No Problems / Nur Probleme: Das nullte Moment
performance installation,
60:00 min, loop, 2018
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A place for encounters and experiments. A safe haven from everyday life and new reality; an invitation to everyone. A location that opens up itself as a club for debate, deconstruction of memory culminating in the oblivion of the present.
The concurrence of people in a club forms a community to which social status is of secondary importance: rhythm and beat define the forthcoming path of the night - communitarisation through finding and inventing a new rhythm.
Das nullte Moment (engl. the zeroth moment) tells the story of the possibilities of one night; encounters, conversations – repetitive sequences, a few hours in an abandoned factory building.
The audience experiences the night first-hand and becomes part of the choreography. Trance-dance rituals and (techno) trance music, which aspires reaching connectedness on a higher level and the utopia of a society in which humankind, nature and machine, merge into a united entity. The choreography consists of four parts, a synergy of light, sound and dance.
Excerpts from the lyrics of popular trance hymns function as templates for the manifest, which repeatedly becomes a component of the sound.The crowd is driven into motion by the rhythm, gradually synchronising to the beat. Movements converge and result into an interplay between closeness and distance and conclude into a total standstill of time perception. Finally, as the group subjects itself to the excess, a re-enactment of the live performance of the song thousand by American musician Moby takes place, resulting in a scenery of light and projected text,
slowly dissolving into restarting from the beginning. Dancing to trance and techno music derives from spiritual trance rituals from all over the world throughout all times, repetitive rhythms and motions form the tools to aspire a state of trance. A pulsating and unyielding 4/4 beat is coated by atmospheric instrumental textures and soft vocals. With its unique nature, the club also serves as refuge for a new reality, having an imminent impact on its followers: obscure, unfamiliar and magical. Logos and the DJ desk form a kind of shrine for the dancing masses to behold.
The club is associated with independence and anonymity – a meeting point of and with strangers, a place of consumption ecstasy where unrestrained behaviour becomes a natural part of the hyperreality of the event. Within this reality, surrounded by different versions of time and space, the pathway leading to the awareness of our own physical body is restored by the hour-long dancing. In a world where our lack of self becomes clearer every day, our value is measured by data and the majority of our communication had shifted into the digital space, dancing lets us feel our bodies, implying an immersion into another realm.
(Techno) music creates a catalyst for accepting the ‘virtual’, enabling a connection between the ’physical’ and the rhythm given by the drum computer which is ultimately experienced within the club area as an inciting gesture.