GROUND

Audiovisual Installation (2013/2014)
Adjustable in size: ongoing version 18 by 24 feet
96 elements of concrete
60 channels of vertical impulses
6 rows of horizontal motion

The ground is in motion. GROUND acts as a LOOKING GLASS, as an AMPLIFIER for what we normally can´t perceive – tectonic plates are continously shifting … the permutations of landscapes constitute an infinite process of becoming… geosphere is a complex system that interferes with biosphere but also with anthroposphere, that part of the environment, that is made and modified by humans.

GROUND is moved by immense mechanical forces. The motion can be felt, heard and seen. Rough sounds are mechanically produced through friction between the concrete elements ... visitors might experience the loss of their visual reference points, it becomes unclear what is still and what isn´t… there is an afterglow of a moving ground in the visitors physical memory after leaving the installation.

Concept/Realisation/Composition: Anke Eckardt
Construction: hertzer GmbH, Berlin

Co-funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin and the Berlin-Pankow Art and Culture Departement; realised with the support of the Graduate School of the Arts and the Sciences, Berlin.



In 1934 Husserl wrote about the ground as reference for the perception of space and the perception of self, ‘Now, when I “conceive” the earth as a moved body, I use a ground to which all experience of bodies is related.’ (Husserl, 1934). Vilem Flusser as an emigrated jew wrote about loosing the ground, about a hovering self over the abysm in his auto-biography 'Bodenlos’ (‘Groundless’). In his book 'Vampyrotheutis Infernalis' Flusser analyses the floating groundless 'otherness' of a huge octopus in the deep sea and draws a line to the psychology of human beings.

Video Documentation from July 2014 at Skanu Mesz sound art exhibition, Riga, Latvia.
If possible please watch it in HD (at Vimeo) and with good loudspeakers.