"Why do you think there is always war?" A question as big as the moon and as topical as climate change. The storyLab kiU installation poses it - after a minute-long, massive multimedia meditation on the outside wall of the Dortmunder U about the horrors of war - through the receiver of a simple dial telephone. To be experienced daily until May 27, 2022.
After each four-minute film loop, a light suddenly goes on a few meters away, oops, there's a phone booth, where did it come from, and the phone rings, which looks strangely cute in this setting, like an innocent child, and at the other end sits the actor Khosrou Mahmoudi, hidden in the U-Tower foyer, asking innocent questions.
"What does war mean to you?"
At the premiere on Saturday, May 21, 2022, says Mahmoudi, people picked up the phone and spoke to him in every break between the mapping loops. Everyone said something different.
Most of them said they had never experienced war themselves. One person talked about her grandmother, born in 1900, one life, two world wars. "She told us how terrible war is, but that there are also miracles in war."
"What do you feel when you think about it?"
One word was used by almost everyone: Fear. And the question of what can be done to combat fear and, above all, the seemingly inevitable return of war. The question will not be answered on this phone. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be asked. On the contrary.
The 70s phone booth seems to have fallen out of time. It may be a reference to the occasion of this installation: the 50th anniversary of the Fachhochschule Dortmund, to which the storyLab kiU belongs. After five minutes, the faint orange light shining from its windows onto the stone slabs in front of Dortmund U goes out again and the 3D mapping on the façade directly above the main entrance starts up again.
"What do you want to do, what can you do?"
First the façade shakes, the brick wall twitches and buckles until the bricks come loose in the shape of a figure: the screaming woman from Edvard Munch's famous painting, who simultaneously presses her hands over her ears. Then seconds-long excerpts from old news programs are shown: Wars as news. Next to them, philosophical quotes are written on the façade.
Then the end-of-broadcast test image with the peace sign appears, before abstract patterns lapse into digital convulsions and are finally torn apart by a black nothingness.
This can be spoiled, because the description does not anticipate the experience of seeing it with your own eyes. As with kiU's previous mappings, the apparent coming to life of this giant building is unlike anything else.
"Answer the call"
But the message is clearer than in the previous, longer façade shows, more unambiguous and very to the point.
It is a call: There's this war, what does it mean? Let's think about what we can, want, should and must do!
As spectacularly as these questions are staged with the mapping, the installation makes it easy for viewers to respond to them:
Driiing, driiing!
At a glance
- What: 3D facade mapping
- When: daily until Friday, May 27, 2022, 10 p.m. to midnight each day
- Where: Dortmunder U, Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
Further information
- The reason for the mapping is the "50 years Fachhochschule Dortmund" anniversary. kiU director Harald Opel is following Fachhochschule Dortmund's claim to social responsibility with the statement and theme of the mapping.
- Until Thursday, May 26, 2022, the sound of the mapping can only be experienced via headphones.
- The headphones can be borrowed for a deposit of 10 euros.
- On Friday, May 27, 2022, the last day of the installation, excerpts from the phone calls of the previous days will be heard during the breaks.