Terminal by Karolina Halatek

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Appreciation towards Karolina Halatek for providing the following description:

来自波兰的艺术家Karolina Halatek的作品“终点站”正于德国格尔林根市政广场上展出。

在经历过濒死体验，从死亡中逃离的人们的描述中常常会出现发光的通道，而Karolina正是受此启发，设计出了这个大型装置艺术作品。巨大的发光管道耸立在开阔的广场之上，似乎全然不属于这个世界，让置身其中的人们如同脱离尘世一般存在。但同时，两端的开口又将身处内部空间的人们完全暴露在外界的视野下。这种处在脱离与未脱离边缘模糊地带的空间营造恰恰呼应了濒死体验的空间感受，而建筑的名字“终点站”也正是有此寓意。Karolina希望引发参观者自主的思考，而不是告诉他们任何既定的含义。

The light sculpture Terminal by Karolina Halatek – shown in Gerlingen on the Rathausplatz on the occasion of the light art festival »Aufstiege« by KulturRegion Stuttgart – is the Polish artist’s first art work in Germany. Recommended as one of three artists by the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, one of the partners of Akademie Schloss Solitude, she was chosen by Joachim Fleischer, curator of the light art festival, Andrea Löhle (city of Gerlingen), and Jean-Baptiste Joly, director of Akademie Schloss Solitude. For the site-specific sculpture, Karolina Halatek was inspired by the near-death experiences of people, who, returned from unconsciousness, reported their experiences at the threshold of death. Read the opening speech here (in English and German) by Jean-Baptiste Joly to learn more about the work:

»Suddenly Terminal, the oversized light-sculpture by Polish artist Karolina Halatek, stands just like a recently landed UFO in the middle of the Rathausplatz (town hall square) in Gerlingen. The artist uses light as a key element and material for her installations and videos. In the focus of her work lies the power of light as something real and yet not tangible. The experience with light art is a visual one, that frees from all trivialities, an »experience of wordless thought« (J. Turrell). »Light is a means, to simply express things,« says the artist in an interview on her sculpture in Gerlingen. With light she creates empirical, site-specific spaces, and light objects at the surface of the visual, architectural, and sculptural. The artistic intention coincides almost exactly with the aesthetic objective of the festival, which the curator (J. Fleischer) describes as a »discovery through light«. »It is not the spectacular that is crucial,« he writes in the festivals catalogue, »much more it is about the power of the artist’s content, who makes light in its intensity experienceable and perceptible.« Further in the festival’s catalogue the cultural scientist Hartmut Böhme mentions »spaces, that are build through the media of light, in which we dive in as spectators«. »Light art is empty,« it continues, »although eventful, because it doesn’t show objects nor content, but enables sensual and physical experiences, and conveys forms of aesthetics.« This description applies directly to the sensual experience of the spectator in the light-sculpture Terminal – in which you walk through the light tunnel and experience a light bath on your own body.

»It is important to me,« says the artist in an interview for Stuttgarter Nachrichten, »that the people, who experience my light-sculptures, will be a piece of my work, so it isn’t only something for them that they see and forget again«. As a noun, »terminal« is a synonym for final stop, final station, end station, or concourse. As adjective, »terminal« marks a border and denotes the end, especially the phase immediately before death. In the same interview with Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Karolina Halatek goes into the meaning of the word »terminal« and explains how she was inspired for this work by the near death experiences of people, who, returned from unconsciousness, reported their experiences at the threshold of death. In near-death-experiences there is actually often the speech of an enlightened tunnel. But it isn’t Halatek’s intention at all to imitate this experience through artificial means. Much earlier it provides a jump for the spectators into the immateriality of the light, an immersion into a space, in which you, ladies and gentleman – like in Chamisso’s fairytale »Peter Schlehmihl« – will lose your shadow for a short moment.

Terminal is a light space, that shines alone at night, separate from the outside world and yet open at both ends, a passage and a space of other kind at the same time, that dissolves in light. In art, light means enactment and dramatization, in this way the light space is a stage on which one gets isolated from the outside world as a spectator, but stands in the spotlight at the same time seen by everyone. At nights the Terminal is a light source: a star, that shines on the square, a shining riddle, that strangely isn’t media nor street light, pointless, but therefore very poetic; it invites one to make a circuit to enter and cross the space. The passerby will remember this aura over the day. Since, when the light in the tunnel is off, the presence of the filigree white sculpture clearly remains. It gives the Rathausplatz a different spatial order between the stairs, the bank, the glass box of the parking garage, and the street. With its circular aperture it frames the round extracts of the urban space and prompts the passersby to perceive the heterogenous buildings at the edges of the square differentl, in rare combinations.

Karolina Halatek doesn’t want to dictate anything to the visitors, rather she wants to force them to think. As artist she engages for an art, »that demands the whole attention of the spectator, an art, in which you will be dragged in, no matter where you are and what you think about.« With this statement Karolina Halatek coincides with James Turrell, the king of all artists who work with light as their medium: »I form the light«, says James Turrell, »[…] in a way that one can experience the light substance, that fills the space, not only visual, but as well physical…By incorporating a space in one’s perception it is possible to see oneself during seeing. The seeing, the deliberately perceiving, fills the space with consciousness.«

Opening speech given by Jean-Baptiste Joly, director of Akademie Schloss Solitude, at the opening of Polish artist Karolina Halatek’s light-sculpture Terminal on September 17th 2016, Gerlingen