Mischa Kuball: ReMix/BrocaII (Letters/Numbers)

The multimedia installation »ReMix/Broca II (Letters/Numbers)« will open the international exhibition tour of the work of Mischa Kuball (*1959), a light and media artist from Düsseldorf, Germany, at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art. Kuball has worked conceptually with light for more than twenty years, and in a unique way has linked light, which is otherwise largely considered an aesthetic medium, with social and political statements. Within his complex and multifarious work, the pieces that confront human communication form a specific concentration. “I am interested in language as a function of a code—that is, in the sense of coding and de-coding,” says Kuball. Presented for the first time is the new, extensive multimedia installation »ReMix/Broca II (Letters/Numbers)«, which is a further development of his earlier work, »broca'sche areal«. With both of these works, Kuball refers to the eponymous brain region, which forms language capability, and thereby the basic conditions for human communication. Taking six different rotating projectors as a point of departure, in »ReMix/Broca II (Letters/Numbers)«, letters and numbers are cast on the walls of a room. This leads to the chance overlapping of a multitude of connections of meaning from various semantic areas, which generates the need to construct meaning. In addition, sculptural elements in the room reflect the light of the projectors; these sculptural elements are the artist's digitized brain waves transferred to three dimensions. In this way, grasping, expressing, and representing thoughts are all connected on different levels as the preliminary stage of communication. “When language and light come together, the basic elements of knowledge are present” (Kuball).

»ReMix/Broca II (Letters/Numbers)« is a collaborative project by the Ruhr-Universität/Neuropsychologie, Bochum, the HfG Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe, and ZKM.