panta rhei – between heaven and earth
In the Arne Jacobsen Foyer of the Herrenhausen Gardens, something troubling can be observed: a river flowing through the space just below the ceiling. Priceless cultural assets seem to fall before our eyes into a never-ending stream of transience. They flow unstoppably from the Baroque Galerie into the glass cuboid. We can’t tear our eyes away from this catastrophe: figures and busts, coins and vases, diverse social identities are washed away in this abstract riverine animation.
Mischa Kuball: “Lost Artefacts – Lost Presents – a large projection running completely under the ceiling, a flow of objects that appear and disappear. They stand for lost culture, lost minds, lost space, lost thoughts, lost ideas. They stand for a culture in which things are currently in motion. We can no longer hold on to it, not only in our culture. It is a global moment. That’s why the Arne Jacobsen Foyer is becoming something like an anti-museum. No longer a place of preservation, but a place of ephemerality. And so this narrative stream is projected from the catastrophes of antiquity into the situation of the present as a continuum.”
In his work the conceptual and light artist Mischa Kuball investigates architectural spaces and their social and political contexts. With the magnificent Großer Garten on the one side and a busy road with a tramline on the other, between the Baroque Galerie, and the rebuilt palace, the Arne Jacobsen Foyer is an ideal space for Kuball: a historically charged showcase whose significance the artist examines in his video work lost artefacts, lost presence. Aside from the function of the foyer as a ‘hinge’ between history and the present, between original and copy, Kuball raises the question of the provenience of the passing objects. Are they perhaps being brought back to their places of origin, or are they lost to all cultures forever? And what is our position? On the edge of this debate, or at its centre?
Mischa Kuball: “In lost artefacts, lost presence I am focusing on the role and presence of cultural and ritual objects that have become part of our collections – and whose origin is currently being disputed. What do we know about the original context, what does that say about our understanding of culture?
| Mischa Kuball | lost artefacts, lost presence | 2021 | Videoinstallation der KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hannover | Still: © Mischa Kuball, 2021 |