Category: Artworks

(2025) Kunsthalle Düsseldorf – “IM KINOSAAL”
Film, Installation, Sound

The installation Chronotopic Recordings stages an abandoned laboratory setting that appears like a frozen trace of scientific — and simultaneously fictional — research. It forms part of a long-term space opera project situated between music film, sculptural spatial installation, and interactive opera. The work explores questions of power, identity, and security in a complex present shaped by ambiguity. At its core are shifting notions of guilt, morality, and responsibility — both individual and collective.

The exhibition space transforms into an immersive narrative environment: sculptural elements intertwine with a multichannel sound composition that weaves in musical motifs and song fragments from the opera. Visitors actively intervene in the sonic landscape, becoming participants in a speculative research scenario.

(Music und performance in collaboration 
with Rebecca Himmerich)

One year of pandemic reduced our world to little bubbles, in which we find ourselves all alone as a part of world events. Confronted with themselves, in a suddenly reduces enviroment, the protagonists begin to

A year of the pandemic has reduced our world to small bubbles in which we find ourselves all alone as part of a world event. Confronted with themselves, the two protagonists begin to deal with their suddenly reduced environment. Repeatingly they keep encountering the same topic: change or the absence of these. Every day there seem to be new changes in the pandemic developement and yet everyday life seems the same. What role do plans for the future play? Plans about which one was perhaps not even sure, but now seem all the more desirable because it is uncertain whether they will even be realistic again.

The aftermath seems to lie in uncertainty, the days drag on endlessly and the little joys that you have learned to appreciate again give you a painful sting. It also seems that as time progresses in social isolation with an often invisible and therefore incomprehensible threat on one's own doorstep, reality takes on more and more surreal features.

The following applies: preparing for the end and a new beginning in a time that seems endless.

The spectators accompany the protagonists through the circles they draw in their little bubble, between uncertainty and courage, rediscovery and clinging to the familiar.

Installation, 5 x 5 x 6 m
Music and performance in collaboration with Jonathan Auth

Autists and Aliens is a narrative concert performance, which uses a space ship installation as focus and stage. It playfully discusses the "pop stars" of the art market and questions the standards and rules of the current art scene.

Two aliens, from planet Nemutib arrive with their space ship at the K21. Their demand: "Hand over Damien Hirst" Damien Hirst is a reptile, who gives away new technology to various nations whiles disguising himself as an artist. The two nemutibians are Royal Guards and came to earth to catch Hirst and bring him to the System of Suraki, where his trial awaits him.

With interdisciplinary media and humor the work asks the spectator to change their perspective and not confuse quality with false seriousness.

The work Hypervulva is a kinetic sculpture, that interprets the female genital organ.

www.akademiaoper.com

Something needs to change. We are stuck in a system. Art doesn't seem to be free anymore. Make art for the art market if you want to survive. There seems to be no alternative proposal to this situation.

But there is a whisper through the communities of a new generation: “We have to change something".

Change what? And how?

Dissatisfaction and insecurity spread, but these feelings are difficult to grasp, impossible to name.

The road to success seems logical but hard to master: first the institution, then the market, where we need to prove ourselves within the given guidelines. What is an artist? Which ideals should be represented? How should institutions prepare us? Where should they guide us?

WHAT DO WE WANT TO CHANGE?

“How free is art?” The most urgent question of the current art debate. Every institutional space, each system, has its own laws, its own discourse, its own rules.

But what freedom can art have within the systematised art academy, art market, capitalism, the patriarchal system?

An institution often degenerates into a system that controls behavior and creates conformity, making art a part of the system. Even if it claims to be a critique of the system art which results from the system doesn't change or improve it, owing to the fact that to be seen or heard art is forced to use the characteristics of the system. Art within the art market is synonymous with the latter.

