Gegenwarten

An object in between

18.9.2022–2025

by Janosch Perler and Edi Aschwanden
(technique: Benno Fäh)

A sign represents the time between before and after. The simulated movement suggests that a virtual world is being built or deconstructed. This indeterminate period leaves room for thoughts and expectations.

The sign represents something abstract. It is at the same time an object in real space and links reality with fiction, perception with imagination.

gegenwarten.site

KlHaus

1.12.2018–3.7.2022

A project by Haus am Gern

A small house stands in the garden in front of Kunsthaus Pasquart, the «KlHaus». For a period of three years we will collect and assemble what is happening in another place 800 kilometers to the north-east, or rather, to reflect this other place in terms of material traces. This other place is situated in the gazebo of an allotment garden in Leipzig. It was constructed in 2005 by Haus am Gern in the form of a white cube in the gazebo of allotment 266 of the association of small gardens in Anger-Crottendorf. In accordance with the EN ISO 14644 contamination control standard, it was then cleaned by the firm Pro_Con, specialists in the cleaning of cleanrooms, then sealed and declared by Haus am Gern to be a «HISTORY FREE SPACE». It is the only room of its kind on this planet.

Prof. Dr. phil. Jasper A. Friedrich builds the «HISTORY FREE SPACE» in Leipzig virtually and writes a garden journal

www.hausamgern.ch

TRANSITIONS
performance & concert
by Judith Wegmann
29.6.-3.7.2022

Transition Part I
«Eine 24-stündige Reise ins Ungewisse»
«Vexations» von Erik Satie
by Judith Wegmann & Simon Bucher
29. – 30.6.2022, 19h – 19h

Transition Part II
Performance
by Judith Wegmann & Duo ALMA
1.7.2022, 19h

Transition Part III
«Vom Ende der Dinge»
Piano und Präparationen
Konzeptuelle Improvisation mit Videoinstallation
by Judith Wegmann
2.7.2022, 21h

Transition Part IV
«Vom Erklingen und Verschwinden der Töne»
Orchester
by Judith Wegmann, Piano & Miao Zhao, Klarinette / Diego Kohn, Violine / Lukas Briner, Schlagzeug / Nicolas Wolf, Schlagzeug / Hans Koch, Klarinette / Laura Schuler, Violine und Stimme / Johanna Pärli, Kontrabass / Sara Käser, Cello / Miro Caltagirone, Stimme / Tizia Zimmermann, Akkordeon
3.7.2022, 18h

Transition Part I “A 24-hour journey into the unknown”
Transition Part II Performance
Transition Part III “From the end of things”
Piano and preparations / Conceptual improvisation with video installation
Transition Part IV “On the Sounding and Disappearance of Tones“

The last artistic work that connects the KlHaus with the history-free space LIFETIIME EUROPE in Leipzig will also be extraordinary:
The Biel pianist Judith Wegmann has conceived a brilliant finale and will enter the KlHaus with a piano. With the participation of 10 musicians and a performance duo, the KlHaus project will end with Judith Wegmann’s TRANSITIONS I-IV. “I have been dealing with the subject of time from an artistic point of view for years. In performances of extreme length, I want to see what happens to me, the space and the body. It’s about experiencing time, transience, passing and new emergence, which are all aspects of time. Connected, of course, to the story of each life.”

Judith Wegmann is a genre-spanning pianist who explores classical music and new music as well as improvisation. Year after year, she designs and conceives new concert programs with different instrumentations and bears their responsibility until they are performed. Only recently she was honored with the “Zuger Werkjahr 2021” for her artistic work.

“The music arises from nothing and ends in nothing.” writes the artist about Part I of her TRANSITIONS, to which you are also cordially invited overnight. “It will sound through the open door from the KlHaus during 24 hours over the meadow of the Pasquart, carried during the day to the awake and at night gently to sleeping people, until it suddenly disappears again. – Was that a dream?”

That’s what we, and with us the 43 artists, the brewer, a pair of lovers, a pair of collectors, two cooks and Elmo will also ask when the meadow in front of the Pasquart sways quietly in the wind on July 8 – without the KlHaus, which will then be on its way to new shores. Everything is flowing. We will report. A big thank you to all who made it possible!

www.judithwegmann.com

73 from Kilo Lima Hotel cosmic orgone exploration (Best wishes from KLH)

Installation by Flo Kaufmann

1. – 26.6.2022

MIDISSAGE
11.6. 2022 / 17h – 23h
feat. Fork Burke, Olivia Hegetschweiler, Lea Fröhlicher 

The artist Flo Kaufmann (*1973, lives and works in Solothurn) and is a trained electrical engineer. He describes himself as « bricoleur universel » and experiments in his artistic work with technology, music and video installations.

80 years after the founding of Wilhelm Reich’s* Orgon Institute, Flo Kaufmann converts the KlHaus in front of the Centre Pasquart into a high quality orgone accumulator with specific hand movements. Reich postulated the so-called orgone energy, a form of our life force that is directly connected to our own libido. Reich believed that carbon-based organic matter (wood, rubber, cotton, etc.) attracted orgone energy and slowly radiated it away, while metal rapidly transmitted or reflected it. The KlHaus, built of wood and sheet metal, is therefore an almost perfect orgone accumulator.

