Anyone who studies the archives of humankind sees an one-sided image of humanity; one that is focused on measurability and control. We reduce people to comparable data, to categorizable differences, to categorizable differences. But is this how we want to be remembered?
Katja Heitmann wants to write a different history and strives to archive human movements before they disappear. Not on paper, not on video, but in the body. An attempt to archive the impossible: an archive of movement. In 2019, she launched this multi-year art project called Motus Mori. Working with a growing group of movement-archivists, she collects and preserves movements from people of all ages, bodies and backgrounds. It exists in our bodies, our memories and our stories.
More than 2500 people have already donated their personal movement to this embodied archive, an ever-growing foundation from which Katja creates new artworks each time. These works of art together form a whole, whether or not it is sequential.
The press about Motus Mori
NEW YORK TIMES (US): Motus Mori
“The body is our archive. Turning the Gestures of Everyday Life Into Art”
Theaterkrant: Motus Mori PERPETUUM
“The respect for fellow human beings”
DE STANDAARD ****: Motus Mori MUSEUM, Charlotte De Somviele
“It is kinetical empathy at its best.”
Theaterkrant (Choice of the critic): Motus Mori CORPUS
“What a fascinating and magisterial concept this is. The warm performance is carefully constructed and designed, with all the space for the individuality, possibilities and impossibilities of the performers.”
DE VOLKSKRANT ****: Motus Mori: Meeting the archive, Annette Embrechts
“I recognize my ‘translated’ tics and gestures, whispering mixed with those of Pavel, Monika, Tosca and Herr Stamm. Highly an original work.”
THEATERKRANT: Motus Mori RELIQUIEM
“Heitmann has a mission! Undeniably. In Motus Mori she returns the body to a society that is in danger of losing sight of its value. Art cannot be more urgent. But besides being urgent, Reliquiem is also very moving. After all, the body is transitory and confronts us with finiteness.”
MUSEUMTIJDSCHRIFT: Motus Mori MUSEUM, Edo Dijksterhuis
“Museum Motus Mori is a kinetic portrait of all of us. The way this comes to form, via the body instead of via the mind, is more effective, more direct and more touching than any video, photo or text will ever be.”