ZUHAUSE/HOME

People with experiences of flight and migration often create a new home in temporary forms of housing such as container villages. At the same time, they remain connected to their homeland through memories and contacts with those “back home,” while seeking ways to live out their cultural everyday needs.

In a workshop at Kunsthalle Tübingen, I invited participants from Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Pakistan to share memories of a home, to explore mental images of their current (hybrid) home, and to imagine visions of a future form of living. These individual ideas were captured in a collective large-scale drawing and documented in a video – both as a creative process and as a vision of communal life.

Menschen mit Flucht- und Migrationserfahrung schaffen sich meist in temporären Wohnformen wie Containerdörfern ein neues Zuhause. Gleichzeitig bleiben sie über Erinnerungen und Kontakte zu „Daheimgebliebenen“ mit ihrer Heimat verbunden und suchen nach Möglichkeiten, ihre kulturellen Alltagsbedürfnisse zu leben. In einem Workshop in der Kunsthalle Tübingen lud ich Teilnehmer*innen aus Afghanistan, Albanien, Armenien, Türkei, Irak, Libanon, Nigeria und Pakistan ein, Erinnerungen an ein Zuhause zu teilen, mentale Bilder eines derzeitigen (hybriden) Zuhauses zu erkunden und Visionen einer zukünftigen Wohnform zu imaginieren. Diese individuellen Vorstellungen wurden in einer gemeinsamen großformatigen Zeichnung festgehalten und in einem Video dokumentiert – als kreativer Prozess und als Vision eines kollektiven Zusammenlebens.

In addition, together with the participants, we explored their inner images of home in narrative interviews, which I then translated into drawings. In this way, mental spatial images emerged that make visible both personal sensitivities, hybird identities and the socio-spatial conditions of refugees.

Ergänzend ergründete ich zusammen mit den Teilnehmer*innen in narrativen Interviews deren innere Bilder vom Wohnen, welche ich anschließend in eigene Zeichnungen übersetzte. So entstanden mentale Raumbilder, die persönliche Befindlichkeiten, hybride Identitäten, ebenso wie sozial-räumliche Gegebenheiten Geflüchteter sichtbar machen.

Fragile Remembering, Varation II

From 2019 to 2023, Simone Rueß visited senior citizens with memory disorders in the Ernst-Berendt-Haus of the Stephanus GmbH in Berlin Weißensee and let them describe their biographical memories which she then translated into drawings. These conversations were the basis for a detailed artistic analysis in the form of double time graphs, which reveal weightings of certain biographical and historical data in relation to memory capacity.

A video gives insights into the conversations with the protagonist K. H. Stauffer. Originally from the region of Lviv, K. H. Stauffer’s family fled from today’s Poland near Wroclaw to Rhineland-Palatinate in 1945, where he grew up with his family on a four-sided farm. He later managed the farm himself for many years. He not only expresses his spatial experiences of displacement linked to current geopolitical conflicts, but also finds ways to describe his embodied limitations and physical restrictions as a senior citizen suffering from Parkinson’s disease. With the help of animated diagrams and a documented light installation, the film expresses the conflictual resonance of time and space along fragile remembering.

Corresponding to the short film portrait, the floating color installation portrays the space biography of another patient, representing and abstracting the biographical conversations over a period of 3 years. Based on diagrams, colored strips of different lengths materialize the narrated and remembered experiences. They rotate around their own axis, forming a kinetic landscape, expressing the constantly changing memory capacity. Each horizontal line materializes a conversation, each colored strip a sentence. Each color stands for a remembered person (relatives, friends, community, etc.).

Fragile Remembering, Ernst-Berendt-Haus

A large part of society is affected by dementia in the elderly; in Germany alone, there are currently around 1.8 million people (2021). Unnoticed by a large part of society, they usually live in a secluded everyday life. With the FRAGILE REMEMBERING project, Simone Rueß gives senior citizens with fragile memory a voice and makes the perception of dementia patients accessible on a visual-practical level.

