GlobalPrayers
2011/ 2012

Magdalena Kallenberger / Dorothea Nold

Raumtausch

Magdalena Kallenberger is an artist working with photography and video, image, text and sound. Her recent research projects focus on different aspects of shifting identities, migration and global nomadism. In numerous interviews she collected individual experiences and memories of current political events and changes. Ongoing world history, social, cultural and historical changes versus individual daily life experience in Tehran were her field of examination 2007—2010. Awarded with several grants by the DAAD and a one year grant by the City of Berlin, Kallenberger spent two years travelling and living abroad, mostly in and around Tehran/Iran. Since 2010, she is a faculty member at the Department of Media Design at the German University in Cairo. 

Dorothea Nold is a visual artist with a background in sculpture and installation. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her artistic work focuses on the connection between social conventions, traditions, architecture and urbanism in different social and cultural contexts. Since 2002, Nold has repeatedly travelled to Central Asia and has lived in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and China for several months. Her interest in video-documentary works started mainly in Kabul, where she was invited to teach installation and sculptural techniques. Nold is particularly interested in collaborative arts projects and participated in artist residencies in Armenia, China and Mali. She lives and works in Istanbul.

 

Raumtausch

The artistic-research project Raumtausch by Dorothea Nold and Magdalena Kallenberger focuses on religious movements and communities from different christian backgrounds that founded dependancies in Berlin within the last years. These groups are celebrating their service either in secular spaces (café, cinema, nightclub etc.) or as temporary guests in spaces that belong to other communities and churches. All of them are involved in national and global networks and interacting locally with Berlin based social projects.

Mapping the community
How become  these new religious practices manifest in urban space? How are these communities implemented in the social space? How do they interact with other networks and communities?

Exploring the sacred
On video we are documenting how a secular space immerse into a religious space. Which transformation can be experienced during the process of appropriation? Which means and methods are used to stage the religious? Which interventions can be observed? Which elements and objects are used? 

Raumtausch
The hypothetical initiation of the performance Raumtausch serves as starting point to get in touch with the communities. In interviews and personal conversations with our contact persons we investigate how the experience of the Holy can be constructed. We want to know where the encountering of God takes place and which role does architecture, music, rituals, and the concept of community play for the believers. 

Documenting the undocumentable
We collect and we observe. We document our observations and reflections with video and sound. Questioning the role of the artist as a researcher, we are leaving the path of scientific measurability and category-analysis by transforming our research material into a mixed-media installation.  

Project Partners: Every Nation Church, Berlinprojekt, ICF Berlin, Taizé Gebetskreis, Jesus Freaks Berlin