Diving into non-human worlds with Anne Duk Hee Jordan
Instead of Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s studio, we meet with the artist in the Gropius Bau. This is an exhibition house for contemporary art in the middle of Berlin, where, among many other works, an installation, a designed room by Duk Hee (that is her Korean name by which she would like to be called) is currently on display.
Duk Hee welcomes us in the imposing entrance hall of the Gropius Bau and leads us past thick marble columns and iron railings through part of the group exhibition YOYI! (the name given by the Tiwi people of northern Australia to a form of gathering that involves singing and dancing together). The final stop is a darkened room into which a cave-like structure made of fabric has been built. It envelops us directly and makes us marvel: mysterious sea creatures glow on the walls, a huge shell hangs from the ceiling and a sometimes booming, sometimes singing and sometimes popping sound fills the room. We can not only hear the sounds, but also feel them as we let ourselves fall onto the soft cushions and simply look, listen and feel for a while. We have very different thoughts and impressions, but above all we all feel very, very comfortable here. For one, it feels like drowning, but in a good way. Someone else has the impression of being underwater for the first time. And that’s not so far from the original inspiration for the work: Duk Hee tells us that she made her first diving certificate when she was twelve and then was a freediver for a long time (that means diving without oxygen tanks, just holding her breath). In the room, she wanted to convey the feeling she had on her first dive: a submersion where you briefly don’t know where up and down are.
Duk Hee also tells us that the sounds are based on real sounds from the deep sea: motorboats, whale songs, deep-sea drilling, and even a lightning strike (the bang!). From these sounds, Duk Hee worked with a sound designer to craft an elaborate composition that wanders and billows through space, sometimes sounding more from the left, sometimes more from above, or vibrating from below.
Duk Hee often likes to work with music in her works. She used to want to be a rock star, but admits she wasn't disciplined enough to learn an instrument really well. Later, it was similar with marine biology. What she likes about art is that she can be a musician and a researcher, an artist and a biologist – all of them together and a little bit of each. In contrast to biology and science in general, not everything in art has to be rational, meaning logically explainable. Although Duk Hee likes to deal a lot with biology and often works closely with scientists, fantasy also plays a major role in her artworks. She particularly likes the fact that one can develop a different view of the world in the process.
For example, the non-human perspective is important to Duk Hee. But what does that mean?
Humans, for example, cannot perceive the singing of whales in the same way as underwater creatures. Also, the multiply enlarged, distorted and partially invented shapes of the luminous creatures on the walls of the fabric cave are meant to challenge the human scientific view of other life forms. After all, the deep sea – just like outer space – is a place that has been explored many times over and still holds the greatest secrets. And the beauty of the things we don’t yet know everything about is that we can make up quite a bit about them.
That’s what we do and fold crazy fantasy figures out of colorful origami papers. This is a challenge even for Duk Hee, because folding requires some discipline! After some initial fiddling, we all proudly hold our unicorn whales, glittering crabs and even a jagged composer in our hands. We’re not quite sure what he's doing in the deep sea, but after all, there are no limits to the imagination in this special and mysterious place!
