L I Q U I D B L U E
video installation, endless loop visible from 5 sides, video & sound, pharmaceutical center of the University of Basel-Stadt
The audiovisual video installation "liquidblue" was commissioned by the Structural Engineering and Planning Office of Basel-Stadt on the occasion of the inauguration and opening of the Pharma Center of the University of Basel-Stadt. It shows a natural element (water) in a kind of fountain, but in a fully synthetic way. The realization refers to the teaching that takes place at this place and to certain ideas of alchemy. A video projector projects the film on five projection surfaces by means of a clever detour via mirrors. The sound fills the room with soft noises, which can be interpreted both reassuringly and mysteriously. The technical and creative realization of the cube was developed in collaboration with the architect Urs Gramelsbacher.
Frohsinn (Cheerfulness, Joyfulness)
Interactive installation, Metron, Brugg
Twice a year, the Metron company in Brugg commissions an artist to create an installation in their "incubator or showcase" on the basis of a word they have chosen. The examination of the word Frohsinn, which was given to me, led to the interactive installation shown here. You see an empty and open birdcage. When passing by, an invisible light barrier triggers the chirping of birds. In order not to limit the installation to a metaphorical and formal idea, I decided to combine it with an action that was invisible at the time of the exhibition, but nevertheless took place in a real and concrete way. I bought 24 little birds captured in Laos, carried them to a holy mountain and gave them their freedom.
Die Firma Metron in Brugg beauftragt zweimal im Jahr einen Künstler / Künstlerin zu einem von ihr gewählten Wort, in ihrem «Brut- oder Schaukasten», eine Installation auszuführen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Wort Frohsinn, welches mir gegeben wurde, führte zu der abgebildeten interaktiven Installation. Man sieht einen leeren und offenen Vogelkäfig. Beim Vorbeigehen löst eine unsichtbare Licht-schranke, Vogelgezwitscher aus.
Um die Installation aber nicht nur auf eine metaphernhafte und formgewordene Idee zu beschränken, beschloss ich, sie mit einer zum Zeitpunk der Ausstellung zwar unsichtbaren, aber dennoch real und konkret stattgefundenen Aktion, zu verbinden. Ich kaufte in Laos 24 gefangene Vögelchen, trug sie auf einen heiligen Berg und schenkte ihnen die Freiheit.
Minimum
Art concept for the State- and University hospital in Basel/Switzerland
54 large-format photos on 9 floors and 4 dimmable illuminated pictures in the birthing rooms of the University Hospital Basel-City Photography here is an excerpt from the endless continuum of images that would be seen. The horizontality of the picture format and the uniformity of the depicted challenge us to think further about these natural structures, to complement them to infinity. Through the chosen format and the extreme cropping of what is shown, these pictures convey a sense of width and openness. The artist sees them as "Japanese windows". Similar to views from Japanese teahouses, his photographs show nature in a precisely selected detail. The deserted views of seemingly untouched nature radiate a great calm. Excerpt from a text by Catherine Hürzeler about the book of the same name, which was designed and published by Lars Müller.
Mirei Shigemori
Multimedia Exhibition at ETH Zurich
On the occasion of the book vernissage of Mirei Shigemori - Rebel in the garden, an exhibition was conceived at ETH Zurich. This exhibition was created in collaboration with Dr. Christian Tschumi (garden architect).
Christian Lichtenberg and the Gardens of Japan
Books and Screens, Museum für angewandte Kunst, Basel
Exhibition of unique books in showcases and their contents on screens mounted between the books in the library.
Honfibú
A group exhibition
Installations / Photography / Sound by Christian Lichtenberg Drawings by Petra Rappo Sound improvisations by Christian Kobi Word by Franz Dodel
The participating artists from three different fields are connected through the circumstance that they each worked during a longer stay in Budapest and each pursued their own projects. All of them were under the impression that they were placed in a historical memory context, which they hardly knew from their own experience, but which they could not and did not like to escape precisely for this reason. Since their works repeatedly deal with the theme of memory, overlaps were created which will now be related in the planned exhibition across disciplines and themes. They therefore worked out interfaces (even during the exhibition itself!), which have been formed by the different fields of work of the participating artists. During the four days of the exhibition, the participants have been permanently present, so that the exhibition space also became a kind of workshop in which what is shown, explained and also continued. At the same time, clear blocks of events were announced in which sound improvisations or readings have been the main focus for a short time. This endeavour is, so to speak, hidden by a quiet longing led to something lost (cf. Proust!). The untranslatable Hungarian word honfibú, which expresses something like "homely sorrow" (in the sense of a sad longing for the familiar), therefore lent itself as a title. This interdisciplinary work is intended on the one hand to stimulate an expansion of one's own work and on the other hand to encourage visitors to take a deeper look at their own memory track.
In the exhibition Christian Lichtenberg showed, based on photographs Images that are layered several times over each other, some of which are darkened and blurred to the reworked, evoke a mood room in which opaque memory images unfold a mysterious luminosity. Installatively accompany objects, collected in Budapest, the foreseen traces of memory. In the background - often hardly audible - is accompanied by a sound installation, which includes various noises from the life of the city, the spatially dense atmosphere.
In the exhibition Petra Rappo often showed almost weightless and at the same time precise Drawings that evoke fragments of a memory. This - also foreign - memory will present in the old and partly bruised papers, which often themselves have already discoloured, became the carriers of the drawings. Simple objects, but also Figures which, with their presence, simultaneously express their transience, their almost statute-barred absence in memory.
In the exhibition, Christian Kobi improvised again and again intervene musically. He marked in the rising and falling flow of memory the supposed "gap" in the memory text, the apparent "break-off" of the stream of images. With his rhapsodies (from gr. raptein = sewing and ode = singing) "sewn together he elements of experience, which embed us in a carpet of sound and lead us to new and perhaps deepened islands of memory.
In the exhibition Franz Dodel continued to write about his work, interrupted by readings that vary greatly in their presentation: From the explicit and announced reading, to the restrained continuous reading and to whispering or silent Reading, even when there are no visitors in the exhibition. In the associative, uninterrupted spinning and linking of reflections, Anticipating and remembering creates a texture impregnated with images and thoughts, a linguistic wickerwork, whose edges are only perceptible, so that the gaze is unperturbed is able to roam in all directions.
