Copper, glass and other materials

Brockmann has been working on the (Im)balance organ-BALANCE project since 2022. The organ of balance is located in the inner ear. It is a complex form that corresponds to the transparency and opacity of cognitive processes related to orientation and the position of the head or body in space. Brockmann’s research project involves testing sculptures of the organ. She uses cutting-edge computer technology to bring the non-human and the human, the natural and the artificial into communication in a way that challenges the usual relationships between object and subject.

The organ of imbalance is also referred to in a 100-fold enlarged organ of equilibrium in glass. The different surface compositions of the glass form make the sculpture either translucent and thus allow views through it or give it an opaque structure through which the forms behind the glass cannot be seen or can only be seen dimly. The sculpture absorbs the surroundings and reflects them. The surface plays a key role here, as the glass has the capacity to reduce, enlarge and distort the reflected environment depending on its shape.

Hereby Brockmann points to the circumstance that the sense of orientation is equally connected to our inner self. It reflects the environment within us, but the stimulus is perceived differently depending on our predisposition and the paths and inclinations appear short or long, strongly or slightly deviating. Sometimes, both the glass reflection and the perceived orientation in space give rise to illusions and appearances that point to something that belongs more to the realm of the imagination than to the real image, and it is precisely then that a poetic moment of the intermediate dimension opens up.

Various materials, various sizes

In her ongoing research on the “Irreversible Moment” Jenny Brockmann is searching for the reason behind fundamental structural and spatial changes, or the transformation of bodies in space. Further, she enquires about the socio-political significance of the “Irreversible Moment” . When and how do social, ecological and economical irreversible turning points occur? And is it possible to find new ways in which to confront the “Irreversible Moment” ?

Among other things, Brockmann searches for forms of visualization and thus also for intellectual approaches to this point of no return, i.e. the point from which there can be no going back, the moment in a process that leads to something never again being as it was before.

It is a work emerging from cooperation between interdisciplinary experts from e.g. the fields of chemistry, physics, dance, and music.

Aluminum, cold air, tubes, controller

In her installations which often develop their full potential through the actions of the visitors, Jenny Brockmann integrates devices and methods which are frequently used in scientific research. In her new project «Cold – Study of Sensitivity», the artist has developed a room of sensory experience for one person at a time. The room invites the visitor to become better acquainted with his/her own sensitivity and sensibility to process of cold (and heat). It also allows one to reflect on the psychological effects of cold. For cold is not merely a meteorological Uraufführung 107 phenomenon; it can also describe the social condition of being disconnected and distant – a trend that increasingly poses a challenge to our coexistence. With this work, Brockmann continues a project she began at the Kunstfest 2018, highlighting the work of Gertrud Grunow who gave instruction on attentiveness, harmonisation and balance at the early Bauhaus in Weimar. With her project, Jenny Brockmann places the Bauhaus at the centre of current social debates on climate change which are no longer separable from the notion of achieving a harmonious coexistence, and for which she now proposes a training programme for our own sensitivity. Most people nowadays are increasingly uncertain about nature and technology, what they have in common and what they don’t, what they are and what they aren’t. Humans and their technical surroundings are inextricably interwoven and often even coalesce. We interact more and more every day with technical devices and systems. Since the Bauhaus and especially since the beginning of the 21st century, we are finding it harder to answer the question of what nature is. While scholars in the 1920s described the strengthening ties between humans and technology in more aesthetic-visionary terms, today in the age of digitalisation it has become clearer than ever how interconnected we are with technology and how impossible it has become to sever those ties. If everything is design, then what is nature?

The project «Apparatus of Heat and Cold – Bauhaus Attempting Balance» has been investigating the historical Bauhaus in Weimar and its impact on contemporary art and culture in various exhibitions, a publication and discussion forums since 2018. This year, the project curators have invited four internationally known artists and artist collectives to explore the uncertainties and potentials arising from humantechnical existence, and by extension, the cultural and intellectual temperatures and concept of nature at the Bauhaus. While the events in 2018 focused on heat and cold in relation to Bauhaus colours and colour theory, form-building and design, and balances and imbalances in their diverse aesthetic and social facets, this year’s project applies heat and cold to the understanding of nature at the Bauhaus.

Concept: Jenny Brockmann

Research + text: Paulina Olszewska

Planning: Atefeh Farzandi

Curators: Janek Müller, Niklas Hoffmann-Walbeck, Pamela Schlewinski

Funding: German Federal Cultural Foundation »Bauhaus Today« / project »Heat Cold Devices« and Klassik Stiftung Weimar

Various materials, various sizes

Collaboration between Jenny Brockmann (visual arts), Lynn Christenson (ecology at Vassar College, NY), Peter Groffman (biochemistry at CUNY, NY), Lathan Hardy (woodwind music) and Lauhona Ganguly (media theory at New School, NY).

Conceived especially for the exhibition “Collaborative Survival, Ecologies of Encounter” curated by Danni Shen and realized at 601artspace, the work unfolds in two parts.

The first part consists of “Archive of a Future Memory #2—HyperAdaptation”, a 5 foot wide, 8 foot long, and 2 foot high, 3-dimensional shelf made of aluminum and LED tiles, on which fabricated objects and materials are arranged that refer to the conversations the artist had with a group of

four New York-based scholars/researchers from different disciplines (biology, AI research, music, ecology). Together two questions in the face of current Anthropocene discourse had been addressed: (1) How does resilience, adaptability and/or non-adaptability reveal itself within species, environments, and social interactions? (2) How might a programmed being refuse and emancipate itself from its surroundings — can AI pose resistance, or not? An accompanying public dialogue event in the gallery with these collaborators will center around the sculpture “Archive of a Future Memory #2 — HyperAdaptation”. The project examines the constructed divisions of “nature” and “culture,” as well as the empirical bounds of scientific knowledge production, by creating an interdisciplinary space within the gallery.

The second part, “2020-20-02 — HyperAdaptation”, an 11 foot 6 inches wide roll of black paper fixed on tripods and hanging down from a height of 10 foot 11 inches, unfolds the complex cartography of ideas, questions, and positions related to the work’s title, HyperAdaptation. Carried out in delicate white lines, the short notes and concentrated illustrations are an attempt at making knowledge processes comprehensible, while the method of cartography (mapping)—used in natural science to visualize spatial information about landscapes or celestial bodies—is adopted to increase the ability of orientation within the landscape of thoughts on “HyperAdaptation”.

In addition to the artworks, a workshop and a discursive performative event around the collaboration with the scientist experts had been arranged by 601artspace.

In collaboration with: 601artspace

Funded by 601artspace and German Consulate General, NY