Polysensorial Navigations by Kerstin Ergenzinger
Processes of worldmaking are closely connected with our human physical and technological conditionality, both with control and loss, confronting us with what is given and what eludes itself, together with what is taken or destroyed. How do we orient ourselves, how do we self-position and how do we navigate these fluid domains in relation to other human and non-human life forms, phenomena and agents ? These questions address limits of our human perception and comprehension, both in relation to conceptions and presences of natural phenomena and their vibrations and signals, to life-ness as such and to an expanded notion of ecology.
The inextricable relations between the body and the world, between perception and the perceived, between sensing and sense-making are central themes of my practice. Here I follow a special interest in sensual and instrumental sensing and sense-making, and focus on the complex multiplicity or polyphony of the frequencies of perception that inform our fluid worldmaking; subsequently how we relate to our surroundings and how we act.
During this studio visit I would like to share parts of my poly-sensorial listening and drawing practice and ways I play with materialities and thresholds of perception together with possibilities of tuning into the differences of the world. Is it possible to establish a shared sensory disposition to proceed from the known towards the unknown and to create spaces both for intensifying our states of knowing and unknowing? How about rhythm and the sonic, can they act as carriers that are able to wander in-between different senses, mental modes, ways of thinking, and generating sense?
CV: Kerstin Ergenzinger is a sonic and visual artist working across the fields of sculpture, sound, kinetics, light and drawing. She finds and repurposes experimental and time-based media/materiality together with so-called traditional media/materiality towards farther thinking investigations. Essential part of her practice is an inter- and transdisciplinary exchange and she is frequently involved in collaborative research projects. She co-founded the ongoing independent cross-disciplinary research project Acts of Orientation, that addresses the need for alternative means of orientation to deal with noise and to understand and (re)establish our unstable position within a highly technologized, mediated, and globalized reality. One result is the co-edited the volume Navigating Noise (Walther König, Berlin): a collection of academic and artistic contributions. From 2016-2019, parallel to her fellowship at the Berlin Center of Advanced Studies of the University of the Arts Berlin, she worked with the quantum-optical research project nuClock ,where they engaged in a dialog around the materiality of time, noise and precision. Together with Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari and Kiran Kumar she forms the Sono-Choreographic-Collective, a transdisciplinary art and research collective, that develops and explores new somatic and musical research instruments together with ways of playing and interdisciplinary choreography.
Kerstin studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and Chelsea College of Arts, London an at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. In the moment she holds a teaching and research position in the fields of Sound Art at the Academy of Art Braunschweig.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the North Rhine-Westphalia Scholarship for Young Artists (Media Art) and a work stipend granted by the Arts Fund Foundation. The recipient of the international residency grant of the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, she has researched in Cambridge, Massachusetts and undertaken residencies with IASPIS and the Goethe-Institut in Taipei, and was also awarded a studio grant by the Kölnischer Kunstverein. In 2012 she was awarded a grant by the Lower Saxony Foundation to produce work at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art and the Prize of the Saxon State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts. In 2013 her installation Rotes Rauschen was recognized with the VIDA 15.0 Award for International Research in Art and Artificial Life. In 2015 she received an Honorary Mention of the Collide@CERN Ars Electronica Award, 2017 she has been Guest Artist at Arts@CERN. Amongst others her works has been shown at Kunsthall Lund, Kunsthall Malmö, Denfrie Kopenhagen, Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Kunststation St. Peter Cologne, Edith-Russ-House for Media Art Oldenburg, HMKV Dortmund, Kunsthalle Budapest, Oboro Montreal, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Schering Stiftung Berlin, Ystad Kunstmuseum, HEK House of Electronic Arts Basel, Chronus Arts Center Shanghai, loop - raum für aktuelle kunst, Berlin, KIT Kunst im Tunnel Düsseldorf and Ars Electronica Linz.
