Laboratory for the Maximization of Spacial Qualities

Refractions

Laboratory for the Maximization of Spacial Qualities is an ongoing project by Sandra Havlicek, Tegan Moore, and Katharina Schücke.

Refraction 1, October 2015:

Observations of undefined spacial encounters are tested out on the surface of the fingernail. The surface of the nail is chosen as a counterintuitive platform for transferral of spacial qualities. With this method of transference, spacial quality itself is contested in the very impossibility of the nail to represent it and the labor required to make such an attempt.

Quiet Time. 372.**

The lab transfers diverse textures and structures in the landscape using the cell structure of a sponge while also positioning the sponge as an object of display. In this instance the sponge is a tool, a readymade and a throwaway, admitting it’s own instability as an object. In other cases the natural object is imitated and transformed into a tool and vice versa. A slate shingle made from plastic is used as a work station for the abstraction of a manicure. Industrial plastic vapour barrier is made visible as an architectural blue sky.

Size Matters. Plastic Beach. Ciel Glacial **

The second floor living room in a historic mansion is at once a studio, makeshift salon, place for reception, and laboratory. It “integrates intimacy, eccentricity, and other forms of formally unofficial forms of creation. Private and public spheres get entangled in a blurred zone of hyperproduction”.*

Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine! A Good Man-darin Is Hard To Find**

* Hito Steyerl,“Is a Museum a Factory?” 2009.
** Selection of nail polish names

Refraction 1 was realized during the Flaggfabrikken / Curatron residency at Christinegård Mansion in Bergen, Norway.