Grenadine
audiovisual installation
Ruller Haus e.V.
Osnabrück 2013
The audiovisual installation in the main room of the Ruller House, a former pilgrimage chapel dating back to the 14th century, shows a pomegranate that seems to float on a light background. Soon, two hands grab hold of him, touch him and finally break him up. A simultaneous sound collage reminding of wind and clinking metal creates an atmosphere of an abandoned place, contrasting the visual impression of the movie and the actual physical location of the projection. Image and sound overlap and build up different interpretive levels that are held in suspension. The visual elements, the red color of the pomegranate, its shiny surface and amorphous shape, the hands that cut it, the red juice that drips on the ground, might make locals and historians think of the founding legend of the chapel, the so-called Ruller ‘blood miracle’.
background:
I developed the installation as part of my seminar on site-specific performance art, which I taught in the winter semester 12/13 at the University of Osnabrück. The point of departure and reference for all the works shown in a joint presentation at the end of the seminar was the Ruller Haus, which we visited at the beginning of the seminar. The small cultural center in the rural Osnabrück district of Rulle has been used over the centuries as a pilgrimage chapel, schoolroom, forester's house, and residence. It embodies a complex local history marked by ruptures and contrasts, in which overall social political and religious developments and upheavals of the last 700 years are reflected. The goal of the seminar was to deal with this local history and to develop a performance for a self-selected location within the house or on the surrounding grounds. A catalog entitled "Performin' the House" was published to accompany the presentation.
