ex-/instinct

2024, installation, joint project with Friedrich Weber

The work Ex-/Instinct explores the fine line between curiosity and appropriation, transience and protection, life and death. In a performative way, warmth and touch are used as instruments of discovery: What can we see? What can we know? What can we experience? The installation works through metaphors: Warmth representative of life, touch for exploration and interaction for curiosity. In a fragile structure, we move in cyclical processes: Dead organic matter transforms into energy and energy secures life. But is this equilibrium disrupted by human activity? What role do intuition, the individual, and responsibility play in the context of the sixth global mass extinction?

The method of Ex-/Instinct (use of heat through an infrared plate and thermochromic paint) works metaphorically by playing with the subject of proximity through touch and warmth as well as transience. It is possible to make animals that are already extinct visible for a short amount time and thus, to satisfy curiosity.
But what can be discovered when the only possible perception is based on seeing images?
The ritual of hand-warming at a fireplace-like, electric power source symbolizes the unbalanced energy cycle (dead matter transformed into oil, which can be converted into energy). An audio station broadcasts scientific facts, philosophical questions, meta-information and situational elements. They touch on topics and information about extinction, the animal realm, transience, responsibility, science, rituals and perception.