DOUBLE ROOM #3: fyr

By Tomke Braun and José Segebre

From the publication Doppelzimmer (for the exhibition fyr with Filippa Pettersson at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 3 ½, 2016)

Filippa Pettersson / Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen

Fire relates to the works exhibited in *fyr* like wind does to the music of an Aeolian harp. Wind blowing across the strings of this instrument, also known as the wind harp, produces sound, thus integrating chance into music. Similarly, the sound sculpture *Pfssssscccccchhhhhhh*, 2015, by Filippa Pettersson and the three sculptural works of the series *Close Horizon*, 2015, by Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen oscillate in a staged interplay between calculated control and composed contingency. The many meanings of the word 'fyr' in Scandinavian languages always denote fire, light and warmth. As a source for material transformations, fire is an ephemeral force of nature. The title of the exhibition refers to the element that set the tone during the creative process and gave form to the works.

In the sound piece *Pfssssscccccchhhhhhh*, the soundtrack of a microphone which Pettersson held against a fire and set ablaze, becomes audible. The recording of the burning microphone plays over a speaker, whose evident objecthood becomes part of the artwork and blares above the heads of the visitors in the high-ceilinged exhibition room. A loud rumbling is already to be heard at irregular intervals upon entering the courtyard and stairwell of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Once in the exhibition room, the experience of the sound changes. The subtleties of the recording become audible: the crackling of the surroundings resounds together with the hiss of the flames enveloping the material until the sounds drown in water and are abruptly extinguished. In *Pfssssscccccchhhhhhh* Pettersson evokes images and sounds associated with fire, which signify a process of destruction and its intrinsic ephemerality. Originating from a performative act, the audio material intimates a paradoxical situation; the microphone as a recording device captures its own destruction. Confronted with the forces of fire, its properties become in equal measure the recording's subject and intent: the medium documents itself. Through the self-referential character of the recording, Pettersson exposes the distorting and imprecise nature of documentary media. She simultaneously rejects any distinction between artistic production and deconstruction, between creation and destruction.

The sculptures by Søndergaard Johannsen, on the other hand, originate from an experimental arrangement which metaphorically captures the rays of the sun. For *Close Horizon* he therefore uses the direct effects of fire as light and warmth. The site-specific works in this series are all tied to distinct situations, to which they indexically refer in the exhibition room. Two of the sculptures are mounted in the stairwell. The third work, produced on a hill near Berlin only briefly before the exhibition, is installed in Room 3 ½, enabling a direct confrontation with Pettersson's sound piece. The foundational structure of the sculptures consists of a nylon net, hand-woven by Søndergaard Johannsen and hung aslant, facing westward. Above them, a bar of rose's metal is installed. This material, made of a lead-tin alloy, is notable for its particularly low melting point of 94 degrees Celsius. Using a lens, Søndergaard Johannsen fixates the afternoon sunlight before it disappears behind the horizon, thus heating and melting the metal, which runs onto the nylon net. This causes the two materials to coalesce in an unusual fashion. Both of the original materials are artificial and exhibit their formal, inherent traits in this series of works. The light, sturdy and stretchable nylon provides the melted metal with the required resistance, yet must elsewhere bend and yield to it. In the process, large holes are burnt and the nylon fuses with the metal, forming heavy knots. In the act of its becoming, the sculpture is exposed and receptive to external influences: a gust of wind can cause kinks and corrugations to form; leaves can become caught in the structures. However, the sculptures do not derive their form arbitrarily. They are generated in an aleatoric interplay between organized arrangement and loss of control. Like Pettersson, Søndergaard Johannsen records a process, rather than producing an image, which can perhaps be best summed up thus: that it was — that it happened.

To consider the works exclusively as sculptures or sound sculptures in the sense of an artistic manipulation of material would neglect the performative act inscribed in them. The sculptures do not limit themselves to a confrontation of material properties and space, but rather include time as a factor: they aspire to become "temporal, like the Aeolian harp, with its principle of random movement"¹. The works function as object-like or aural recordings of past performative acts referencing the ephemeral beyond the exhibition space. Without reverting to pure documentation, the artists focus on the confrontation of technical materials with the forces of nature, and through this juxtaposition they create an index of ephemerality. In a play between precise experimental arrangement and contingent influences, performative sculptures or artistic documents of this moment of encounter take form.

1. Adorno, Theodor W.: *A Philosophical Reader* (2003), Trans. Livingstone, Rodney et al. p. 368.