Paul Spengemann
One World, One Sky
31.10. – 14.11.2021

Boredom is a deadly danger. One way out is immersion in the spectacle, immersion in a second world within the first. The attraction of immersion, however, is not based on genuine deception, not on complete belief in the reality of the second world, but on the knowledge of the fabrication of what is presented. It must never be completely forgotten that the puppet is hanging by a thread, that there is a machine from which the spirit comes. Even the most technically adept and convincing illusion still contains a small remnant of the will to consciously deceive oneself, of amazement at one’s own ability to bring imaginary things to life. When the illusion is perfect, boredom returns.

With “One World, One Sky”, Paul Spengemann takes up the title of a fulldome planetarium show by the company Liberty Science Center, which stages virtual realities for children in Los Angeles and Beijing. In the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, laser beams project an astral being onto the wall: two stars as eyes, a moon as a mouth. It sparkles, sings, flies, cries and laughs, driven by the invisible hand on the computer mouse. The dilettantish, aimless animation of this disembodied marionette contains a poetics of animation that translates the elaborate immersive worlds of the entertainment industry back into the children’s room, where the naive virtuoso playfully and effortlessly conjures up one world after another. Childlike playfulness undermines object fetishism. Either the hands of a DIY craftsman or those of a baroque sovereign who sees the world as a mirror of his power rub against the magic lamp, which contains a genie. But no one really knows what to do with it.

Elias Wagner on the exhibition “One World, One Sky”, text fragment.

Curated by Klaus Becké.