“THIS IS HOW SPACE BEGINS, WITH WORDS ONLY, SIGNS TRACE ON THE BLANK PAGE”•

The human being moves within a system of fixed comparative standards, the time and space continuum. Three dimensional space and time are parameters upon which the human relies without thinking. They are essential for orientation, movement and the human’s own positioning, but this is usually not consciously but intuitively grasped. Only spatial perception allows people to be in the position whereby they can experience their surroundings and, as a consequence control them. However, there are numerous possibilities to find oneself in the situation where the familiar frame of references is lost and one’s position is no longer possible to be established. The known spatial structures created of verticals, horizontals and right angles go out of control. Gestures, changes of lines and direction can break through this system of constants. Aside from cities where one gets lost in their size and complexity, there exist also natural surroundings that in themselves confound spatial perception, places where space is simply constituted differently. Places come to mind such as vast deserts, the perpetual ice, upon the high seas or underneath it, in the big blue, where gravity itself is radically altered and where in the absence of clear-cut clues one persistently loses one’s way. The opening up of any space is largely dependent on the generation of forms of orientation. One other, but no less effective interference of perception can emerge from an increase in the consumption of alcohol, when the room appears to move, starts to spin, resulting in a loss of the vital faculty of maintaining stability.

What happens now, when spatial constants are lost or faded out? What reactions occur and is it possible to achieve one’s own navigational system? These questions, the relevance of coordinates and the consequences of their loss are investigated at the Künstlerhaus Bremen in Verbleib unbekannt (Whereabouts Unknown). Various artistic strategies have been combined to approximate such sites, to incite provocation and a handling of them. Hereby the possibility is opened up to the exhibition visitor to witness the diverse attempts in which the protagonists of these artistic contributions have had to face such situations. The visitor can trace the emergence of varying reference systems made by others. Furthermore he can navigate himself through alien-like architectonic contexts and be placed in situations where he is exposed to spatial confusion.

The first work on display upon entering the exhibition space is Erik Olofsen’s video installation Shift. It comprises a double projection beamed onto two wall surfaces which stand at an angle of approximately 150° to each other. Both images meet one another at the edge where the walls touch. Massive surfaces are to be seen which move at varying speed, which slide against one another overlapping; at times they appear to float then again to hover. Thoughts on the movement of tectonic plates or associations with cartographic presentations seem likely. Only little by little, here and there do they give way to a view on the construction, where scale and surrounding are opened up. The starting point of Shift has been formed by an installation Olofsen filmed upon completion; smoothly and precisely, the camera moves to and fro over the architectonic landscape. Resulting from this on the one hand are the (flowing) direction changes of the individual components and on the other the interplay of near and distance vision, accompanied by a constant shift in scale. This in turn causes the functions of individual fragments to change: leaves of paper appear, for instance as load-bearing structures and walls are formed into abstract decoration. In the course of the camera’s movement, what was initially perceived as two-dimensional colour fields are revealed as plastic particle boards. Step by step the installation becomes filmically deconstructed; however, through the parallel projections new image information is being generated continually. The fact that within the exhibition the video itself is projected on a newly erected wall construction, means that it expands and steps out from the surface into the space. Through the combination of installation and video a penetration of the spatial situation in terms of two and three dimensions takes place. The merging of image and the observer’s space harbours a moment of irritation and leads to a reflexion on human structures of reference.

In their video works the British artist duo John Wood & Paul Harrison grapple with the perception and development of spatiality. This occurs by means of their bodies, diverse objects and relatively undefined, empty spaces. These cells present themselves like stage spaces which are filled by the artists, their movement and objects, and through this they become described or classified. The relationship to the categories of architecture, sculpture and performance is here quite clear.

In the first work produced together, Board, 1993 the two artists are to be found in a white room, its floor, walls and ceiling no longer possible to clearly differentiate due to their monochrome covering. Both men are handling a large similarly white board and carrying out choreographed acts which are at times synchronised at other times proceeding asynchronously. As the surrounding space is only perceptible as a white surface the moving bodies and the flat board convey the depth, height and extents of the space. Thus the awkwardly shaped utensil is lifted up, turned around, rotated or reversed. It is positioned whereby the spatial depth of the box section stage decreases and concealment can occur. Each of the two people appear and in the next moment disappear. The board transforms into a moveable wall and through its movement the space is bit by bit divided, folded; it forms itself, it is conferred depth and it is taken again.

