At the end of the short corridor, the person can make out a room. Pale light flickers for a few moments, one can hear the buzzing of neon lights. In the periodic flashing they think they can make out a ceiling criss-crossed with plastic panels. Two thin cables are hanging down from the ceiling – or threads? A memory, a sense of familiarity, illuminates their consciousness for a brief moment – “Do I know this room?“ – then emptiness again. Slowly the person moves towards the room, but stops abruptly as two figures enter. They unroll a large moss mat, bring up two shiny metal boxes, place them on the soft ground and disappear again. Suddenly a telephone rings, a relic of times past. Though muffled, as if coming from one of the boxes, it is loud and metallically distorted, cutting through the air. The person reacts, covering their ears, but their fingers pressed deep into their ear canals changes nothing. The space blurs, the whirring of the phone confuses the senses.
Physical, tangible spaces and the objects in them relate us to reality. They take on a mediating role between us and the environment. They create feelings, first and foremost feelings of body and space – then create atmospheres, living spaces, working spaces and transit spaces. Offices, shopping malls, industrial plants, street crossings and swimming pools shape what we understand as the ‘everyday’, the construct of an individual reality. Their socially determined functions, such as working in the office, shopping in the mall, swimming in the pool, form markers that give us a coherent image of our reality. But what happens when these markings dissolve, functions disintegrate into disfunction, structures disintegrate into a mere lack of structure? One thing remains: discomfort.
“Uninvolved Junctions“ traces this unease. 14 artists present works that settle down in the empty rooms of an old mobile phone shop and an ice cream parlour, overgrow their surfaces, hook themselves into the interstices. They sought a place for their existence without being noticed, who knows how long ago, became part of the space, took it over and rededicated it. The memory of a place full of people and bustle, of a space of lively everyday life, has long been no more than a faded glimmer – a dull reverberation in the corridors.
— Robin Ahrens