Academic final project, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Materials: textiles, studio lighting, bar with furnishings, domestic furniture, printed matter, mannequins, window film, laser-cut fabric elements, book editions, found objects
Size: variable

dispersed non-existence unfolds as a staged environment in which temporal registers collapse. Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors encounter a constellation of objects, figures, and light that refuses linear narration. Past, present, and future appear not as distinct categories but as overlapping conditions within a single spatial arrangement.

At the center of the installation stands a functional bar titled die sogenannte Gegenwart (the so-called present). Five figures from different temporal and ideological contexts are suggested through clothed mannequins positioned around the space. Their presence is mediated through a series of logging of bad deeds, distributed across the bar and a secondary seating area referred to as the socialist corner. Rather than offering coherent biographies, the texts assemble fragments of worldview, contradiction, and self-description.

Colored studio lighting and tinted window films produce an artificial atmosphere that modulates perception. Zones of heightened clarity alternate with areas of visual opacity, lending the space a suspended, dreamlike quality. The lighting operates less as illumination than as a structuring device, shaping attention and spatial orientation.

The bar is periodically activated by a bartender serving drinks. While the gesture suggests hospitality and pause, it functions primarily as part of the installation’s scenography. Consumption, reading, and observation occur simultaneously, yet without resolving into genuine social exchange. The polished surface of the setting contrasts with the content of the diaries, which subtly destabilize the notion of a stable present and expose its constructed, ambivalent nature.

Realized with the kind support of the Party.Rent Group and the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf.

in easy words

dispersed non-existence is an artwork.
It was my final project at the art academy.
The academy is: Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The artwork is a big installation.
An installation is an art room you can walk into.

The artwork plays with time.
In this room, past, present and future exist at the same time.
Visitors see objects, figures and light.
Nothing tells one story from beginning to end.
Everyone finds their own way through the room.

In the middle of the room stands a real bar.
The bar has a name: die sogenannte Gegenwart.
That is German and means: the so-called present.

Five figures stand in the room.
They are mannequins with special clothes.
Mannequins are dolls from shop windows.
The figures come from different times.
And they have different ways of thinking.
Next to the figures lie diaries.
The diaries come from my work:
logging bad deeds.
logging bad deeds means:
writing down bad actions.
Some diaries lie on the bar.
Some lie in a corner with seats.
This corner is called: the socialist corner.
The diaries do not tell whole life stories.
They show only pieces:
Thoughts, opinions and contradictions.

The light in the room is special.
Colored lamps and colored films on the windows change the room.
Some places are very bright.
Some places are hard to see.
The room feels a little bit like a dream.
The light shows you where to look and where to go.

Sometimes a bartender works at the bar.
He serves drinks.
It looks like a normal evening at a bar.
But it is part of the artwork.
People drink, read and watch.
But a real meeting does not happen.

The bar looks perfect and shiny.
The diaries tell something different.
They show: The “present” is not simple and stable.
People build it – like a stage.

This work was supported by:
Party.Rent Group and Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf.

Image 1, 2, 4 Installation view dispersed non-existence, 2023
Image 3 Die sozialistische Ecke (The socialist corner), 2023
courtesy Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Photos by Ivo Faber

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn