Eva Rocco Kenell

About Eva Rocco Kenell

I am an artist and doctoral student in artistic practice. I work primarily with moving images. My artistic practice concerns collective situations, resistance, bodily memory, sports, and politics. Using the camera as an exploratory tool, I seek out details and events that are often lost at first glance. My previous work has revolved around questions of cultures of resistance, poetry that surpasses reality, and microhistorical events.

My PhD project is deeply rooted in lived experiences, both personal to me and to the participants I work with. I am interested in the collective feeling of elation, how the body's memory works, and how I can use film/filming to approach both individual and collective experiences of resistance.

My PhD project, “The Physicality of Absent Resistance,” uses cinematic and collaborative processes to explore the need for and effects of resistance and opposition, both physical, mental, and collective, in sports and politics. Through case studies in the form of workshops with athletes and political activists, and with film, re-enactment, and participatory methods as central methods, I will investigate and visualize the needs, effects, and physicality of resistance, opposition, and the absence of these in sports and politics.

Ultimately, the project aims to explore the connection between the need and pursuit of resistance and the concept of collective effervescence. The concept was coined by Durkheim and is explained as the feeling of joy, energy, and significance when a group comes together for the same common purpose. The project seeks to investigate whether collective effervescence can arise when there is no opposition or physical resistance in situations where resistance is a given.

Previous work and CV can be found on my website www.evakenell.com