SABINE GEBHARDT
THE WORK OF HEINRICH LÜBER

In his work, Heinrich Lüber combines elements of performance art with photography, video, computer generated images, installations and object art. Lüber creates a quasi experimental situation by combining all of these elements and employing his own body to transmit a new image, using visual and acoustic signals. Language and the use of language are central to Lober's work. Fragments of children's language, ritualised speech, body language, and perte parole" are employed outside their contextual meanings. Elements of monologue and dialogue are utilized to create a tangible basic form of language. Articulation is turned inside out. Following the tradition of modern language criticism, Lüber tries to create a sensual experience for the spectators, expressing the impossibility of a uniform comprehension or perception. This could be seen in the work Guide Langue", presented in the Kunsthalle Basel in 1995, in which the public were invited to look and listen inside the performers throat using a camera and a microphone that threatened to choke him. Lüber reproduces the dissolution of language or the beginnings of language; this main theme is then contrasted with the rhythmic speech of two rappers" singing acappella at the front of the presentation.

Guide Langue" enables us to approach several of Lüber's works such as Bambini Code" (1 994) or Wolfgang" (1 995) that deal with communication outside a defined code. These works start with a message that the listener finds irritating and it is through this, that new forms of understanding are brought about. Thus this new idiom gains in tangibility and a directness, that has been lost in spoken language which is tied to its meaningfulness", its necessity to cling to fixed meanings.

Some of Lüber's works are characterized by variations on a single idea or a section of a performance action: as for example seen in the body projections in Beutelform" (1 994), or in In Echt sehen sie ja ganz anders aus als in Wirklichkeit" (1 995), placing the emphasis on a body or a series of works, rather than single unique creations. This method of working allows him to approach each work a new depending on the space, the light and the time of day in which it is presented.

The work that Heinrich Lüber has created in collaboration with other artists is tempered by a miriad of truths rather than being limited to a single possible truth. This search for a way of presenting multivarious views and diverse opinions in a single work, is refflected in Bocca della verita" (1 991 ) in collaboration with Stefan Dähler or with Karin Roth in Transitown" (1 992).

So, it is with this in mind, that the public becomes the only imaginabie continuation of this art form, it is their experiences that give the single actions a fixed place in our memories, and the images their respective place.

translated by Linda Cassens


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