In Blind / Spot a black spot moves backwards in empty space. The points, painted on a series of roller blinds, snap up, one after the other. Through the high speed action of the screen, the point begins to move ever further into the depths and gradually a grey corridor looms before the eyes of the observer. But in its increasing distance from the camera or observer’s point of view the point itself does not get any smaller, but instead appears to maintain its original size. In point of fact, proportionate to its distance from the eye the point increases in size so that the development of depth originating from perspectival vision is balanced. In the end the last roller blind remains until the black point melts again into the first point and the loop enables it all to start over again. The usual spatial vision of perspectival development of movement into the distance through a tunnel is thwarted as a consequence of being countered by the synchronised reverse movement of the point remaining the same size throughout.

The most recent work of the two artists is Of Knowing Where You Are, 2009. It demonstrates exemplarily their turning towards combinations of image and text and forms their first animated work. In front of this black surface, words, fragments of sentences, general descriptions of situations are superimposed and in a rhythmic sequence are combined with symbols and the simplest geometric signs, like a point or a line. Primarily through this interaction of symbol and text the surface of the image is stretched optically into three-dimensional space. The plastic representation generates depth and with that suggests being incorporated with a system made up of spatial coordinates. Thus the black monitor screen surface for instance is intersected by a white line which in turn metamorphoses into the flow of a street, when two other lines
meet it. But such a moment is always only of the tiniest duration. In correspondence with the changing sequence of signs the presentation is subordinated to constant change and jumps between two and three dimensional pictorial space. Through diverse means the search for a locationing, orientation and one’s own standpoint is playfully — nonetheless formally exceedingly reduced — circled.

Nummer Acht — Everything is going to be alright is a part of a cycle of nine short films. In his film Dutch artist Guido van der Werve finds himself in the Gulf of Bothnia. He crosses the icy landscape apparently with no goal or point of orientation. The audience alone beholds the gigantic icebreaker, which observes the artist from lesser distance and which is very soon about to destroy the ice that is still bearing him. This condition of totally being lost has additional emphasis with the engine noise of the icebreaker and the sound of the ice bursting apart all accompanying the scene. The title’s succinct statement Everything is going to be alright is undermined powerfully: if the protagonist hesitated one moment in his movement the distance between himself and the icebreaker would significantly decrease, the boat and the erupting slabs would all be too dangerously close to him. The projection shows an only minimally altered, precisely staged, theatre-room like setting, in which the artist operates. Without compass, but with instinctive certainty he moves over the sheer, unending ice cap, crosses the white frozen plain, predestined to take away all forms of orientation. Ground and sky dissolve into a great white surface that can only be structured suggestively by a blurred horizon line. Unlike the protagonist of the activity, who gazes into the direction of the camera, the recipient is capable of perceiving the verticals in the form of the advancing person and the icebreaker as fixed points. But these reference parameters are also deceptive — the distance between them and a registering of the terrain regarding distance and scale is rendered impossible due to the frontal view of the man and the machine. The question of the distance between the ship and the person remains enduringly present.

At the end of the exhibition the work Vertex by Elín Hansdóttir is to be found which has been developed especially for the spatial situation of the Künstlerhaus Bremen. Vertex (lat. vertere — to turn) describes a turn or an apex, a place where various directions meet one another. It deals here with a tunnel system within existing architecture that the visitor can enter. But no accustomed path structure is to be found; in its place is an elaborate labyrinth. The ground plan of this path system is made of star forms placed against each other whose spurs are of various lengths. At the points in which its walls meet one another there are from time to time horizontal or vertical light slits the only light sources of the installation. Furthermore at neuralgic points mirrored surfaces have been inserted.

What can be experienced here, in an extremely impressive way, is how determining the horizontal or the vertical and sufficient lighting of the site is for perception of the surroundings as well as for the localisation of one’s own body. For hardly has one entered this aberration and the reliability of both these factors is shattered. Due to the specific, reduced directing of light, the calculated sequence of shadows generated which suggests plasticity sometimes even appearing like walls, and the built in mirror wall extends the space optically increasing its complexity. In the briefest period of time the combination of unusual pathways and the diffused occurrences of light lead to a condition of orientationlessness, the perception of the spatial reference system is divested of foundations. The visitor is advised therefore to generate his own clues and build up his own navigation system which in addition to the sense of sight leads to a heightened sense of touch. The unusual experience of space evokes not only confusion and insecurity but also prompts the individual relationship to space and location, the individual standpoint, to be determined and reassessed.

“Space seems to be either tamer or more inoffensive than time; we’re forever meeting people who have watches, very seldom people who have compasses. We always need to know what time it is […] but we never ask ourselves where we are. […] Now and again, however, we ought to ask ourselves where exactly we are, to take our bearings, not only concerning our state of mind, our everyday health, our ambitions, our beliefs and our raisons d’être, but simply concerning our topographical position […].”••

Stefanie Böttcher

• Perec, Georges, Species of spaces and other pieces, London 2008, p. 13.
•• Perec, p. 85.