details:

• 8 channel audio setup

• 4 channel volumetric video projection

For the second performance venue, the urbanrecall collective chose the KHG Church Hl. Johannes XXIII and organized this performance themselves, asking the person in charge of cultural events in the church. Performing at this Christian religious place was different than expected, much more difficult for urbanrecall as non-Christian religious artists. It made them think about approach and process of this and consequently their future projects.

At the same time, they had to deal with their identities, e.g. the cultural roots of each individual, which are not very German and/or European. The prejudices and the fear of religious images made it difficult in the beginning to plan the performance on the same level.

Why do we have problems about identities and roots, although on the biological level we are basically the same people?

The KHG, located in Cologne-Sülz, is one of the five colleges of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne. This college is a place for all students in Cologne who are interested in spirituality and faith regardless of their subjects, although its basic idea is based on the Catholic faith. It is open to collaborate with various cooperation partners such as music, art, media arts, sport and applied science colleges.

As a Catholic college, they invariably have a church for services. This church was built in the same style as the surrounding buildings, a brutalist architecture made of concrete in the late sixties. Today it is common to use concrete for architecture, but at the time it was avant-garde to use this material as a design tool. The sculptor Josef Rikus was commissioned to build this church in 1964, inspired by the shape of a tree rooted in the cave of the crypt. Sedilia, tabernacle steel, ambo and altar were created by heavy wood, and a wooden sculpture stands in the center of the church as a trunk. The surrounding concrete structure represents the branches of the tree.

urbanrecall: Ali Chakav, Joel Jaffe, Navid Razavi

with:

• Curation: Luis Reich

• Communication & Marketing: Damian Weber

• Setup and Photo Documentation: Michel Besl

• Photo Documentation: Mira Rachel Hanak

• Helping Hand: Steffen Kronschnabel

• Video Documentation: Tim Gorinski

• Multichannel Sound Recording: Thomas Meckel

Part of URBANRECALL