Words by Claudia Holzinger
When I got in touch with Nora Heinisch and her project „Why can’t I hold all these projections?“ through instagram, I saw womxn trying to fit pictures directly projected onto their bodies, moving their heads and arms, trying to imitate the projection‘s pose and mimics. It turned out to be really hard to get into pose and even more difficult to hold them. Sometimes the nose is just too far down or up, the eyes too close together, the shoulders too broad or the waist anyway completely different.
When Nora invited me over to try to match @sarahmgellar‘s projection, I slipped into my beige jumpsuit, mascaraed my eyelashes and tousled my hair. I don‘t have to say twice that I‘m a huge fan of the show „Buffy - The Vampireslayer“, but I also always enjoy watching @Sarahmgellar‘s instagram, where she often shows, what she puts in the daily lunchboxes for her kids.
While the portraits are projected on my own body, I am standing in the glistening beamer spotlight. Nora and the camera watch, as I try to squeeze my shoulders, my belly, my breasts, hips, arms,
mouth, nose, and eyes into the shape of Buffy, but if one thing fits, all the others don‘t. Especially the difference in body volume, reminds me of how I felt when I grew out of a size 38 as a teenager and started wearing a size 40 and up, which gave me the feeling of leaving the „normal“.
It felt like looking in the mirror at 15 when I judged myself as insufficient. Like channeling my own teenage self, who is still there, mostly keeping in the background and only very rarely looking at me through my same eyes, while judging me as too loud, too big, too flashy, too clumsy.
The difference was, that I allowed myself not to fit the projection. That it was also interesting to find out how uncomfortably tense and often impossible with my body material it is, to do these poses and to hold them. And how exhausting it had to be for @sarahmgellar herself to impersonate Buffy, too.
PS: Please forgive me, Spike - I still like you better than Angel!