FAT PEOPLE DANCING - MUSIC VIDEO by Veronika Merklein and Johann Michael Schober

FAT PEOPLE DANCING

Music, Video, Vienna (AT), 2026

Release
24·07·26

A private phone video of
a fat boy
dancing by a pool
became a refuge for me.
Recognition, relief,
permission
to exist as I was.

I began collecting hundreds of similar clips.

With Johann Michael Schober,
that archive became this film:

gestures distilled into
continuous choreography,
nothing
between the body
and the frame.

— Veronika Merklein

Fat People Dancing is an animated
music video that centers fat bodies in motion.

The film addresses cultural conditions that often
discourage
fat people
from moving freely,
rendering their bodies invisible,
ridiculed, or constrained.

By foregrounding dance,
it insists on fat movement as
presence,
rhythm,
and joy.

Set to a Chicago–Detroit house track,
the repetitive pulse supports a sustained,
bodily insistence.