Liquid Light - Berlin

Liquid Light 2022 - a site-specific Installation at the Sounds of Water Festival - im Kleinen Wasserspeicher, Berlin-PrenzlauerBerg. 

Water dripping steadily into a shallow pool creates ripples that are reflected on suspended drafting film and the surrounding walls, resulting in the projection of a rhythmic, pulsating wave. The pool is 1m x 2m.

     

Foliage-flow

Reflective moment in the botanical garden of Braunschweig, early September 2021

A moment in time

Summer 2020 

Two birds flying past, making a fleeting appearance on Live Sky - a 'slice' of sky floating in the space (CCTV live feed projection on acrylic glass).

A year has passed since the exhibition @ King Edward Street, Light Works. I had used the space for nine months as a laboratory, setting up new works in response to the space and refining existing ones. It has been an intense, demanding and beautiful time, a dive into new territory, quietly challenging me on various levels. 

Subsequently the last year became a time of recovery - and also of final goodbyes, with  impromptu travel and long stays abroad. 

It would turn into August before we could take down the projection works on the upper floors. And it was then, just before dismantling Live Sky, that I accidentally captured two birds flying by, a coincidence I could only dream of during the exhibition time...

waning light

What a difference two days make: same time, same place - sunlight and shadows at 14:15h on 28 and then 30 October 2019*. In just 48 hours the sun moves by 1º closer to the horizon of the neighbouring roofs.

28 October: 16º altitude / 218ºSW
30 October: 15º altitude / 218ºSW

Reminder: there will be a similar constellation between 10 and 15 February 2020 14:45h.

*Cast on a slightly changed installation, see previous compare with previous post.

Threshold

'Threshold', a site-specific drawing, nylon and mohair-wool, photo: Harlan Whittingham


Early evening sun illuminating a detail of 'Threshold'
photo: Michael Taylor

Intermezzo

"wedding gespinst" 2 Tage Wedding", 6. - 8. September 2019
Montagehalle-Berlin und Atelier Togo 80, Berlin



Playful cooperative and interactive window display at Montagehalle-Berlin.
Fluorescent mohair wool and nylon

Vacant space

Blogposts April - July 2019 about work in an empty shop unit in Hull, made available by Axisweb. I'm using this space as a temporary studio to experiment and try out new avenues - mainly setting up site-specific installations.

More about this project in my interview with Axisweb.

Vacant Space, nylon thread and mohair wool

 unit47.blogspot.com

pupa-families

between the lines is a growing collection of texts in the format of a blog. A blog that gathers stories and scenes which resonate with me, make me think and muse, describe perceptions I find stimulating. Over the last couple of months these texts have become kind of a 'cathedral of sanity' to me. between the line will be part of Dolls - Pupa, an exhibition of text-based work, 23 March to 4 May 2019 at L'atelier de mélusine in La Trimouille, France.

At the heart of the blog is a text by Max Frisch (Swiss writer 1911 - 1991), which vividly describes how the substance of a text lies in the space between words and lines:

"On writing" - an excerpt, translated from the German original
What is important is what cannot be said, the white space between the words. The words themselves always express the incidentals, which is not what we really mean. What we are really concerned with can only, at best, be written about, and that means, quite literally, we write around it. We encompass it. […] the true, the inexpressible experience emerges at best as the tension between the statements.
[…] language is like a chisel, which pares away all that is not a mystery, and everything said implies a taking away. […] Like the sculptor plying his chisel, language works by bringing the area of blankness in the things that can be said as close as possible to the central mystery, the living element. [...]  
Max Frisch, Sketchbook 1946 - 1949, p 25, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
translated by Geoffrey Skelton   

Words - texts - lines, they become storyline and thread of the story. Yet, as Frisch puts it, what is essential cannot be said - it lies as an immaterial unspoken, yet living, substance between the lines. The words are just pointers, so to say. Thus, I liken Frisch's 'central mystery' to the 'pupa' that is enveloped and hidden between the lines - the threads and webbing of the cocoon. It is the reader's mind, our thoughts and feelings, that brings the inexpressible, the area surrounding the words, to life and transforms the 'pupa' so it becomes 'imago'.

The format of the blog allows the reader to choose focus - keywords or themes - and in this sense it works as a bot. The string of stories/texts that come up depending on such a focus build a new kind of 'pupa-family', whose members interact. For instance, you may find Werner Herzog as a child in a group with Matthiessen's son and Naoki Higashida a young, autistic writer from Japan.

studies

Structures drawn with lead pencil on paper (bottom) and nylon thread 'webbed'  (top) - positive and negative.

Sculptural aspects of language

Two texts from Between the Lines that depict language and writing as something that is tangible, akin to a sculptural process:

On writing, by Max Frisch, (one of my favourite writers) describes vividly that the substance of a text lies between the words and lines. "[...] language is like a chisel, which pares away all that is not a mystery, and everything said implies a taking away." The art is to come as close as possible to the surface of this mystery, to reveal it without scratching its surface, a surface that has no substance "[...] it exists only in the mind and not in Nature, where there is also no dividing line between mountain and sky."
From: Sketchbook 1946 - 1949

Thoughts on words, by Naoki Higashida, compares spoken language to a blue sea in which you can swim, dive and resurface.
From: Fall down 7 times get up 8, a young man's voice from the silence of autism

'Abbrechen'

The art of throwing sand - while simultaneously pressing the shutter button.
This happened while clearing up Aufbrechen.


Taking down temporary work is part of the process, so to speak. I remember it was fun.


Rediscovered while sifting and sorting images & documentation.

New blog:

between the lines is a growing archive of texts - texts that accompany me and I keep returning to, lines that make me muse and think.

Lightning

left: Lichtenberg figure from "über elektrische Entladungsfiguren auf photographischen Platten" by Anton Blümel (Berlin, 1898)
center : Hiroshi Sugimoto, 'Talbotized 011', 2012
right: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lightning Field photograph from 'The Long Never, 2008

from St Ellock's page

Haven

A world at the bottom of the Mediterranean:


HAVEN from Les films engloutis on Vimeo.

The story behind

PS: ...reminds me of Jason deCaires Taylor work. 

projection of water ripples...

on walls and drafting film (seven sheets 50 x 70 cm each) @ RED Gallery Hull

LIQUID LIGHT (click thumbs to enlarge)






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mush-room

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plan(e)t Echinacea

Picked in the garden -
and rediscovered...
plan(e)t Echinacea...

then found that Greek ἐχῖνος (echinos) means "sea urchin"

budding

Magnolia buds, captured in the garden today. Click thumbs and/or find colour images here.

January's harvest

Japanese anemone seed heads gathered at the end of January - studio pics.
Click thumbs and find four more images in this album.

more on seeds

<< The dried remainders of the broad beans we grew this summer - and hidden within:  pink-black seeds.

The seed-head above - I found it recently while weeding one of our flowerbeds. No clue what it is though. It's about 3cm wide. Maybe next year, we'll find out what's hiding within...