'MIKRO SILENCE' by Nschotschi Haslinger at Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne

In Mikro Silence Nschotschi Haslinger creates an installative connection between sculpture and drawing, with the intermediary as an auditive intervention. Her pictorial worlds contain quaint, dream-rooted creatures that possess a magical presence of history. Among them, enchanted figures, animals and body parts, such as frogs, ouroboroi or feet with the bones of a leg still protruding. Dolls, like small creatures, find fragile shelter in their beds. It is a world where bumper cars have warm, living fur. Even if this environment is strange to us at first, it seems to be aware of our presence and invites us on an expedition. Everything appears to be in motion and in interaction. Immersed in a journey or a trance, the figures seduce us. Physical tensions are visible and female apparitions are eager to spread their matriarchal wisdom. There is scurrying and flickering. The readiness for transformation, for change – metamorphosis – is noticeably forming. The lush vegetative landscapes are alive and taken by those creatures that counter these forests and caves, the places of romantic longing. At the same time, they keep alive the flow that conditions this idea of nature.

 

Nschotschi Haslinger layers various aspects of mythology and escapism into a new world: fantastic elements in the form of acting animals or objects, sorceries as well as sexual temptation. By their very nature, fairy tales harbor a moment of utopia, often in socially realistic or socially utopian form, bringing social conditions to light. This includes reflections on domination and power structures, gender roles, sexuality and family structures. The artist uses this traditional moral structure to generate a charged mood in which fairy tales also seem meaningful to adults and extensive primordial fantasies are lived out. In the process, her seductive creatures function as an initial, a ritual transition – a votive offering, as it were. The visitors themselves can become part of the journey and bed down, audio-visually connecting with the Other. The bedding, showing oneself unprotected and listening to the singing with the shy face, stands for the inner journey towards protection and security.

 

It is its own cosmos, its own universe, its own complex world of life – with contours that radiate a certain hardness – touches, looks and actions that surround something dark and mysterious. The protagonists oscillate between closeness and distance, security and being at the mercy of others. The scenes function as stories without a fixed chronology, which can be defined more as an in-between space. This space is able to be part of a placeless dream, as part of our fantasies. We are also able to grow in the darkness and in the pleasant realms of utopias.