Projections through a pinhole, Træna, Norway 2018

The museum of Træna contains a treasure of used items from past times. Big and small witnesses of daily life. They show a great variety of narratives about work, social life, raising children, cooking, fishing, traveling and much more. I had the chance to take a closer look into this unique collection of public memory.

Depicting these historic objects through a pinhole means that I tried to catch a glimpse on the spirit of the past to show their timeless beauty.

Solargraphy, Træna, Norway 2018

The series of photos was taken on the archipel Træna, Norway, situated far out in the Atlantic Ocean near the northern Polar Circle. I installed eight film boxes loaded with light sensitive photo paper at several places around the island of Husøya to be exposed for more than three weeks. It was late autumn, sunrise happened after eight o’clock in the morning, sunset before four o’clock in the afternoon, the days getting shorter and shorter towards the end of the year. Furthermore, the weather was quite rough most of the time with lots of strong wind and rain. The results of this long time exposures show some landmarks and the powerful effect of increasing darkness. Some of them are blurry, shaken by heavy winds and with stains of moisture. The marks of some clear days appear as white lines, caused by sunlight. Low curves above the horizon, yet powerful enough to burn traces directly into the paper.

The short scene “The Spectre of Poverty” is about fear and ignorance.

A “Marchese” and his wife have to face the appearance of a spooky situation.

In Heinrich von Kleist’s tale “The Beggar Woman of Locarno” these encounters end with a complete disaster:

“he had already found his end in the most horrible manner possible; and his white bones, gathered together by his people, still lie in that corner of the room from which he once ordered the beggar-woman of Locarno to rise.”

This site specific performance connects a well known urban setting in Stuttgart, Germany, with a Kleist inspired plot and some thoughts about the first sentence of Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa…”

Performance, Ton, Kyrgyzstan, 2018.

This work is referring to the novel of Chingiz Aitmatov “The White Steamship”.

The scenery of the short plot are the ruins of a soviet industrial site at the south shore of Issyk-Kul lake. Two riders meet in front of the abandoned building. They represent the mythological Kyrgyz stag and the nameless boy of Aitmatovs novel whose dream is to become a fish and meet with the white ship in the middle of Issyk-Kul.

I am deeply grateful to Jomart Orozaliev and Adilet Kubanov for their impressive and skillful way of performing an imaginary meeting of these two powerful and famous fairy-tale characters.

For the project "Quest Pilots Closet" I walked along Broadway, New York, from Battery Park to 180th Street in Manhattan. With a self built analogue pinhole camera I imitated Google Street View, taking a picture every one hundred steps. I used the navigation system what3words to connect each photo to its exact GPS position.

Walking on Broadway about 20 kilometers, with a photo stop every one hundred steps, took me about three whole days.

When I got the chance to see all the processed photos (more than 200 in total), I had the impression to look back into a time which is long gone by now. The pinhole photos show a peaceful atmosphere of twilight and emptiness, very different from the current experience on this noisy and crowded road. 

Google translator speaks the what3words GPS positions. So each location is announced with a concrete and on the same time poetic headline.

The slide show "Quest Pilots Closet - Behind the Scene" shows each position of the pinhole camera on Broadway. I used those pictures to reconnect the analogue photos to their GPS positions.

February 2018. During a one month residency in Brooklyn, New York, I built pinhole cameras for instax film. After taking the pictures I developed them by pressing each photo between my fingers. This caused unforeseeable colors and traces of light and shadows. Most of them turned out as abstract shapes or almost white clouds, being heavily overexposed. I combined them with some characters who refer to the graphic novel "Fables". Most of these characters are fantasy figures from The Brothers Grimm fairy tales who are in exile in New York City. The hacked instax portraits connect these fictional persons with depicted views of Red Hook, Brooklyn. The texts are excerpts from a well known German fairy tale of a fearless young hero who goes abroad and conquers evil ghosts and demons. (In the end he gets rich and marries the princess).

January 10th, 1972. The cargo vessel "Elviscott", 499 tons, 65 meters length, is on her way from Naples to Marseille. During a heavy winter storm she hits the Ogliera cliffs near Elba, Italy, and sinks. 

Now, so many years later, the huge wreck has become a paradise for submarine life. A great diversity of plants cover the entire hull and swarms of small fishes are drifting around.

