The centerpiece of the installation is a special travelling case which was fabricated at the Oxford Fiber Case Company in Brooklyn specifically for Dreyblatt's re-location to Berlin in 1983. The case still retains his last address in the United States in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn (in a former seaman's bar at 51 Kent Avenue). Dreyblat continued to use this case during his extensive travels to Eastern Europe during the 1980's and in my later visits back to the United States.

Surrounding this case, which is displayed as an original artifact in a glass vitrine, are two enclosed L-shaped vitrine light boxes, each 2.5 meters long to be installed on platforms just under eye-level. The light boxes form both the bottom surface and back wall of the vitrine, so that one is able to percieve information content on multiple transparent layers, which combine to form unexpected encounters of autobiographical moments. Archival materials (photos, documents and video) are printed, viewed and projected in a "forest" of document sized upright standing transparent panels in such a way that one can look and read through them to deeper layers.

Contained in these vitrines is an array of hundreds of autobiographical content items, culled from his personal archive of the last twenty-eight years, were organized and cataloged expressly for this project. As in much of his artistic work, the interplay of text, light and transparency play a pivital role in the perception of historical documentation.

The archival content represents three different information layers, which in turn mirror a network of "times", "locations" and "relations": a) USA: Family Immigration and my first thirty years b) Berlin: from 1983 to the current time; and c) Eastern Europe: Family origins and personal research.

In concieving this work, Dreyblatt imagined "looking-through" paths from New York to berlin to east europe, evoking multiple biographic identities, splintered, yet related and left open to interpretation by the viewer. During the development process, a decision was made not to provide commentary or explanation of the individual items.

The installation represents one of Dreyblatt's few works which addresses the subject of archival storage and cultural memory from an autobiographic standpoint.

"My Baggage" was commissioned by the Jewish Museum, Berlin expressly for the exhibition "Heimatkunde" (2011-2012). After the exhibition ended the installation became part the collection of the museum.

Chosen texts from A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage (1967) which were randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words text, writing or reading occur have been combined with another source: handwritten inventory cards from the archive collection of the Jewish Musem in Berlin. From these cards I selected texts which speak of the condition and readability of unnamed documents in that collection.

These two, seemingly disparate text lists were further fragmented using a version of the cut-up method invented by Brion Gysin and often utilitized by William S. Burroughs: in which texts from unrelated sources meet each other and create new random associations. This process resulted in a final list of 329 text items, ranging from 1 to 15 words. The list was recorded and spoken by the artists Sam Ashley and Ray Kass, who were recent participants in the TONSPUR Project.

A specially written software sends randomly chosen voice recordings from a database to the various loudspeakers according to pre-determined rules but leaving much to chance. We experience a possible conversation, never repeating and creating unexpected meanings.

During the preparation period, Dreyblatt lived in a studio near to this TONSPUR_passage: 'I often marvelled at the diversity and density of the soundscape, in which the distant sounds of Sam Ashley's installation, Freedom From Happiness, mingled with the sonorites of crowds of people passing under my four windows, and resonating in the plaza and in my living space. Over a weekend, I made numerous recordings of this situation over different times of day, and then created a carpet which lies under the voices, functioning as a kind of memory of this site from a recent, yet now lost time.'

'As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have been re-examining Cage's oevre in textual composition. My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in his extensive experimentation with printed text layout and vocal readings.'

'In 2011, I was invited by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to create a work for the exhibition A Room for Cage. It was in the preparation for the works which I created for this exhibition (Writing Cage, 2011) that I made use of texts from my copy of the 1967 paperback edition of A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage

Exhibited: TONSPUR_passage, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, 2012

Voices: Sam Ashley, Ray Kass; Recordings: ORF Studios, Vienna; Technical Supervision Peter Szely; Programming: Norbert Math; Production: TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum; Artistic director: Georg Weckwerth

   Original Text List
   Layout Galerie Installation
   Text by Sabine Sanio

Dreyblatt has used lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragmentas from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disapears.

The individual shapes of these seven works have been chosen from an archeological database of antique potsherds originating from ancient Greece and Rome, north and central America, the Near East and China. These shapes are the result of the "chance operations" of physical decay, a gradual historical process dating hundreds or thousands of years.

The texts are derived from Dreyblatt's original copy of the 1967 paperback edition of "A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage". The text fragments used in the work have been randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words "text", "writing" or "reading" occur.