In Flo Kaufmann’s installation, the voice of Wilhelm Reich can be heard, talking about his discovery of the orgone and its energy.  After the voice is silenced, the audience is invited to sit on the chair for 10 to 15 minutes, to charge themselves energetically and to experience the full power of KlHaus

In the anteroom – in reference to the basic function of the “hut” (shack**) – a broadcasting station will be set up, with which messages will be sent to the history-free space LIFETIME EUROPE in Leipzig. “Every night at 24 o’clock sharp “*** the messages are translated into Morse code and sent through the ether at 00:00 – in the hope that these messages can be received around the history-free space in the garden settlement of Leipzig. The radio transmissions can be followed comfortably from home via WebSDR. Detailed instructions are available. Please also note advertisements in relevant publications and in public spaces.

MIDISSAGE
On June 11, 2022 from 17h to 23h there will be an ORGON MIDISSAGE:
Poet Fork Burke will read and artists Olivia Hegetschweiler and Lea Fröhlicher will bake fresh, orgone-charged fortune cookies.
May the energy be with you!

* Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was an Austrian American physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, sexologist, and sociologist. More detailed information can be found in Wilhelm Reich’s detailed publication: Discovery of the Orgone, Volume 2, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994
** Designation of the workstation in amateur radio
*** Quote from James Bond’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,1969

www.floka.com/

HOUSE OF IMITE

Artwork by

Olivier Rossel

30.4. – 27.5.2022

FIRESIDE OPENING
Walpurgisnacht 30.4.2022
19:00 Beer, Barbecue & Bowle

FIRESIDE FINISSAGE 27.5.2022 – 16:00
19:00 Cake, Sirup & More
20:30 Collaborative Live-Video

Olivier Rossel’s artistic fieldwork in the garden 266 in Leipzig, where the history-free space LIFETIME EUROPE of Haus am Gern is located, forms the basis for the artwork in KlHaus. While pruning the fruit trees, knowledge came that could not have been gained in any other way: the work HOUSE OF IMATE works without cross-reference. Olivier Rossel understands the group of works created in collaboration with Haus am Gern and those working on site in Leipzig as a multiple history, as a linking of different realities of life. In doing so, Rossel questions conventions and procedures of historiography from an artistic perspective.

The artist Olivier Rossel (*1977 in Biel/Bienne, lives in Basel) opens up artistic knowledge spaces in collaborative constellations, creating artworks in the fields of sound, video, AR and print. Rossel is the founder of the art space Riddim Messy Cambio in Basel, president of the Photoforum Pasquart and council member of the foundation Centre Pasquart. Olivier Rossel is doing his PhD under Prof. Dr. Astrid Schwarz at the Chair of General Technical Sciences at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (D). His research interests lie at the intersection of practice-oriented art research, science and technology studies, and current particle physics. Olivier is investigating dark matter from an artistic perspective as part of his dissertation and – accompanied by Prof. Dr. Rachel Mader – is collaborating with researchers at the MADMAX experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY and at CERN in Geneva. olivierrossel.com

MERCI LES PLANTES !

Installation by

Beat Frank

9.4. – 24.4.2022

OPENING 9.4.2022 – 16:00
the artist is present – join us

” … They have no hands to lay on the world,
and yet it would be hard to find actors more adept than they
more skilful than they in the construction of forms.
The plants are not only the most skilful craftsmen of our
craftsmen of our cosmos, they are also the ones who opened up to life
the world of forms, the form of life that has made the world a place
of endless figurability. Through the plants the mainland has emerged
as a space and cosmic experimental laboratory for the invention of forms and the
Shaping of Matter…  ”
Emanuele Coccia, A Philosophy of Plants

Beat Frank
Builds sculptures for use in daily life.
Taught: discovery and development of his own artistic voice / visual language at the School of Design Biel/Bienne and the School of Art and Design Bern. His objects are among others in collections such as Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, new collection Museum of Design Zurich, Landesmuseum Zurich, Vitra Design Museum.
Beat Frank lives and works in Bern. www.beatfrank.com

266 / Licht aus dem Garten Eden

Installation by

Anno Weihs

12.3. – 3.4.2022

With my installation 266 / Licht aus dem Garten Eden I transform the KlHaus into a temporary “devotional space”. The proverbial focus is sunlight, captured in the allotment 266 in Leipzig, where also the history-free Space of Haus am Gern is located. With the aid of cyanotype, a phototechnical process, I captured sunlight there last year that shone into and onto the allotment garden for a few hours on a glass pane and then fixed it as a blue color field.
With its history-free Space, the allotment describes the ideal place where for me the Garden of Eden can be found.
Stored and presented in an old monstrance, the “stored light” is now raised to the holy of holies in the KlHaus. An ensemble that is very similar and widespread in my rural home to the local “Heiligenhäuschen” (small chapels). With this installation I continue a series of works from my project “Altkreuz – Abgabestelle”, in which I dematerialized crosses and all kinds of liturgical equipment and transformed them into new forms and meanings.

The question is how the course of history has transformed the sacred into the illusory.Anno Weihs

Anno Weihs,*1971, is a freelance artist specializing in experimental photography and lives in Menden/Sauerland (D). www.annoweihs.de

PRAIRIE OYSTER
Part III – Brooklyn

by Sophie Robinson

20.2. – 6.3.2021

Sophie Robinson, *1985,  is a published, award-winning and well-established poet and writer based in Norwich in the UK.

