YES

Installation with sound
Context-specific work for “Forming Communities” / KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2022-23

Panoptism – The 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 repression.

What interests me about the work “YES” is that it evokes ambiguous thoughts and feelings, but ultimately leaves us in the dark as to what it actually is or wants from us. When we enter the exhibition, we are irritated. This white box stands in our way, right at the entrance, like a lock: Is this a work of art 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 work “YES”, as it can now be seen in “Forming Communities”, was created especially for the exhibition and in close dialogue with the curators, whose concern is to subtly stimulate reflection on political and social issues in China; as well over here in Germany.

Personally, while working on “YES”, I always had Kafka’s gatekeeper parable in the back of my mind. 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!

YES YES YES YES

Installation / object with sound /
Context-open installation at a historical factory building Berlin-Tempelhof, 2002/23

The work was created on the basis of smaller works that playfully deal with (couple) relationships between objects – respectively: people. With the shift in size, the objects gain a new character: they become context-open and connect to the location at which they are being placed. They react to their surroundings, bringing to light something that is already there but would not be readily apparent without the contextual framing provided by the minimalistic object. Planned placements are industrial buildings as well as political architectures.

YES / YES / YES / YES

Object / model for installation with sound
Constellation of four elements

ME / MAY-BE / YOU

Object / model for installation
Constellation of two elements

YOU / ME

Object / model for installation
Constellation of two elements

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

Objects / models / photo collages
Exhibition views of “A Little Piece of Invisibility”, 2021
Eight constellations of elements on MDF pedestals / as well as image-poem-collages on wall

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