Sandra Lahire and Celeste Burlina: we sat rigid except for the parts of our bodies that were needed for production

“We are honed to tolerate boring work. The hundred letter words emerging like alphabet soup, like faces in a funhouse mirror, feeling more and more distorted in my body. Everything around, appearing quite tiny, as if seen through a keyhole. We sat rigid, except for the parts of our bodies that were needed for production. We sat in this way, pointed to reassemble people. Lights flickering across our eyes. And propped up in attitudes, counterfeiting life,” a female voice rhythmically recites in Sandra Lahire’s Terminals (1986).

we sat rigid except for the parts of our bodies that were needed for production is an exhibition that convenes the work of the late British experimental filmmaker Sandra Lahire and the Italian artist and designer Celeste Burlina. Coming from two distinct eras of feminist practice, their piercing meditations on the porosity of the body, labor, and environmental trouble enter into joint fabulation. 

we sat rigid... is host to six recently restored films by Lahire. Her galvanizing handling of the celluloid moving image addresses the ways in which capital and patriarchy mold and deplete vital faculties of the (female) body, the earth, and ultimately the moving image itself. Her first two films, Arrows (1984) and Edge (1986), are firmly rooted in her persistent struggle with anorexia. Together, they render a confronting account of the cultural causes of her drive towards thinness while she simultaneously seizes control over the production of her own image. Terminals (1986) broadens these autobiographical reflections and introduces another cycle of works—Plutonium Blonde (1986), Uranium Hex (1987), and Serpent River (1989)—, which probes into radiation, the mining of uranium, and the social and environmental destruction that comes with it. Against the backdrop of a looming nuclear war and the disintegration of miners’ communities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the 1980s, she examines this atomic reality in a fractured, sensitizing fashion. Approximately 35 years later, her concerns gain traction again and put the urgent need for the political recognition of corporeal vulnerability to the fore once more.

Celeste Burlina responds by way of an architectural intervention and echoes Lahire’s cinematic exploration of mining, industrial production, and female labor. Attentive to the ways infrastructure enables or obstructs the gathering of bodies and their circulation, Burlina’s proposition cuts through the three galleries of the Kunstverein. At once, the structure serves as a support for Lahire’s moving image and interrogates the body of the Kunstverein as such. Burlina, who is trained as a structural engineer, rewires the function and purposefulness of raw, technical materials—H-beams, chains, rods, bits, and methyl methacrylate sheets—and thwarts her longstanding relationship with such materials often associated with brute, subjugating forces. Piercing through spaces and walls, Burlina performs a balancing act, seeking to undo the rigidity these materials propose while insisting on their potential for powerful transformation.

What is called into being is a sensuous dialogue beyond the limitations of linear time—a resonant space sustained by two voices in fervent inclination.


On the occasion of the exhibition, Grazer Kunstverein will publish we sat rigid..., the first in a series of small volumes of correspondence, responses, and conversations. It includes contributions by Celeste Burlina, Tom Engels, Laura Guy, Calla Henkel, Charlotte Procter, Kerstin Schroedinger, and Miriam Stoney.

we sat rigid... is the first exhibition curated by Grazer Kunstverein’s newly appointed Artistic Director, Tom Engels. It also marks the start of the collaboration with Julie Peeters, graphic designer, and Sophie Rentien Lando, web developer.


Soft Resource: Rosa Anschütz
Concert, April 8, 9pm
Inspired by Lahire’s films, Rosa Anschütz draws from her archive of music and lyrics and reassembles its elements into a one-off sonic journey.

In Resonance: The Golden Pixel Cooperative and Sandra Lahire
Screening and conversation, April 9, 5:30pm at Schubertkino
With works by Christiana Perschon, Lydia Nsiah, and Enar de Dios Rodriguez, followed by a discussion between Katrin Bucher Trantow, Enar de Dios Rodriguez, Antonia Rahofer, Tom Engels, and Daniella Shreir. Curated by Antonia Rahofer. In collaboration with Diagonale’22, Festival of Austrian Film, and Kunsthaus Graz.

A Lifeline of Lovers’ Conversations
Screening and conversation, April 10, 2pm
Charlotte Procter (LUX, London) and Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze) present a partial survey of the work of Lahire’s contemporaries and collaborators. With works by Tina Keane, Jo Davis & Lis Rhodes, Jeanette Iljon, Tanya Syed, Martine Thoquenne, Sarah Turner, Sandra Lahire, Annette Kennerley, and Helena Goldwater.

Linear X
Performance program, May 13–15
With contributions by Clara Amaral, Bryana Fritz, and Margarita Maximova. More details will be announced shortly.

Grazer Kunstverein is structurally supported by the city of Graz, the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, the province of Styria, legero united—the shoemakers, con-tempus.eu, and its members.