ESSENTIA

Installation | 4 projections | 4 speakers | round screen Ø 155 cm | 18 min/loop | sound: "Hexagons" by Tom Johnson, interpreted by Wolf-Dieter Trüstedt | 2008

 

Documentation of the installation, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Nürnberg

Two hands are constantly engaged in making a net. Loop by loop a structure of white threads is created. Every loop, every knot is part of a large world fabric. It reflects the life cycle and embodies the essential aspects of life:
We sow and bury. The soil is fed. Life is produced. Life grows. It separates itself from the mother’s body. It has contact to its surroundings. It must end another life in order to nourish itself. It engages in selfless contact with others. It rests, and at some point it dies. Then the cycle begins afresh and the dead body provides sustenance for new life.

One is sowing / former living organisms turn to nourishment for new life
One is sowing / former living organisms turn to nourishment for new life
New life comes into being, peeling away from the body of the mother
New life comes into being, peeling away from the body of the mother
Other organisms are getting killed to nourish the own body
Other organisms are getting killed to nourish the own body
nourishment
nourishment
Contact to nature
Contact to nature
crop
crop
selfless contact with others
selfless contact with others
rest/dying
rest/dying

Direction: Simona Koch
Camera and light: Anselm Lenhardt


In the installation “Essentia” one can follow this cycle of life in three projections on three walls. As though illuminated by a candle, the scenes of life appear before us and disappear into the dark again, to be repeatedly replaced by new scenes. The actions are performed by people of different ages and skin colour, using only their bodies, their hands and the elements of nature.
A soundscape above the scene has a connecting effect: the composition “Hexagons” by Tom Johnson, in its sequence, describes an invisible weave consisting of a pulsating tone – the sound of a human voice.
Suspended over the three projections in the room is the circular projection surface on which the hands incessantly create the world fabric, loop for loop.

* Tom Johnson writes about “Hexagons”: “For accordion or another sustaining instrument. The numbers 1 to 19 represent 19 notes of the chromatic scale. Begin with the central chord (4, 11, 16). Following the lines, move to adjacent chords, always sustaining two voices and moving the third voice. Move slowly, carefully, until each of the 63 chords has been played at least once, returning finally to (4, 11, 16).”

 

Hexagons by Tom Johnson, Notation
Hexagons by Tom Johnson, Notation