Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
https://annagohmert.de/das-leben-als-5-akter/
To visit the work Sterben Üben – Das Leben als 5-Akter (Learning to Die – Life in 5 Acts), you have to go through several caves. The first is a virtual cave that you enter as an avatar: [insert link]. You can use your keyboard to move through the architecture of the cave. Spherical music can be heard in the background. The walls of the virtual underground vault are made of brown animated rock. Five round portal openings framed in red and blue are set into the walls and indicate the entrances to five numbered rooms, each of which shows a video – a cinematic act. Visitors enter the individual rooms, which are also designed like caves, by travelling through the portals and short tunnels. The only feature that gives away the fact that this place is a virtual, artificial cave is the pink grid structure on the ceiling of each room. In each of the five cavernous rooms, a large projection screen presents the respective cinematic act. Information about the respective act can also be accessed via a link that appears on the screen. Peggy Schoenegge, curator of the virtual exhibition space, has written a short overview for each room. Two portals in each room lead either back to the central cave (orbit), where you started, or to the next room.
In addition to this virtual cave, caves are also a central symbol of the five cinematic acts. In acts two to five in particular, viewers find themselves in underground worlds. Unlike the virtual exhibition space, the cinematic locations are real places. They appear in various forms: as an underground world that lies beneath the reflective surface of a lake; as tourist sites where people walk along paved paths between stalagmites and stalactites or take a train through the cave architecture; as sandy vaults that illuminate daylight; as a dark place in which only a distant outside casts a circle of sunlight. They are spaces from which people run out under clouds of dust or explore with interest.
A third, not entirely obvious type of cave is found in the fifth act as a perhaps modern analogue of the cave: the interior of an apartment building. There, the camera’s gaze is directed through curtains towards the outside and recalls the cave vaults into which the sunlight falls in the third act, while a young person runs out, raising clouds of dust.
In Sterben Üben – Das Leben als 5-Akter, caves are perhaps also a symbol for how old the world is, in the face of which every human life becomes tiny. And they are a metaphor for the winding, deep, peculiar, sometimes fascinating, sometimes eerie, unfathomable world that lies beneath the surface of a life, to which even the person leading that life has only limited access. Time is deposited in caves. Caves are among the most primitive of human dwellings. They offer protection but also harbour the danger of getting lost in tunnel systems. This is similar to the virtual tunnel systems of the Internet, to which Peggy Schoenegge also establishes a connection: ‘The virtual [exhibition] space becomes a Platonic allegory of the cave that points to the transformation of being and approaches what life is. At this point, art becomes Anna Gohmert’s tool for making the intangible tangible and reflecting life in its impermanent form.’
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
https://annagohmert.de/das-leben-als-5-akter/
Dieses Glossar soll einen Einblick in einige von Anna Gohmerts Werkomplexe geben, ohne einen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit zu erheben. Anna Gohmerts Arbeitsweise zeichnet sich unter anderem dadurch aus, dass sich unter dem Titel eines Werkkomplexes oft mehrere Arbeiten verbergen, die im Dialog miteinander stehen. Das Glossar versammelt Schlagworte zu einzelnen Aspekten oder einzelnen Arbeiten der Werkkomplexe, anhand derer sich Leser*innen einen fragmentarischen Eindruck verschaffen können. Das Glossar hat nicht das Ziel, die Arbeiten detailliert zu beschreiben, sondern setzt vor allem darauf, die Materialität des Unsichtbaren in Anna Gohmerts Arbeit herauszuarbeiten. Entlang des Glossars unternehmen Leser*innen assoziativ einen sinnlichen Trip durch einzelne erfahrbare Aspekte (haptische, auditive, visuelle) der Arbeiten. Der zentrale Gedanke des Glossars ist, dass Leser*innen über unterschiedliche Material-Metaphern einen Eindruck und Überblick über unterschiedliche Arbeiten gewinnen, die sich über einen Aspekt ihrer Materialität textlich auffalten und so von einem Detail der Arbeit zur gesamten Arbeit gehen.
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
This glossary is intended to provide an insight into some of Anna Gohmert’s bodies of work without claiming to be complete. One characteristic of her practice is that the title of a body of work often encompasses several projects that engage in dialogue with each other.
The glossary brings together keywords on individual aspects or individual pieces from the bodies of work, allowing readers to gain a fragmentary impression. It does not aim to describe the works in detail, but rather to highlight the materiality of the invisible in Gohmert’s practice.
The glossary takes readers on an associative sensory journey through individual experiential aspects of the works (haptic, auditory, visual).