The floating text is a poetic call to the spirit of the broken ship. A memory of a different existence long time ago.

I formed you and found

rightness in your light,

until your pain

alarmed me: you are alive.

Rain tumbled onto my hands,

wind rocked my body.

You are other.

Poem by Triin Soomets, Estonia

 I climbed a steep hill above the village Chiessi, located at the lonesome west side of the island Elba, Italy. On top I entered a magical area with a great view over the mediterranean sea towards the island Montecristo. And I walked through the ruins of the romanian chapel San Bartolomeo. Built in the 12th century, it has been destroyed four hundred years later, probably by pirates. Just the southern wall of the small church remained complete.

Saint Bartholomew was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. In the calendar of saints his day, the 24th of August, marks the beginning of the colder season.

Suddenly I had the impression of a theatre stage, with a huge scenery in the background. And a short scene took place, a remembrance of the quiet saint Bartholomew, announcing the arrival of autumn.

May 2017: an abandoned Soviet pioneer camp in Bokonbaevo, Kyrgyzstan. In the former hospital station I found a torn out and dirty page from a photo album, presumably from the 60s or 70s of the 20th century. The Russian inscription says that the two black and white photos show a production of the play "Бухенвалдский набат" (The Bell of Buchenwald).

A children's group, performing a theatre play, seven to twelve-year-old boys, probably the sons of communist party officials, who spend their summer holidays at the camp in Kyrgyzstan at Issyk Kul Lake. Some are dressed up as Nazis, camp guards or soldiers, they wear caps and armbands with swastikas, machine guns and pistols.

The rest of the group obviously represents the injured and sick prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp. They have blood-stained bandages wrapped around their heads or arms, and sit behind the barbed wire fences on the upper picture. In the second picture, they have risen, support each other, while the "Nazis" are presumably just about to capitulate.

In the search for the play "Бухенвалдский набат" I came upon a Soviet song with this name. It was written in the fifties on the occasion of the inauguration of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. (Text: Alexander Sobolev, melody: Vano Muradeli.)

I created a short film about this subject. It shows a kinetic installation with the protagonists of the photos and two young pioneers in uniform. They move to the music of the song "Бухенвалдский набат".

Children, who stand for the two most serious ideologies of the twentieth century. Nazis and Communists. Serious and committed. They move to the emotional song of the Soviet singer Muslim Magomaev, alternating from light shapes to black shadows. They hang on threads. Random encounters and changing directions, controlled by the wind.

Solargraphy, Bokonbaevo, Kyrgyzstan, 2017

I constructed cameras with found materials such as beer cans and other metal containers. I placed them around Beltam Yurt Camp near the shore of Yssyk Kul and exposed them to light over several days. Some of them were tossed over the property by animals, kids or by the wind. But all of them carry images with traces of landscape and of this amazingly bright light that is so strong and clear near the Tien Shan mountains! Like letters, written by the sun.

Installation, Museumspark Rüdersdorf, Germany 2016

A book with poetry, written for Lucie Tarun in 1927 by her school friends and teachers. I put the pages into glasses to find a way to revitalize these memories, like fruits are conserved after harvest for the winter, saving them from falling into oblivion.

Intervention in public space, Rüdersdorf / Berlin, Germany 2016

A hiking tour from Rüdersdorf to Berlin- Kreuzberg, distance: about 35 kilometers. I carry 32 concrete casts of doorbells with names of female philosophers. I ask local people if they would agree to have one of these objects on the front door of their houses. Sometimes there are no houses at all. In this case I put one on a tree in the forest or on the wall of a tunnel. Some houses have so many names that I don't know whom I should ask, so I add my fake doorbell to the real ones. Imagine you would meet Hildegard von Bingen in a Kreuzberg backyard!

www.komoot.de/tour/11428985

www.komoot.de/tour/11686450

Kinetic installation, Museumspark Rüdersdorf, Germany 2016

Impressions of walls, machine parts and rocks in the Museum Park Rüdersdorf. Technical features that have lost their meanings long time ago. Fading memories, like dreams, dancing fragments from the past.

