In 1999, artist Manuela Barth and art historian Barbara U. Schmidt launched their LaraCroft:ism project series. They together inquired into the effects which digital media have on our current concept of individuality , in particular our notions of body and gender. A number of their publications to date and the LaraCroft:ism website www.laracroftism.de provide detailed information on their work so far.

For intermedium 2, Manuela Barth has devised a new project for the LaraCroft:ism series. For some years now she has been using a camera to study the ideal of computer-, ad- and commodity-based independent identities that can be playfully perfected. In a new slide show Invest in your loss of body! she has composed the snapshots to form insightful sequences. What we see is the media-based, wide-spread and strongly internalized rhetoric of cyborg metaphors. In this way, she creates tension between the reductive and manipulative effects of deliberately artificial phenomena, on the one hand, and the desire for a powerful, inviolable body, on the other.

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Manuela Barth
born 1972 in Mainburg/Lower Bavaria, studied sculpture (Munich) and Contemporary Media Practice (London); film and exhibition projects since 1995, has published art books. Main focus: representation and social impact of digital media, investigations into everyday culture, current notions of home and authenticity

Barbara U. Schmidt
born 1960 in Düsseldorf, art historian, Ph.D. on Miriam Cahn's installations; conceptual work for exhibition projects and events, has published and lectured on contemporary art: current concepts of the body and gender, areas of everyday practice, such as advertising and youth culture, the 'new' media and its myths