“For KlHaus I decided to use parts of my book, Prairie Oyster. PRAIRIE OYSTER is an experimental memoir about dead celebrities, addiction, and recovery. These extracts deal with themes of water, intoxication, sobriety, belonging, and dislocation. They were written in a tiny cottage in Westfjords, Iceland, miles from anywhere and at what felt like the end of the world.
My three collections of poetry to date have dealt with death and grief, with love and heartbreak, and with addiction and recovery respectively. My work over the last decade has been particularly focussed on communication of affect, extreme states of emotion, vulnerability, intimacy, and what might be termed the ‘radical confessional’. My work has always been formally innovative, and I strive to find new writing forms to fit my subject matter. My latest collection Rabbit, dealing primarily with alcoholism, sobriety, and relapse, came out in 2018 and the book has already received a lot of critical attention in the UK, as well as a little attention in the US.“ Sophie Robinson

Space, Event, Place

by Stefan Guggisberg

29.1.-19.2.2022

OPENING 29.1.2022, 11:00

Parallel to the history-free space in Leipzig, Stefan Guggisberg presents white, almost empty pictorial spaces with immaterial traces such as shadow cracks and light reflections at KlHaus. These are high-resolution prints of drawings created on the iPad.

Films emerge under the human eye, narratives that contain something of the metaphysical moments of human perception. For example, the pictorial space is a special space insofar as it shows something that does not occur in measurable space-time – unless one considers the applied pigment as a physical particle.

Stefan Guggisberg (*1980 in Thun) has lived in Leipzig since 2004. He studied photography and painting at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig after graduating from the graphic arts class at the Schule für Gestaltung Biel. His work has been awarded numerous scholarships and prizes including the Art Prize of the City of Thun 2015.

COUNTLESS EARS

Installation by Zora Berweger

1.1.-27.1.2022

OPENING 1.1.2022, 11:00

Zora Berweger (*1981 in Bern) has lived and worked in Leipzig since 2006. Her work includes painting, drawing, installation, sculpture and light art.

Berweger’s installation at KlHaus can be understood as a theatre space with fragments of dialogue. But what seems clear and obvious at first turns out to be an invitation to a much more far-reaching, contemplative conversation: What is present in this particular place, what communicates – how? And what does this have to do with us?

A “history-free space“? If one takes seriously the concept of history raised by the artwork “Lifetime Europe” by Haus am Gern, one could at least ask to what extent matter can be a storage medium of its own past. Does matter tell something – for itself? How does it communicate – how does it become conscious? Through us humans? What of ourselves does not belong – to matter? And finally: What is the non-physical?

zoraberweger.com

Pistolshrimp Synalpheus pinkfloydi

Audiovisual installation by

Gaudenz Badrutt

4.– 31.12.2021 +1h

OPENING 4.12.2021, 17:00
PERFORMANCE 11.12.2021, 20:00
FINALE 31.12.21 23h – 1.1.2022, 01:00

In his audio-visual installation Pistolshrimp Synalpheus pinkfloydi, Gaudenz Badrutt deals with Synalpheus pinkfloydi, a species of pistol shrimp discovered in 2017 and only 6cm in size, thus questioning nothing less than the interactions between the “history-free” and its transformation in the context of human history. The audiovisual installation evolves throughout the month and ends in an acoustic finale at the end of the year.

Gaudenz Badrutt, who began his musical career as a pianist in the field of contemporary classical music, has been working as an electronic musician in the field of improvised electroacoustic music for 20 years and is also a musicologist. Gaudenz Badrutt was awarded the Municipal Culture Prize on November 30, 2021 by the City of Biel/Bienne together with Christian Müller as Duo Strøm.

gaudenzbadrutt.ch

A GENEROUS WITHDRAWAL

by Effi & Amir

The artists are present: 2.– 15.11.2021

Public’a participation: 6./7.11.2021

Opening: 13./14.11.2021

Installation

13.–31.11.2021

On the basis of two rather contradictory interpretations of the terms Tzimtzum, Effi & Amir, with the participation of the public, will improvise a growing installation inside the vacant space of the KlHaus. Tzimtzum is a Kabbalistic term used to explain the doctrine that God began the process of creation by «contracting» his infinite light in order to allow for a «conceptual space» in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. This primordial initial contraction forms a  «vacant space» into which new creative light could beam.

Effi & Amir live and work as a duo since 1999. ( Effi Weiss, *1971 Ramat-Gan IL / Amir Borenstein, *1969, Haifa IL; 1999 BFA Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts, Jerusalem; 2004 MFA Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam). Their work, which often includes video, performance, and participatory strategies, explores collective and symbolic identities and their construction, particularly in relation to the notion of place. Their work is presented in Belgium and abroad, both in art spaces and at video and film festivals. In addition to their own artistic projects, they also collaborate with other artists as editors, camera operators and effects designers. They teach and give video workshops all over the world for different audiences. They live in Brussels.

JOURNAL (Session III)

Residence & Installation
by Antoine Rubin

18. – 31.10.2021

Writer Antoine Rubin takes up residence at the KlHaus for another week to continue the work he began during his first residency in summer 2019 and winter 2020.
The time spent on site will be translated into a journal that will grow daily, after which it will become available for visitors to view.

recitativo

a little prose (Narziss und Echo for a composition by Beat Furrer, voice and transverse flute)
by HÄNDL KLAUS

22.9. – 17.10.2021

READING

10.10.2021, 11:00
with a cello performance by Matthias Walpen at the award ceremony

recitativo (Narcissus and Echo for a composition by Beat Furrer, voice and flute) is a small prose of the wild narcissus blossom in Portmoos, where the author has admired & accompanied it for 23 years.

