In OPEN SPACE, the exhibition space of Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, we are presenting the laser show "spin jump crawl climb dream bite hunt" by Hamburg-based artist Paul Spengemann.
"The being that only occasionally comes to the surface here is attempting to build a world – a world made of unstable connections, in which a longing for community becomes as evident as a sense of estrangement in a place governed by peculiar rules of play." – Merle Radtke
When multiplex cinemas first opened in Germany during the 1990s, a trip to the cinema was often accompanied by a grand laser show. Fog would rise before the film began, and flashes of light would streak across the auditorium. Viewers would lose themselves in the space; at times, the space itself seemed to dissolve. Bottomless. Paul Spengemann, a highly acclaimed artist, works in the exact opposite manner. He strips the story down to light itself and, through this light, tells a story that each person who experiences it sees, feels, and interprets differently. Once, spiders wove large webs across Hamburg’s HafenCity, enveloping it. Spengemann has long been fascinated by these arachnids.
For spin jump crawl climb dream bite hunt, he created a character who, with the help of the thread it spins, shares its emotions with the audience in short scenes. Through the sharply focused beam of the laser, the artist conveys the experiences of a creature that not only spins, jumps, crawls, climbs, bites and hunts, but also dreams – revealing its fears and desires. A narrative suspended between abstraction and storytelling. As in cinema, understanding emerges through the eye itself. But now: not loud, not monumental – rather tender, quiet, idiosyncratic. In doing so, Spengemann opens the black box to an experience that allows the audience to become the authors of what they perceive. His spider defies gravity with ease – weaving, scrambling, running, shaping. We sense the creature – and perhaps it senses us in return. Could that be why it is descending now, gaining speed?
OPEN SPACE: spin jump crawl climb dream bite hunt
Daily from 11 am, free entry
Festival Center Post
