Installation and Soundtrack by Philipp Zuercher
Foto: © Vera Rüttimann
Velostation Bicycle Parking Bahnhof Bern
March 5th Trough April 3Rd, 2021
Kunst kreuzt Weg is an annual event by Open Parish Heiliggeist Bern, celebrating Passiontide. 14 contemporary artists are to create new interpretations on the traditional stations of the cross.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, this year’s event will be taking place in a different form: a kind of orienteering along places of public interest in the city of Bern. See map below.
Station of the Cross XII. „Dying“
(Installation and Soundtrack by Philipp Zuercher)
I consider my art to be some kind of «Dichtung» (poetry) in the sense of «Verdichtung» (densification), in both space and time, as a sculpture including a soundtrack.
Combining ancient metaphors and symbols in order to create new ones. Somewhere between life and death, where «dying» is taking place.
My father, who died a few weeks ago, claimed that dying was «each person’s end of the world». That made me think of the Apocalypse and consequently I compared the Book of Revelation with the Passion narrative and found some striking similarities as well as many a source of inspiration for this piece of art. I consider the result – visible as well as audible but only temporarily – to be some sort of manifestation.
On the Installation
A kind of crucifiction, composed of a guitar hero, the angel announcing the end of time, as well as Baron Samedi (Loa of Death and Resurrection) and Nataraja (Hindu deity Shiva’s reincarnation as the King of Dance).
On the Soundtrack
«Gloria» sung by an electronically alienated boys choir. Voices of Thunder in Chinese and Hebrew: «I am the One-Who-Will-Be», «I am the Beginning and the End» etc.
A synthesized singing bowl (of wrath?) moving across the skies. A guitar solo once referred to as schizoid by a female listener. And a poem on my father’s fear of dying.
Vera Rüttimann, a Swiss photographer based in Berlin, has analysed urban emergences of the human search for meaning for over a decade. While visiting Bern and the Kunst kreuzt Weg’s stations of the cross, she shot a series of strong images.
