Filmed between dusk and dawn, “Liquid Skin” was filmed with nine women, who all perform night-time labour, across a wide variety of professions, including a baker, pole dancer, care worker, nightclub owner, cleaner etc. These women take us on a tour of night-time working environments, linked by history, economics and events shaping the post-industrial landscape of the Ruhr region in Germany.
Filmed between dusk and dawn, “Liquid Skin” was filmed with nine women, who all perform night-time labour, across a wide variety of professions, including a baker, pole dancer, care worker, nightclub owner, cleaner etc. These women take us on a tour of night-time working environments, linked by history, economics and events shaping the post-industrial landscape of the Ruhr region in Germany. Through this choice of locations, the work links the nocturnal with questions on the subterranean, which is so present across this region with its thousands of kilometres of quiet tunnels underneath. The video consists of long, mostly single shot sequences each guided by one protagonist. Filming in black & white Infrared gives both the locations and the people a slightly abstracted and ghostly appearance, calling into question the specificity of each situation. Sound is integral to this work as it references industrial, technological, subterranean sounds of coal mining histories. The soundtrack is constructed from field recordings captured in each location but used in a non-diegetic way that consciously avoids synch sound. Visually the work aims to cross the dreamlike counter-logic of Lynch with urban spaces that may evoke Tarkovsky, Lang’s Metropolis or drawings by Escher.
Biography
London-based artist/filmmaker Melanie Manchot employs photography, film, video and sound to form sustained enquiries into our individual and collective identities. The work interrogates and employs acts of care, resistance and communality to engage in discourses on social and political urgencies of our societies. Her films investigate innovative forms of storytelling with an acute understanding of the power of filmmaking to speak to urgent issues and have profound impact. Manchot’s first feature film, “STEPHEN”, commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, addresses gambling, substance misuse, recovery and mental health through narrative fiction and documentary. It had its cinematic release through Modern Film in 2024 and continues to be shown in exhibitions as a multi-channel installation. Manchot is working towards her second feature film: “Mount Makalu”. She is shortlisted for the Jarman Award, UK.
Her work is held in many public collections and was presented in a major survey show at museum MAC/VAL, Paris 2018. Selected solo exhibitions: “STEPHEN”, The Exchange, Penzance, 2024; “Alpine Diskomiks”, Parafin, London, 2022; “Black Snow White Out”, Museum Lumen, Italy, 2021; “Mountainworks (Montafon)”, InnSitu, Innsbruck, Austria (2019); “Open Stage/Back Stage”, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Switzerland (2019); She completed her MA in Photography at The Royal College of Art in London in 1992.