Händl Klaus, writer and filmmaker *1969 in Rum/Tyrol, lives in Port near Biel/Bienne, CH.
Awards: Robert Walser Prize 1995, Culture Prize of the City of Biel 2008, Grand Prize of Haus am Gern 2021.

Questions for the History-Free Space in Leipzig

A performance by Eliane Rutishauser and Barbara Naegelin

Sunday 19.9.2021

Arrival and aperitif: 18:00h

Start of the performance: 19:15h (duration approx. 30 min)

The artists Barbara Naegelin, *1967 in Venezuela, lives and works in Basel braingarden.ch  and Eliane Rutishauser, *1963 in Schaffhausen, lives and works in Zurich elianerutishauser.com have been working on joint projects since 2018. With “instabil”, Naegelin/Rutishauser realise art happenings, editions (published by Edition Haus am Gern), works and exchange formats with other artists. www.instabil.art

“We are convinced that everything that has been created in the name of the History-Free Space in Leipzig has been deposited in it. It contains the shovel noises of the mole as well as thoughts about love, knowledge about life as an artist in today’s Hong Kong, Biel or Cairo and much more.

We would like to use this concentrate of accumulated thoughts and stories by using our telepathic abilities: Alternately, one of us will mentally send a question to the History-Free Space, while the other will concentrate on receiving its answer. If necessary, we will also take questions from the audience and hope for new insights as well as extraordinary trains of thought.”

Eliane Rutishauser and Barbara Naegelin

SILENCE AFTER THE BANG
Viewing of an unrealized exhibition

by

BEAT GUGGER

29.8.2021, 11:00 – 18:00
performative device

1.– 12.9.2021
Installation@KlHaus

S_n_d_K Silence after the Bang Viewing of an unrealized exhibition

Beat Gugger is an independent curator. As a historian, he likes to dream and project into the future to understand how the past became the way it is. He lives and works in and around Switzerland.

From the research for the exhibition S_n_d_K, which was not realised in the summer of 1999, a vast archive of notes, articles, magazines and books on utopias and visions has emerged. Historical utopian texts are part of it, as are SiFi stories, architectural fantasies, technological dreams and ideas of paradise, but also the beginnings of every great world outline, the small reveries.

Like sediment, the documentation and materials have been deposited in a multi-layered turbidity over the past 25 years. Now, in the KlHaus project, it is a matter of stirring up this great chaotic mess, of spinning it at different speeds, in order to view it anew. What will be expelled from the project by centrifugal force and what will remain and condense in the next phase of the S_n_d_K project?

On 29.8.2021 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Beat Gugger will explore this question in a performative device in and around the KlHaus.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE

by Hamdy Reda

Interaktive Installation

7. – 27.8.2021

soft opening 7./8.8.2021
the artist is present

The artist, curator, cultural activist and photographer Hamdy Reda (*1972 in Cairo EG, lives in Egypt and Germany. Reda was the founder, executive director and curator of artellewa art space (2007-2017), a residency for local and international artists in Giza-Egypt. His artistic practice includes painting, experimental photography and installations. Reda is known in the regions of North Africa, the Middle East and Europe for his collaborative projects with artists from the Egyptian and international scene.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE is created from my situation as a newly immigrated Egyptian artist in Germany, and is based on my artistic practice: reflection on urbanity, social connections, collection of meanings, cooperative dimensions of immigration such as language and integration, and the deflection between the Old and New history of my old and new homeland. All of this churns through me as if in a giant vessel between words, images, meanings and feelings. Double exposure, multiple exposure or long exposure – it’s about all kinds of fused layers and layers of time and history, stratifications and multiplications of coincidences, cultures and consciousness.

The title DOUBLE EXPOSURE is a metaphor for the space of the KlHaus as camera obscura and cultural blender at the same time. Based on the concept of KlHaus, a journey full of serendipity takes me back to my hometown in Ard El Lewa / Giza (Egypt). The image of this neighbourhood, with all the meanings and feelings it conveys to me, guides my art practices and experiments, with images, meanings and concepts. The journey ends at the flea market in Kaiserslautern in front of a book called “The Big Book of Proverbs”. Together with the audience, the resulting image is created in the KlHaus.

PRAIRIE OYSTER
Part II – Westfjords

by Sophie Robinson

21.7. – 1.8.2021

Sophie Robinson, *1985,  is a published, award-winning and well-established poet and writer based in Norwich in the UK.

“For KlHaus I decided to use parts of my book, Prairie Oyster. PRAIRIE OYSTER is an experimental memoir about dead celebrities, addiction, and recovery. These extracts deal with themes of water, intoxication, sobriety, belonging, and dislocation. They were written in a tiny cottage in Westfjords, Iceland, miles from anywhere and at what felt like the end of the world.
My three collections of poetry to date have dealt with death and grief, with love and heartbreak, and with addiction and recovery respectively. My work over the last decade has been particularly focussed on communication of affect, extreme states of emotion, vulnerability, intimacy, and what might be termed the ‘radical confessional’. My work has always been formally innovative, and I strive to find new writing forms to fit my subject matter. My latest collection Rabbit, dealing primarily with alcoholism, sobriety, and relapse, came out in 2018 and the book has already received a lot of critical attention in the UK, as well as a little attention in the US.“ Sophie Robinson

あまりにも簡単なこの宇宙のレギュレーションと人間精神の意思の保持

The universe’s regulation on what human being can easily understand, and retaining purpose through a human’s psyche

Zeichnung / Dessin / Drawing

by

SILICA HIRATSUKA

23.6. – 18.7.2021

Silica Hiratsuka *Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan, worked since 2014 on the drawing “The universe’s regulation on what human being can easily understand, and retaining purpose through a human’s psyche”. He completed the drawing on 28/4/2021 and exhibited it at Otaru Municipal Art Museum (JPN) on 14/15 May 2021.
The drawing and Silica came to our attention via Instagram, and you can also follow the making of the drawing since 2014 here. The last post is from 15 May with the comment: Dream Ended This Way

A facsimile of the drawing is on display at KlHaus.

