Attic II
audiovisual art project with a primary school class
Münster, 2003
In my installation 'Attic' (see archive) the inner life of things we use every day without questioning them is made audible. Things embody history, they link private and contemporary history.
This basic idea was also the starting point for the project with an elementary school class from Wartburg Elementary School. After an introduction to the art term 'installation'. the children brought objects from the attic, from bulky waste, from home or from their grandparents' house that fascinated them, that were important to them. They slipped into the skin of these things and invented their 'biography', writing stories from the point of view of a knitting picture, an old saddle, a dollar bill or an encyclopedia.
They also recorded the stories themselves. Cut together on four different CDs, the audio recordings ran in a continuous loop in the installation set up by the children in a cleared small room at the school. The walls and ceiling were covered with black fabric, colored light bulbs were mounted, and the objects were arranged and hung in groups with nylon threads. Into this strange, floating and murmuring universe we invited the visitors, who listened enthusiastically.
