Schuhplattler

Schuhplattler, 2000, 2012

Using the traditional folk dance „Schuhplatteln“ in a small village in Upper Austria, Songül Boyraz investigates rites which are used to confirm collective feelings of solidarity although at the same time they generate a mechanism of exclusion. A sense of belonging to a native place is used to oscillate in a dialectical field of tension. On the one hand she shows a sense of belonging to a group, on the other hand she makes clear that anything foreign will be excluded.

From an ethnologist’s perspective Boyraz demonstrates what happens in a slow motion videorecording. The camera of the foreign artist is situated – as if in contrast to the mechanism of exclusion which the ritual generates – in the midst of the dancers who move around her in a circle. This circular movement, generating in itself an „inside“ and an “outside“, is doubled by the presentation of the video which is also projected in a circular form. The spectator finds himself surrounded by people whose rituals and traditions remain unknown to him, as if in a claustrophobic situation which is even heightened by the sound of the stamping feet of the dancers.
Sönke Gau (Camera Austria 75/2001)