Manuela Mangold

Manuela Mangold received her M.A. in Fine Arts at the Art Academy Dresden in 1999. She took part in gallery projects from 2001-2003. Since 2003, she has taken part in the B.A. program at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and is currently finishing her B.A. thesis in North American Studies. Research interests are film and film theory, especially in "Heimatfilm" and American TV Series.

The Body's Twist. How Does the Body Construct a Story?

Juxtaposing two recent television shows, CSI and Nip/Tuck, Manuela Mangold delineates how the human body is taken up as a visual metaphor in a search for coherence and meaning. This is realized through a "fragmentation," a virtual dissection of the actual human body and its sense of identity. Caught between the artificial and the real, the fragmented and the coherent, and thus between fundamentally different models of identity construction, the two shows offer a pertinent point of departure for a discussion of ethics and aesthetics in contemporary visual media.

held at: Picturing America. Domestic and Global Aspects of US Media Culture, May 19-21, 2005