Katharina Kneip

untitled (poem)

(untitled)poem

2016

exhibition view - Rundgang2016,Münster

ca 1,75x1,75x3,45m

MDF plates, wood, different fabrics, isolationmaterial,a singing person

I’m inside in the dark - singing - singing for me and for people I don’t see. They look at the construction, hear my voice - wondering whether there is a real person inside or just a loudspeaker. Some fear to touch it - they knock, not aware that I hear them talking, that I am answering their questions and their laughing. Then I feel the vibration of people sitting down, smell their perfume through the tube system, feel them waiting for something to happen, then calming down and being touched by a voice being somehow too close and intimate to them. I know, they are sitting in the dark on a soft pillow in a cosy, warm chair - the cover is touching their heads gently, they are alone with them-self and hear less from outside but me so close - singing only for them. Some sit for a long time, others get excited and feel scared, children imitate me and they are the only ones recognizing my answers.

I think of the poem above my head - about us - things repeating, continuing, going away - about the spaces in all of us being so close to each other - beeing part of multiple systems. Sometimes you can hear me from far away, sometimes only when you are sitting in one of the five chairs.

When I don’t sing, I take down the cover. You can sit down - read the poem before and wait in the dark, the noise from outside comes in stronger through the tubes without the cover. In the different moments it remains still - standing and in a way quiet; there is a switch between inside and outside, seeing, seeing nothing, being seen and becoming part of the construction, the change between produced loneliness through singing, the noise of the surroundings and the loneliness in you.