Absolute, elsewhere

Hannah Rettl, Alì Darwish, Noah Griffin

NEU WORKSHOP

11.10.2024 - 14.10.2024

After six weeks, you arrive in a small grey box. Finally.

📦: How should I best describe the space you're about to experience? It has changed so often and so drastically since I arrived in the box myself. Box, vessel, container, etc.
Container from the outside (encompassing), container from the inside (embodying).

📦: Let me explain: Here, it often happens that fiction (an exuberant idea) turns into lived, active, practical action (project). But it always starts with the space, with the container. Without it, the projects would just fall apart, or you couldn’t carry them all at once. It would be fine if they could just pile up in good weather, but right now it's cold and raining. Some projects are sensitive to light, or dependent on certain temperatures and other environmental parameters. Some require many words spoken in the kitchen, while others need an equipment room or a concert performed just for them.

And it’s about translation—how to externalize the internal.
📥: It might seem the most banal thing to write about the essence of artistic work in an exhibition text, but I’m reminded that this form of expression is an attempt to mediate the internal and the interest (through the transformation of thought -> work) to somebody else.

📤: Because we have this container, many come to us, and many leave. The space must constantly be rethought, so it never stagnates.
If we stagnate, we lose the container, and the space becomes more like a dividing surface. Vast distances, great effort, too wide a view, which creates tunnel vision. That’s why we’ve extended our feelers, and many feelers have reached back. It’s a tricky situation, not being able to invite everyone.

📦: And tell me, how can I best guide you through the space once you're out of the box? Maybe taking you by the hand is too much, but you might need a tour, or perhaps my advice, just as I need yours…

After six weeks, you arrive in a small grey box. Finally.

Where do my eyes run when I hear your name? by Alì Darwish.

A fantasy, a tale, an imaginary world through which the protagonists move: the goal of every piece is to portray a symbolic representation of a collective fate. In the form of short narrative film pieces, the project is about giving a mythical dimension to reality, while addressing a series of themes ranging from social issues and personal streams of consciousness to reflections on love, grief, and loss.

As though they’re a utility built as a result of modernist design but in a slightly altered world where sonic environment generators could be considered an everyday commodity. Sonic Environment Generator 1: 179.5-718Hz and Sonic Environment Generator 2: 179.5-718Hz (flash mod) by Noah Griffin considers the complex routes through which mathematics entangles itself in structures of power within design and vibration. Sonic architectures are continuously generated from metal boxes.

Surfers ride an endless wave in a slowed, flickering stream. The music never stops.

Hannah Rettl's außenprobe mimics a puppet theater: curtains parting to reveal a rooftop concert performed for a plastic audience, all in the fleeting belief that this orchestrated display offers a sense of control – until the curtains close once more.