In the middle of May 2022, during their Version Room residency at Circa 106, Heike Kati Barath, Lui Kohlmann and Julian Hespenheide transformed the gallery space into an open invitation to encounter chance and choice from three different perspectives. Between the three different components, a Projection-Animation, a Software Oracle and anthropomorphic life forms, common themes of repetition, randomness and selection were shared.
See full documentation on the Circa106 website.
The exhibition Chance and Choice is the result of the collaboration between Heike Kati Barath, Lui Kohlmann and Julian Hespenheide where the three explored the motif of randomness, selection and choice.
In her component “A portrait of some-no-one” for The Dynamic Archive, Heike Kati Barath, encourages visitors of the archive to change, draw, add, reflect, print, scan, make it move or make it what you want. look for a portrait. Her work is a vast array of smaller components, drawn and in text form, that can be re-arranged to form new output. In the Circa106 space, Kati showed, for the fist time in an exhibition context, her video animation instead of her paintings and drawings.
Lui Kohlmann and Julian Hespenheide took Kati’s invitation to form versions of the original component.
“A portrait of some quadropods” is Lui’s contribution. She created anthropomorphic life forms, so-called Quadropods, gave them shapes and new forms of expression and transferred them from the archive to the real life as a small of archive of artefacts.
Julian’s version of the component is called “Stochastic Oracle”. It takes in the contours and eyes of the original component as a sort of database and combines it with randomness to permutate outcomes for the future. Texts that are generated from the software are tightly bound to I Ching (the Book of Changes) a chinese divination manual for cleromancy.
Chance and Choice is the fifth installment of the Program Version Room related to the project The Dynamic Archive in the space of Circa 106.
All photos by Jimmy Liu
Biographies
Heike Kati Barath
Born 1966, Kati Barath lives and works in Berlin and Bremen. From 1990-98, she studied at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Gent and at the Kunstakademie Münster. Since 2016 she has held the position of a professor for figurative painting at the University of the Arts Bremen. She has exhibited internationally since 2001, among others in: Galerie Mark Müller Zurich, Cokkie Snoei Rotterdam, Art Tower Mito Japan, Frissiras Museum Athen, Beging Biennale Bejing,, Xi´an Art Museum China, James Fuentes New York, Bonnefanten Roermond, Kunsthalle Palazzo Liestal, Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Bremerhaven, Columbus Art Foundation Leipzig and many others.
Julian-Anthony Hespenheide is a german designer in the fields of Interaction Design. In his work, he creates compelling complex installations to tell peculiar stories about the digital and opens a discussion space in the analog sphere. His work emphasizes on converging the digital with design, art, science and technology to create novel concepts and a better understanding of the future. He is holding a M.A in Digital Media from the University of the Arts Bremen (HFK), Germany.
Lui Kohlmann (1995) studied fine arts in Bremen from 2014 to 2020 in the class of Katrin von Maltzahn and graduated with a diploma. Her work includes poems, artist books, card games, short stories, papercuts, installations, comics, GIFs and animated films, which she presents in exhibitions, at readings or at zine festivals. She is the founder of the Quadropod Research Society.