Neurodermatitis

I can be observed as I apply cream to the neurodermatitic eczema on the upper part of my body, dried-out spots on the skin´s surface inflamed by intense itching and constant scratching of the skin. The salve causes an unpleasant burning sensation on the infected spots.

(K. C.)


One fixed shot, one role of Super-8 film. Naked Cmelka puts some lotion on her rashes-covered body. Russ Meyer meets David Cronenberg.

(Olaf Müller)


As early as in one of her first short films, Neurodermatitis, Kerstin Cmelka deals with the topic of the transgressive experience of facial gesticulation and expression as self-thematising interaction, interchanging it with her own corporeality and pain as a recorded and self-experienced spatial installation. One´s own Ego is sensorily engaged through the largest human organ: the skin. All along, spots on the skin, little islands lost for themselves, are discovered in special places and covered with skin cream. They then turn into places that are marked as liminal points, which biographical corporeal space separates as a sensory and experienced border from the internaö and the external, while simultaneously posing and frankly opening the issue of the others. We are, after all, constantly surrounded, even when the others are in no way present in space, maybe deposited in distant memory of one´s own personality, as a mere archaic idea.

(Frank Sygusch)

Translation: Hana Dvornik