Musik der Anomalie – Stimme der Menschen

The installation »Musik der Anomalie – Stimme des Menschen« [Music of the Anomaly – the Human Voice] consists of portraits of physically disfigured people, a sandstone sculpture, a concrete sculpture in a corner with the German word »Schrei« (scream) and a plate of glass with the words »Musik der Anomalie – Stimme des Menschen« in asphalt. The images of the mutilated people ask us the question of who and what a human is and who defines being human. Is the cry of need the real voice of humanity, the frozen, suffocated, silent cry of the creature? Are abnormal anatomies, anatomical anomalies, the limits of humanity? Or is the actual wellspring of humanism the imagination, the longing for transcendence, the desire to overcome the limits of what exists?

Part of the installation is a sandstone sculpture from 1974, on which the first notes of the composition »Arcana« (1927) by French composer Edgard Varèse and the word »magination« are carved. Varèse refers to a saying of Paracelsus: »There is one star, higher than all the others. This is the star of the apocalypse. The second is the ascendent. The third is that of the elements which are four in number. There are therefore six firmly established stars. In addition, there is another star, the imagination, which produces a new star and a new sky.« Varèse himself says: »It is the imagination that gives form to dreams.« The stone is intended to show that petrified conditions can be changed by the imagination.