Premio Combat Prize

Technical details about the workThis is a light and sound installation. A womb measuring 250 x 350 x 280 cm high suspended from the ceiling to the floor. It is made of 500 fiber optic lights, which change color and intensity through sound.The sound is a composition of stories and lullabies from different voices, as well as the mother´s heart beat or breathing just as the fetus in the womb may hear. In the end, a buzzing going around wraps the songs and the stories as a metaphor about the vertigo and loneliness the mother feels, struggling with her own feelings. Vuela la Luna - The moon fliesFiber optics, steel, video 10’ + audio250 x 350 x 280 cm
*You can find in You Tube a video with some parts of the installation with the sound, as a description.
http://youtu.be/Qq5QR3bPHhM
Text about the work ”The moon flies”Martin turned out the light. Solly lay on her back with the huge dome of her belly golden in the light from the street lamp. The thought of the night that was just beginning horrified her. Now the baby was about to arrive, it couldn’t stop existing even in sleep. She spent night on the verge of unconsciousness, a place full of movement, noise and yellow light.Rachel Cusk, Arlington ParkWeightlessnessThe maternity I want to see in this artwork is internal, visceral, instinctive, hormonal and perhaps even voluntary, the idea of the upbringing of future generations as the most important task. A maternity that is revealed as a place of struggle that redefines gender relationships and women’s social position, something that leads us to an internal fight with the wish for self-realization. And impedes us concentrating on developing ourselves as independent beings.“Someone once asked me: Don´t you ever write poems about your children? ... For me, poetry was the place I lived without being a mother to anyone, where I existed as myself.”Adrienne Rich, Rage and tendernessMaternity and upbringing seen as an obstacle in the path of autonomyIf self-realization can be reached through creative work, whose objective is not merely remuneration, it is even more difficult, being as it is the consequence of an interiorized desire and not fitting in with the social standard of necessary work.According to the historical conception of patriarchal society, the ideal mother has no personal interests; she has to fuse them with her children’s.What is socially expected of her is to yield to the temptation to annul one’s ego, not to not fulfill the impulse of maternal love. From the traditional Freudian psychoanalysis point of view, the main characteristic of maternity is tenderness, which translates into passivity as the will to sacrifice. Maternity wipes out all aggression and sexuality in woman. (Maternity and creation, Moyra Davey)… She went back to the kitchen and sat on a chair, seized by shame. In her belly the baby wriggled around with some force. Solly held her belly with both hands. Nobody will ever be able to imagine the feeling of a human body struggling inside your own. It was incomprehensible. If you thought about it, you would go mad. If you thought about it, you would convince yourself that you were alone in the world, that even the baby wanted you to disappear.Rachel Cusk, Arlington ParkLife become a series of expectations, a constant set back in artistic creation … when I finish cleaning, when they are better, when they start school next year … and day to day interruptions are constant, … I´m on my way, just a moment…At the age of twenty-six, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom´s Cabin) laughing at her attempts to finish her manuscripts.“Come here Harriet,” I said watching her holding one baby and looking at two others learning to walk, “Where is that article for Souvenir I promised the director you would write? You´ve only got today to finish it and you´ll have to give it to me now”.“You tell me, dear friend, how it can be done … At the very least it will have to wait until I finish cleaning the house and the baby´s stopped teething.Tilie Olsen, Mother writers: The basic situationA woman who fulfills her desire to be a mother and her wish for self-realization, finds herself caught up in her interior dichotomy that drags her thought a battle against herself, a battle she has to lead alone.