Damien Simon

about the audiovisual Installation "Lüster"

Lüster is certainly one of the most poetic works by Tilman Küntzel. A Montgolfière chandelier is lying, enigmatic, on the ground, producing light and sound.
The work plays on the visuo-auditive synesthesia percpetion, a subject which guides the work of the artist for several years.
In a remarkable passage in the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau Ponthy describes how the music when it filled the concert hall can transform our perception of it. The music „.. insinuates through the visible space a new dimension where it breaks, as for hallucinates, the clear space of things perceived is split by a“ dark space “ where others presences are possible »1. The view is not the only way for us to understand space, but it is a complex game, a“ one gear on the other sensory areas, „which allows us to find space unity.
Synaesthetic perception, far from being a one-off phenomenon, is more of a norm2, it is universal, but we are not conscious of it. In this complex gearing added memory and feelings that influence the information gathered by the sensory organs, our brain does not reproduce the environment but interpret it.
It is to a similar experience that invites the work of Tilman Küntzel. The chandelier produces sound and light extravaganza that seems to emanate from pendants that constitute it. Without ever having heard it or seen it we know in advance what sounds produces one of its great charms golden chandeliers in glass or crystal. It is part of a common imaginary3, something that we know and remember but wihtout being able to recall the exact place and date. This is also the material that composes it, the glass: it is both, transparency, rigidity, fragility and crystal clear sound.
However, here, imagination and memory lead us to see and hear something that does not exist. Not a tassel is moving, the object is there, motionless, resting on the soil covering by its presence the clear space by this „dark space“. The myriad of tinnitus actually comes with an ingenious device thermal relay technology which stack at irregular intervals by heating and cooling letting pass the electricity that powers the bulbs placed inside the chandelier. It results a smooth and random sound and light composition.
Damien Simon

Licht\Klang
Michael Aschauer / Tilman Küntzel
October 7 till December 14 2010
Le Bon Accueil
74, canal Saint-Martin, F-35700 Rennes
Cette exposition rend un ultime hommage aux ampoules à filament et tubes fluorescents appelés à disparaître progressivement. L’occasion de découvrir les oeuvres de Michael Aschauer (Prix Ars Electronica) membre de R-ep.org et Tilman Küntzel figure de proue du Klangkunst. Entre univers féerique créé par un lustre baroque animé d’un souffle électrique et confrontation poétique entre un ordinateur et huit tubes fluorescents.
Curated by Damien Simon