Commissioned by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2011

"As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have re-examined Cage's oevre in textual composition. In "A Year from Monday" he writes, "The thought has sometimes occurred to me that my pleasure in composition, renounced as it has been in the field of music, continues in the field of writing words, and that explains why, recently, I write so much." My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in seminal Cage works as "Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969)" and in his extensive experimentation in printed text layout and vocal readings." - Arnold Dreyblatt

Permanently installed in four meetings rooms within the new Ministry of Agriculture, Nutrition and Consumer Protection (BMLEV), Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, and dedicated in 2010. Winner, 1st Prize, Invited Competition, Federal Ministry for Buldings and Public Spaces (BBR) Berlin, 2008

Inscriptions is concieved as an interactive textual dialogue with the employees of the Ministirium who will pass through, meet and work in four meeting rooms. Lenticular printing technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, different text content appears and disapears, allowing one to 'create' one's own narrative about the history and workings of the BMELV Ministry. In this way the employee should become participants in a dialogue with the work, which can only be 'completed' through movement and reflection.

Text excerpts will be chosen as content for the work from the following themes:
a) the history of the BMELV Ministry;
b) the historical and architectural context of the building;
c) descriptions of activities and goals relating to the work of the BMELV Ministry;
d) historical and contemporary quotations from literature and science on subjects such as agriculture, nutriton, etc.

A theme has been concieved for each of the four meeting rooms:
1. Wilhelmstr. Nr. 54, history of the building housing the Ministry
2. Agriculture: texts from Marcus Porcius Cato (234 v. Chr. - 149 v. Chr.), Albrecht Daniel Thaer, (1752 - 1828), Johann Heinrich von Thünen, (1783 -1850)
3. Agricultural Politics and Policy in Germany
4. Consumer Protection

The work was commissioned by- and is installed within the Permanent Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

One arrives at the site at the end of a journey through German Jewish History representing the last section of the permanent historical exhibition at the museum. This site depicting the "Shoah" is situated at the intersection of pre- and post- war exhibition areas.

Historical documents have been selected from the Museum archives from two sources:
a. Letters from burocratic offices to individuals about preparations for deportation and eventual transports to the east.
b. The last correspondance from Ghettos and extermination camps.

One approaches a glass barrier made up of vertical sections which are either transparent or opaque when data messages begin writing on them. One has the feeling that one cannot proceed further, yet one can see through the panels, revealing a hint of what follows. The visitor is intrigued by the dynamic rhythm of the panels appearing and disapearing, and by the pace of the digital writing on the glass.

Along a line in the floor which transverses the space at an angle (and which represents lines which intersect the original architecture), a glass barrier is built in eight sections, each 1 meter wide and 3 meters high. Four data projectors are mounted from the cieling behind the glass barrier and are connected to a computer.

A section of mirrored glass is mounted on the right diagonal wall, opening up the space and reflecting the wall of glass and the dynamic movement of the displays and changing panels.

The barrier is composed of eight 'Priva-lite' glass panels, each 2.5 x 1 meters mounted in steel frames. When electricity is applied to the glass, it is transparent; when the current is turned off, the glass is opaque, thereby functioning as a projection surface.

The glass panels and the projectors are synchronized. There is one projector each for two panels, representing one document fragment. When a document pair are 'active', the glass becomes opaque, and the document information (left side) and content information (right side) begin 'writing', letter by letter, simultaneously, at eye level.

The four projection pairs are either in an 'active' (projection, opaque) or 'inactive' (transparent) state. From one to four active states may be happening at any one time. The patterns of active and inactive panels is changing all the time, creating a sense of dynamic rhythm in the space. At the same time, sections of the wall seem to disapear and reappear at other locations. The selection and display of the texts is random.

Production:
Text Preparation and Project Coordination: Maren Krüger
Media Design: Thomas Buck
Media Realization: White Void, Berlin
Photos: Copyright Jüdisches Museum Berlin; Foto: Jens Ziehe

Installed Permanently at: Jewish Museum, Berlin, 2008

Galerie Singuhr, Kleiner Wasserspeicher, Berlin
Produced with support of Hauptstadtkulturfonds

This text, image and sound installation was especially concieved for the circular vaulted brick space of the historical water container in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. Specific information content is derived from archival documentation concerning the history of the site. A 'media turntable' spins animated text content around the inner and outer spaces of the space. Other sound and image sources are located at fixed locations on the peripheral walls. The text/image and sound material is percievable as fragments which appear and disapear throughout the media environment.

