Konstanze Habermann

CHAPEL OF THIRST (http://www.chapel-of-thirst.com)
A staged installation by Konstanze Habermann

‘In the New World, being human means being lonely.’ wrote the literary theorist Georg Lukács about 100 years ago, thus coining the formula of the basic spiritual condition of modern Western life, a formula still valid today: ‘transcendental homelessness’. God had been declared dead, but the yearning has remained to this day, the thirst for a meaningful connection outside our rational, logical world in order to somehow understand and master the inexplicable, the emotional, the surprising – in other words our very life.

Welcome to the powder-coloured, auspiciously shiny room and multimedia installation by the Hamburg-based artist Konstanze Habermann! Her fictional faith community ‘Chapel of Thirst’ has all the answers for uprooted city-dweller to fill their diffuse inner void. ‘Free yourself and feel the release’ is one of the commandments – the only one not to begin with the exhortation to ‘do without…’. Because release here is the reward for those who give, yields, discharges a burden. The priestess of forgiveness gratefully accepts all this ballast, especially the monetary equivalent of the same.

In a situation staged to the smallest detail, friendly, confident, open and enlightened community workers explain the philosophy of liberation from over-abundance. For a donation, one can acquire ‘enlightenment to-go’ and, as a climax, enter the chapel which is crowned with the glowing community symbol to honour and worship the angel Orchard, who promises absolute bliss and freedom. She appears in the large format of a perfectly lit photograph. On the front wall of the installation are grouped sixteen more staged figures of the community, arranged symmetrically and by size around the central portraits of the founding couple of this fictitious congregation. Using all sorts of symbolism and allegorical allusions, Konstanze Habermann skilfully combines the protagonists in her staged photographs employing the iconography, as supposedly typically accepted, of religiosity, mysticism and the sacred. Earthy muted colours, shimmering make-up as well as spotlights and highlights give the subject the perfect setting.

In an increasingly faster and more complex, anonymized and automated world, the search for meaning and higher truths is nothing new. As in the Middle Ages with the relics trade, today’s consumers can choose their dosage of enlightenment according to the depth of their pockets – whether it’s the motto in the fortune cookie, or the price-intensive luxury retreat; ultimately the need for self-discovery and communion with some higher level has to be satisfied.

These horizons and contexts are what make Habermann’s artistically highly demanding pictorial worlds special. Behind a series of works lie months of hard labour and research. Knowledge is collected, and the choice of models and interiors also evolves to perfection only thanks to long processes.

All the more easily, more clearly and more captivatingly her works then present themselves. They take us on a thought journey into another world. Freed from the burden of unambiguous pigeonholing, they animate associations and the beholder’s own stories. Whimsical as well as witty details and carefully selected metaphors give space – despite the seriousness of the theme – to imagination and humor. This is the special depth and freedom of Konstanze Habermann’s pictorial narratives.

For example, I suddenly remembered a wonderful, almost forgotten quote from the British comedy team Monty Python on the meaning of life, as proclaimed by the TV announcer in the film of the same name: ‘Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.’

(with Jonathan Johnson)

o.T. 2005

(with Adelaida Cue-Bär)

Inside an abandoned caravan, Konstanze Habermann and Adelaida Cue-Bär tell the fictive-fantastic story of the Browsky Palace and play with the concepts of identity, intimacy and reality. The clothes, photographs and everyday personal objects that lie discarded and strewn around the caravan cannot help but arouse our curiosity, despite the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the former occupants could return at any given moment and pick up where they left off.

Habermann and Cue-Bärs multimedia portraits of the clown, Browsky – who apparently once lived here with his three-armed wife and their dog – Cue-Bär’s custom-made textiles and the photographs that decorate the caravan’s interior present themselves to the observer rather more accidentally than intentionally, and it’s only at a second glance that the possibility of a further exhibition within an exhibition becomes obvious.

Within the staged production of the caravan, the pieces function as props and triggers for associative narrative threads but removed from this context, they also perform as independent works.

In both cases, the question is raised how intimacy and identity can be constructed and experienced in different ways. It would seem that identity can be the presumed expectation of others and at the same time, the aspiration of the individual.

If that means, consequently, that a depiction of each individual’s reality in its entirety is an unachievable task, then the possibility of creating a reality divorced from the real world could lie in a deliberate mise-en-scène.

And thus we find ourselves – although Browsky, his three-armed wife and their dog probably never existed – nevertheless rummaging around in their most intimate memories and dreams.

(Rosa Windt)

GERMAN
(mit Adelaida Cue-Bär)
Im Inneren eines verlassenen Wohnwagens erzählen Konstanze Habermann und Adelaida Cue-Bär die fiktive bis fantastische Geschichte des Browsky Palace und spielen gleichermaßen mit dem Verhältnis von Identität, Intimität und Wirklichkeit. Im Wagen verstreute Kleidungsstücke, Fotografien und alltägliche Gegenstände erwecken dabei aller Neugier zum Trotz das unwohle Gefühl, als könnte sein ehemaliger Bewohner jeden Moment zurückkommen und das Leben wieder wie gewohnt aufnehmen. Sowohl die von Habermann und Cue-Bär intermedial inszenierten Portraits des Clowns Browsky — der hier scheinbar einst mit seiner dreiarmigen Frau und Hund lebte —, als auch die von Cue-Bär eigens angefertigten Stoffarbeiten, als Teil des Wohnwageninterieurs sowie der Fotografien, präsentieren sich dem Rezipienten dabei eher zufällig und offenbaren sich erst auf den zweiten Blick als eine mögliche weitere Ausstellung innerhalb der Ausstellung. Die Arbeiten funktionieren so gleichzeitig als Requisiten und Auslöser für assoziativ lesbare Erzählstränge innerhalb der Inszenierung des Wohnwagens, als auch als aus dem Kontext gelöste, eigenständige Werke.

In beiden Fällen stellt sich die Frage wie Intimität Identität konstruiert und variabel erfahrbar wird. Identität kann dabei dem anschien nach gleichzeitig vorausgesetzte Erwartung der Anderen und Begehren des Individuums sein.

Wenn es folglich nicht möglich scheint die individuelle Wirklichkeit ganzheitlich abzubilden, kann in der bewussten Inszenierung doch die Möglichkeit liegen, eine von der Wirklichkeit losgelöste Realität zu schaffen. Und so findet man sich, obwohl es Clown Browsky, seine dreiarmige Frau und ihre Hunde wahrscheinlich nie gab, dennoch in ihren intimen Erinnerungen und Träumen wühlend wieder.

(Rosa Windt)

Exhibition “Powerhaus”, Galerie Kai Erdmann, Hamburg 2010
Exhibition “Art Eats You”, Krug, Hamburg 2015