The central idea of the glossary is that readers can gain an impression and overview of different works through various material metaphors that unfold textually through an aspect of their materiality, thus moving from a detail of the work to the work as a whole
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
https://annagohmert.de/das-leben-als-5-akter/
To visit the work Sterben Üben – Das Leben als 5-Akter (Learning to Die – Life in 5 Acts), you have to go through several caves. The first is a virtual cave that you enter as an avatar: [insert link]. You can use your keyboard to move through the architecture of the cave. Spherical music can be heard in the background. The walls of the virtual underground vault are made of brown animated rock. Five round portal openings framed in red and blue are set into the walls and indicate the entrances to five numbered rooms, each of which shows a video – a cinematic act. Visitors enter the individual rooms, which are also designed like caves, by travelling through the portals and short tunnels. The only feature that gives away the fact that this place is a virtual, artificial cave is the pink grid structure on the ceiling of each room. In each of the five cavernous rooms, a large projection screen presents the respective cinematic act. Information about the respective act can also be accessed via a link that appears on the screen. Peggy Schoenegge, curator of the virtual exhibition space, has written a short overview for each room. Two portals in each room lead either back to the central cave (orbit), where you started, or to the next room.
In addition to this virtual cave, caves are also a central symbol of the five cinematic acts. In acts two to five in particular, viewers find themselves in underground worlds. Unlike the virtual exhibition space, the cinematic locations are real places. They appear in various forms: as an underground world that lies beneath the reflective surface of a lake; as tourist sites where people walk along paved paths between stalagmites and stalactites or take a train through the cave architecture; as sandy vaults that illuminate daylight; as a dark place in which only a distant outside casts a circle of sunlight. They are spaces from which people run out under clouds of dust or explore with interest.
A third, not entirely obvious type of cave is found in the fifth act as a perhaps modern analogue of the cave: the interior of an apartment building. There, the camera’s gaze is directed through curtains towards the outside and recalls the cave vaults into which the sunlight falls in the third act, while a young person runs out, raising clouds of dust.
In Sterben Üben – Das Leben als 5-Akter, caves are perhaps also a symbol for how old the world is, in the face of which every human life becomes tiny. And they are a metaphor for the winding, deep, peculiar, sometimes fascinating, sometimes eerie, unfathomable world that lies beneath the surface of a life, to which even the person leading that life has only limited access. Time is deposited in caves. Caves are among the most primitive of human dwellings. They offer protection but also harbour the danger of getting lost in tunnel systems. This is similar to the virtual tunnel systems of the Internet, to which Peggy Schoenegge also establishes a connection: ‘The virtual [exhibition] space becomes a Platonic allegory of the cave that points to the transformation of being and approaches what life is. At this point, art becomes Anna Gohmert’s tool for making the intangible tangible and reflecting life in its impermanent form.’
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
https://annagohmert.de/das-leben-als-5-akter/
Dieses Glossar soll einen Einblick in einige von Anna Gohmerts Werkomplexe geben, ohne einen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit zu erheben. Anna Gohmerts Arbeitsweise zeichnet sich unter anderem dadurch aus, dass sich unter dem Titel eines Werkkomplexes oft mehrere Arbeiten verbergen, die im Dialog miteinander stehen. Das Glossar versammelt Schlagworte zu einzelnen Aspekten oder einzelnen Arbeiten der Werkkomplexe, anhand derer sich Leser*innen einen fragmentarischen Eindruck verschaffen können. Das Glossar hat nicht das Ziel, die Arbeiten detailliert zu beschreiben, sondern setzt vor allem darauf, die Materialität des Unsichtbaren in Anna Gohmerts Arbeit herauszuarbeiten. Entlang des Glossars unternehmen Leser*innen assoziativ einen sinnlichen Trip durch einzelne erfahrbare Aspekte (haptische, auditive, visuelle) der Arbeiten. Der zentrale Gedanke des Glossars ist, dass Leser*innen über unterschiedliche Material-Metaphern einen Eindruck und Überblick über unterschiedliche Arbeiten gewinnen, die sich über einen Aspekt ihrer Materialität textlich auffalten und so von einem Detail der Arbeit zur gesamten Arbeit gehen.
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch
This glossary is intended to provide an insight into some of Anna Gohmert’s bodies of work without claiming to be complete. One characteristic of her practice is that the title of a body of work often encompasses several projects that engage in dialogue with each other.
The glossary brings together keywords on individual aspects or individual pieces from the bodies of work, allowing readers to gain a fragmentary impression. It does not aim to describe the works in detail, but rather to highlight the materiality of the invisible in Gohmert’s practice.
The glossary takes readers on an associative sensory journey through individual experiential aspects of the works (haptic, auditory, visual).
The central idea of the glossary is that readers can gain an impression and overview of different works through various material metaphors that unfold textually through an aspect of their materiality, thus moving from a detail of the work to the work as a whole
Text: Judith Engel
Translation: Bonnie Begusch