& SARAH HUBER
NEXUS PLEXUS
Installation, Video and Sound, 2024
Sarah Huber and Johanna Mangold explore models of reality and states of consciousness in their artistic collaboration.
They employ the concept of play as a tool to understand the world as a complex simulation. In their artistic practice, they interweave archetypal symbols, ritual motifs, and elements of science fiction and pop culture with scientific and theoretical paradigms. They investigate how ritual actions influence the connectivity between humans, other living beings, and the Earth, and the effects this has on human consciousness. The mechanisms of the psyche and the dynamics of physical interactions are essential fields of research in their work.
Through their experimental approach to heterogeneous streams of information, they create poetic works that invite viewers to renegotiate the boundaries between reality and fiction, consciousness and dream, science and mysticism.
… that we are protrusions, individual subunits of a greater, more advanced being. A being with the will to reduce chaos and weave patterns, networks of every kind and color. From the urge to connect, diverse avatars were created, with which the One pretends to be Many, using us for stimulating self-dialogues. Interaction between two units accelerates growth and, ideally, the quality of this reality.
By jumping back and forth between the perspective of the greater whole and the positions of the subunits, we attune ourselves. We renegotiate. We move. We emerge, and we submerge …
exhibition view, Wunderkammer Naturalia Artificialia Stuttgart, 2024
two-channel video, Sound, Text, 12:50min, 2024
The work NEXUS PLEXUS consists of a wooden construction, small sculptures, and a two-channel video installation with sound.
The wooden object, which—with its carved lines, pencil drawings, and arrangement of lines and symbols—resembles a game board, is populated by a variety of small sculptures. The lines and symbols represent the nodes of a network, with which the objects symbolically interact as embodiments of various archetypes and states of consciousness, illustrating different processes of awareness.
The two-channel video, displayed on two side-by-side screens, features various sequences, including performative elements as well as 2D and 3D animations, forming a collage-like composition. This is accompanied by analog synthesizer compositions and spoken text.
The work engages with simulation theories, such as those of physicist Thomas Campbell, which propose that we are avatars in a reality created by a higher consciousness. At the same time, it depicts various actions reminiscent of rituals or games, offering a way to anchor oneself in this world or to establish contact with another, inner world.
NEXUS PLEXUS navigates the intersections of science, magic, and science fiction, inviting viewers to playfully adopt new perspectives on how we perceive reality.