“I have been consistently thinking about the ultimate question, “I am dying and the universe is ending, but what will we do? This is a theme that penetrates not only my art activities, but all the time I live. I work as a local government employee to keep my living (to get money). It is necessary to maintain my body and to continue the human species (raising children). I consider myself to be a practical philosopher rather than an artist. I believe that the reality of living and thinking as a human species is a sincere approach to the above questions. (…) 
Today, in the mainstream of art scene, I feel that there is a THEORY WAR going on. This may be necessary, but I feel that not many people are taking Gauguin’s question* seriously (even though it is a question that no one has solved yet). I am one of the few who think about it. And also, I’m just a local government officer. I am the standard for the next generation.” Silica Hiratsuka

*Paul Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, 1897-98, oil on canvas,
139.1 x 374.6 cm (@Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

6 details on Instagram, Screenshot

SKIN
Sound installation
by
Franziska Baumann
5.6. – 20.6.2021

The external sounds vibrate more intensely in the interior, beyond clear recognition, but in the imaginable. In listening, we perceive the permeable wall and actively hear the interior and exterior landscape, which expands into the imaginative. The multiplied voices, some of which are based on Becket’s poem “Skin”, take us on a sound journey; as sirens in the landscape, they widen the acoustic paths for us in a sound production of the place itself.

Intense auditory moments of the everyday world of sound push into the centre, a world that we recognise as reality – as handed-down certainties, as overheard systems of thought and sound. But what happens when we give these sounds our attention and they are freed from their limitations? In her latest creation, Franziska Baumann explores the qualities of the immediate ambient sounds as an intensive listening space. There is a seat. The shoes stay outside. All that is there is sound, the permeable spatial envelope of the KlHaus and the guest listener.

Franziska Baumann, the singer, improviser-composer and sound artist draws as a vocal artist from archaic, experimental and stylistically wide-ranging pronouncements of the human voice. Together with gestural sensor electronics, she invents music in which she creates her own versions of narrative, non-linear and spatial storytelling. Under her direction, she has created numerous projects for (voice) ensembles with a scenic practice as well as spatial sound projects for indoor and outdoor spaces. As an improviser she has a rich international collaboration with musicians and has toured extensively throughout Europe and overseas. She teaches contemporary vocal practice and improvisation/composition at the Bern University of the Arts.

www.franziskabaumann.ch / www.baumann-brieske.net

PRAIRIE OYSTER
Part I – Alonnisos

by Sophie Robinson

21.5. – 4.6.2021

Sophie Robinson, *1985,  is a published, award-winning and well-established poet and writer based in Norwich in the UK.

“For KlHaus I decided to use parts of my book, Prairie Oyster. PRAIRIE OYSTER is an experimental memoir about dead celebrities, addiction, and recovery. These extracts deal with themes of water, intoxication, sobriety, belonging, and dislocation. They were written in a tiny cottage in Westfjords, Iceland, miles from anywhere and at what felt like the end of the world.
My three collections of poetry to date have dealt with death and grief, with love and heartbreak, and with addiction and recovery respectively. My work over the last decade has been particularly focussed on communication of affect, extreme states of emotion, vulnerability, intimacy, and what might be termed the ‘radical confessional’. My work has always been formally innovative, and I strive to find new writing forms to fit my subject matter. My latest collection Rabbit, dealing primarily with alcoholism, sobriety, and relapse, came out in 2018 and the book has already received a lot of critical attention in the UK, as well as a little attention in the US.“ Sophie Robinson

KELASARIAM – Welten sind mehr als Fakten

Raumbild by Filip Haag

17.4.-16.5.2021

KELASARIAM emerges situationally and improvised and gives the KlHaus height and breadth. I move in the imagination beyond the clearly recognisable and on this side of the vague, the no longer foreseeable. This is the terrain of an abstraction that still remains attached to the tangible: the object, the landscape, the figure. A landscape, not a landscape… The difference is infinite – and nevertheless both touch each other. 

I paint with gold paint. This makes it easier to enter the picture on a deep, dark blue and unites the light, gentle shine of gold with its weight, its symbolic power.

I do not have, paint or distribute a message. Whoever enters the painting and lets himself in, will be let in, will recognise a world, find himself in it, be part of it – and related to it. The more related, the more oneself, the more seen, the more clever. Filip Haag

Filip Haag, *1961, lives and works in Bern. In his painting he focuses on perception and the phenomena of visibility.    www.filiphaag.ch

He is currently showing paintings and drawings under the title AUGENBLICK MAL FARBE at Galerie Bernhard Bischoff in Bern until 15 May.

www.bernhardbischoff.ch

«C» – by PETER GYSI

16.12.2020 / 1.3.-28.3.2021

Peter Gysi temporarily fits his kit «C», consisting of 65 white wooden tyres, into the interior of the KlHaus. The tyres are transformed into a fragile, provisional arrangement – stored, fitted, arranged – and form new spaces, interspaces. Peter Gysi lives since 65 years, and he is a master of the explosiveness of the banal.

Peter Gysi (*1955 in Chur, lives and works in Burgdorf) expresses himself in his artistic work in a variety of media and complex content. Objects, installations, works on paper and actions often meet in surprising ways. Peter Gysi works in series. He is interested in creating and simultaneously breaking or disrupting existing orders, whether they are found or specially created. In his analysis of art historical references, the artist questions the principles of composition, proportion and functionality. In this way, he gets rid of the original function of everyday objects and industrial materials, which is all the more present through their understatement, and transfers them into new contexts of content and aesthetics – visual thought-provoking impulses, often mischievous, which subtly and subversively irritate with an immediately recognisable shift in the existing order, but which only develop their full effect and lead to the reflection of existential basic conditions in the advanced process of knowledge. 

Eva Inversini 

ZEITKONTAMINATION
Time Contamination
Installation, performance

by

Martin G. Schicht
formely known as Martin G. Schmid
17.8.– 25.10.2020

SA 19.09.2020

Presentation of the Filter Bible / rrr-Performance instructed by Martin G. Schicht

SO/DI 25.10.2020 – 15:30
Closing and talk with Martin G. Schicht, Beat Gugger and Florian Eitel

The talk will be followed by the “earthformance”, which will bring the project to a close in Biel.
During the “earthformance”, Martin G. Schicht will decide whether he will keep the name of his project.

“Into one room we can go again and again – into one time only once. Therefore, we are not in the same space, we are in the same time.”
Martin G. Schicht

In the middle of the 19th century, Biel/Bienne became the centre of the Swiss watch industry with over 2000 manufacturers. Not far from Leipzig is the city of Glashütte in Saxony. At the same time a new watch production was developed there, deliberately as competition to the Swiss and thus Biel watch industry. Throughout the history of timekeeping, these places have always competed and cooperated. For both, the digitalization of time is the current challenge.

Our digitalized present simply holds time for time. The present seems to be expanding more and more. Or as Alexander Kluge calls it: an attack of the present on the rest of time. Historically, however, time has always been understood differently. Many a historical concept of time seems downright alienating to us today, and accordingly, many a future concept of time will also disturb us. We are exposed to this irritation by a different understanding of time, even if we try to entrench ourselves in a permanent present. But we will be contaminated. And sometimes we already are. Time contamination.

Martin G. Schmid will change his name to Martin G. Schicht for the project in the KlHaus. He has taken soil from the garden of the Historical Free Space in Leipzig to bring it to Biel. For earth is a very good conservator in which objects remain stable in time for a very long time. This is where the project begins. Subsequently, the KlHaus is enriched with various interventions: digital filter bible, optical digital pattern, digital and analogue patina, space irritation, time irritation, spinning time hands from Biel and Glashütte, archaeological excavation of contemporary art on the meadow of the Kunsthaus, burial in the KlHaus, earth performance, rrr performance – personally instructed by Martin G. Schicht.

Martin G. Schicht online : martingschicht.net

“DROMENON” – 72 drawings by TILO STEIREIF
4.7.– 16.8.2020

Tilo Steireif’s series of 72 Dromenon drawings was created during the Covid 19 lockdown. “During this time I was working on a picture book in which the avant-garde of design and contemporary art are mixed together. When turning the pages I had the impression of a total erasure. Design and art together literally destroyed themselves as all meaning and interpretation disappeared before my eyes. That is when the definition of the mystery of the ancient Greeks appeared to me: the simultaneous role of word, image and ritual and this unknown word: Dromenon.
Dromenon, according to Christopher Wood, means the act, “the thing done”, also in contrast to the image. The 72 drawings, produced and presented in the KlHaus in filmed form, objectify the ritual of seeing and reading and try to evoke the erasure of image and action at a symbolic place. In 2005 this happened in Leipzig’s Kleingarten 266 in the context of SARS. Now it is the context of Covid 19.

Dromenon we can imagine (after Wood 2012): “(…) as a goal. The word was borrowed from the archaic Greek religion. The mysteries consisted of Legomenon, Deiknymenon and Dromenon: words, images and rites. The word Dromenon is derived from Dramain, meaning running. But dromenon, the race, does not mean the lock to the future, nor the catch-up to history, nor the panic flight, nor the random wandering, but rather the repetitive action of the ritual.”
It was only by chance that I made the connection with Aby Warburg and his institute in Woburn Square in central London. The Warburg Institute is, according to its website, the world’s leading institute for the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture.  It contains 78 black boards, on which side by side are pinned Renaissance masterpieces, pictures from a visit of a cardinal to the Fiat factories to the “house fairy” advertisement, which praises the advantages of toilet paper.”
Tilo Steireif, artist, Lausanne

