BETWEEN | YOU | AND | ME (Wall)
Multimedia Installation 2011/2012





As second part of her architectural trilogy, and with a grant from the Minister for Art of the Free State of Saxony (DE) in collaboration with the state capital Dresden, Anke Eckardt created a series of site specific installations entitled BETWEEN | YOU | AND | ME.
The development of the installations was inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s publication “Leçon sur la leçon”, in which Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, as well as symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. In “Vita Activa, oder: vom tätigen Leben”, Hanna Arendt too investigates the conditions of action in public space. Building on this, formative factors of social dynamics and worldview constructions moved to the center of the artistic project, specifically the development of an aesthetic situation based on collective practice and embodiment.
BETWEEN | YOU | AND | ME is a wall of sound and light. Given its ephemeral, dynamic media – ultrasound and light beams suspended in air – the wall can be perceived only when the visitor comes close and interacts with it. Two thin membranes of light form a visible frame filled with sound. Multichannel, hyperdirectional loudspeakers render audible various textures of broken glass: a sound architecture within the wall, comprised of juxtaposed single sound beams, whose constellation changes depending on the visitor’s position. Observed from a distance, the wall fades away: luminous transparency and only faintly resonant tones attest to its existence. Unlike walls of stone or concrete and intangible barriers of the social, national or political variety, the boundary in this installation is set by light and sound, and can therefore be overcome, even stepped through or blithely penetrated. The installation invites the visitor to play with seemingly two-dimensional membranes of light, to transgress them with their whole body or its single parts, to observe their body being dissected by light, or immersed in the walls, and thereby to perceive it as discrete from other bodies.
BETWEEN | YOU | AND | ME has been exhibited at Steirischer Herbst/Musikprotokoll, Festspielhaus Helleraus, Bethanien at the CTM Festival Berlin, Ars Electronica in Linz, among other places. The installation was awarded with an Honorary Mention in the category ‘Digital Musics & SoundArt’, at the Ars Electronica 2012.
