ntv.de / Panorama / 03.11.2024

Water, Dancing Thistles, and a Black Hole Upset Perception at the Langen Foundation

The artist collective “Troika” occupies the museum and is also a guest at Art Cologne. ntv.de visited their studio.

Chains hang from the ceiling. A power drill sits on a huge wooden table, waiting for its turn. An axe, pliers, and other tools hang neatly on the wall. Brushes stand, freshly cleaned, by a sink. Despite the neatness, there’s a creative chaos in the air at the “Troika” studio. Everything was built by the artists themselves, including the furniture, they tell ntv.de during a visit in London.

“It’s usually not this tidy here,” says Eva Rucki. Along with Conny Freyer and Sebastian Noel, she is part of “Troika.” In this narrow house, located in a courtyard, they create their surprising artworks, which are shown internationally. Everything created in London last year is currently on display at the Langen Foundation in Neuss. With their exhibition “Pink Noise,” the trio challenges the perception of the audience.

Curious visitors are greeted with sounds from nowhere before they even enter the museum on the Foundation Island of Hombroich near Neuss. What sounds familiar, almost like birdsong, are acoustic signals from space, recorded in Antarctica by a low-frequency receiver. This heavenly choir is generated by geomagnetic storms and lightning activity. Without complex technology, it would be imperceptible to the human ear, even as static noise.

In a room six meters underground at the Langen Foundation, “Troika” has completely flooded the space. With a shimmering black water basin in the basement, the three artists reflect the water basin in front of the house and also evoke the region’s history of lignite mining. Visitors can walk over rock slabs to balance toward a curtain of water droplets. However, the water rushes from the basin toward the ceiling. Is gravity truly defied? No. The human brain is simply tricked. It’s worth taking a trip to Neuss to experience this.

Capitalist Hunger

The flooded room takes on a dystopian feel with orange lighting and floating, water-stalking beings made from digital archives of museum objects. Everything reflects the gloomy atmosphere “of a post-industrial society in which we live,” says Sebastian Noel.

“When we visited the museum for the first time in 2015, we immediately thought it would be great to do an exhibition here,” he recalls. The fact that the Langen Foundation is located on the site of a former NATO missile station, now surrounded by art, nature, and agriculture, intrigued “Troika” deeply, adds Eva Rucki. When the request came years later, they immediately knew they wanted to say yes and fulfill their dream.

For over a year, they engaged with the minimalist building structure of concrete and glass designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. They didn’t just create site-specific works in their studio; they also spent time in the half-floor beneath the roof, discussing and refining all the details of their works. On a long desk sit three large screens, surrounded by thick stacks of books. These include volumes on scientific and philosophical topics, as well as feminist writings, many on economic systems and climate change. The questions that occupy them are: “What damage is caused by capitalist hunger for ever-new technologies? How does technology change our lives and our relationship with nature? And how can we translate this as artists without becoming too preachy?”

 

Idyllic or Natural Disaster?

The two Germans, born in 1976, and the one-year-younger Frenchman, met in London at the Royal College of Art. Shared themes and an endless flow of discussion led them to organically form “Troika” in 2003.

“We started in a living room,” says Conny Freyer, looking around the studio they moved into two years ago. On the first floor, they work a lot with paint. Here, large pixel paintings are created using only 16 colors of red, green, and blue. Red, green, and blue are the limited palette that machines use to see. The viewer of the painting now becomes the machine and recognizes in small dots palm trees swaying in the wind. What may be read as idyllic, however, actually depicts scenes of natural disasters, recorded by environmental monitoring systems before they were destroyed. Billions of such images are stored unseen on servers, consuming so much energy that they contribute to further environmental damage.

In their installations, video works, sculptures, and paintings, the group addresses the relationship between digital and real worlds, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. “Troika” explores the blurred boundaries between “nature and artificiality, realism and romanticism, the living and the non-living, us and the others,” as the curatorial duo Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman write in the exhibition text. In daily life, technology drives people forward, and the digital world influences everyday life beyond screens. The infinite amounts of captured data fuel profit, changing society and the environment.

“Troika” uses the latest technology in their artworks, attempting to make the audience aware of their disorientation in this brave new world. The themes are not easy to digest, but the art is attractively beautiful. “It’s a little trap we’ve set,” says Sebastian Noel with a smile.

How Limited Our Senses Are

For twenty years, they have worked hand in hand, complementing each other perfectly. They have learned to combine science and technology with their multifaceted art. The black hole, floating in an almost empty room, reveals itself as a geometric figure upon closer inspection. Depending on the position, it transforms into a square, a hexagon, and back to a circle. Black pigments absorb all light reflections. Once again, it becomes clear how limited our senses are.

Oh, and then there are those blue glowing thistles. They grow from a pile of promisingly shimmering silicon stones. Even as you wonder whether plants could actually grow there, they awaken into living beings. They start to dance. What is human imagination, and what is technological illusion? Everything seems to blend together at the Langen Foundation. Questions arise, swirling in your mind. “Troika” pushes us to rethink the way we use digital technologies.

“Pink Noise” runs until March 16 at the Langen Foundation, Raketenstation Hombroich 1, 41472 Neuss.

“Troika” at Galerie Max Goelitz, booth A-204, Messeplatz 1, 50679 Cologne.

Source: ntv.de

 

Pink Noise,
Langen Foundation
01.09.2024 – 16.03.2025

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