Interview with the space and time-bending artists collective RaumZeitPiraten by Dessislava Berndt
Monument for a forgotten future / RaumZeitPiraten in Gelsenkirchen 2012 from RaumZeitPiraten on Vimeo.
Who are the RaumZeitPiraten? How did you come up with the idea of this concept?
We are RaumZeitPiraten, a space and time-bending artists collective. We started working in 2007 as a group because we felt the need to get out of the spirals of egocentric self-stimulation. Apart from the very inspiring concept of the four-dimensional “Raumzeit” of Albert Einstein, space and time are determining elements of perception and creation. As pirates we feel free to mess around with these elements as we please, sailing away from industrial and commercial interests to custom-built lands.
CinemaBackyard – BreitSeite / CycloCopter – RaumZeitPiraten from RaumZeitPiraten on Vimeo.
Can you describe the development process of a project?
The development process of a project is an organically growing, a heterogeneous mix-up, much like the project itself. Conceptual fragments collide with reality, shattering to even more fragments of uncertainty, ping-ponged between the members of our group, reflected by the distorting audience, bouncing off the walls on-site, spontaneously accumulating to lumps of new experiences and perspectives, falling apart again into small pieces of memory, maybe reforming itself in another time at another place in another manner…
licht-klang-rhizom from RaumZeitPiraten on Vimeo.
What is the aim of your projects? What would you like to express and achieve with them?
The project is RaumZeitPiraten. It���s a collective body of work which has started to take effect on many levels. In a social context, questions of alternative and collaborational forms of organization are raised. What can worn out terms like democracy or labour mean today if reanimated? On the level of aesthetical categories, we explore the practicability of philosophical and psychological concepts like the “rhizome” of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and we even dare to continue proceedings in the indistinct field of alchemy in the sense of a psychoanalytic interpretation of C.G. Jung. As instrument makers, we are interested in the relationships of humans and technology and demand a more creative and questioning approach. One overarching priority is the attempt to create realms of experience that can be used as tools of knowledge.
CycloCopter – RaumZeitPiraten from RaumZeitPiraten on Vimeo.
Who or what influenced your work?
The list is long. Our work, what we do and what we are would not be possible without former achievements in human efforts like science, art or technology. A Licht-Raum-Modulator of Moholy-Nagy can be as inspiring as a psychological concept of alchemy of C. G. Jung or a walk in the park with a friend. A short techno-philosophical essay of Vilém Flusser can cheer us up as much as a visit to the techno-club can. The malfunctioning copy-machine can generate creative energies in us and a Wikipedia article on parasitic life forms can too. The brand new, smaller, and even more efficient solar panel awakens our interest as much as the old broken slide projector from the neighbour´s garbage does.
What do you like about your work?
It feels good to work in a field which does not reduce us to a single function decoupled from the rest of life.
Photo: RaumZeitPiraten
Due to the various fields of activity as RaumZeitPiraten, we have the opportunity to explore our potential as self-determined individuals and learn about collective processes whilst at the same time trying to share our experiences with our fellow beings.
Photo: RaumZeitPiraten
RaumZeitPiraten are a space and time bending artists collective. With custom-built opto-acoustic instruments, they are misusing and remixing ancient and up-to-date audio and visual technologies for heterogeneous, organically improvised light and sound architectures. Their activities are aimed at playful, experimental connections of sound, image, object, space and time to an alternately-self-expanding-multimedia-performance-surround-spaceship-laboratory-travel to somewhere between science and fiction.
