audiovisual installation, for the rooms of the Aubette 1928 and “thoughts in motion” – creation during an artist residency in 2024/25 at the Aubette 1928 in Strasbourg

 

premiere: 24 January 2025 | 18:00 (duration: 1 hour) | Aubette 1928, Strasbourg

 

Katharina Gross – composition/sound, visual design/video, performance
Ria Marks – final stage direction
Aurélio Edler-Copes – realization spatialization electronics
Studio Lab’UT Strasbourg (Octave Morits & Yérri-Gaspar Hummel) – support techincal realization
Lianiobe (Michaela Haider) – camera

 

Photos © Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Strasbourg

 

Photos by Octave Moritz; premiere 24 Jan 2025

 

The Aubette 1928 has been designed by the artists Theo van Doesburg, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hans Arp.
The audiovisual work Images Intérieures is created in view of 2028, when the 100th anniversary of the Aubette 1928 will be celebrated in Strasbourg.

 

Humans carry an individual inner treasure trove of images that would not be necessary for survival to this extent. Nevertheless, according to the German neurobiologist Gerald Hüther, these seemingly superfluous/ surplus images that our brain produce are not nonsense, because ultimately it was images that set human development in motion. The work Images Intérieures delves into this topic, bringing together different approaches and sources of inspiration.

 

Van Doesburg was driven by a strong inner world view: People should be placed inside the work of art and not in opposite of it. The great challenge for Van Doesburg as an architect was to create a living environment for people that would influence them. They should become happier and have “better thoughts” under the influence of their surroundings.
Referring to Van Doesburg’s vision, the new work draws inspiration from the ideas of Lao Tzu, who in his Tao te king, the “book of the right way”, as early as the 4th century BC, spoke out in favour of man’s connection to nature and non-violent coexistence, whereby “one’s own inner strength” creates the basis for a stronger “we”.

 

The work is also inspired by the ideas of the philosopher Ernst Bloch. In daydreams he sees the driving force for a “better life” and the starting point for social change processes. The prerequisite for setting these processes in motion, however, is the human imagination, the ability to combine subjective longings with images.

Van Doesburg’s intention was to create spaces that were both living spaces and spaces for entertainment and pleasure. Images Intérieures creates new spaces in the rooms of the Aubette 1928: spaces into which the audience’s imagination is allowed to enter and unfold. In this way, the work only comes to life with the help of the audience’s imagination.

 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp has been described as an “artist of the circle”. To create a sense of spatial circular movement and flow of motion, she uses creative means such as variations and repetitions of motifs, rhythms, but also changes of direction. Musically and visually, Images Intérieures is influenced by these elements and sets the audience in a state of mind in which inner images are evoked or can arise. In this context, C.G. Jung’s studies on the phenomenon of the “circle”, which deal with the reorganization of the personality after chaotic states, also provide a source of inspiration for the work.

 

Images Intérieures invites its audience on a journey through the world of inner images. Those who embark on this journey can return as someone else, with new inner images, with a view to 2028.

 

Photo by Michaela Haider