Mittlerweile ist ein großer Teil der Gesellschaft im Alter mit der Erkrankung an Demenz betroffen, allein in Deutschland sind es derzeit ca. 1,8 Millionen Menschen (2021). Von einem großen Teil der Gesellschaft unbeachtet leben sie meist in einem zurückgezogenen Alltag. Mit dem Projekt FRAGILES ERINNERN gibt Simone Rueß Senior*innen mit fragilem Gedächtnis eine Stimme und macht die Wahrnehmung Demenzerkrankter auf visuell-praktischer Ebene zugänglich.

Verfaulte Pfirsiche, (Gespräch mit K. H. Stauffer, 17.12.2019), Bleistift auf Papier, 14,8 x 21 cm

The drawings presented in the Ernst Berendt House are based on personal descriptions of residents that Simone Rueß visited regularly from 2019 to 2022. In conversations, she gave them the opportunity to talk about their biographies. She gradually visualised their mental images in the form of drawings, which are shown to the interlocutors during further visits. The graphic approaches establish a connection to the experiences and emotions of the patients and bring to light further memories that the patients themselves or those close to them thought had long been forgotten. The artist also observed how the images could act as memory aids when memory became more fragile. She is interested in how the understanding of space is defined by childhood, the present, fellow human beings, objects, the environment or geopolitical events, depending on the ability to remember. The exhibition in the retirement home enabled an exchange with nursing staff, carers and relatives, which had a direct impact on the everyday lives of the patients.

Die im Ernst-Berendt-Haus präsentierten Zeichnungen basieren auf persönlichen Beschreibungen von Bewohner*innen, welche Simone Rueß von 2019 bis 2022 regelmäßig besuchte. In Gesprächen gab sie ihnen die Möglichkeit, aus ihrer Biografie zu erzählen. Die wachgerufenen mentalen Bilder visualisierte sie nach und nach in Form von Zeichnungen, welche in weiteren Besuchen den Gesprächspartner*innen gezeigt wurden. Die grafischen Annäherungen bauten eine Verbindung zur Erlebnis-und Gefühlswelt der Erkrankten auf und brachten weitere Erinnerungen zum Vorschein, welche die Betroffenen selbst oder ihnen Nahestehende längst vergessen geglaubt hatten. Außerdem beobachtete die Künstlerin, wie die Bilder als Gedächtnisstützen bei fragiler werdendem Erinnerungsvermögen fungieren können. Dabei interessiert sie, wie sich das Raumverständnis je nach Erinnerungsvermögen über die Kindheit, die Gegenwart, über Mitmenschen, Gegenstände, die Umgebung oder geopolitische Ereignisse definiert. Die Ausstellung im Haus der Senior*innen ermöglichte einen Austausch mit Pflegepersonal, Betreuer*innen und Angehörigen, der sich direkt auf den Alltag der Erkrankten auswirken konnte.

K. H. Stauffer (space biography)

Since September 2019, artist Simone Rueß has been visiting people with dementia in the Stephanus Foundation's Ernst Berendt House. In returning conversations, she invited them to describe their spatial experiences, which she then visualized in drawings. In 2022 she presented the series of drawings in the exhibition “FRAGILE REMEMBERING” on the site of the Stephanus Foundation, together with an site-specific installation in the Friedenskirche.

In the direct neighborhood of the exhibition FRAGILE REMEMBERING, the open air cinema Freilichtbühne Weißensee was showing a short film portrait of K. H. Stauffer, which documents the moment of fragile memory of biographical experiences. K. H. Stauffer fled with his family in 1945 from present-day Poland to the Rhineland-Palatinate, where he grew up with his family on a four-sided farm. He later managed this farm by himself for many years. Resettlement and escape as well as the Iron Curtain play a central role in his memories. In addition to a spatial biography album, which the artist is constantly expanding in collaboration with the protagonist, we see and hear three excerpts from the large-scale project “Space/Time/Resonance” (2022), in which Simone Rueß explores “how geopolitical caesuras are written down in spatial biographical narratives…”

Seit September 2019 besucht die Künstlerin Simone Rueß Menschen mit demenziellen Veränderungen im Ernst-Berendt-Haus der Stephanus Stiftung. In wiederkehrenden Gesprächen lässt sie sich Raumerlebnisse beschreiben, welche sie im Nachhinein zeichnerisch visualisiert und 2022 in der Ausstellung „FRAGILES ERINNERN“ auf dem Gelände der Stephanus Stiftung präsentiert.

In unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft zeigt die Freilichtbühne Weißensee anlässlich der Ausstellung FRAGILES ERINNERN ein Kurzfilm-Portrait von K. H. Stauffer, welches den Augenblick des fragilen Erinnerns an biografische Erlebnisse dokumentiert. K. H. Stauffer floh mit seiner Familie 1945 aus dem heutigen Polen in die Pfalz, wo er mit seiner Familie auf einem Vier-Seiten-Hof aufwuchs. Später bewirtschaftete er selbst jahrelang diesen Hof. Die Flucht sowie der Eiserne Vorhang spielen in seinen Erinnerungen eine zentrale Rolle. Neben eines Raumbiografie-Albums, das die Künstlerin in Kollaboration mit dem Protagonisten ständig erweitert, sehen und hören wir drei Auszüge aus dem umfassenden Projekt „Space/Time/Resonance“(2022), in dem sich Simone Rueß damit befasst, „wie sich geopolitische Zäsuren in raumbiografische Erzählungen niederschreiben...“

K. H. Stauffer (space biography), 2019-2022, short film, Freilichtbühne Weißensee, based on conversations with K. H. Stauffer, 4min

Animation

Diagrams with a vertical historical timeline and a horizontal narrative timeline summarize the narratives (in this case narratives by K. H. Stauffer). Weightings of certain space biographical data become visible in relation to memory capacity. Superpositions and condensations reveal how certain experiences of respondents, influenced by geopoliti- cal caesuras, acquire more frequented resonance.

Light recording [micro-light installation]
On the 18th of January, 2022, for the duration of eight hours, daylight was recorded on a sheet of paper with a small funnel in a darkened room on a micro scale while appearing on a monitor via a webcam. The digital light cone translates the phenomenon of filtering perceptions onto the screen (as a magnified sensor).

Sound piece by Catherine Lamb
Filtered ambient sounds are the basis of the piece inter sum (2019). Taking into account the various transitions of acoustic perception between indoors and outdoors, Lamb applies a resonance band-pass filter to her ambient field with her synthesizer instrument, thus reflecting the constantly fluctuating field of attention.

Lichtaufnahme [Mikrolichtinstallation]

Am 18. Januar 2022 wurde für die Dauer von acht Stunden in einem abgedunkelten Raum Tageslicht auf einem Blatt Papier mit einem kleinen Trichter im Mikromaßstab aufgenommen und über eine Webcam auf dem Monitor eingeblendet. Der digitale Lichtkegel übersetzt das Phänomen der Filterung von Wahrnehmungen auf die Leinwand (als vergrößerter Sensor).

Klangstück von Catherine Lamb

Gefilterte Umgebungsgeräusche sind die Grundlage von Lambs Stücks inter sum (2019). Unter Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Übergänge der akustischen Wahrnehmung zwischen drinnen und draußen wendet Lamb mit ihrem Synthesizer-Instrument einen Resonanz-Bandpassfilter auf ihr Umgebungsfeld an und hält so das ständig schwankende Aufmerksamkeitsfeld fest.

space/time/resonance: 'How geopolitical caesuras are written down in biographical narratives…'

Simone Rueß conducts space biography conversations with middle-aged participants and people suffering from dementia. Diagrams with a vertical historical timeline and a horizontal narrative timeline summarize their individual statements. In this way, weightings of certain space biographical data become visible in relation to memory capacity. Superpositions and condensations reveal how certain experiences of respondents, influenced by geopolitical caesuras, acquire more frequented resonance.

Light recording [micro-light installation]
On the 18th of January, 2022, for the duration of eight hours, daylight was recorded on a sheet of paper with a small funnel in a darkened room on a micro scale while appearing on a monitor via a webcam. The digital light cone translates the phenomenon of filtering perceptions onto the screen (as a magnified sensor).

Sound piece by Catherine Lamb
Filtered ambient sounds are the basis of the piece inter sum (2019). Taking into account the various transitions of acoustic perception between indoors and outdoors, Lamb applies a resonance band-pass filter to her ambient field with her synthesizer instrument, thus reflecting the constantly fluctuating field of attention.

Space Biographies – 2016–2022 (Variation I), Exhibition view at TRAFOstacja Szceczin, 2022.