Text and Image
The central turntable contains two data projectors facing outwards which are connected to a computer. The text content is programmed to scroll out of view at a speed corresponding to the speed of rotation in reverse, giving one the impression that the text is standing still. The texts are projected on both the inner and outer circles of the space, at times 'hugging' the multiple archways.
Four stationary carousel slide projectors are controlled by computer software. Enlarged sections of original blueprints of the site are projected in black and white negative on the outer walls.

Audio Composition
A 40 minute five channel sound composition was created for five loudspeakers which are positioned throughout the space. The sound content is derived from recordings which Dreyblatt made of MRI Magnetic Resonance medical scanning..

Research, Collection and Projection
The project considers historical research and the collection of archival documentation an integral aspect of the project preparation. Under the direction of the artist, a research assistant collected historical materials from archives and official agencies.

Produced by Carsten Seiffarth
Software: White Void, Berlin
Turntable: Andreas Marcksheffel
Slide Projection: AV Optics / Emmanuel S. Boatey
Historical Blueprints: Landesarchiv Berlin
Archive research and text preparation: Birgit Kirchhöfer
Text correction: Gunnar Voss
Archival Sources: Landesarchiv Berlin, Museumsverbund Pankow Archiv
Digital Recordings: "Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class" Magnet Resonanz Tomographie (MRT or MRI)
Recorded by: Jörg Hiller
Recording Location: Röntgenpraxis (MRT-Departement), Dr. Anne Sparenberg, Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus, Berlin

These fifteen lenticular text images refer to Benjamin's famous essay, "Ausgraben und Erinnern" (Walter Benjamin, Ausgraben und Erinnern, in: ders., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. IV.1, hg. von Tillmann Rexroth, Frankfurt a.M. 1972, S. 400 f.)

The texts are derived from online epigraphic databases of ancient inscriptions maintained by European and North American Archaelogical research institutions (list below). Commentaries to thousands of papyrus, stone, clay and wax inscriptions were collected from these databases, specifically chosen for content refering to readability and fragmentation.

Lenticular technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest".

Sources:
Die digitale Papyrus-Sammlung der Universitäten Halle - Jena - Leipzig; Papyrussammlung Universität Trier; Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyrus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; The Egypt Exploration Society und Center for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University; Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Database, University of Chicago; Cuneiform Inscriptions Database, University of Minnesota; Cuneiform Digital Palaeography Project, University of Birmingham

Produced with support from Alstercolor Bild + Medienservice GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg.

Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin (as part of the exhibition; "Translation: Text as Image" within the frame of the Walter Benjamin Festival, Berlin), 2006-2007

Photos: 1-4: Waldemar Kremser, 5: Arnold Dreyblatt

At the end of a long darkened corridor, one percieves an oversized card catalog in black, as one recognizes from libraries and offices. The catalog contains thirty drawers, each fitted with the shining metal frames and handles which clearly identify their archival function. Within these frames, where normally the little paper cards which mark the contents of that drawer would be, the data is active and continually changing.

In the lower area of this large piece of virtual furniture are three flat LCD screens, mounted vertically and partially disappearing into the black box. Here, an endless row of documents 'march' head-first into the 'machine' as if they being inputed for further data analysis within the catalog drawers above. The 'entry categories' of the series of documents are written dynamically on the face of the drawers, letter by letter in a series of 'chapters', each representing the data structure of a document.

Due to a built-in randomness integrated into the program processes (as to location, order, and time), the display of the data will never be exactly the same when the software program repeats its sequence. These entries are derived from the questionaires and index cards from the recently found archive of the Jewish Community of Vienna during the Third Reich era. The work was commissioned by the Jewish Museum of Vienna for the exhibition, 'Ordunung Muß Sein' ('Order must be'), and is a collaboration with the archive of the Jewish Community of Vienna.

Software Programming: Alexander Krestovsky and Gregor Kö
Production: 'Anlaufstelle der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien' and 'Jüdisches Museum Wien"

Exhibited:
Jüdisches Museum Wien, 2007

   Original Plan for Installation

'Innocent Questions' was the winner of a closed competition initiated by the The National Foundation for Art in Public Buildings, Oslo (Utsmykkingsfondet for offentlige bygg) in 2004 for a permanent artistic work in front the Villa Grande, a villa occupied by Vidkun Quisling from 1941-1945. The Villa is currently the site of the "HL Senteret", The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.

