joeressen + kessner

From September 2010, die kunstbar takes on a new interpretation with curtain call, a 365-day transmedia real-time installation by joeressen+kessner. No new canvases, photos or furniture, no physical things of any kind are brought into the space. Instead, from 18 September die kunstbar gains a spatial and temporal extension of light and sound that fits dynamically into the existing room.

A stream of images and sound that never repeats itself over 365 days: only for die kunstbar, only in die kunstbar. curtain call is based on photos from die kunstbar’s current archive. They are the raw material for an ever self-reinventing image system that stretches and squeezes them, shatters them, reassembles them and sets them in motion.

Similar photos are combined, unfamiliar ones confronted with each other or composed in counterpoint. This dance of images through space and time becomes visible through several projections into different areas of die kunstbar. The texture and structure of the projection surfaces, which are made of curtains, reshape the images they receive, each in its own way.

The image sequences are interlocked with sound, with image and sound feeding back into each other: image conditions sound, and sound steers image. The music playing in die kunstbar at any given moment provides a double input for curtain call. Its pulse forms the basis of all timing, and it also serves as real-time material for the live electronic sounds.

The current music and its abstract sonic mirror blend, depending on the situation, at varying degrees of audibility. curtain call is realised in real time by a computer programme that joeressen+kessner developed especially for die kunstbar. Parameters, rules, connections and limits are set, but the concrete form is fleeting and will never again appear exactly as it does in that moment.

Realised with the kind support of VELTINS, fritz-kola and goldsofi

joeressen+kessner

Since 2001, the artists Eva Maria Joeressen and Klaus Kessner have been working together on site-specific transmedia installations. In these works, place, image and sound shape one another. Each audiovisual continuum gives rise to diaphanous events that are bound to the moment of perception, as they never repeat themselves in their concrete form.

The basis of joeressen+kessner’s artistic practice is an analysis of the chosen space in its architectural, social, historical and/or culture-shaping dimensions. Its layers of meaning are reflected in their formal engagement with it.

Photos by KaPe Schmidt

kapeschmidt.com ↗