PALESTRINA AND HELL
Scaffolding, PVC membrane, water, lights, 8 sub-woofers, 4 speakers, 2 CD players. Electronic music by Ian Boddy (U.K.). Curated by Eva Jacob.
Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria, 2003.
Water is the catalyctic element motivating the installation: it is the purifying, baptismal agent that ‘’segregates’’ and at the same time, ‘’fuses’’ the extreme poles of the upper and lower ‘’chambers’’ of existence. There is a split between what is beatic and peaceful and what is sinister and foreboding. Water is introduced as a mirror to extreme realities but also as a refractory conductor that splits space and truth. Is this a moment of extreme existential anxiety or a moment of spiritual reconciliation? Is this an uncompromising visitation to a season in hell or a deliverance through water? And are we objective viewers or are we intertwined in this manifestation of dual extremes? The very act of watching and listening seems to make us all accomplices... The remarkable thing is, that beside this flat standpoint of the axial center of almost being insular and standing in front of and looking at it, you are also simultaneously looking at something else. You are concurrently seeing two levels at the same time. Seeing above the water everything looks like the promise of heaven with the baptism-scene on the ceiling picture and reflected in the water, mirrored, the reality and the reflection doubles in a promising way what you see – in total silence and calmness at first. And you see at the same time, and that it is very contemporary, because simultaneous vision is what the modern picture program of the 20th century actually established as paradigm shift to see the world with new eyes. This simultaneity, this multiple-perspectivity.





