Light and Sound Installation »res·o·nant« by Mischa Kuball

Covering a total floor space of more than 350 square meters, res·o·nant will incorporate two of the five vertical Voids that traverse the Museum building. For Mischa Kuball, the Voids express „the impossibility of representation.“ These symbolically laden empty spaces form the starting point for the artist’s work, which refers to the materiality, effect and signification of the Voids. The opening of Kuball’s light and sound installation will provide Museum visitors with the opportunity to re-discover these two Voids, which have become something of a Museum trademark in the period since the opening of the Museum in 2001.

In these rooms with 24-meter-high ceilings, rotating projectors cast light fields in the form of the outline of the Voids onto the walls and ceiling. By means of rotating mirror elements and stroboscopic light impulses, there arises, in the words of the artist, a „resonance between architecture and skin.“ A third element of the installation is comprised of several loudspeakers, distributed throughout the room, playing back a series of 60-second-long sound clips – so-called SKITS – which were composed specially for this installation by more than 20 musicians. The soundscape thus resonates, in varying volume levels, throughout the entire exhibition space.

With an open call to be published starting in November 2017, other musicians will be invited over the course of the exhibition to submit new pieces for inclusion in the installation. From now through the summer of 2019, various interventions are also planned in several popular outdoor spaces throughout the city of Berlin. Besides performances and concerts, the outlines of the Museum Voids will also be projected onto public spaces; transcending the physical boundaries of the museum.

The artist Mischa Kuball

Mischa Kuball, born 1959 in Düsseldorf, has worked since 1977 in public and institutional spaces. Using the medium of light, he explores architectural spaces and their social and political discourses. He takes up and manipulates various aspects of a public space, from its cultural and social structures through architectural intrusions, in order to emphasize or re-code the trademark effect they produce or the position they have assumed in an art- and architecture-historical context. Since 2007, Mischa Kuball has been Professor for Public Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln), Associate Professor of Media Arts at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung/ZKM, Karlsruhe), and since 2015 a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of North Rhine- Westphalia in Düsseldorf. In January 2016, he was awarded the German Prize for Light Art.

REGISTRATION

To assist our planning, please confirm your intention to attend the press event by e-mail (presse@jmberlin.de) or telephone (+49 (0)30 259 93 419) no later than Wednesday, November 15 2017.

Please submit any requests for interviews in advance to the press office.