HEALING
My sound sculpture "H.E.A.L. (Hemostasis, Entzündung [Inflammation], ProliferAtion, RemodeLing)" embodies in 4 phases with a total length of 12min my engagement with the work series "Suicide" by Valérie Favre in the context of the theme "Healing".
The 4 phases of the sound sculpture represent the 4 medical phases of wound healing. The bleeding is stopped, the infection is fought, new tissue is formed and finally everything is reorganized. In the exhibition, the work is placed as a loop opposite the "Test and Rest" works from Valérie Favre's suicide series and enters into a dialogue with it. Healing here is a painful process, it is change, and death as an absolute certainty is met with horror but without denying it, acknowledging its complexity, with due ambiguity, sensitively and carefully. It challenges suicide as the ultimate means of healing and suggests devotion to both life and death as an alternative.
"H.E.A.L." was created in residency at WhiteSpaceBlackBox in May 2023 with sound material collected on site.

On May 6, I wrote a personal letter to Valérie from my residency. The following is an excerpt translated from German:

--

But is wishing for healing mere nostalgia? Or what is healing then?

My album about longing offers these matter of fact lines on the song "Feel Ok":

Es fließt Blut wenn man uns schneidet
Doch wir können auch wieder heilen

(Blood flows when we are cut
But we can also heal again)

[...]

Many years earlier, I wrote an entire song about healing. It was partly inspired by the Second Merseburg Charm - a spell meant to heal injured horses. [...] The song is entitled "For the Sequel".

Es trat heran der Erste mich gesund zu machen
Und es blutet und es knackt
Und wo alles war zurecht getan
Ein wunderbares Lächeln mich fragt wie mein erster Kuss denn war

(The first one approached to make me healthy
And it bleeds and it cracks
And where all was made right
A wonderful smile asks me what my first kiss was like)

Healing is not repairing. A healing is not going back to the old, is always incomplete, is reshaping, ends with "remodeling", in the wound and in the world. The world and the universe as a delicate tissue - Everything is made of flesh, everything rubs, inflames and heals. Healing is forward looking. Therefore, death is allowed to be final. The cycles of life draw their radius in a wide arc around us, we are not to turn with them, but simply swim our courses.

Calman


BIO
Calman is a young german artist (born 1994), living in Berlin. His work focuses mainly on the media of painting and music. Since 2019 studies of fine arts at Universität der Künste Berlin UDK, since 2020 in the class of Valérie Favre

Accolades
- Recognition award of Ulrich und Burga Knispel-Stiftung, 2021
- Berlin Music Video Awards 2021, Silver Selection music video “Calman - Kathodenstrahl”
- Winning project of Google Impact Challenge 2019 Code and Safe the Planet, GetYourWings gGmbH
- Stipendium “Böckler Hoch k” 2022: Scholarship of Hans Böckler Stiftung for artistic talents

Group shows
2023: Naked in the Woods (Raum für Sichtbarkeit, Berlin)
2022:
A Thin Line (Sakura Gallery, Nagoya)
Zirkus Klasse Favre (Galerie Grisebach, Berlin)
Das Absurde Symposium (UdK, Berlin)
Das Absurde (U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz, Berlin)
Excuse me I’m looking for the rabbit hole (Culterim Gallery, Berlin)
Super Sonic Bunnyhop (Tiergarten, Berlin)
Klasse Valérie Favre Part II (Galerie C, Neuchâtel)

2021: Don’t lock me down II (Palais für aktuelle Kunst, Glückstadt)
Let’s see if this works (Circus Schatzinsel, Berlin)
2020: Animation of dead material (Bethanien, Berlin)
2019: Calman Live mit DJ Mighty Sweat (Monarch, Berlin)

Photo Credit: Meret Freisen