In developing a concept for an artistic intervention for the Villa Grande I preferred not be limited by the particular historical circumstances associated with this site. I have chosen rather to focus on the use of the 'personal questionnaire' in population registration systems as the defining element that thematically connects the Holocaust in Norway with other genocides of the twentieth century and with the administration of foreigners and other minorities in contemporary society.

The winter snow and the dramatic approach up the hill to the site call for a vertical installation as a transformation of the imposing and grotesque historical building facade. In renovating and reconstructing the 'Villa Grande,' fire and safety regulations required an external stairwell to be fixed on the facade to the left of the main entrance. I proposed to utilize the structure of the stairwell in order to physically support the installation of 'Innocent Questions.'

Attached to the structure of the stairwell is an array of twelve panel-boxes, mounted within a steel frame. These panels are designed to form one unified image (size: 8330 x 4070 cm.), which is perceived in three distinct optical layers:

Non-Reflective Image: Sandblasted onto the hardened surface of the outermost glass layer of each panel is a reconstruction of a historical 'punch card' , representing the reduction of the individual to number and category. This image is perceived as non-reflective, creating a heightened contrast to the reflectivity of the underlying mirrored surface.

Reflected Environment: The work functions as a mirrored wall that reflects the natural environment: the trees and sky, and the visiting public. The face of the historical building is thereby opened and partially erased.

Illuminated Texts: Mounted onto the rear of each panel within the punch card image, are words and phrases written in fixed light-emitting diodes (LED's). This textual content has been derived from historical and contemporary personal questionnaires.

The rear of the work is sealed, and the illuminated red LED texts appear as an ephemeral image, suspended in the reflecting mirror. Only the illuminated LED texts are seen through the mirrored glass, which is otherwise fully reflective of the environment.

The words and phrases appear and disappear within a slow and randomly generated temporal composition perceived within the virtual punch card image. Because the appearance of illuminated words and phrases is continually changing, new combinations of words and phrases arise, igniting unexpected associations from the questionnaire entries as one passes the work.

During the hours of daylight, the mirror glass reflects the trees and sky. The information layers (non-reflective image, reflected environment and illuminated text) are clearly visible. In the hours of darkness, artificial side lighting illuminates the non-reflecting sandblasted surfaces of the outer glass layer, which would otherwise be imperceptible.

In my concept for a permanent installation at the site, a list of 'Innocent Questions,' derived from historical and contemporary sources and representing a composite collective questionnaire, is contrasted with the image of a historical 'punch card.' Together, this is a representation of the collection, archiving and application of personal data by political systems for administrative and often questionable use.

A motor-driven rotating cylinder, 80 centimeters high and with a diameter of one meter, mounted on a stand. The core of the cylinder contains an wired array of 100 flashbulbs which face the outer surface. This surface is composed of multiple layers of plexiglass and film which appear white when inactive.

Approximately every seven seconds, an extremely intensive 360 degree flash illuminates eleven circular text phrases which are inscribed into the cylinder surface. As the cylinder is slowly turns, one percieves new text fragments with each flash, which are only readable as an afterimage in the brain, white letters on a black background.

The texts are derived from scientific texts based on the phenomena of Flashbulb Memory. Texts from: R. Brown & J. Kulik, Flashbulb Memories, in: Cognition, 5, 1997, S. 73-99; RB Livingston, Reinforcement, in: The Neuro Sciences, A Study Program, Rockefeller Press, New York 1967; U. Neusser, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Context, W. H. Freeman, New York 1982; etc.

The installation Recovery Rotation was created in cooperation between the Festival Conceptualisms: Contemporary Receptions in Music, Art, and Film, commissioned by the Akademie der Künste Berlin, curated by Christoph Metzger, and made possible by funds from the foundation Hauptstadtkulturfonds) and the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken.

Exhibited:
Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, 2003
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Table from MDF with internally mounted TFT-Display and Computer, Chair.

In 1925, Freud wrote a text that compares the faculty of memory to a child's toy known as a Wunderblock. It consists of a wax slab stretched with cellophane, upon which a text may be inscribed, and just as readily erased by lifting the cellophane layer up and away from the wax slab.

In contrast to Freud's model, in which the pressure of the act of inscription onto the cellophane surface continues in the direction of the underlying layer of wax, in 'The Wunderblock', the original selection and entry of data has been concluded in the past. The movement originates from ROM and is held in RAM, before travelling up towards the surface.

