to national narratives, and define history as a living document that warrants active engagement by marginalized subjects. This two-channel video installation is edited by Cary Cronenwett. Additionally, Slippage/Spillage presents a constellation of diaristic photographic imagery that serve as propositions for personal encounters and collective actions. The observational gaze recalls photographic histories of social realism and enacts an urgency to witness and record, while underscoring the poetics and fragmentation of the archive.