Light Recording and Animation, as part of *space/time/resonance: 'How geopolitical caesuras are written down in biographical narratives…'*

About the exhibition at TRAFO Center of Contemporary Art in Szceczin, 2022, curated by Dagmar Schmengler, Michał Markiewicz, Stanisław Ruksza:

You could be heading away from the endless middle and towards the bottom of the top*

*idiomatic sentence used by one of the characters in the TV series Succession

The archive often serves as a certain model representing social mechanisms. It becomes a synonym for memory, power, and an argument in the discussion about the status of history and created images of the past. In practice it is not something that can be read like a novel, from the first page to the last. It appears to us as an infinite resource. It consists barely of pages in the usual sense of the word, but more of various visual forms: tables, photographs, documents, charts, images, disguised narratives. We look at them for a specific purpose or we browse freely, letting our desire to know drift. Having reached the bottom of the list, we find ourselves back at the top in (new) data to explore. In this sense, the archive never has a form that is definitive.

We usually make a use of it that combines two seemingly disparate gestures. We open it at first in order to search for a particular piece of information. Having found it, we browse further. We close the collection it contains only after wandering around like a labyrinth for a while. Waiting for the next time, equally useless or fruitful. By recalling this dual use, an apparently democratic archive can turn out to be a ‘double-edged’ ‘object’, dangerous, and even deceptively inverting the order of political and identity relations.

The subject of the archive, taken up by artists from Poland and Berlin, not only in the sense of a visual form of knowledge or a scientific form of seeing, but also in the ways of communication produced within its framework, comes down to tracing the disturbances found in the community space of our experiences. The juxtaposed artistic strategies show the archive as a living medium and a “moving place”, emphasising both its physical existence and the spatial construction that embodies order, without taking away its phantasmal character. In this way, they reveal the possibilities of subordinating the historically accrued and systematic dimension to current questions and doubts.

The project consists of three substantive components:

An online presentation during which every day from January 21, 2022 to January 30, 2022 invited artists presented their practices and working methods in direct or allegorical relation to the exhibition. The website mozeszuciec.com will be active from January 20, 2022.
Exhibition at TRAFO from Janury 17 until April 3, 2022
Experimental art-event in Berlin, in April 2022

The project is realized within the framework of the Odra Partnership, in partnership with TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin.

more informations here

Mütter mit Kindern und Schwiegermüttern füllten die Stadt

Auswanderung, Umsiedlung, Flucht (K. H. Stauffer)

Verfaulte Pfirsiche (K. H. Stauffer)

Bubble Syria (A. A, 2016)

A. A. is a writer and dentist born in Deir Ezzor, Syria. He grew up in the Ar Raqqa region, which is characterized by a cultural and linguistic intermingling. In Damascus he pursued his studies and his profession. After a short stay in Mauritania, A. A. left Syria forever in 2013 and fled to Germany via Beirut (2015). In 2018, his family came to Germany. After successful language courses and medical exams, A. A. works now in Berlin as a dentist.

With A. A., we had our first space/biography conversation in 2016. Later we met again in 2021 and 2023. In continuing conversations we reflect on the changes in spatial biographical perceptions.

Like going out of the bubble syria (conversation with A.A., 12.07.2016), 21 x 29,7 cm

Bubble (A. A., 2021)

With A. A., we had our first space/biography conversation in 2016. Later we met again in 2021 and 2023. In continuing conversations we reflect on the changes in spatial biographical perceptions. In this drawing series from 2021, we can follow reflexions on geopolitical caesuras and social structures.

Dream: dissolve the bubble (dt: Traum: die Blase aufzulösen), (conversation with A.A., 02.12.2021), pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm

Zuhause (A. A., 2023)

With A. A., we had our first space/biography conversation in 2016. Later we met again in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In continuing conversations we reflected on the changes in spatial biographical perceptions, . In this drawing series from 2023, we can follow reflexions on relations between memories and the feeling of home, the language and translocal and transnational social spaces.

Heutiges Leben: Erinnerungen in der Zukunft.

Erinnerungen als Zuhause. Viele Icons auf Desktop.

Die Wohnung hat viele Ecken, so wie das Gehirn.