Quite independently of our own states of presence or absence, the installation searches and inscribes autonomously. One has the impression that the underlying textual sources can never be perceived in their entirety. Because the many texts fragments are inscribed and erased simultaneously, one can read a given fragment only with difficulty before it vanishes. The model of memory demonstrated here is at once highly unstable, fragmentary, incomplete, perishable and ephemeral.

The sentence fragments appearing and disappearing on the screen describe a process of finding and loss, safeguarding and destruction.

Texts from: Sigmund Freud, Notiz über den `Wunderblock', Wien 1925; A Glossary for Archivists, The Society of American Archivists, Chicago 1992

Software: Alexandr Krestovskij

Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, 2000
Art Forum, Berlin, 2000
Gemäldegalerie, 2001
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
Kunstverein Hannover, 2003
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
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Black room, computer data projection, suspended wire mesh, sound equipment. Size variable.

An automated writing and recitation machine is found in a darkened black space. One enters a three dimensional data architecture where the process of searching, sorting and locating words and the overlapping inter-textual linkages of information are simulated optically by metaphors of transparence and complexity. Projected onto a barely visible cylindrical screen are multiple transparent layers of continually flowing historical data, which appear to be suspended in the center of the space, and which delineate the room contours with textual landscapes.

Two computers randomly search and locate thousands of words within an endless virtual page of biographical information in real time. As each word is found, it is highlighted visually and spoken out loud by a male or female voice. The voices gradually cross each other in time, creating a dialog. The viewer participates in a deconstruction of history through a non-linear and associational reading of forgotten archival fragments.

Texts from: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933
Design & Software Development: Luca Ruzza, Architect, Rome
Software Consultant: Alexandr Krestovskij
Sound: Tom Korr

Exhibited:
Felix Meritis Foundation, Amsterdam, 1998
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Jewish Museum, New York, 2001
Arte in Memoria, Ostia Antica, Rome
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Data projection on plexiglass, sound equipment, size variable.

One thousand documents have been entered into a database which reports the life of T., (b. 1879 Paks, Hungary - d. 1943 Shanghai, China), a forgotten Central European historical figure whose multiple identities span three continents (Europe, North America and Asia) and touch on many of the most important events of the pre-war period. The work is derived from a larger collection of over 4,000 intelligence documents from State Archives in Europe and North America from the inter-war period.

The collection contains daily reports and correspondances between 1915 and 1943, forming a vast communication network in which the official traces and observations of the individual are cross-referenced to historical events, international personalities and geographic locations.

In the interactive display of 'T-Mail' new documents are chosen randomly from the database, a scan of the next document gradually slides into view as various thematic categories and cross-links are activated. Text writings are simultaneously emitted sonically as morse code, in five different sine wave frequencies which change with consecutive paragraphs.

Texts from: The Public Record Office and The British Library, London; The National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Bundesarchiv Koblenz; Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn, etc.

Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail

In 1991, I received a commission to create what I imagined as a Hypertext Opera based on an edition of 'Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933' which I had found some years earlier. This theatrical production, which toured in various forms and languages until 1997, was realized containing a libretto assembled from thousands of biographical fragments. The project involved music compositions performed by my music ensemble; spoken and projected text, a sound installation derived from historical audio sources, and an image projection composition of amateur photographic material of the period.

I soon became frustrated with the passive theatrical situation of the proscenium stage and became interested in presenting the living environment in which historical data is stored and archived. In order to make this process transparent, I wanted the public to be involved in a more active sense, and I gradually developed a model for performance and installation which has been presented in various European cities under differing titles since 1995.

The basic concept of these site and city-specific projects involves the invitation of several hundred inhabitants of a city who are then invited to take part in a functioning yet temporary archival installation system. Selections from the archival holdings are read out loud collectively according to a precise timeplan or score. Hundreds of persons from the contemporary cityscape reflect hundreds of forgotten individuals from the past by their presence and participation.

The Reading Projects have been realized in various spatial and temporal contexts, often lasting for four to five hours, over many days or weeks at a time. I am continually experimenting and modifying the forms of presentation, yet the basic elements have remained: A Burocracy which administers the network of travelling archival files, readers, and visitors; a functioning archive system containing historical and contemporary documents; and a reading space or communal area in which the actual reading takes place.

