YES YES YES YES

Installation / 4 objects with sound / voice

The work was created on the basis of smaller works that playfully deal with „relationships”, by each time forming new constellations from the same basic modules. With the shift in size, the small models gain a new character: they become open and correspond to both, the surrounding in which they are being placed and the people encountering them. There is a voice (loudspeaker) placed inside each modular object, saying „Yes“ in a somewhat encouraging and seductive tone. It moves circularly from one object to the other, with way inviting visitors to follow the sound, by entering the installation and walking through it in an endless circle – or rather: square.

YES

Installation / single object with sound / voice

Some thoughts on the piece within the context of the exhibition “Forming Communities” (KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin): … Panoptism – French thinker Michel Foucault introduced this term to describe his idea of power, a kind of power that is not exercised by a central repressive authority. Rather, we have internalized it via institutions, laws, regulations, general social norms on “what one should do” and “what one shouldn’t do”, etc. – and this to an extent that ultimately there is no longer any need for a central authority to regulate us. We ourselves have become our own instrument of our repression.

What interests me about the piece “YES”, the way it is being presented here, within the context of this exhibition, is that it evokes ambiguous thoughts and feelings, but ultimately leaves me in the dark as to what it actually is or wants from me. When entering the exhibition, I am irritated. This white box stands in my way, right at the entrance, like a lock: Is this a minimalist art work that I am not allowed to touch or enter, as usual in a museum? Or a security check? Should I go through it? Maybe I even have to! Suddenly a voice appears, loud and emphatic it says “YES”. But yes to what? To go through, to go around? Or to me in general, as a person? I go on. Look at the exhibition. And only gradually, with the passing of time, I realize: the voice coming from the object is not interested in me at all. It follows its own tact. Its own cold logic, which is not the one of the individual…

The piece “YES” is somewhat anonymous. And so is its authorship. It was not so much created by me, the artist, but rather by its surrounding – its placement right at the entrance of “Forming Communities”. The exhibition curators’ concern is to present Chinese artists based in Berlin and their artistic network; as well as to stimulate reflection on political and social issues may it be in China or over here, in Germany. However, while working on “YES”, I personally often had to think of something less concrete… Franz Kafka’s “gatekeeper parable”. This story in which a man, who seeks for justice, stands in front of the gate of law and waits. Eventually, he is old, about to die. With his last breath, he asks why he was never let in. The gate keeper replies: “Well, you never tried to go through!”

WORDS + OBJECTS / MODELS

Various objects

The works from the series “Words + Objects” are based on a single element that is only slightly varied (without wall / with wall at the end / with wall on the side / with transparent wall / with solid wall). The individual elements are combined in different ways, forming arrangements of two, three or four elements. Formally the pieces remind of the U.S.American minimal art of the 1960s and 70s, which deliberately aimed to look industrial and wanted to be pure form without statement or possibility of interpretation. In ironic reference, the pieces created within “Words + Objects” reverse this thought. The formations they create are meant to be read: formally as well as literally, with the help of an index displayed in the exhibition. They may be interpreted, too: as relations between objects as well as between people.

ME / YOU / MAY-BE

_Image-poem collage / audio / performance. Series of ca. 20 works as photo collage; also, as reading/audio-recording and live-performance

The titles of the models/installations from “Words + Objects” also inspired a series of so called image-poems, in which, instead of objects, hands stand for a particular word, this way turning collages into readable poems.

WORDS + OBJECTS / PERFORMANCE

Series of ca.. 20 photo collages; read as part of a live performance

Another form of translation – from object to image, from image to language – is the spoken version as part of a live performance: 4 speakers are distributed in a room. Each speaker is assigned a word (or a fixed, limited selection of words). The image/ text is read spatially, whereby a specific word can always be heard from each corner of the room (or a fixed, limited selection of words). Images above: Index to WORDS + OBJECTS / PERFORMANCE .

FOREST WALK

Video: ca. 45 min / Filmed every ca. 10 years / So far: Three videos from 2001 / 2010 / 2019

A person has disappeared. What remains is the forest in which this person – the grandmother, my “grandma” – walked along the same path every day. A year after her death, I picked up a video camera for the first time and set out to follow her daily walk. 10 years later, this spontaneous action turned into a concept. I decided to walk the path every 10 years from then on. What you see on the videos: old trees disappear, new ones take their place; paths that once existed no longer exist, others have emerged; even the village, the starting point of the walk, has changed. What remains the same over the decades: walking quietly with the camera, dissolving into the surrounding nature, becoming a seeing eye, a perceiving body – who is actually walking this path?

GOOD PLACE – ONLY THE LIGHT REMAINS

Installation: oak wood, sawn, sanded and stained by hand; metal construction, moving light projection

The floor of a family living room (grandmother’s living room) is recreated as accurately as possible, with all the traces of use that people and furniture have left on it. However, the room has long since vanished, so that all measurements and traces can only be recreated from memory. While people, furniture and walls are not recreated in the installation, warm light still seems to fall through a large window that has also disappeared. Above: Installation in the exhibition space with moving projection of the slowly moving sunlight / Below: The entire installation as well as a detail, showing one of the traces worked into the parquet flooring.

UNSATISFYING SITUATION

Installation / MDF, wood, carpet, glass (clear/intransparent), neon light

HARDLY BETTER SITUATION

Installation / MDF, wood, carpet, glass (clear/intransparent), neon light

UNCLEAR SITUATION FOR TWO PERSONS

Installation, MDF, wood, rubberized floor, glass (clear/matte), neon light

STOCK-TAKING

Installation / white coated MDF, clothes hoes, lockable door, mirrors, aluminum profiles etc.
Instruction for action: “Go into the cabin alone. Lock the door. Take off your clothes. Look at yourself in each of the four mirrors for one minute.”
Above: exterior view of the dressing room / Below: Interior with mirrors

WAITING ROOM

Installation / 2 clocks (staning still), Sound (clock ticking), 16 waiting seats in two rows, neon lights, MDF, wood, paint, etc.
Image above: Waiting room / Version below: waiting room with long corridors; at each side one: corridor for entering and corridor for exiting

HOME 03

Installation / MDF, wood, carpet, lamps, artificial smell (of bathroom cleaner, carpet, dust etc.)
Above: Home 03 exterior view / Below: Interior views