{"id":7355,"date":"2025-11-16T15:02:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T14:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/ausstellungen\/mirror-touch\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T23:01:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T22:01:43","slug":"clara-jo","status":"publish","type":"exhibition","link":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/exhibitions\/clara-jo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror-Touch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clara Jo\u2019s solo exhibition Mirror-Touch<\/em> consists of complex, immersive video installations that entangle the senses and constructed sociopolitical relationships embedded within human experience, while engaging with sensitive historical and ontological narratives.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s title is borrowed from psychology, describing a rare experience of tactile sensation on one\u2019s body induced by seeing someone else being touched. In the context of the exhibition, the idea of \u201cmirror-touch\u201d stands as a strong metaphor or desire for empathy \u2014a key notion in Jo\u2019s oeuvre.<\/p>\n

Between Lived Experience and Simulated Presence <\/em>(2021), a research-based work newly commissioned by the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, blurs boundaries that separate interior experiences to promote healing and transformation. The project involved collaboration with Dr. Lucia Valmaggia\u2019s Virtual Reality Lab at King\u2019s College London, where clinical psychologists design VR treatment environments for individuals experiencing conditions such as psychosis and schizophrenia. The resulting video work explores how digital worlds could serve as collaborative spaces to understand one another\u2019s lived experience. A second chapter of the installation, titled The Wallpaper Stories<\/em>, acts as a narrative anchor for these subjective healing journeys. It presents a fictional rendering of British painter Mary Barnes\u2019 1973 memoir, which follows her mental health journey to seek alternative spiritual experiences and personal mythologies. Jo approaches these historical and contemporary testimonies of lived experience and their expressions as acts of consciousness itself, lived in the very moment.<\/p>\n

The large-scale installation De Anima <\/em>(2018\u201321) spans documentary and animation and features a dreamlike narrative examining how various gendered, racialized, economic, and metabolic systems embedded within the global health system\u2014which have become especially apparent during the COVID-19 crisis\u2014drive fear of contamination from the nonhuman world. The work\u2019s departure point is Jo\u2019s 2018 field research in Myanmar with Smithsonian wildlife veterinarians who were hunting for new strains of coronavirus to predict their pandemic potential. The sacred caves depicted in De Anima<\/em> are both high-risk interfaces as well as sites of spiritual encounter between humans and animals, science and religion, nature and politics\u2014interfaces where ecosystems cross and feed into global conflict. This behind-the-scenes work had been underway for years, and sheds light on the inevitable: not of a why<\/em> but an unknown when<\/em>\u2014offering an ominous prelude to the current global health crisis. Recorded in Myanmar, Kenya, and France, the images and sounds featured in De Anima <\/em>that once felt so \u201cfar away\u201d now deeply resonate in the everyday.<\/p>\n

Jo\u2019s newly commissioned work continues her ongoing artistic investigations<\/strong>around the idea of \u201contological insecurity\u201d\u2014a strong feeling of uncertainty about ways of being in the world. This topic is also explored in the single-channel video FFS Studios<\/em> (2013), an intimate portrait of actress Luise Helm that captures a voice-over session for a popular American television show as it\u2019s dubbed into German from English. The unseen character\u2019s uncanny presence in the film, Helm\u2019s intense emotional interpretation of this protagonist, and the viewer together create an intimate space of new narrative possibility and a rather intense sense of character deconstruction and construction.<\/p>\n

Between Lived Experience and Simulated Presence <\/em>and<\/em>De Anima <\/em>both expose subtexts that reveal deeper issues embedded within society at large, namely the neglect and treatment of health beyond the human in an era of accelerated globalization. The Mirror-Touch<\/em> exhibition at the Edith-Russ-Haus addresses urgent questions about crossing physical and psychological thresholds and our shared responsibility for the future health of our global community.<\/p>\n

Clara Jo is a Berlin-based artist and a 2020 recipient of the Media Art Grant from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus.<\/p>\n

Curated by Edit Moln\u00e1r and Marcel Schwierin.<\/p>\n

The info booklet on the exhibition with brief descriptions of all exhibited works can be downloaded free of charge as a PDF. The use is exclusively for private purposes, other uses must be coordinated with the Edith-Russ-Haus. Download here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"class_list":["post-7355","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"gallery":[11961,11977,11978,11969,11970,11972,11968,11962,11976,11975,11958,11959,11974,11971,11960,11963,11957,11965,11973,11967,11964,11966],"start_date":"20220126","end_date":"20221231","opening_start":null,"opening_end":null,"events":null,"artists":[5917],"sponsors":[1815,1819],"publications":null,"videos":[{"url":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Videos_interview_clara-jo-2.mp4","caption":"Short interview with Clara Jo","description":""}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition\/7355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibition"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor\/1819"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor\/1815"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist\/5917"}],"acf:attachment":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11966"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11964"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11967"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11973"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11965"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11957"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11963"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11960"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11971"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11974"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11959"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11958"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11975"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11976"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11962"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11968"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11972"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11970"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11969"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11978"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11977"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}