84 chronological archive documents, plastic envelopes, format DIN A4, nails with spacers

'The T Documents' is one of a number of related works derived from over 4,000 intelligence documents from State Archives in Europe and North America from the inter-war period which have been collected by the artist.

These documents reveal the life of 'T'., (b. 1879 Paks, Hungary - d. 1943 Shanghai, China), a forgotten Central European historical figure whose multiple identities span three continents (Europe, North America and Asia) and touch on many of the most important events of the pre-war period. The collection contains daily reports and correspondances between 1915 and 1943, forming a vast communication network in which the official traces and observations of the individual are cross-referenced to historical events, international personalities and geographic locations.

In the installation 'The T Documents', the artist's personal selection of 84 original archive documents have been digitized and faked by specially developed printing techniques applied to the reverse side of postwar East German archival pages, posing question about the identity of both the subject's personality and the authenticity of the documents themselves. The documents are displayed in chronological order in transparent envelopes hanging on metal hooks. Selected excerpts are translated and typed in German on small strips of paper which has been inserted into the envelopes.

In related works, thousands of documents have been entered into a database and are displayed by computer projection. A realization for the World Wide Web has been prepared in collaboration with the University of Lüneburg, Department of Cultural Studies.

Sources: The Public Record Office and The British Library, London; The National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Bundesarchiv Koblenz; Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn, etc.

Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Hudobné simulakrá. Jozef Cseres, Bratislava 2001
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007

Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail

A historical hypertext becomes a three-dimensional image. A black box is divided by four lateral sheets of glass inscribed from edge to edge with layers of finely printed texts. The text layers are illuminated from below. The texts are reconstructed from the tens of thousands of biographical fragments.

As one peers into this sea of information, it is as if one stares into a bottomless well filled with multiple levels of floating texts in depth. One focuses one's eyes on any given text fragment on a given level, as the other text levels defocus and blur, becoming illegible. One's attention might wander to a remote or nearby fragment, our eyes continually refocusing as we isolate and connect a related or unrelated name or phrase.

A grain of sand is propelled into our field of vision for a single moment, separating forground from background, only to vanish gradually into the collective ocean of memory. The intention is to realize, in three dimensions, a hypertext as a metaphorical space which contains in compressed form a database of all mankind.

Texts from: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933

Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1995
In Medias Res, Istanbul, 1996
Jewish Museum, Vienna, 1997
Veletrzni Palac, National Gallery, Prague, 1997
Jewish Museum, Franfurt am Main, 2005

Production was realized in 1991 as a commission from Inventionen '91, Berlin and the DAAD program; and later at the Gasteig, München; Secession Wien, (Wiener Fest Wochen); in Kulturpalast Dresden; in 1994 at the Berlin Festival in Prague (in Czech Language); in 1995 at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and the Goethe Institute Budapest (in Hungarian Language); and in 1997 at the Zurich Theater Spektakel, Stadtheater Ludwigshaven, and at Festspielhaus Hellerau-Dresden.

The production won the Philip Morris Art Prize in 1992.

Materials: Computer synchronized slide projection system, eight channel sound environment, 16 mm film projection

Performers: three speakers of texts, composition performed by The Orchestra of Excited Strings; Vocalist: Shelley Hirsch

Set in a Procenium arch situation, in which a series of scrim material walls divide the stage space laterally into several light zones. Private (amateur) photographs and films, and documentary sound materials (language and music) representing the regions and the time period have been selected from archives and personal collections. Light and shadow integrate the performers within the projections. An opera libretto composed of textual historical fragments was sung and spoken by the performers.

Texts from: Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933
Images: Horus Archive, Private Film Archive, Budapest
Image Composition: Etta Von Cramer
Sound Material: German Radio Archive.
Sound Composition by Hans Peter Kuhn
Stage and Light Design, Co-Direction: Fred Pommerehn
Hypertext: Heiko Idensen

Performances:
Inventionen '91, Kino Babylon, 1991
Wiener Fest Wochen, Vienna, 1991
Kulturpalast, Dresden (Production: Philip Morris), 1991
Gasteig, München (Production: Philip Morris), 1991
Berlin Hier und Jetzt Festival (Dnes a Tady), in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Prague, 1994
Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, 1995
Petrofi Czarnok, Budapest, in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Prague, 1995
Theater Spektakel, Zurich, 1997
Festspielhaus Hellerau-Dresden, 1997
Theater im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen/Rhein, 1997