“Joyfulnoise Now” – a sound project by Hans Koch
8.– 28.6.2020

Konzerte
14.6.2020, 17h
28.6.2020, 18h

Biel/Bienne ist eine Hochburg der freien improvisierten Musik und ein Laboratorium für stilistisch ungebundene Musik, der «Jetzt-Musik». Für die Grösse der Stadt gibt es eine erstaunliche Anzahl von MusikerInnen, die mit ihrer ureigenen Art immer wieder musikalisches Neuland erforschen. Den Nährboden dazu  legten u.a. die beiden Musiker Hans Koch und Martin Schütz  mit ihrem aussergewöhnlichen Joyful Noise Orchestra. Inspiriert  von der New Yorker Downtown Szene  starteten die beiden Musiker 1988 die Konzertreihe Joyful Noise und gründeten später das Joyful Noise Orchestra (“3 Nights Of Joyful Noise”) – ein radikales musikalisches Wagnis und ein Fest der freien Improvisation. Das bis zu 24-köpfige Grossorchester findet sich alle 2 Jahre zu einem dreitägigen, intuitiv-kollektiven, nicht-hierarchischen Spielrausch. «Es soll eine verrückte, betörende, sensible, Aufmerksamkeit fordernde, herausfordernde, und hoffentlich unerhört fantastische Musik ohne stilistische Scheuklappen sein», so Schütz und Koch. Joyful Noise nimmt mit dieser frei erfundenen Musik auf eine unerhörte Art Raum und Zeit ein und inspiriert die ganze Stadt.

Im KlHaus spielt Hans Koch täglich ein kurzes Set. In seiner Abwesenheit ist eine historische Joyful Noise-Konzertaufnahme und Hans Kochs zeitlose 15-minütige Fieldrecordings zu hören, arrangierte Aufnahmen von Wind und Regen und lokalen Geräuschen, die in Japan, China, Chile, Kroatien, Serbien, Wien, Biel/Bienne und auf seiner Alp im Berner Oberland aufgenommen wurden. Der Bläser und Komponist Hans Koch lebt in Biel/Bienne und musiziert auf der ganzen Welt.

14.5.-7.6.2020

All nonsense cancels itself out

Audio piece: Concept / Text montage: Bernhard Kathan
Speaker: Katrin Daliot
Poster: Autopsy report D.P.Schreber

Bernhard Kathan, cultural historian, writer and artist from Innsbruck, deals with various aspects of totalitarian rule. Kathan’s profound studies of the Leipzig lawyer and writer Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911) find their artistic form in a audio piece in the KlHaus.
Daniel Paul Schreber was the son of the Leipzig orthopaedic surgeon Moritz Schreber, the eponym of the later Schreber or allotment garden movement, whose brutal method of education is considered to be black pedagogy. Kathan’s audio piece is the fictitious soliloquy of an aspirant of the Dresden Higher Regional Court who, after a conversation with Daniel Paul Schreber, attempts to order his confused world view.

27.1. – 15.3.2020

“JOURNAL (Session II)” – 877 MINUTES DE SILENCE

Residence & Installation (sound, text) by Antoine Rubin

Writer Antoine Rubin is taking a second week in the KlHaus to continue the work he began during his first residency in June 2019. The time spent on site will be translated into a journal, which will grow daily, and will then be available to visitors. If the summer season promised a reflection on life outside with a roof over one’s head, this second part of the residence – this time winter – initiates a movement of inner retreat. Oscillating between presence and absence, the author questions the disappearance by means of the traces left behind.

The installation 877 MINUTES OF SILENCE forms the conclusion of this week. The memorial lists the 877 animal and plant species that were declared extinct by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in January 2020. A minute’s silence was observed for each extinct species. The inventory of these species extinct during the Anthropocene is included in a red list published by the UICN (iucnredlist.org).

7.12.19 – 26.1.20

„Sammlung Ketterer-Ertle RELOADED“

Installation

7.12.2019, 17:00

Opening: “Sammlung Ketterer-Ertle RELOADED”

BEER-OPENING – “KL HAUS SPEZIALBIER”

edited & brassed by HAUS AM GERN & PRIVATE GRIMM BRAUEREI 

The master brewer Daniel Grimm has already ensured the purity of the history-free space in Leipzig. On 26.10.2019 he brewed together with Haus am Gern in the KlHaus a few exclusive bottles of finest barley juice according to the Bieler purity bid, which are stored until 7.12.2019 and will be drunk at 18:30.

19.10.-5.12.2019

SOMETHING FROM HONG KONG by Cheung Tsz Hin and Ling Pui Sze

Artists travel the world and are therefore networked. The paths of the two visual artists Cheung Tsz Hin (b. 1987) and Ling Pui Sze (b. 1989) from Hong Kong and the two Biel/Bienne artists Susanne Walther and Barbara Meyer Cesta crossed in Iceland.  On the occasion of a trip to Europe, Cheung Tsz Hin and Ling Pui Sze will now make an intervention in the KlHaus – space and time can always be overcome at short notice.  Art critic Alice Henkes will talk to the two guests about how artists in Hong Kong are dealing with current events.

