IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY

"IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY" deals with the in-between, with places of transformation and imagination. Based on the concept of liminality, Lili Süper and Johannes Hoffmann explore the entanglements of time and space in installation and performance. The result is a walk-in image in which every object, every trace, forms part of a narrative. Lili Süper creates a spatial installation for La Felce. It tells of the discomfort or uncertainty that arises when we are unable to categorize things. An apparent living space, indicated by the carpeting, curtains and furniture, evokes nostalgic memories and at the same time plays with a curiosity and eeriness through major, but also more subtle changes. The furniture is merely representative, deprived of its function. Traces on the walls and dart holes in a drawer mark temporality, intertwining reality with fiction. "IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY" displayed on sheets of paper on the wall and glitter beneath a low-hanging lamp in the center of the room are reminiscent of a birthday party that we are attending or that has already taken place. But the reduced and therefore barren nature of the place remains. The combination of heterogeneous elements creates a space full of ambivalences, suggesting various events, evoking associations, and, as a space of resonance, is shaped by the subjectivity of the visitors. For the opening of the exhibition, the installation was activated with a four-hour performance developed by Johannes Hoffmann and performed together with Citra Amongsari and Chanmin Kim. Three figures covered in fabric appeared like ghosts from another world and transformed La Felce into a surreal world. Playing a handful of notes on the guitar, they created a loop that circled through the room. As a concept, this is representative of an original topic of music: the division of time. Instead of repetitive monotony, however, the three alternating performers created an organically flexible soundscape that sometimes compressed and sometimes stretched time. Johannes Hoffmann’s performance is about simplicity and emotion and liminal states: about a threshold state in which for a short time the past is not relevant, and the future has not yet begun – a moment full of possibilities in which everything hovers in a fragile balance. The work itself is also in-between states: between event and uneventfulness, presence and absence of bodies, concert and sound installation. As part of the exhibition, the performance was integrated into the installation as sound and with objects. [translated from German]