melting installation, ice, steel, soundscape (in cooperation with Isabella Leung and Bastian
Lehner), 2023
“Soft rigidity.
heavy coldness.
sticky liquids.
Craters on the roof of this planet
and soft sponges on the wall
-imagining delicious moments of letting go.
Our faintness is going to melt.
Dark-grey transforming entities that nourish the plants.
Trash nourishes us from within.
Floating lines break through closed gates.
Shifts in space lead to emerging landscapes.
There was another time.
Non-human bodies arrive and thrive.
The speed is too fast to develop these flickering tubes,
that grow inside to the web of raindrops above.
What leaves.
What disappears.
Cold heaven inside. it emerges and clarifies the view.
cold heaven in my heart. cold on my shoulders.
spitting into my navels. sinking into the ground beneath and between our feet.
dew. blood. wetness. tears.
-spitted liquids collecting in the hidden bottles of the pigeons.
frequencies form into different bodies of juice.
the drops, an entirety.
the reflection and inclusion of what was and what will be.
so cold. it burns on our surfaces.
to the edge of our blurriness.
the melting point is frozen.”
The melting installation Clouds To The Ground was realised for the STWST48x9 festival. It led visitors into the space between the Stadtwerkstatt and the building next door, which is approx. 60 cm away. The outdoor installation comprises several blocks of ice, which are inserted into the narrow space in between on three different levels on welded steel grids. The soundscape that can be heard when entering the ‘non-place’ consists recorded sounds of the ice material itself, as well as sequences of words that evoke surrealistic, dystopian-utopian images. The body of sound invites you to perceive the space in which you find yourself more expansively. The text was inspired by the festival theme COLD HEAVEN and created on the basis of field research on site.
Clouds To The Ground emphasises themes of (material) transformation and spins thoughts of a utopian dystopia. A material that is dependent on its environment and, above all, temperature, is directly revealed in its temporality, mutability and raw materiality.
Daniela Gutmann 