2023, performance & installation
gold, copper, silver, steel, leather, cotton, linen, pigment
12 min & dimensions variable
Rathaus für Kultur, Lichtensteig, CH
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2024, sound & scent installation
gold, copper, silver, steel, leather, cotton, pigment, resin
dimensions variable, 60 min stereo sound
Johanniterkirche Feldkirch, AT
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2024, sound & scent installation
gold, copper, silver, steel, leather, cotton, pigment, motor
dimensions variable, analogue sound
Gasometer Triesen, LI
On 7 July 2023, Martina Morger walks with a train through the main street of Lichtensteig (CH). She drags an object with bells that resemble intestines noisily on the ground behind her. The bells serve both as a sign of announcement as well as a warning. "Do ghöörsch es!" the artist speaks in local dialect as she walks and embodies the figure of Frida, who has been resurrected 92 years after her death in order to echo the words of her mother. At the crown, she finally hoists the object up and attaches it to the upper gate. The performance is an emancipatory act that deals with the theme of shared suffering and a stimulus to reflect on the writing of history historiography: Who writes history? How can history be rewritten? How is history told?
Bella Bells can be found at Hauptgasse 2 (Krone/Obertor), Lichtensteig (CH). Thank you to Än Oswald (assistance), Gaby Morger (costume), Lukas Zerbst (artist care & photography), Patrick Götzl from Scherrer Metallbau (metal construction), Marcel Hörler (curation & text).
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Martina Morger has laid out a field of 1000 bells in the abandoned archaeological site. They are made of different materials and intended for different purposes: Bells, jingles, call bells and chimes. With this compression into a powerful and at the same time meditative-reflective image, the multimedia artist illuminates the contrasting functions of bells as a signal of warning and as a sound of joy. Roland Scotti: "We know these instruments because they chime the hour in our culture, they acoustically mark outstanding ceremonial events in the Christian liturgy and unmistakably clock the flow of time - that embedding in transience from which we would only love to escape. So it comes as no surprise that bells - globally in almost every cultural context - have become symbols of a connection between earth and sky, the profane and the sacred, even a cosmic harmony."
Is the silence of the bells here in St John's Church only just beginning or is it about to end? Martina Morger is interested in this moment of uncertainty: her minimalist sound installation seems like an echo of the memory that once rang, now silently slumbering on the church floor.
Another element of the exhibition is a resin fragrance, composed out of 12 components. The room is repeatedly fumigated with this resin mixture. Roland Scotti: "Conceptually, Martina Morger's intervention addresses all our senses - a sensory, emotional and intellectual totality; certainly with the intention through a challenge or an overstrain to liquefy the seemingly fixed - the world that we see and believe in. Martina Morger keeps things in limbo in such a way that questions of life are not only made possible, but necessary."
Thank you to the team of Johanniterkirche & especially Arno Egger (curation), Karin Guldenschuh (text & publication), Roland Adlassnigg (technical lead), Christoph Frick (scent) & Roland Scotti (speech).
Photos by Hanes Sturzenegger, Lukas Zerbst & Ursula Dünser