“Success in art is currently analogous with success in patriarchal capitalism (the desire to have money and power). If one benefits from its comforts then capitalism immediately appears less terrible and corrupt than just a moment ago.” (Jolanda Wessel)

The artacademy Düsseldorf as an example for many art institutions

The opera "Akademia" is an experimental opera that deals with the questions and topics mentioned above. It shows the various perspectives of different positions in the institutional system and explains ideals, ideas, fears and personal struggles. The framework for these discourses is an example of different discursive contexts and locations in the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Through the collaboration with over a hundred artists, the project “Akademia” wants to create a more concrete awareness of this topic among artists themselves, as well as the public in general. After graduating from high school, Lara Wittenberg is accepted to the art academy. She gradually learns about its characters and institutions and is soon confronted with the gap between her own ideas and the ruling system. What is being praised as a place of anarchy and freedom slowly develops into the scene of her own doubts, political struggles and hurdles that stand in the way of her own art and thought.

There is a piece of Lara in each of us

Visitors to the Akademia Opera receive a Student ID entering Malkasten Park with the name Lara Wittenberg on it. During the welcoming speech by Elena Ubrig and Aylin Leclaire, on the first of five stages, the visitors are addressed as new students of the Art academy. The character Lara Wittenberg also receives her acceptance letter for the Art academy and joyfully expresses her hopes and expectations. The opening ceremony begins. Beth Stone, the new principal of the art academy, presents her values ​​and ideals which are partly received with hope and enthusiasm, partly with terror and indignation by the students and professors. After the end of the annual opening, the visitor now has the opportunity to choose their own order of the following scenes. As a new student they can visit the Asta Café, join the colloquium of Malstein’s class, participate in a life drawing class of Harald Werl or attend a Senate meeting. Lara Wittenberg reflects on the situation at the end of each of the scenes and has her own personal order, which is still readable for the viewer.

Life drawing with Harald Werl

A few students are drawing the nude model in the middle of the room, others drink beer or are otherwise busy. Harald Werl is sitting on a chair, puffing a cigar and reading the newspaper. The life drawing class is like the Italian marketplace of the art academy; there are stories being told from past times, the current art scene and the latest academy gossip. This life drawing class is the shore of the traditionalists, a rough male-dominated room. Despite the male presence, the class functions as a room for all kinds of characters and Lara chooses to join the life drawing class as her first stage. After getting over her irritation that the room seems to be more of a men's get-together than a class for learning to draw, she discovers the very special charm to this place. She is naturally attracted to the passionate atmosphere that allows open discussion.

Colloquium with Professor Malstein

Lara is attending her first colloquium with Professor Walter Malstein, an aging artist who sways between the role of the wise master artist and the failed, melancholy old man. The students try to assert themselves and their work in front of him. For the first time she feels the importance of artistic creation in her own being and immediately falls into a crisis. By the end of the scene she pulls herself out of it, with newly won energetic resolutions and findings.

The Asta Café

The visitor will find the Asta Café (student union café) in a 20 metre long ship. The student "revolutionaries" sit at a rotating bar and are planning to overthrow the authorities at the academy. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Act soon gets lost in binge drinking. Lara Wittenberg, who has been at the academy for a while now, enters the café in a rage, tired of the academy’s restrictions and requirements. She asks the others to finally take action; she has hope, wants to change something and sees the problem. However, Lara currently only sees these problems in the context of the art academy.

Senate meeting

The high professors are sitting around a long, narrow table, to advise and decide important tasks and plans to do with the future of the academy.  There are big things happening, it seems. But gradually it becomes clear that the senators lose themselves in petty arguments and infighting instead of fighting for their ideals. Lara observes the meeting and is disappointed, she thought here she would be meeting her role models. She understands that the problem of restriction and inaction is more far-reaching, a problem of society as a whole, one that reaches beyond the walls of the academy.

The finale

The spectator returns to the now mirrored first stage, the circle is complete. Everything has repeated itself; a new headmaster welcomes the students and introduces his values ​​and ideals. Lara Wittenberg decides she can no longer only watch and wants to take action, wake people up, make a difference. At the last moment she gets talked down by the people surrounding her and their societal tunnel vision. She breaks down and melts into the ground.

