“... like a creature native and indued Unto that element”

I speak about stones as algebra, vertigo and order; stones as hymns and quincunxes; stones as stings and corollas, on the brink of dreams, catalyst and image; about this stone, a cascade of hair, opaque and stiff, a drowned person’s strand, dripping on no temple; in which the sap becomes more visible and vulnerable in the midst of a blue vein; about those stones, similar to de-crumpled paper, noncombustible and sparkled with uncertain sparks; or, to the most hermetic vase in which a liquid dances, leveled behind absolute walls, and whose preservation would have required cumulated miracles.

Roger Caillois

In the approximately half-hour-long, soundless video animation universe, which Annett Stenzel presents as part of her exhibition It could be freedom, The moon or Maybe we have to explore new at the CICA Museum, stones or rather crystals of various shapes, colors, and structures float weightlessly in nothingness, in the blackness of the infinite universe.

The impression of floating and weightlessness is created by the very slow movement of the crystalline bodies or the camera, which sometimes approaches them in slow motion and sometimes moves away from them, and the consistently black background of the image. The alternation between distance and close-up vision leads to a constant play of our associations, between recognition and alienation, apparent reality and imagination. The extreme approach to the image object – without the slightest loss of image sharpness – allows us to take a close look at the surface of the crystals and study the material in detail. Walter Benjamin also emphasizes this ability to test a technical device, in this case, the camera, in his famous essay on a work of art. He even goes so far as to compare the person wielding the camera with a surgeon who penetrates deeply into the fabric of the situation. Due to the possibility of the apparatus to create close-ups, emphasize hidden details, and explore seemingly banal environments, a space through which people consciously work is replaced by an unconscious space that allows us to experience the optical unconscious.In universe too, the camera penetrates, we penetrate ever deeper into the thicket of crystalline structures. Until we have the feeling that we are emerging in a forest of stony plants. This extreme approximation makes it difficult to guess what real object is at issue here. Instead, we associate new, imaginary worlds: Individual structures bring to mind rugged rock formations or moss-covered landscapes, are reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's painting The Ice Sea or - due to the resolution into only white, gray, brown and ocher geometric surfaces in the absolute close-up view the painting of analytical cubism. The crystals manifest themselves – as Stenzel puts it in her artist statement – as open shapes. Unclear about the proportions and our perspective, we sometimes see ourselves floating above things, like an astronaut in space looking at the earth or another planet, sometimes we feel small and... lost in the thicket of a large, unobservable stone forest. We are constantly asked to rethink and reflect on our point of view, and our own experience.The slow approaches and moving away are followed by faster cuts and faster movements in the video animation: the stones appear to come to life, moving like spaceships in different directions. Blue, translucent flashes of light dance like flames across the picture surface, laying over the crystalline structures and also over the framing of the crystals. The film-like presentation of the material study in widescreen format, with the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen that are so typical of cinema, is broken up and the digital processing is shown. Little by little, a red, semi-transparent ball appears, surrounded by blue light threads, which suggests an energy or magnetic field; to electrical voltage that charges and discharges again. Like an energetic power that is attributed to stones and especially crystals in esotericism.

Roger Caillois, from whom the quote precedes the catalog text, moved far away from esoteric trends and yet was fascinated throughout his life by the embodiments of inanimate nature, stones, minerals, and crystals. In his writings dedicated to stones, he develops insights into the nature of stones in which he perceives - frozen in a snapshot - the dance of the living.For Caillois, the unmoving rigidity of the stone seems to be a prerequisite for the movement, the dynamics of life to emerge. Annett Stenzel abolishes this immobile rigidity by actually setting the crystals in universe in motion, animating them, and thus literally bringing them to life. The powerful pulsation of a red spot of light, like a pumping heart supplying human circulation, can also be understood as a reference to life. Just like the gray shades of a crystal up close, which are reminiscent of ultrasound images of the unborn life, an embryo. Or translucent, microscopic images of liquids that lie over the crystals in the background of the picture: sometimes collected as a multitude of small moving bubbles collect, connect, and separate again, like the core biological process of cell division that ensures the growth and reproduction of all life; sometimes as a centrifugally expanding circle, reminiscent of a human eye or the eye of the camera. The moving crystals remain visible in the center of the pupil or the open aperture - as if the dynamics of life had been inscribed on the retina behind it, the film behind it.The video ends with a gold crystal gradually becoming darker, moving into the depths of the universe, which finally disappears completely into the darkness of a black image that lasts for a few minutes. The blackness that appeared to us in the background of the crystals as a representation of an empty space or the universe is transformed into a monochrome color surface, an abstract image. In the black image's potential to be an abstract and representational image at the same time, the play of material objectivity and incessant semiotization is realized. A game that - like the alternation between distance and close-up vision, which questions our own experience - shows us the relationship that we as thinking and seeing beings have to the world.

In exploring our experience and our relationship to the world, Annett Stenzel navigates between digital and analog media, between film, photography, and Riso printing. In addition to the video animation universe, in the exhibition at the CICA Museum she presents extremely delicate objects made of multi-layered printed organza as well as photographs of various sizes - sometimes carefully framed with a passe-partout, sometimes unframed, seemingly provisionally attached to the wall with just two metal clips.Three large-format photographic works show women lying on the floor in a pose similar to sleep. The fact that they are most likely female can be determined by the clothing, hair, and parts of the face or body that we see. The sleeping people almost completely fill the picture, so that the surroundings can only be seen as a section. Dusty earth, a stone wall, marbled floor, and wall tiles allow us to locate the scenes outdoors or in public, urban spaces. Our gaze is directed at the women from diagonally above: their legs are bent, their arms are in front of their bodies, protecting themselves or clutching a bag, their eyes are closed or their backs are turned towards us. The posture as well as the closed eyes and the averted gaze give the impression that they are in their own world, their own cosmos. A parallel world to our world, the world of the observer, who we look at the women from outside, from above. As close as we come with our gaze to the sleeping, rest-seeking women in the photos in this actually private, defenseless moment, we become aware of the distance that lies between our worlds. The image of women sleeping on the ground outdoors is quite familiar to us. These are typical scenes that we know from everyday life, in our daily encounters with homeless people. Here too, in the reality of our everyday lives, there is no contact - neither of glances nor of worlds. Instead, like those viewing the photographs, we look from outside, from above, and remain at a distance, in our own, privileged world.

