EMPFANGSHALLE creates art in the middle of society. Society that consists of different groups and various structures is the medium of their work. More precisely: EMPFANGSHALLE embraces people who form such groups through common ideas, environments or activities. They dock to something that has already been formed, and something new arises as a result; a new space is shaped from a previously existing structure - the space of EMPFANGSHALLE.
For example, subways and their passengers or art-halls and their visitors can be such structures. Peculiarities of certain places and situations, define the way they should be treated. Infrastructural interferences make invisible or unconscious elements of structures visible, intensifying them by means of a resonator, and give them presence. A subway with thousands of passengers, which every day view the galloping by surroundings through its windows, provides audience and rhythm for irritating, theatrically staged three-second actions. A three second look through the window focuses on an unexpected event; the event that took place in the street gets mixed up with what was written in the newspaper; fact and fiction are freed from their habitual places in our perception. And an art-hall, a place for works of art, is occupied by simple products, very useful goods, with practical purpose, during presentations of Tupperware and Haka-Kunz cleaners.
Embracing a structure, the artists "kidnap" the public. Thus, docking means boarding or baiting. The audience can, for example, swallow the bait of curiosity, sensation-seeking or playfulness – those are traits most of us have. They lure us into new spaces. The audience is often taken to a new space that has appeared in the course of work without knowing it explicitly. Its lifetime is limited; the time is of the same importance as the place. The works should not be used repeatedly as permanent substances of randomness: though these dramatizations are precise, they operate with accidental moments.
Social dynamics, statements, movements and activities of people that constitute a group, are directed through different channels to the abovementioned new space, the artists of EMPFANGSHALLE adopting the role of porters. They see to it that the whole thing "works", they take care of the infrastructure. And, they "make a picture of it", which means, above all, that the new space is documented by EMPFANGSHALLE, and remains embodied in the form of a video-sketch, whereas the space itself disappears when the life-time of the event runs out.
Jochen Meister
Art historian, author of numerous reports on contemporary artists. Works mainly for the Bavarian State Picture Collections and for the House of Art.
