Happy End

Prompted by the organisation of the Berlin sewage, Marie Jeschke’s exhibition is structured as a metaphorical radial system. The works, though interwoven, each connect to the central search for a distilled essence of visible waste and invisible data, forming the oneness of the city. Water is of course its carrier. On the ground floor, the viewer is greeted by an imposing suspended object, reminiscent of a ceiling lamp. Signs of use—dirt, rust—bear witness to its past activity. This is a time-worn module used in UV water treatment. The installation lights up at times in ways which might seem random, but that are fully ruled by natural cycles of the human body. A painting faces the light installation. Continuing Jeschke’s self-developed technique of subaquatic work, the artist submerges herself and her paintings in bodies of water and acts as a transmitter of unpronounceable knowledge—from liquid to canvas. Whereas earlier works were produced in natural environments, here, the artist performs within the sewer itself, channeling and releasing through her gestures the repositories of the urban past. A staircase takes the viewer down into the underbelly of the building, where soiled wet wipes appear to float among moving images of microscopic creatures. Over the course of several months (Feb - April), Jeschke recorded a diary of spunlace nonwoven, wet wipes—notes, drawings, and stains cover a fabric designed for hygiene, yet not intended to enter the sewage system. Curious objects in the shape of snow-globes are positioned all around the space, inviting to be shaken. Filled with murky sewage water, their glass stands as the barrier between here and the untouchable. Fitting into the human innate curiosity, playing on our feelings of the uncanny and our deep-rooted voyeurism, these globes tickle the raw nerves of our brains’ chemoreceptor trigger zone, responsible for nausea. They are however leak proof, miniature galaxies hiding inside poems and drawings scribbled, here again, on wet wipes. What can waste water tell us? What has it seen? Tales of life, of people, their dreams and failures. City animals and plants, time woven into nature’s cycles. A wet daze of happy ends (incidentally also the local discounter wet wipes brand name) soaking through metal and plastic pipes, centrifuged in a solid fusion of compact energy ready to be burnt. The sludge becomes black tar, the condensation of a city’s mind.