SPACE AS AN INSTRUMENT

About the Artistic Concept:

This is a communicative performance of Sound and Movement between, the Artist Holger Maik Mertin, and the building itself.

The building in its structure, materials, emptiness and foundation, is the core base for the alignment where materials meet man, and how together they can create sound and movement where often one does not expect to find.

Together Holger Maik Mertin and the attending participants wander through different areas and floors of the Old Hospital building.

Tools for the multidisciplinary performance are the floor, the glass windows, and the sunbeams that cast light, and shadow and thus create imagery and emotion. Paired with the dust, dirt, water and brick on the surface of the floors.

Holger Maik Mertin Citation “I don’t alter the settings of the space, for my performance. I respect the building in its current state and the people who run and work in it, and will treat all as such.”

Space As An Instrument was created through a one-month artistic research in different rooms and areas in the Old Christiaan Barnard Hospital. The project is about observing and working with the environment of the Old Hospital: with its architecture and its semantic structure. It is about the history of the rooms and also about what this place could be like in the (near) future.

Performed and recorded in the emptied “Old Christiaan Barnard Hospital”

Capetown - South Africa

Film and Documentation of the project by Cecilia Martens (@ceecestravel)

The Performance took place during Holgers Maik Mertin's time as an Artist in Residency at AVA - Association for Visual Arts

Contributors: Mirjam Asmal, Stefan Naudé, Zweli Ntuli, Holger Maik Mertin, Volker Kuhl and further AVA members.

Holger Maik Mertin's Artistic Residency in South Africa 2022 was funded by Kunststiftung NRW