2006, BIOPHILIA, 6`05`` — BERGAMOT GROUP copy

BERGAMOT GROUP

BIOPHILIA

Video
2006

6`05``

Bergamot artists specialize in performance art, with films and photographs based on their actions. The film Biophilia (2007), shown as a wall projection, depicts Volha’s naked and attractive female body with a giant pumpkin lying on top of it. It is accompanied by an overwhelming sound, which is the intensified purr of a cat.
The woman is shown piecemeal, from her breasts to her pubic thigh, with a pumpkin lying on her breathing belly. The woman seems crushed by its weight, while at the same time there is a sensual contact and color affinity between her body and the pumpkin. After all, the identification between femininity and
nature is a recurring cultural theme. The film is interesting because of the possibility of sensual associations. First of all, the weight of the pumpkin lying on the body evokes the sense of touch. The image activates haptic sensations. Intense breathing and purring takes the gaze inside the body and intensifies the eroticism of the representation.
The title concept of „biophilia” was coined in the 1960s by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Biophilia means love of life and various biological living systems, emphasizing, for example, the positive relationship between humans and the natural world. The Greek „philia” is the opposite of phobia. Fromm contrasts biophilia as a cult of life with necrophilia, or the cult of death and obsession with human destructiveness. Biophilia makes therapeutic sense. The beauty and sensuality of the Bergamot group’s show corresponds to Fromm’s affirmative sense. In a similar way, the idea of the exhibition Empire of the Senses is closer to philia than phobia, seeking pleasure, fulfillment and intellectual-sensory creativity through art. After all, it presents the work of artists engaged in the pedagogy of creativity.

Paweł Leszkowicz