The process

The piece describes our current situation in terms of artistic freedom and takes the perspective of Lara Wittenberg. Each scene represents Lara's reflections and shows the viewer her understanding of the situation. By positioning the piece this way we are able to show that Lara is critical of everyone as a part of the system, not just pointing fingers at authority figures.

During the two-year production process the work took shape over various phases. Aylin Leclaire developed the concept for Akademia for over a year, starting with interviews she conducted with students and graduates of the art academy Düsseldorf. Then research in newspaper articles and literature (e.g. Foucault's "The Order of Discourse" and Gene Sharp's Guide for non-violent revolutionary strategies "from dictatorship to democracy"). Subsequently, Aylin Leclaire wrote a base of the libretto.

Then the work started to take shape with a collective working process. Leclaire founded a text team which utilised the existing libretto written by Leclaire to write the opera Akademia. After several busy weeks of regular collaboration the final libretto was ready.

A composition team of six composers started to transform the text of the opera musically. Composers of various genres worked on the piece and gave each scene a different atmosphere particular to their style of composition.

The basis for the opera was completed. At the same time as talking to the Künstlerverein Malkasten a stage team consisting of several artists began to work on five different stage installations.

An open call, organized by the public-media team, brought almost forty singers and twenty musicians together to start rehearsing the piece in early 2019. Elena Ubrig took over as director of performance, Aylin Leclaire as director of the music. In May 2019 we finally entered the park.

The construction of the stages / installations began and rehearsals took place in the park at their designated venues. At the same time, the technical team implemented a complex PA system on the five stages.

At this moment hundreds of participants were creating a large scale work collaboratively, if someone was needed, there were more than enough people to gladly help out. Everyone was working together, a self-initiated Catering team provided warm meals for everyone around the clock.

After two years of work, the premiere took place on June 11, 2019. In bright sunshine 200 visitors wandered through the Malkasten park for four hours and explored scene by scene. Akademia was performed six times and was completely sold out each performance (with 2000 visiotors in total).

Akademia began with the idea of ​​one person to make an opera. Through the partially democratic work process, Aylin Leclaire organized the individual teams, functioning as a kind of glue for the process. She gave each of the participating artists as much freedom of expression as possible, while taking care of the possibilities of realisation and over time a large and complex collective project emerged.

The special aspect of the project is not that over one hundred artists have gathered to raise their voice to express the need for freedom and criticality, but that one hundred people, through their strong cooperation, have given a counterexample to the current situation and demonstrated a possible solution. This cooperation could not be planned, it only grows from a mixture of desire, suffering, concept and teamwork.

The collective established itself in this project and wants to continue to fight for artistic freedom and is currently working on future strategies.

"Zentrum" (centre) is a sculptural installation made of plastic, fiberglass, light and sound. The centre of the sculpture is a thin part in the middle of a trunk which pulsates with light like a heart. It responds to the rhythms and clicks audible from the corners of the room around the sculpture.

Long tentacles searching for ways through the room towards the corners, growing out of the top and the bottom of the trunk and conquering the space. The 'centre light' also responds to the occasionally occurring soundscapes, audible from the very inside of the sculptures. These soundscapes are modifications of different social situations.

Visitor entering the sculpture’s space find themselves in a non-verbal communicative exchange with the sculpture, as it also reacts to sounds they produce and leaves no space to escape this dialog.

(In collaboration with Glenn Ryszko)

"Conversation-Situation" is a work that deals with the relationship between two people. The work is divided into four sequences showing different stages of such a relationship. Each sequence seems to reveal a communication between two individuals without revealing the explicit dialog, but it transports emotions, atmospheres and a narrative. Occasionally it is possible to catch some words but the complete dialog stays vague, so that that listeners must create content for themselves. The work is about what is NOT said. The sound is presented on a classical tape recorder, containing a twelve minute looped tape.

This sound installation deals with the architectural presence of sound. Aylin Leclaire recorded sounds at four different locations for this work. She constructed sound collages out of these sounds which represent her experience in these spaces. The collages are divided into four sequences, which are presented in a dark, and thus visually undefined space. The entrance of the space is a square hole in a wall. The sounds of the different places transform the space into a dynamic room, where Leclaire's experience and the viewer's perception mix.

