Mischa Kuball: res·o·nant

The Jewish Museum Berlin is exhibiting res·o·nant—a walk-through light and sound installation by the Düsseldorf conceptual artist Mischa Kuball. Kuball created the installation specially for the newly redesigned exhibition space on the lower ground floor of the Libeskind building. Covering a total floor space of more than 350 square meters, res·o·nant incorporates two of the five vertical voids that perforate the Museum building. These symbolically laden empty spaces form the starting point for the artist’s work, which refers to the materiality, effect and signification of the voids. Museum visitors will thus have the opportunity to re-discover these two voids, which have become something of a Museum trademark since the opening of the Museum in 2001.

In these rooms with 24-meter-high ceilings, rotating projectors cast light fields in the form of the outline of the voids onto walls and ceiling. By means of rotating mirror elements and stroboscopic light impulses, there arises, in the words of the artist, a “resonance between architecture and skin.” As an important element of the installation, several loudspeakers, distributed throughout the room, loop a series of 60-second-long sound clips—so-called Skits—which were composed specially for res·o·nant by more than 220 musicians (for complete list please check here)

Moreover, interventions expand the installation into the public space. Through projections of the Void outlines, the work connects urban Berlin with the museum space, thus overcoming physical boundaries.

For the Gallery Weekend, the five musicians of Monika Werkstatt working with the music legend Gudrun Gut will immerse the light installation res·o·nant by Mischa Kuball with electronic sounds. It will be the third experimental live gig in the installation space, following performances by bassist William Parker and Detroit techno mainstay Mike Banks. On 26. and 27. April the collective will perform its Ambient Werkstatt in various formations inside the installation situated in two of the famous Voids of the Libeskind building. The musicians want to get involved, mix, and shuffle and to animate enjoyment and learning. Monika Werkstatt does not make music as “pure weekend entertainment but with an unrestrained genuine experimental approach, that is revealing and also vulnerable in its freedom.”

“We want to inspire in a session without a twin safety net. Mistakes and fractures can occur during the experiment, but the collective performance continues until it’s back in the flow. We want to be more than music.”

Monika Werkstatt are:
Barbara Morgenstern
Beate Bartel
Danielle de Picciotto
Gudrun Gut
Islaja
Pilocka Krach

April 26, 27, 2019
4-8pm, entry with the museum ticket
Supported by innogy Stiftung für Energie und Gesellschaft

#jmbresonant

Curators: Gregor H. Lersch, Klaus H. Teuschler
Press contact: Katharina Schmidt-Narischkin
presse [​at​] jmberlin.de / T (+49 30) 25993 419
Press material: www.jmberlin.de/en/press

Photos: Mara von Kummer (Monika Werkstatt); Ladislav Zajac, Alexander Basile (installation views)