What kind of world do you grow into as a young person? How have past generations have constructed this world and left their mark on it? How can one transform inherent systems and structures into one’s own and make use of them? That are questions asked by artists Lisa Seebach (*1981, Cologne) and Julia Charlotte Richter (*1982, Gießen) in their multimedia installation Aren't you the one who can remember the future?.
We find ourselves in an enigmatic mental landscape reminiscent of an abandoned high-voltage scientific laboratory and excerpts from a dystopian playground. The expansive installation appears like an enlarged drawing translated into sculptural materials. Video monitors are embedded between plateau-like, shiny steel elements, wall-mounted arrangements of rods, fragile framework constructions and futuristic machines. They display a group of teenagers whose members move about the installation like accomplices in a special forces mission. They follow seemingly fixed yet inexplicable patterns of activity: Objects are shifted, rolled, hung and passed on to other members. Seebach and Richter direct our attention to the developmental stage of adolescence, where the past rests in childhood but the future has yet to be written.
The work is based on a participatory approach: Among those involved in the video recordings were members of the Kunsthalle Bremen New Perceptions youth curatorship, pupils from the Bremen Mitte comprehensive school and singers from the Bremer Bürger*innenchor.