The title of this work is a pun referring to this transformation or mixing: Transposition In Four Places -Transpositioning four places. The word transposition can also be found in music theory. By using different speakers and a sound transducer, installed underneath the wooden floor, the architectural impression is intensified.

The performance "Control Station" deals with the role of acoustics and the opportunity to shape rooms by intervening with the existing background noise.

The auditory part of this work consists of three sections, each of which are sound collages, spoken and sung passages. These passages explain Leclaire's thoughts about the content of the sound piece. Within a latex installation, the space is divided into an indoor and an outdoor space. The viewer is outside the latex construction, while Leclaire performs inside it. The latex material, which is made from liquid latex, plastic wrap and iodine bitumen, has a skin-like structure and appearance. Inside the thin latex material lights are installed, which respond to sound. The sound of the performance lights up the latex installation from the inside, so that the construction seems to pulsate like an internal organ and becomes something like a uterus. The spoken and sung text deals with the hypothesis that sound has a huge impact on the perception of space. "I can change a room only by speaking. Nevertheless, the space that forms, is my very own personal space and the space of my counterpart is not properly assessable for me." The light installation additionally depicts this.

The work, produced in 2014, references the painting "The Strawberry Girl" by Joshua Reynolds. It consists of two parts. Both parts treat the almost bizarre scene in Reynolds' painting, which shows a little girl bent over like an old woman, coming out of a dark forest and carrying something in her apron the viewer cannot see. This makes the painting incredibly intriguing.

The first part of the work is a video in collaboration with Conrad Veit where Aylin Leclaire plays the role of the Strawberry Girl. The figure holds a strawberry in her hand and then a thought appears in her mind. This thought distracts her so much that she drops the strawberry. She opens her apron, in which she is carrying something and looks at what is inside, which is unclear to the viewer. She is happy and suddenly her joy becomes a deep pain. She closes her apron. The last image shows the girl in the same pose as in Reynolds' painting.

The second part of the work is an old Mini, which does not look unusual at first glance. However, this car attracts attention from many people even in day to day life. The car windows are painted black from the inside. There are two small holes scratched into the windows where the viewer can see into the car. Through these peepholes, one can see the strawberry girl lying on a dark, cavernous floor, which is completely covered with strawberries. It is unclear whether the girl is sleeping or even alive. The passive viewer leaves the installation feeling that they have encountered something intimate, but with the knowledge of an unrevealed secret.

Both parts of this work suggest and describes a secret that lies within the Joshua Reynolds painting. The figure inside the Mini is a plastic cast of Aylin Leclaire's body, and also the same person in the strawberry girl video.

This work, produced in 2013, is about Aylin Leclaire's alter ego Roswitha Seefichikowski. The yurt-like construction should give the viewer a feeling of meeting Leclaire's alter ego, without actually seeing her. The room is constructed from raw battens and boards, and is situated within a studio used by other artists, camouflaging the true identity of the interior.

When the viewer enters, it becomes obvious that the space is self-contained. The decor of the room consists of objects that are familiar and seem to be from former times. Moreover, the furniture becomes something absurd. The canopy bed for example, is built from many other furniture parts and objects such as a piano, cabinets, and books. Instead of a mattress there is a carpet that mimics a mountain landscape, with little black houses sitting in the folds (or valleys) of the carpet. The canopy-ceiling is an upturned table top, chairs break through it and appear to freeze while falling. The desk is also a broken table top with a hole in the right side that reveals a golden miniature city. The left drawer of the desk contains a tiny forest. Under the desk, tree roots hover, holding a dollhouse interior. In the right drawer, looking through a tunnel of foliage and tree branches, one can see Joshua Reynold's painting "Strawberry Girl". The entire space is divided into small interlocking rooms that become episodes or clips. These give the impression of diving into memories of a person's life. Some of the rooms are concrete, whereas others blur into transfigurations and dreams. Upon leaving the space, the viewer should feel as if they have met Roswitha. The homage gives the viewer the oppertinuity to observe her character, however if only with their eyes.