Maria Arzt

Other work (selection)

A series of ambiguous hook - objects

An investigation on weight(iness), dependencies, processes of signification and valorization.

An interruption of a dialogic sculptural process, by a war offensive in my birth country – a very concrete experience calling into question the holding up of subject matters as abstract.

A deliberate displacement, superimposing different localities, temporalities, and forms of violence, bringing them in the same room to collapse into each other, into a space.

Additionally to the sculptural elements, large paper packages of the local industrial mill" Roland Mühle" (which can also be seen from the window of the Hochschule für Künste) and which suggest the quantities of white powder in the room to be flour - a resource which, around that time, was thought to be scarce because of the full-scale war on one of the global top producers of - as well as the document "Brand- und Explosionsschaden Bremer Rolandmühle am 06.02.1979" are part of the structure.  The plaster, plaster-filled paper bags, along with rubble from the artschool workshop are staged in a way, that is suggesting being in a scene of prior violent happenings.

The book refers to a historical event - the "most serious explosion since the [Second World] War": an occasion of flour-dust explosion caused by the whirling up of micro-particles, which of the like occurred only a few times in total globally. 14 people lost their lives at this Bremen event. Bremen.

At the vernissage, another element - simit bread ordered from the nearby Turkish bakery "Lavash" and crafted in the same shapes as the plaster sculptures - is added to the set-up and activated by the participants eating it.

The correlating shapes connect the sensation of destruction and waste, evoked by the installation, with the convivial moment of collective eating and the usual light-hearted atmosphere of exhibition openings, thus raising the question of solidarity. Solidarity as a question and something that may only exist in transience but, like bread, must nonetheless be produced in concrete terms and gestures.

"Ich habe nichts zu sagen [hier ]" / "[Here] I have nothing to say"

Installation, 2022
HfK boat “Dauerwelle” residing in the Weser at a central point of Bremen,
near Bürgermeister-Smidt -Brücke.

These forms of in- /exclusion are also pointed to in the [ sculptural metal frames: [ cut-up parts of frame[ings. Their matte black color and minimalistic style are reminiscent of typography and relate spatial boundaries to caesuras in text- and meaning- production.

Oval openings have been milled into the metal tubular frames, opening them up to "speak" and visually recalling common outdoor trash cans, receptacles for the refuse and "abject" of cityscape. Since they are hollow, wires can run through the sculptures and the rectangular bracket shapes made of triangular tubing can be attached to them in a mobile way, allowing them to their “heads” and facing positions

Wires run through, connecting a 2-channel-soundpiece, separated into 2 different outlets.

Sound track 1 is open sound, emerging continuously from an oval "speaking hole": (trickling and streaming sounds of an old heater, interrupted by a repeating sequence of knocks, resounding against the likewise metallic sounding heater body)

Soundtrack 2 can be heard through headphones, as soon as they are plugged into a jack socket, placed on the inside of the clamp form. [ Then, the breathing noise of a diver can then be heard, interrupted by a shrill echoing sonar. [ The open sound falls silent until the headphones are disconnected again. This option is hinted at in a small, written note.

Furthermore, a note on the second metal "bracket" points to blanks of litmus paper, (an indicator rendering visible the acidity of a liquid, it is dipped into, by discoloration) that can be used to write things down, which the visitors had to or preferred to stay silent about and which can then, if desired, be dissolved in an acid (HCI in about 1% concentration corresponding to the human gastric acid) contained in the nearby funnel, but also taken along to keep or discarded into the transparent vault made of acrylic glass, which is attached right underneath the bracket, - floating like a false floor above the belly of the exhibition ship and likewise mirroring it horizotally. This (acrylic (shape is repeated vertically in the doubling of an outside window, to which it is directly attached from outside the ship. Through the opposite window, another black tube body can be seen from the inside – this one doesn´t have the upper “bracket” part. Outside it stands as a witness without a head but with the reflected face of the observer - under certain lighting. The Weser promenade and city centre serving as a moving background.

Time after time a knocking can be heard [ -- . [

I am in [ ] I represent [ ]

gesture in public restrooms of Kunsthalle Baden Baden, 2021

Cards, printed on both sides with cut-outs, DINA6 100pcs.
Pens.

 I AM IN ____

 I REPRESENT 

[ ]  

The two rectangular cut-outs – the “I” in the first line as well as the bottom "input field" - form an opening to other surfaces: writing, image, skin, or wall.

I did publicly announce this intervention but pointed out to people asking, that they are welcome to take it with them and use it, for example, as a bookmark. It may also be filled out and left at the space like a survey.

The mirrored cards - which turned back towards each other in the toilet rooms in the picture - reflect processes I observed in connection with this event and imply an inversion - the exhibition posters attached to the outside are, as if behind a pane of glass - now "inverted", as one is inside.

The installation stages multiple references to the construction of a border taking place and thus separating “inside” from “outside” in mutually defined categories.  This also connects to the intersection of belonging and othering/ identity, as well as their generative dynamic in mirroring. As with some bathroom constructions, these can form an endless loop that only ever mutually confirms and reproduces each other’s images.

Persons who are physically, institutionally, or socially "in" something (a university, class, nation-state, or predeterminate spaces) are thereby defined socially-and so are those who are "out."  Thus, when entering a binary restroom, persons are gendered by this spatial assignment and assumed contradictions to the cissexist reading -one is "in the wrong restroom" are often transphobically attacked.