---------------------------CV Bettina GeisselmannGöppingen, Germany, 1966 / Lives and works in Madrid Economics, Augsburg University, GermanyPainting at La Laguna University, Tenerife, Spain Postgradued in Photography, I. S. A., Havana, Cuba Individual Exhibitions2012 “Re-Naturalization”, Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid2011 “In the Kitchen” Clorofila Gallery, Madrid2009 “The Moon flies” in “Mater”, Jaén University2008 “Placements/Displacements”, Dinastía Vivanco Museum, Briones, La Rioja2007 “Placements/Displacements”, PhotoEspaña, C.de la Guerra Gallery, Madrid “Bettina Geisselmann”, M. Mayo Hall, Cultural Centre Las Rozas, Madrid2006 “Life-Time-line”, Arts and Literature Faculty, IX Biennial of Havana, Cuba2004 “Innecessary Certainty”, Photography Festival Medellín, Columbia2003 “Innecessary Certainty”, video-installation, Stand-Art, Madrid, España2002 “Beyond the absence”, “Temptations”, Estampa, Madrid, España “Commenting a Photograph”, CDAV, Havana, Cuba “Ab Imo”, L Gallery, Ciudad Habana, Cuba2000 “Bettina Geisselmann”, Picasso Hall, C.Centre Colmenar Viejo, MadridCollective Exhibitions2013 “Un-spaced”, Space and identity, Fuencarral Passage 77, Madrid“And stones had just dreamed, Casa Cultura, San Lorenzo del Escorial “Festival Visible”, El Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid“Watching at Picasso”, CC Sanchinarro, Madrid Art Madrid “Sculpture in the Time of Decrease”, CC Infanta Cristina, Pinto, Madrid y Biblioteca Miguel Hernández, Collado de Villalba 2012 “Aforadas” I Ed. Festival “Miradas de Mujer“, El Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid ”Festival Visible”, Desnudos, Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid “Winter leafs”, El Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid “ST”, Biblioteca Nacional, L. Tolstoi Library Las Rozas, Madrid2011 “In the kitchen”, Hall Clorofila, Madrid“Festival Visible”, Lorca amaba a Dalí, Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid2010 “The Temple”, “Electrocuciones”, El Foro, Madrid2009 “El busto es mío”, Logroño University “ST”, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid“57 stabs in “Festival Visible”, in El Foro, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid 2008 “Temptations”, Casa de Vacas, Retiro, Madrid “El busto es mío”, Ermita de Lomos de Orios, Logroño2007 “Summer Journey”, Jaén University, Art-Jaén 072006 “The imaginative hypotesis”, Cultural Centre Palacio de Villardompardo, Jaén“Homosexualities”, in II Festival “Visible”, Foro de Pozuelo, Madrid “Andén 16: Heterónimos”, Metropolitan Cultural Centre, Quito, Ecuador(travelling) “The dynamics of the journey”, T. La Coubre, IX Biennial inHavana, Cuba “Jet Lag”, Carmen Montilla Gallery, Havana, Cuba2005 “Bottled”, in “West Eye”, contemporary artists of the Community of Madrid“Public Readings”, in “Carpe Diem”, Maracaibo, Venezuela and in ”I Visible Festival”, Madrid “Distraction Manoeuvres”, in “Andén 16: Heterónimos”, Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Madrid (travelling: Cultural Hall, Caja Madrid, Barcelona)“You, from the ”Public readings” series, in “Ring de Box”, Havana, Cuba “Self service”, in “IV Pornographies”, C.de la Guerra Gallery, Madrid2004 “Dream places for butterflies”, Town Hall Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid “Love bladders”, in “14th February”, CAM Gallery, parallel to ARCO, Madrid2003 LABBO, BBK Kulturforum Gallery “Abraxas”, Augsburg, Alemania ”It rains on wet - the same old story”, parallel VIII Biennial in Havana, ISA, Cuba ”VIII Fotonoviembre 2003”, Tenerife, Spain VI Havana Digital Art Show, Pablo de la Torriente Brau Centre “Pornographies”, Carmen de la Guerra Gallery, Madrid, España2002 V Havana Digital Art Show, Cultural Centre of Spain in Havana, CubaAwards, Mentions and grantsGrant for the exhibition at the IX Biennial of Havana, by IFA, Institut für Auslandsbeförderung, Germany, 2006 
Production Grant by the Conde Duque Centre, 2006World Festival Art on Paper, Kranj, Eslovenia, 2000”XXXI Ed. City of Alcalá Awards”, Foundation Colegio del Rey, Madrid, 1998 II Prize Leyendeker Gallery Viña Norte, Tenerife, Spain, 1996Fast Painting on the street, Caja Madrid, Tenerife, 1994