Pause: Lydia Ourahmane
sync

01.–02.10.22

Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Main Hall
11–11 am, continuously (24 hours)
The event is for participants at the age of 16+.
Free admission

Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992, DZ) creates a site-specific installation at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. This new commission is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing engagement with the emotional, psychological, and political correlations between material, body, and place. Comprising approaches to composition and performance, the work engages her relation to rituals and the notion of permanence. KW’s invitation poses a challenge for Ourahmane to reflect on the transcendence of matter and the many deceptions of eternity.

Ourahmane’s installation will materialize in a one time-intensive event discussing permanence as a non-tangible, yet an embodied matter sitting between myth and endurance. Ourahmane’s approach questions how continuity is both reflected in the opportunity of coexistence as well as our fellow inscription of meaning and affection onto one another, while simultaneously being defined by its exhaustion, its breaking point, its rupture—and how it becomes a way of reflecting and challenging the continuum of personal and broader histories.

For this extended event, which is made in collaboration with musician Daniel Blumberg (b. 1990, GB), the doors to KW’s main hall will remain open for 24 consecutive hours, interrogating the endurance of visitors and artist alike. Visitors are invited to engage in the creation of an in-progress immersive sonic composition orchestrated by each participants’ heart beats.

Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen
Curatorial Assistance: Nikolas Brummer

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling
Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling
Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling
Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling
Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling
Pause: Lydia Ourahmane – sync, in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Blumberg, Live Klangperformance in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Foto: Frank Sperling

Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992, DZ) presents the site-specific piece sync in collaboration with musician Daniel Blumberg (b. 1990, GB) as part of KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s Pause series.

This new commission is a continuation of the artist’s engagement with the emotional, psychological, and political correlations between material, body, and place. Comprising sculpture, installation, and sound, Ourahmane’s artistic practice weaves together the complex tapestry of the personal, the collective, and the metaphysical. In her works, she addresses how narratives can be shaped, altered, and connected through the migration of objects, beliefs, and histories.

KW’s invitation challenges Ourahmane’s preceding material approach. Whereas she previously worked with tangible, temporal forms, the artist uses the commission to reflect on permanence as the transcendence of matter. Through the prism of shared behaviors and social relationships between individuals, Ourahmane questions how continuity is reflected through repetition, language, and myth. Meanwhile, she is interested in how our awareness of that continuity is defined by its exhaustion—and how this becomes a way of reflecting and challenging the continuum of personal and broader histories.

sync is a single time-intensive event which discusses the heartbeat as the only assurance of permanence we will ever embody. Regarded as chaotic systems in cardiovascular science, hearts have been known to fall subject to the phenomenon termed “synchronization of chaos”: a simultaneity of cardiac rhythms that may occur when two or more chaotic systems are joined in specific yet erratic emotional environments.

In the main hall of KW, which will remain open for twenty-four consecutive hours for the first time in the institution’s history, sync will premiere as a live sonic performance in which twenty-four participants at a time are invited to have their heartbeats amplified into the space. A simple arrangement of seats forms a physical echo chamber, creating a matrix in which each participant can explore visceral conditions of assimilation through physical proximity.

As sync is an in-progress composition, we kindly ask each participant to observe and respect the instructions for taking part. When entering, visitors should remember this is a silent event as a live recording will be in progress.

Each participant can decide when to enter or exit the hall and will be guided accordingly by our team of invigilators. Visitors who enter only as listeners are invited to experience the work from the designated spaces on the ground floor above the main hall.

Lydia Ourahmane and Daniel Blumberg © Aidan Zamiri.

Part of project: Pause series

The Pause series of KW Institute for Contemporary Art allowed for an ephemeral yet deep engagement with a single artwork in order to draw and question relationships between the past, present, and future. A Pause acted as a punctuation of KW’s regular program by presenting an artwork for a short period of time in between exhibition cycles, working with this state of in-between. Pause projects were predominantly commissioned or reworked pieces that shifted between or even merged the disciplines of performance, installation, video, and sonic work.

Overview
2017–2024

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song
7–9 June 24

Pause: The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group
25/27 August 23

Pause: Alexis Blake
Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve
27–29 January 23

Pause: Tobias Spichtig
Die Matratzen
19–23 January 22

Pause: Michele Rizzo
REACHING
1–3 October 21

Pause: Archivio Conz Collection
Broken Sounds / Remote Music—Prepared Pianos
16–19 January 20

Pause: Every Ocean Hughes
Help the Dead
24–25 August 19

Pause: Emma Hedditch
+49 30 243459-53
18–19 May 19

Pause: Jimmy Robert (After Ian White)
Joie noire
19–20 January 19

Pause: Evelyn Taocheng Wang
What is he afraid of?
27–30 September 18

Pause: AA Bronson
Garten der Lüste
26–29 April 18

Pause: Ericka Beckman
Super-8 Trilogy
18–21 January 18

Pause: Margaret Honda
Spectrum Reverse Spectrum
18–20 August 17

Pause: Anthony McCall
Line Describing a Cone
27–30 April 17

With thanks to Schertler Audio.

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane sync

Curatorial Introduction

Part of project: Pause series

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane
sync