wandlungen des ich < 77ichs > . september 16 - october 15 2017

st margret’s chapel of st peter’s abbay . salzbourg

overview

the site-specific spatial & sound installation << wandlungen des ich < 77ichs >> (“metamorphoses / transformations of being < 77 egos > / < 77 i’s >”) was made between 2015 and 2017 and addresses the topic of living and dying. ‘dying’ is used here additionally in the sense of ‘letting go’. we are not talking about death. a central element is the poem < 77 i’s > written in early 2015, which talks about ego and the letting go of & from the ego, in both playful.serious language.

originally, the work was devised in an improvised garage wrested from the moenchsberg and cladded out in black. only later did the idea coalesce in connection with st margret’s chapel and its very special & remarkable late gothic ‘firmament’.

florian boehm's texts on life & its understanding, spoken by werner friedl, awaken the various emotional facets of the stage.ing. they invite the visitor to immerse himself in them & and to experience them on his own account.

between two and three thousand visitors attended the stage.ing, which was generously provided by archabbot korbinian birnbacher of the benedictine order and sponsored by land salzburg.

statement . question . play

it is not death that is signifi.cant : but dying . as a process .

how does boehm alight upon this theme ? death concerns us . life (living) concerns us . but the pair of opposites is wrongly cited : it should be ‘living and dying’ .

life implies dying just as dying implies living . living is actively done , dying is actively done . the act of coming into being at the start is however passive : being.born (or perhaps not : sperm actively flow towards the egg ). thus a gift to the one being.born : through its mother's pain . but of course the one being.born plays its im.portant part in the birth .

conception of the installation

temporary cladding of walls up to the bezel in black : a cloth that does not allow much light to pass
cross-ribs and vaults (the vaults of the heavens, or firmament) remain visible and give the space a framework
three coffins (or coffin lids) are positioned in the chapel for visitors to lie on
the poem < 77 i’s > is read by werner friedl & four more texts are played in the loop
video projection between ground and heavens conveys the space between the spheres