21.9.-18.10.2019

 SLEEP CYCLE, analoge s/w Fotografie, div. Dimensionen

«Sleep Cycle» nennt sich eine App, die – einmal auf dem Smartphone installiert – von der Matratze aus den Schlaf überwacht und analysiert. Die App verspricht, das Beste aus dem Schlaf herauszuholen, damit der Schläfer oder die Schläferin den stressigen Alltag noch besser bewältigt und verkraftet – die Selbstoptimierung und Competition macht nun auch vor dem wohl einzigen Zustand nicht mehr Halt, in dem wir gar nicht mehr «bei uns selber sind», sondern anderswo, im Schlaf nämlich, beim «kleinen Bruder des Todes». Keinerlei Selbstoptimierung betreibt hingegen Wojciech Niedzielko, wenn er die analoge Kamera auf sein  Bett richtet, den Verschluss öffnet und sich schlafen legt. Die Kamera zeichnet während der ganzen Nacht auf, was sich vor ihrer Linse abspielt. Das ist nicht viel und ist doch «das halbe Leben», das wir ja bezeichnenderweise schlafend verbringen. Diese schlafenden Selbstportraits von Wojciech Niedzielko transportieren eine unendliche Melancholie und Trauer über die «verschlafenen» Möglichkeiten und die Unmöglichkeiten, dieses Leben noch einmal nachzuholen. Auf dem Blog von Wojciech Niedzielko (http://wojtekniedzielko.blogspot.com) findet sich unter vielen anderen Bildern ein Foto mit dem Titel «Dziadek Stanisław». Es zeigt ebendiesen Grossvater Stanisław aufgebahrt auf dem Totenbett, und ein paar Klicks weiter ein Bild, das den Heustock in der Scheune seines Grossvaters zeigt mit der Legende: «Ich möchte gerne noch einmal eine Nacht im Heu in der Scheune meines Grossvaters verbringen. Trauer». Die polnische Sprache macht übrigens keinen Unterschied zwischen den Wörtern Schlaf und Traum.

Wojciech Niedzielko, polnischer visueller Künstler, *1959 in Ełk, gründete 1999 zusammen mit Igor Krenz die «Grupa Usługi Fotograficzne (Photo Service Group)». Seit 2001 Mitglied der Video- und Performance Gruppe «Azorro». Er lebt und arbeitet in Warschau.

18.8.2019 

“MARIAGE” 
de CYNDIE & RAPHAËL

Real life moves in: Cyndie and Raphaël are getting married in the KlHaus!
The decor consists of an “installation végétale” by the bride and groom: under the roof of the KlHaus they will hang dried plants, which will be available as souvenirs in the KlHaus in the autumn.

ALL those who would like to be present at a new story beginning in the KlHaus are invited to the wedding party.

PROGRAMM/E

ab/dès
14:00h Apéro, Buffet*
15:00h Cérémonie**
15:30h Musique***
permanent: Installation végétale****

* LE MENU :
• Apéro, Buffet par Batavia Epicerie Moderne
• Leipziger Allerlei & Leipziger Lerchen
interprété par maître cuisinier Rolf Bähler
• Gelati fait maison par EYE SCREAM

** CÉRÉMONIE performative
interprété par maître de cérémonie Rudolf Steiner

*** INSTALLATION végétale  jusqu’au sèchage final

**** DJ set par Dany Digler

VOTRE CADEAU DE MARIAGE: veuillez prêter attention à la COLLECTE
pour soutenir les intervenants de l’événement
IHR HOCHZEITSGESCHENK: bitte beachten Sie die KOLLEKTE
zur Unterstützung der Festbeiträge

24.7.-16.8.2019 

“THE FRIENDLY HERMIT” 
a sound installation by MR. SCHÜTZ

What you hear:
8 long loops, recorded in the last few months, with (mostly) prepared acoustic or electric cello. A short interruption between each loop: a few individual notes, a Robert Walser poem from the collection of early poems, “Au Bureau”, published in 1909, recorded by me in the French translation; a little greeting towards the Robert-Walser-Sculpture >>

17.6.- 23.6.2019

Le temps d’une semaine, l’écrivain Antoine Rubin a pris ses quartiers dans la KlHaus. Apportant le strict minimum, il développe une réflexion autour de la vie dehors avec un toit au-dessus de la tête. Le temps passé sur place se traduit en journal qu’il augmente au fur et à mesure des jours avant de le restituer à la ville.

Die Texte werden danach bis Mitte Juli im KlHaus zur Lektüre aufliegen.

PREKARIA – a video-opera by Studio Prekär

Marie-Luise Lange & Jeroen Singer
3-canal-video installation, ca. 3h

Opening 10.5.2019, 6pm

Running time until 16 June 2019, Finissage at 5pm

How does an idea of the past manifest itself in the present? The video installation PREKARIA examines the dichotomy and speechlessness that accompany the transformation of a social system. Distorted images, fragments and shreds of conversations, gestures and emotional impressions interweave with abstract choral and improvised opera singing. The documentary material is interpreted in various ways and subjected to an effective transformation. The focus of the work is not the search for truth, but the attempt to make an experience tangible. This does not only mean the experience of others, but also the difficulty of rearranging the distorted image of history in oneself.

Catalogue with DVD by Edition Haus am Gern

supported by videocompany.ch

Currently @ KlHaus:

PRECISION AND RECALL
Hartmut Abendschein
Suchbewegung in der Ordnung der Dinge
16.3.-13.4.2019, Finissage 13.4.2019, 17:00

14.4.2019, 17:00 @ KlHaus:

DER GESCHICHTSFREIE RAUM UND DER APFELBAUM
Eine botanisch architektonische Fabel by Helmut Dick, vorgetragen von Helmut Dick und Vera Trachsel.

Im gesunden Hier und Jetzt haben Apfelbäume möglicherweise, und Räume ganz sicher kein Bewusstsein. In einem der unzähligen, nirwanischen Subräume allerdings – die zueinanderkommend zu einer Art Brummton verschmelzen – ist nicht nur jede erdenkliche und noch nicht gedachte Konstellation vorstellbar, sondern geradezu logisch: Bäume und Räume wissen wer sie sind und sprechen … sogar miteinander.

Der Geschichtsfreie Raum und der Apfelbaum @ Leipzig, 30.5.2016