Nachtwächter:innen

 

Nachtwächter:innen
at the outer edge of the inner clock // Schlafbunker, former Max Planck Institute, Erling-Andechs (DE)
Arrangements by Elena Carr and Jonas Beutlhauser with narration by David Carr
Sound performance by A. Sophie Adelt
Curated by KunstRäume am See in cooperation with Dr. Gerd Holzheimer
as part of Juni Spiele 2019

 

“I am the moth and you are the light”, said one side to the other.
In 1977, in the Max Planck Institute’s sleep bunker, the body temperature of the research assistant had synchronised with that of the test person after only a few days. Both spent four weeks in the bunker, one lived without a timer, the other operated the ECG, nor its print on continuous paper and numerous other recording devices. With them there was also sleep, “which I see as a person who is part of me and does something for me, where I don’t have to worry about anything for a change.”
The digital film copy about the time in the sleep bunker is thrown onto the screen. A moth seeks the bright light source of the projector, it remains in the background of the adjoining chamber.
Its dark body flutters chaotically. If she flies completely into the shadows, she is almost invisible. She can allow herself to be the one who doesn’t get enough sleep, is tired, grumpy, lazy, unfocused, dreamy, hesitant, moody and otherworldly.

Elena Carr and Jonas Beutlhauser
work in complicity.

 

 

 

A. Sophie Adelt (States of Clay) Sound and Performance Artist, Linz (AT)
Sophie, like many people, likes to sleep. In her sleep she digests food she has eaten late at night or things that occupy her mind. People know this, people say this.
“If you dont dream you pretty much die.” said Erykah Badu, but whether dreaming has so much to do with sleeping itself?
When you climb a high volcano, you first have to go up to the base camp and get up very early the next day, and before that you are not allowed to sleep. Only rest. So that your blood circulation doesn’t go down and you get cold. That was too steep for me and I stayed down. Sleep cures headaches and worries.
The neighbour once said, “I’ve noticed that you always sleep so late!”

David Carr, senior biostatistician, Starnberg/Melbourne (AUS).
D. worked as a research assistant in the sleep bunker in 1977 and later in the chronobiology department of the Max Planck Institute in the team of sleep researcher Jürgen Zulley. Sleep movements on his mattress in the scientific annexe of the bunker premises were also recorded throughout by sensors. D. tells of an experiment in which the wake-sleep rhythm of a test person in the sleep bunker ran over a 42-hour day, of which he spent about 30 hours awake and 12 hours asleep. Empathically, D. can empathise with the subject, who had never felt so good physically before. In New York, people lived this rhythm. D. continues to empathically report how terrible and socially indiscernible it was for these people. They became complete outsiders.

Petra Anne Bernard
The hanging of two sheets in the entrance area shows a section of Petra Anne Bernard’s preoccupation with sleep. She slept in both, meticulously noting her sleep in strokes and painting the sleeping body.