Air Condition (2019)
with Janne Kummer
Ballhaus Ost Berlin, September 2019
In our research we investigated questions about the hierarchy and materiality of the invisible element air: public and private, clean and dirty, manipulated and air-conditioned. How does the machine form and describe public and private space? Who can breathe where and why?
When I was about ten years old, I went to the theater with my parents. During the break they met a couple I didn't know. Both were introduced to me by their first names. In the conversation it turned out that the woman was a kind of colleague of my mother, which didn‘t particularly interest me, so I asked the other person what his work consisted of. He was a handsome man from Belgrade, Srdjan, whom I found somehow fascinating. He said that his profession was too complicated to explain, which of course made me even more curious - so I asked him a second time. The other adults looked at him interested and slightly amused, as if they were eager to know how he would explain his complicated profession to a child. He told me that he was dealing with vacuum. "Do you know what vacuum is?" My mother asked. "Nothing! Air without air" said Srdjan. "For example, flushing aircraft toilets works with vacuum," my mother added to illustrate the unrepresentable. I was somewhat confused about this answer - especially because the air itself seemed like "nothing" to me and I wondered how you could subtract another nothing from the nothing. From this moment on, Srdjan was called in my family only "the air salesman".
Outside Gets inside Through her skinI've been out before But this time it's much safer in
Last night in the skySuch a bright lightMy radar send me danger But my instincts tell me to keep
Breathing(Out, in, out, in, out, in)BreathingBreathing my mother inBreathing my beloved inBreathingBreathing her nicotineBreathingBreathing the fall-out inOut in, out in, out in, out in
(Kate Bush)
