SIGNA – The Northern Complex Method

As the artistic duo SIGNA, Signa Soerensen and Arthur Koestler provide our world with replicas of itself. They install reproductions of the original, three-dimensional parallel worlds, habitable cartographies: a run-down flophouse is the setting for the hopeless world of six Eastern European prostitutes who are ruled by their social degredation and the brutality of their pimps — a mystical nightmare universe consisting of forty areas filled with religious, political and social rituals. The wing of a closed-off psychiatric station, led by the female doctor, Dorine Chaikin, and her team, subject amnesia patients to a procedure that includes welfare service and discipline.

The parallel worlds of SIGNA are replicas which have lost their historical and geographical attributes. The colors, costumes, furniture, in their tiniest details: these seamless properties offer temporal and regional associations, but the where and when remains indefinite.

Whoever enters these worlds signs on for six, twelve, or twenty-four hour periods, and carries out a part of the happening. The power of one’s fantasy, personality, and borders begins a play between oneself and one’s other. For this year’s Steirischer Herbst, the CastYourArt team asked for a visit to the northern complex of the Dorine Chaikin Institute and received one of its rare admissions. (wh/jn)

https://signa.dk/

Interviewee: Signa Köstler, Arthur Köstler
Artworks by: SIGNA

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German, English
Subtitles: German, English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Sigmund Steiner, Wolfgang Haas, Ewa Stern
Production country: Austria, Graz