Mischa Kuball: res·o·nant

Since mid-November 2017, the Jewish Museum Berlin has been exhibiting res·o·nant—a walk-through light and sound installation by conceptual artist Mischa Kuball. Kuball created the installation specially for a space on the lower ground floor of the Libeskind building. With public interventions and live performances, the project has expanded into the urban space. res·o·nant continues for only two more months until September 1.  

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, and visitors will have the opportunity to re-discover these two voids for the first time since they have become something of a trademark after 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). res·o·nant is impossible without the contribution of all these artists and without the support of those who performed in the course of the last 18 months. William Parker, Mike Banks, and Monika Werkstatt, represented by its Ambient Werkstatt featuring Gudrun Gut, Beate Bartel, Danielle de Picciotto, Islaja, Pilocka Krach, and Sonae. The Ambient Werkstatt was captured and postproduced for radio by Pilocka Krach (thanks also to Mo Loschelder) and is still available in a two-part series on NTS Radio, here and here.

The accompanying publication res·o·nant will be presented at Pro qm in Berlin on August 30, in the context of a discussion of the multiple implications of the work in the realms of architecture, music and the reality of the longue durée, please save the date. 18 authors and artists echo, shed light on, reflect and project on Kuball’s creation of a resonant space in and outside the museum space. Edited by Gregor H. Lersch, Léontine Meijer-van Mensch. Published by the Jewish Museum Berlin at Sternberg Press. 

With contributions by Christoph Asendorf, Juan Atkins, Horst Bredekamp, Diedrich Diederichsen, Kathrin Dreckmann, Shelley Harten, Norman Kleeblatt,  Alexander Kluge, Daniel Libeskind, Gregor H. Lersch, Léontine Meijer - van Mensch, W.J.T. Mitchell, Hans Ulrich Reck, Richard Sennett, Peter Weibel, Lawrence Weiner, John C. Welchman, and Alena Williams.