"It is a way of digesting the chaos of my own interests": Inside Mariechen Danz's Berlinische Galerie installation

Mariechen Danz uses the human body as a template to explore how knowledge is modelled and conveyed. As the winner of the GASAG Art Prize 2024, the Irish artist is currently presenting an expansive installation in the large entrance hall of the Berlinische Galerie. Titled edge out, the exhibition redefines the concept of perception by transforming the gallery space into a folded map, with walls extending out from the floor.

By incorporating elements of cartography, geology, astronomy and anatomy, Danz’s installation prompts a mental and physical reappraisal of our view of the world, uncovering hidden connections. The contemporary artist, who has been living in Berlin for the past 20 years, has also participated in notable group exhibitions, including those at Haus der Kunst in Munich (2018) and the Venice Biennale (2017).

What’s the concept behind this massive new show?

I approached the room as a map. With the sides folded upwards, the walls become additional floor. There will be casts of feet walking along the walls and floor, their soles implying a reverse or further side to the space. I want to convey a sense of multiperspectivity. The main element in the room will be the 2,455 body bricks distributed throughout the space. Each has its own markings like punctuation marks, that we imprinted into the bricks by hand using organs, bones or our bodies.

It’s like a language…

They are a modular system that can be rearranged anew each time in response to the architecture. Seeing what images or connections can be created through the imprints. I want to look at how things are transcribed. A lot of my work is rooted in getting away from the limits of the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, and looking at different modes of transfer, written systems, oral ones, historical or current ones and how information and knowledge is recorded and communicated.

Current languages?

We were looking at the existing templates used to allow for data transfer to give us a kind of alphabet of forms. The metal costumes or “Common Carrier Cases” have been punched and embossed with openings for cables, sockets and venting systems. They also incorporate details from historic maps and anatomy illustrations that are cut out of the metal. There will be light shining through these shapes, making shadows on the wall that appear as starmaps. The shadows relate to Plato’s cave. We’ll also be painting fake shadows as well as using projections to distort and change scale. The experience of the space will be structured through videos and soundscapes that appear and disappear.

You’re combining scientific illustrations, maps and models and overlaying them with organic, corporeal forms, like organs and facial features… 

I am interested in overlaying data, bridging imagery and rooting it in the body itself. That’s why everything keeps on being built around aspects of the human form. Unlike in my earlier installations, the body here is fragmented, rearranged and modular, there is no central body. I’m looking at the role of subjectivity and objectivity in histories – all these different mediations and transfers end up building up persistent knowledge systems.

I didn’t want to compete with the architecture, I wanted to utilise it.

But what’s the enduring interest for you?

There are so many errors that keep on misguiding us. Societies are structured around their current understanding of the functioning of the body, but so often that understanding was and is full of errors. There are many ways of understanding our functioning in the world, and it’s limiting to confine ourselves in the way that we do.

Are you mocking these outdated representations of knowledge, like these old maps?

No, but all the maps you use now are false. The maps we’re looking at in school are distorted and wrong. People don’t talk about it. But it will all change, just like it’s changed in the past. And then you’ll be talking about what we thought about now as being particular to our time and our understanding and our conditioning and structuring of how we do things. Just like a map of the world with Europe in the middle, and all the other countries completely the wrong size and scale.

You’re rejecting the idea that there is an absolute truth?

It’s more about being aware of who’s telling you and what you’re absorbing. How did they get to record this? How did they get to have the position that their experience of this was transmitted? What are the hierarchies involved here? Not to dismiss it, but to have a much more balanced look, because knowledge is dynamic and in no way ever linear. It is a way of digesting the chaos of my own interests.

Do you worry about people struggling to wrap their heads around it?

No. People can access it in different levels of complexity. Hemispheres double as eyes. Basically all knowledge is human knowledge.

With all its directions and sculptural tangents, the installation is quite ambitious…

Well, it is 7 metres wide, 10 metres high and 43 metres long – its a clearly challenging architecture. I’ve seen a lot of shows here, some works survive, but some don’t. I didn’t want to compete with the architecture, I wanted to utilise it. We’re a few days behind because hanging the enormous sextant on the wall took far more time than we envisaged. They had to build a construction to wrap itself around the core of the building. An inspector came today to check if it’s safe. He was hanging off it like Tarzan.

This exhibition stems from winning the GASAG Art Prize, funded by the Berlin energy company. With a growing movement to eliminate “green-washing” and sever cultural sponsorship ties with fossil fuel companies, was there any hesitation in accepting the prize?

Well, I hope every artist is being asked this! Of course I did look into what GASAG said in their mission statement about what they’re doing, what their aims are. I also had conversations with friends about where the money comes from and what transparency is there in other institutional funding. You can’t be careless, but I also think that it can’t be put solely on the artist to navigate this as a solo challenge. In my opinion the conversation needs to be about the entire illusion and hypocrisy of the art system. All these great conversations about freedom, and then it’s changed in a moment because somebody withdraws funding.

Is this all new work?

When you get nominated, you have to apply with a concept for this specific space but with pre-existing works. If you’re awarded the prize, they give you a bit of money to adapt the works and also make something new, specifically developed for the exhibition.

You have a young family. Is it difficult juggling the pressure of putting on a big show like this?

I’m a solo mom to a two-year-old. For the past two years I haven’t put on a big show like this because I chose not to, and I was mainly teaching. And then, suddenly, you’re singing, you’re editing videos, you’re building. If you have any issues that delay anything, it’s all thrown off course. Then, when you’re with [your children], you have to stop completely. You must be able to turn off because they live in the present moment. But I’d probably be more stressed without my son.

Do you think there’s enough support for working parents in the art world?

No, and I don’t know what people are talking about, saying you can do it all. The support is not there. Often, nor is the understanding. Being a mother is a huge part of my identity and the reality of my life. I find the disconnect absurd and there is much more to say. But anyway, right now, I just want to focus on this exhibition, and I want him to see it. He’ll like the star constellations and lights, and he loves bricks.