Susanna Brenner

A video installation with 1 big bed, 1 screen, 1 sculpture and 1 soundscape. She lies down to take a break from her personal development with all its necessities. She breathes, listens and stares. Her mind starts to go on a road without destination. She meets her alien other and now she doesn’t know if she should keep her distance or adopt it in order to eradicate its strangeness. She starts to sweat. The smell of fear. The fear came out of nowhere. Suddenly it is she, who is afraid. She starts to resist against her fear. She looks directly into the sun. She closes her eyes so far that only the smallest of the sunrays comes through. She opens her eyes, quick and sudden, her eyes start to tear up. Different shapes in different colours appear in front of her. The same structures appear, when she closes her eyes. It is like an open door to see an in between universe. She connects threads with knots to rebuild the structures she saw. She colours them to create space. These threads ban the fears. She networks with the unknown, catches the uncatchable. She leaves loose ends and invites strangers to grab them. It is time to lie down and change perception. I have been growing these sculptures since about 6 years, that are made of wire and thread, painted over with different colours, they are shaped intuitively in ever evolving and expanding patterns and shapes. In April 2019 I've started an artist in residency in my neighbourhood. A shop on the ground floor at number 125 in Jan van Galenstraat went empty. It was a ground floor with very high ceilings and a beautiful mezzanine, like in a church. The height became essential for the size of the sculptures and the surrounding played a big role in the soundtrack. Eventually I asked friends and passer-by’s to lie down on the bed and observe the Gespinst-universe above them, giving in to the soundtrack, merging with the surrounding, getting carried away in the endless expanding threads. Some told me: "It is, as if my thoughts are dancing with each other"; and that they enjoyed the calmness it brought to them as well as the moment of spacing out. The intimacy of observing the body in a restful position with the opportunity to let ones mind take over and how to give thoughts way to travel and dance, intrigue me. 

Susanna Brenner started as a goldsmith in Germany before she began studying Time based Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (BA 2002) and Fine Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, NL (MA 2004) and Plymouth University, UK (MA 2004). Her work is multidisciplinary, it involves video, soundscapes, objects, drawings and ritual performances; and has been presented in galleries and festivals both in The Netherlands and abroad. Her video works were part of productions of various performing artists for example Nicole Beutler, Sanja Mitrovic, Bart Oomen, Oneka von Schrader, Susanne Marx. Her love affair with sound/scapes started in 2004 in the ongoing project AFTERIMAGE – a choreography for light, a collaboration with video artist Helle Lyshøj and lighting designer Minna Tiikkainen which was presented also in COME TOGETHER festival, Pakt Zollverein, Theater Kikker and in Julidans 2018. www.videomachas.com/afterimage/ 

with thanks to Felix Ritter, Marta Pisco, Martin Kaffarnik, Helle Lyshøj, Minna Tiikkainen

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