Harte Zeiten – Ciężkie Czasy
Simone Rueß (2021). de-re-konstrukt – "Lass uns von vorne beginnen...", pp. 98-107
Simone Rueß (2021). de-re-konstrukt – "Lass uns von vorne beginnen...", pp. 98-107
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.
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.
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…”
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.
On the constructed 23-metre-long footbridge in the garden of Gallery Le Guern, visitors actively contribute to a connection across physical distance through their participation on 4 September 2021. Built from material from Warsaw and Berlin, the bridge is the starting point of the happening. The Varsavian artist Krzysztof Franaszek is present on site in the gallery garden, while Berlin artist Simone Rueß is present on the bridge digitally on a screen. Visitors can follow how the two artists meet again virtually, and they can also talk live with the Berlin artist. The installation invites visitors to share their current (border) experiences during the pandemic. The happening makes the transnational relationship tangible and evokes memories of territorially specific border cases. The action relates digital and physical proximity to each other. Differences in distances are experienced, spatial approaches are tested and digital and analogue presence are negotiated with each other.
In 2018, I collected mental images of home in my INhabit project with the help of around 60 narrative interviews from Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, the Czech Republic, Germany, Thailand, etc. During the lockdown, for many „home“ became a home office. Professional and private activities all took place in the same place. In 2020, I juxtapose the mental images from 2018 with new conversations with the same interviewees. These are presented on posters at bus stops during the festival in the public space „ADAPTACJE"
in Gorzów Wielkopolskie (2021), curated by Marta Gendera.
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. In this drawing series from 2021, we can follow reflexions on geopolitical caesuras and social structures.
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, 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.
2018, Adele Giacoia related the city Rome with the meaning of home and described it as a large, open labyrinth structure of books that you can walk through. 2020, the same city, Rome, was still connected with the meaning of „home“, but now Adele Giacoia created a mental image of a DNA-like structure, where you could only walk through mentally with the help of your memory.
Inhabit 2018/2020: During my residency and exhibition at the Triennale di Milano, 2018, I collected, in the form of narrative interviews, over 60 mental images of home, from people from Europe, Taiwan, Israel, etc. During the pandemic lockdown 2020, for many people, the home became the home office. Professional and private activities took all place in the same place. I met my interviewees of 2018 again, this time virtually, and I asked for their current mental image of home in times of pandemic lockdown. Transformed into drawings, the contrasts between the ideas of home from 2018 and 2020 are presented on posters at bus stops during the festival in public space "Adaptacje" in Gorzów Wielkopolskie, 2021.
