Ontotop
Caroline Heinzel | 2017
Collective liminality is captured in this site-specific installation that is of straight form while being made of diffusing and mineral materials. Having climbed a steely stairway originally carpeted with a dark synthetic, visitors discover a small room carpeted just the same, their steps producing harsh sounds in the muffled atmosphere. They face another roomlike structure built into the original space, accurate and translucent, yet raw, supporting and contrasting original quailities. By passing through, they meet thresholds, face apertures and trace the impact of others who had been there before. The soles of their shoes produce a distinct sound on the wooden architecture’s resonant planks or carefully reach out to step onto a firm yet mushy white surface. They experience an aesthetic change and find themselves responsible for it. An accurate zone of compacted chalk gets dispersed by visitors’ feet step by step. It imprints a current, diffusing even into the surrounding rooms.
Like a fold, the room had been build into a narrow back bureau of the former French Embassy in Saarbrücken and had later been transferred to its park. Both are part of an architectural complex by Georges-Henri Pingusson, breathing the atmosphere of political change and unfulfilled expectations, adressing substance and vagueness of the ‘European Greater Region’ narrative.
Saar Art 11 état d’esprit