Introduce #11, Kristin Weißenberger

The exhibition shows two installations, which explore in different ways the representation and the utilisation of objects as tools, depicting a change of the meaning, depending on whether established by usage or by contemplation.

Kristin Weissenberger works on different aspects of perception in relation with space and its organizational power, shaping perception and thought of the individual. She studied Art History at the University of Vienna and graduated in Stage Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2009.
The work “A Statute of Matter” has been produced in collaboration with pavillon_35.

A Statute of Matter

Two media reflecting a common meaning. A quotation from the movie “Stalker” by Adreij Tarkovski, in written form, grown as a living yeast-print.

When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible.When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

The displayed life cycle of the yeast further articulates the quote, the semantic meaning is materialised and fulfilled in the death and the decomposition of the yeast culture and the obliteration of the language signs.

Variations of a basic item

A meat hammer cut into pieces and re-arranged, withdrawn from using, therefore depriving it of its truth and opening it for reflection. A confrontation with a strange motionless clump of metal.

Hammering reveals one example of the potentiality and manipulability of the hammer. The loss of usefulness creates distance and objectification, separated from human action. The end of utility is the start of the modification of meaning.

Pieces of the work question digital 3D designing tools. Tools and other objects in the virtual designing space are not useable, as they are only representations, referring to the actual/possible/spread usage. The combination of rendered and recorded images on the background of utilisation practices leaves mathematical truth and actual presence stated as claims.