From September 28 to October 18, 2013, the Quartier am Hafen studio house in Cologne-Poll presented an interdisciplinary installation with new works by the artists Gonzalo H. Rodriguez and Kuai Shen, curated by Anne Mager, as part of its exhibition program.
The starting point for the exhibition “The Initiate (You) & The Mystics (Them)” were two of the most successful and complex social models on the planet: humans and ants. Gonzalo H. Rodriguez (born in Peru in 1981, studied at San Francisco University and the Catholic University in Quito/Ecuador and at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne) and Kuai Shen (born in Ecuador in 1978, studied at the San Francisco University of Quito/Ecuador and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne) did not simply juxtapose the two spheres of biology and sociology, but rather developed a dynamic and documentary ritual. In the exhibition space of the Quartier am Hafen, they presented a seamless, organic and artistic fusion of visual stagings. In a three-part room installation, the two artists, who are working together artistically for the first time here, combined biological and sociological aspects with media, narrative and performative elements – and living organisms.
The exhibition space became a laboratory and discursive sphere, a research and living space. The focus was on a large-scale installation of transparent acrylic spheres that housed specially bred ant colonies. Film recordings that illuminated this ecosystem showed analogies between the social-parasitic ant state and human social life. The essayistic film, which was shown as the second component of the exhibition, combined urban observations and alienated socio-scientific statements into a poetic and mystical narrative. The sound and diaper performance at the opening expanded the multimedia scenario to include the themes of exoticism, mysticism and ritualized relationships. Gonzalo H. Rodriguez and Kuai Shen used images, sound and text to investigate anthropological questions and the ritual transformation from human to animal.
With “The Initiate (You) & The Mystics (Them)”, the artist duo crossed the boundaries of scientific disciplines and artistically reunited them. Gonzalo H. Rodriguez and Kuai Shen created a complex world of life and thought that examines the parallels and differences in the phenomenology of humans and ants. Because, according to the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss: “You must first observe the differences in order to discover the properties.”
With the kind support of the Kunststiftung NRW and the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne.