Installation, Kalevala Theatre, Petrozavodsk, Russia 2016

During a four week long stay as artist-in-residence in Petrozavodsk I created a large scale installation in a public space together with approximately fifty local people. They participated with artworks, texts and personal items, related to their personal dreams in all kinds of meanings. The installation emerged like a dream itself. Strange connections appeared, never intended by anyone, but surprisingly diverse and powerful.

Pinhole cam photos, statements, Stuttgart, Germany, 2016

Refugees, newly arrived in Stuttgart. 135 of them were living in a nearby sports hall for more than seven months. No privacy, a lot of noise, no sheltered space for the kids, bad food. Some of them were talking about themselves... They allowed me to take photos with a handmade pinhole cam.

Collaboration with Anna Neizvestnova, kinetic Installation, Flacon Design Center, Moscow, Russia, 2015

Project for the exhibition "Topography Of Reality“ - Parallel programme of 6. Moscow Biennale of contemporary art. Curator: Lana Zaytseva

The "Dance of Death" was originally a species of spectacular mystery play. It has been traced back to the middle of the fourteenth century. The epidemics so frequent and so destructive at that time, such as the Black Death, brought before popular imagination the subject of death and its universal sway. The dramatic movement then developing led to its treatment in the dramatic form.

No matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, sometimes personified death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, child, and labourer. They dance to remind people of the fragility of their existence and how vain were the glories of earthly life.

The kinetic installation „Danse Macabre“ shows a transformation of the traditional subject into a contemporary setting. The characters are meant to be representatives of the present society. They perform their duties and have the fate to repeat their predetermined choreography endlessly. 

Installation in public space, Leveld, Norway, 2015

Paper and sticks

Maybe a poem

Read by nobody

Found words

A morse code, moved by the wind

Installation, Ålingen kjøpesenter, Ål / Leveld, Norway, 2015

Leveld, a village in Norway. I started my work by knocking on doors and asking questions. Ten people invited me to come in:

Ragnhild, Ola, Mette, Björg, Anne-Björg, Birgit, Kari, Odd, Per, Anne-Sigrid.

They allowed me to share their thoughts and memories with them.

Most of them grew up on farms and spent the bigger part of their lives in Leveld. They have a lot of things in common: All of them told me that they have had a good childhood: ski tours and hiking in the mountains, playing in the nature, good friends and good teachers. All of them have had hard working parents. From early age the children had to help a lot with the daily work. Some of them have experienced real poverty: no money to buy food in the store, no toys. And school was only three days a week! 

Stories of the past and the meaning of living here now, being parents and grandparents.  An enormous hoard of life experience and hope for the future! 

This installation contains fragments of all that: Portraits of my amazing interview partners - and a shelf with a collection of their personal memories, photos, names and texts. Thus, they are saved from oblivion. A fragile and ephemeral documentation of ten individual lives. And part of the collective memory of the village. 

Project with "Hit The Beat" and Waldorfschool Windhoek, Namibia, 2015

AIDS is still one of the main causes of death in Namibia. Only about 10% of the affected population has access to the vital medication. Victims are not only the infected themselves, but also their children. Estimates indicate numbers from 85,000 to 250,000 AIDS orphans and HIV-infected children.

Thirty students sew flags. Messages for a future without AIDS. Hope for the next generation.

This project is part of Hit The Beat and Waldorfschool Windhoek. It is funded by PEPFAR.

Installation, Kunst und Kultur im Schtadl 6, Kippel, Switzerland, 2014

Documentation of a hiking tour from Stuttgart to Kippel, shown as a kinetic installation.

A collection of gifts. Souvenirs from people I met on my way to Switzerland.

Walking distance: 421 Kilometer

Duration: 16 days

Installation in public space, Inside Zone Festival, Borsec, Romania, 2014

A travertin quarry in Romania. Abandoned long time ago. Polished white surfaces, like sheets of paper, waiting for the writings of Comrade Director Dinu Dobre. Narratives about the past, when workers cut the rocks for metro stations and theatres in the capital. Photos: Ida Andrae & Caro Krebietke

Project in public space, Inside Zone Festival, Borsec, Romania, 2014

The poem "Well Holes" by Nicola Yeeles moving in the mineral water sources of Borsec, Transylvania. The natural, constantly changing water pressure and the different compositions of the water determine rhythm and pace of the movements.