2023. Installation, 9 x 9 x 9 meter – water, foil electric pump, tubes. Wasserturm Berlin. GER
As part of the Exhibition: The Beauty of Covid, curated by Ronja Mothes and Mathilde Outeiro.
#societaltrauma #installation #polaraizedsociety
CONTEXT: This work was part of the Exhibition ‘The Beauty of COVID’, which offers a space for introspection and mourning for our multiple shared experiences over the two year period of panic, isolation and loss. But it attempts to go further and speculate on a communal future, which makes evident the necessary dependency from one another.
Can there be beauty within trauma?
Beyond the entrance curtains, there lies a room (9 x 9 meter water basin in total darkness, beside one lightened drop which falls from the ceiling into the surface of the water) involved in a contemplative slumber, a metaphorical space for confrontation, revisitation and reflection. Delving in the dark, each visitor becomes a performer, an agent reentering an immaterial dimension of recollections, thoughts and experiences.
To come from the outside in, there is a necessary ritual, of bearing down our shields and crossing over planes of malleable textures. A subtle sound inhabits the circle. In an almost imperceptible rhythm, a seemingly stillness is interrupted. In a meditative environment, memories surge drop by drop, and are left alone hovering in between elements, holding themselves up. We dive into the ambivalence of a shared distant recollection, of times past and times present. The linearity of memories held deep in our consciousness is interrupted, and dissipates with each ripple fading into the edge of light.
In this stillness, the interruption becomes movement, a dynamic that allows new levels to the self to become tangible.
Further Information: https://thebeautyofcovid.de
Fotos by Alexander Sacharow & Jakob Wirth.