Painted on human skin, directly beneath the camera, shot as single frames.

Gisela Steinlechner: Die Kunst des Einzelbilds. Der Puls der Bilder. Poetiken und Erzählstrategien im österreichischen Animationsfilm, Vienna 2010, Filmarchiv Austria...

RITES OF SELF-DISSOLUTION
One is struck by the frequent focus on the body, which becomes the actual medium and catalyst of the animation and which is sometimes used and abused as a projection screen or reduced to stuttering individual frames. In Renate Kordon’s Colourful Blood (1985) the bare skin of the body in the film is the canvas for the painted signs which are then animated and rhythmically manipulated using various film techniques. The type and application method of these signs (dots, spirals, stripes, stars, applied as liquid paint) calls to mind archaic body rites and tattoos, but also has parallels with the gestural sign language of Viennese Actionism. Only here we are confronted with a very intimate, almost meditative scene, the signs “speak” in accordance with a precise score closely bound to the musical soundtrack. This is “laid” over individual body zones and becomes charged by them. Thus it is as if the breathing (which can be clearly seen in the rise and fall of the torso) were what moved and animated the signs and symbols and with them the film. >>>