Nik, the Sleeper
SF Exploitation / Performative Installation
A fragmentary perceptual space and body that combines pulsed textual content, diffuse imagery, states of self-forgetfulness, alienating afterglow effects, reduced movement. A connected unconsiousness and observing postglow of mind-mining and self-fracking.
The sleeping body as an organ of thought, a connected consciousness as a network, a sleeping land beneath the waking state, the sleep of the many as an entity: Nik, the Sleeper is a spatial sci-fi exploitation story told in scraps of text. Nik deals with body, consciousness and technology. It engages in historical debris research on electricity, for example, and points to a techno-future as a potentially larger, connective unconscious network. Between algorithmic underground consciousness and self-fracking, however, the installation swallows almost all of its content. A fragmentary perceptual space emerges that combines pulsed textual content, diffuse imagery, states of creativity and self-forgetfulness, elements from regular sleep measurement, alienating afterglow effects, and elements of reduced movement economy.
As Pulsed Text
Nik Dreams of the Dead Artists:
As Text Panel
Thank you for publishing this manifesto. I read that the artists are now dead. Another loss. Too bad about the artists. One has to say goodbye to them. But often what was said about them had nothing to do with what they did or thought anyway. They were interpreted and placed to avoid too much contradiction. Today, we produce objects that create less dissonance.
Sitting in the Nirgendwo
Skepticism about entropy itself
Indirect work
in the interior
Making meltdown objects
from Egomantel reinforced concrete
reverse reading direction
and extract opinion like crude oil
it’s still the content, stupid
and sometimes still go out
Instead of art now
deal with rocks
and anti-gravity
with plants and radiation
increase contradiction
and from brushwood and thoughts
make a TOE
Seize the means of contradiction of
Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist
Die Welt ist alles, was einem einfällt
With the Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
and the Connection with Everything
and the Physics of Relationships
with Beautiful, Strong and Electroweak
settle under the Golden Peak
and personify the system E8
(Plus: Nik dreams in german language)
STAGING – Video NOT ONLINE
Some pictures and staging of Nik, the Sleeper: here and here (scroll down).
An associated text on the project/artist appeared in Versorgerin 135:
Postglow Cinema – The Green Ray by Georg Wilbertz.
Tanja Brandmayr, 2022
Project shown at STWST48x8 DEEP. 48 Hours Disconnected Connecting.
Tanja Brandmayr (AT) is artist and writer and has been working for many years and in different contexts between text, media, staging and art. Art and context research Quasikunst in cooperation with STWST. Also editor and author for art and culture magazines. Lives in Linz/Austria. https://quasikunst.stwst.at
First Photo: Astrid Benzer