Photo: DSL Studio © Triennale Milano

Exhibition

Austria
Entangled relations – Animated bodies


The performed and multisensory installation by the artist Sonja Bäumel aims to stimulate the cultural imagination via the potential of microorganisms. It seeks to alter our perception of the boundaries of the human body and explores what the microbial paradigm shift may mean for cross-beings boundaries. Exploring the vital relationships, bonds, and interconnections between our bodies and the microbes that cohabit them, it invites visitors to wonder, observe, and understand what it might mean to embody the human in a more-than-human world.

Magnified 40,000 times, a larger-than-life sculpture of an amoeba expands in multiple directions, linking piece by piece with the transparent fragments of a human figure riddled with microbial inclusions. The dynamic projection of a real amoeba overlays the installation and is accompanied by sound transmitting the bubbling vitals of the microbial world. The installation will be brought to life by choreographer and performer Doris Uhlich on several occasions.

By unfolding, shifting, and fragmenting the so-called boundaries of the human bodies, the installation exposes the entanglement and constant exchange with the microbial milieus living on, in, and around it, revealing yet unknown forms of movement, intelligence, and communication.

Credits

Organising institution:
MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna

Commissioner:
Lilli Hollein

Curator:
Marlies Wirth

Artistic concept and realization:
Sonja Bäumel

Funding and Governing Body:
The Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport

Performance Choreography:
Sonja Bäumel, Doris Uhlich

Video projection Amoeba:
Wim van Egmond

Graphic Design:
Nina Ober

Artistic Partners:
University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Science Visualization Lab and  Studio Book and Paper

Scientific Partners:
ISTA – Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Sixt-Group

Supported by:
Dynamic Projection Institute, your partner for innovative dynamic projections, Made in Austria
4YOUREYE projektionsdesign & - technik gmbh
Austrian Cultural Forum Milan

Highlights

Sonja Bäumel, microbial entanglement (2019). Site-specific performance per Trees of Life – Stories for a Damaged Planet presso Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2019 - Ph: Robert Schittko

Sonja Bäumel, expanded self (2012)

Sonja Bäumel, expanded self (2012)

Sonja Bäumel, expanded self II, (2015/2019). Installation view at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2019 - Ph: Norbert Miguletz

Sonja Bäumel, expanded self (2015)

International Participations

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