Within the glass architecture of super bien!, Jakob Kolb stages the act of remembering as a hermetically sealed engine room. An installation consisting of steel-and-glass containers (vessels) overgrown with organic material makes the mechanics of memory and storage visible. The objects are networked via a web of audio cables, and a specially developed LED system visualizes the acoustic processes taking place inside.

At the heart of the work is a networked audio system. In a source performance (Opening), Jakob Kolb feeds voices, text fragments, and songs live into the system from inside the glass pavilion. The audience observes this metabolic process from the outside: through the glass barrier of the space, the combination of rigid steel architecture and organic decay becomes a clinical exhibit. The performance relies on the acoustic texture of the reverberation and the spatial distribution of sound—a soundscape that makes the constant rewriting of the past physically tangible.

After the performance, the live-recorded audio circulates between the pairs of sculptural vessels via integrated mini-speakers, transforming and disintegrating through effect loops, constant repetition, and material resonance.

The performance transitions into a site-specific installation with a total exhibition duration of approximately 6 weeks.

super bien! Berlin

Through the greenhouse’s glass structure, super bien! Berlin aims to offer visitors an experience in which interior and exterior, intimacy and extroversion, public and artistic space are inextricably intertwined and blend into one another. The exhibitions are visible 24/7. The visual permeability of the space fosters a constant exchange between artistic work and its respective spatial-temporal context on site, such as the different seasons, light, and weather conditions. Its unstable conditions—transparency and loss of control, openness and relationship to the constantly changing environment, the visual dissolution of the boundaries of physical space—can become metaphors for our perception and existence. Thus, the unpredictable variability of circumstances becomes an integral part of the installations and events, and repeated visits unfold this potential all the more—the overall perception is reconstituted anew and differently each time.

At the super bien! Berlin Greenhouse, 5–7 site-specific installations produced specifically for this purpose by artists living in Berlin as well as international artists are shown each year. Using a cross-media approach and a wide variety of materials, the focus is on questions regarding public space, nature in the tension between technology and ecology, human and non-human physicality, fragility, and transience, with the exhibition space—the greenhouse—becoming an active component of the artistic work.

Founded: 2006