res•o•nant

2017

The Jewish Museum Berlin has presented res-o-nant, a walk-in light and sound installation by Düsseldorf conceptual artist Mischa Kuball. The installation was created in 2017 especially for the new exhibition space in the basement of the Libeskind Building. Covering a total of more than 350 square meters, res-o-nant has used two of Daniel Libeskind's five voids that run vertically through the museum building. These symbolic 'voids', to whose materiality, effect and meaning Mischa Kuball refers, form the starting point for his work.

In the 24 m high rooms, rotating projectors cast light fields in the form of the void floor plans onto the walls and ceilings. Rotating mirror elements and strobe flashes create a "resonance between architecture and skin", according to the artist in his conceptual approach (see above). In the installation res.o.nant, a rhythmic rotation moving through the space alternates between the exact floor plan section of the respective void and a circular section of the space and the visitors in this space. At the same time, 60-second short compositions submitted by musicians/sound artists in an open call for the project will be integrated into the installation as an acoustic impulse. So far, more than 120 musicians have accepted this invitation.

res.o.nant attempts to make a kind of echo tangible. An echo that is not created by calling into the space, but that exists in the space itself. The material used in the space is an invitation to enter into a dialog with the space and the people in it. The focus is on different levels of the spatial experience: on how the viewers move in the space and on how the space moves in the space: it constantly opens up anew and offers new insights. As the visitor moves through the Void, the space reveals itself in a new way, as the angles and points of incidence constantly overlap in different ways. 

In a next step, the installation moved into the outdoor space, with the Jewish Museum Berlin conceptually moving from inside to outside into the urban space at exemplary places of public life with res.o.nant. There, a temporary stage is created - for everyone - developed from the significant floor plans of the Voids, which here become public spaces and are subject to a new reception as projection surfaces.

An diesem Gedanken von res.o.nant wurde mit zahlreichen Performances, Konzerten, talks – u.a. mit William Parker (23. März 2018), Daniel Libeskind (Herbst 2018), Raimund Hoghe (Juni 2018), der ACADEMY der Bühnenklasse (Ende Mai 2018) und anderen gearbeitet. Zudem ist eine dokumentarische Publikation der Installation sowie der begleitenden Interaktionen im Kontext von res.o.nant zwischen 2017 und 2019 entstanden. In dieser Publikation sind theoretische Diskurse namhafter Autor*Innen zu finden: Peter Schäfer, Leontine Meijer-van-Mensch, Gregor Lersch, Klaus Teuschler, Hans Belting, Horst Bredekamp, Alena Williams, John Welchman, Hans Ulrich Reck, Liz Kotz, Julia Bryan Wilson, Kathrin Dreckman, Diederich Diederichsen, Alexander Kluge, Ed Atkins.

Works

• res·o·nant, 2017
• res·o·nant, after image, 2017
• res·o·nant, light / dark / vitrine, 2017
• res·o·nant, light gravity, 2017
• res·o·nant, light gravity_soundfiles, 2017
• res·o·nant, mirror / fragment, 2017