The sleeping places and situation of the women in the photographs on display do not seem inviting at all, but rather cold and inhospitable: bedded on a small patch of greenery, between sawn-off bush stumps that stick up vertically like sharp poles, surrounded by the sandy ground of a public park; under the shelter of a graffitied wall, on the hard, cobbled stone floor of an urban riverbank; on the bare, dirty tiled floor of a public transport underpass, without a blanket, wearing only a backless, knee-length dress.Nevertheless, the photographs convey a peculiar beauty: the partially penetrating sunlight creates a fascinating play of light and shadow and artfully highlights the women's bodies, their clothing, and the materials surrounding them. Purple crocuses blooming at the feet of the woman lying in the park evoke the feeling of emerging spring. There is also an almost cheerful and playful palette of colors and textures: the lavishly billowing, multi-layered skirt made of white and turquoise tulle; the wrinkled, shiny gold foil that, spread out as a blanket, reflects the sunlight; the grainy silver-white of the graffiti on the rough stone wall; the red and blue marbled sleeping pad; the smooth, silky, shimmering surface of the sleeping bag; the gentle waves of the deep, dark, almost black water surface.The diverse structures and colors are reminiscent of the crystals from the video, in which the most beautiful colors grow from seemingly unspectacular gray stones or the most fascinating crystalline formations can only be seen up close. Stenzel also presents some of the crystals from the video animation as photographs in the exhibition room: isolated and motionless on a white background. The frontal view of the stones and the sharpness of the image, which is already apparent in the video, allow us to study the different structures, surfaces, and colors of the crystals and to take a close look at their materiality.

Annett Stenzel's “instinctive longing for tactile materiality,” which she speaks of in her artist statement, can be felt in all of the works in the exhibition It could be freedom, The moon or Maybe we have to explore new. Even in the small-format, passe-partout-framed photographs, it is the almost tangible materiality of the objects that catches our eye and stimulates our imagination: the peculiarly rough, furrowed surface of a loaf of bread lying on crumpled wrapping paper; the smooth, shiny porcelain jug with scattered flowers next to picture frames wrapped in bubble wrap, with a crisp white, fragile egg crowned with a fluffy feather; a thin, woven cloth bathed in light and shadow, only revealing the contours of what lies beneath; the misshapen remains of a flattened, dirty PET bottle; the elegant folds of a thrown garment made of blue, woven fabric. They are small still lifes, close-ups of objects of civilized life; “material goods” that – as Stenzel himself puts it – “accompany the life of a person; either in the privileged life (with an apartment, family, etc.) or in the rough, raw life on the street (such as the plastic bottle that became deformed because a car ran over it).”The play with textures and light leaves room for associations, for possible narratives and connections between the artistic works, but also the different worlds: the bread, whose surface is reminiscent of the rough texture of the stones in the video; the translucent gray-white color and elongated shape of the compressed plastic bottle, resembling the cinematic close-up of a rock crystal; the blue fabric of the garment, which, due to its color and structure, is reminiscent of the backless dress of the woman lying on the floor.Annett Stenzel's longing for tactile materiality is evident not only in the works themselves but also in the way she presents them and stages them in her exhibition. By installing the photographs - except for the smaller still lifes - unframed and hanging on two brackets in the room, she also refers to their materiality, to the underlying photo paper, which, depending on the size and hanging, sometimes bulges from the wall, sometimes from it Rolls up the sides.The materiality is particularly impressive in the works Pond, Fall, and Silhouette, which Stenzel places as delicate, multi-layered objects made of printed organza and tracing paper between the photographic works. By layering the shimmering, folding, loosely hung fabric - also with only two metal clips - the impression of depth and movement is created, which brings the object to life. Stenzel uses relics from an older work as the basis for the prints, the remains of a kombucha dress from her experimental music feature film Silence Song, which she simultaneously reproduces and alienates in a multi-stage process of scanning and printing. The hanging of the works as well as the silhouette-like motif are reminiscent of depictions of the shroud of St. Veronica, on which, according to legend, the face of the suffering Christ was imprinted. The reference to the vera icon (Latin for the true image) raises the question of the reality of what is depicted. This question of whether it is an image or an imprint of reality has always been raised through the medium of photography, whose claim to objectivity was based on the fact that a light image is a light imprint of the photographed object.

The object names Pond, Fall, and Silhouette as well as the aesthetics of the blurring silhouettes of the superimposed prints indicate a theme that Annett Stenzel also refers to in her photographs of women lying outdoors: the motif of Ophelia from William Shakespeare's early 17th century. The drama Hamlet, created in the 19th century, and its depiction in art history. Hamlet's lover, who had fallen into madness and whose fate and end Queen Gertrude reports on, became the incarnation of female death through her literary and artistic adaptations, especially in the 19th century.Perhaps the most famous depiction of Ophelia is by the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. It shows a sumptuously dressed Ophelia in the water, her head thrown back, her hair loose around it. Her eyes are half closed, her mouth slightly open, and she spreads her arms in a surrendering gesture. In one hand she still holds a few of the previously picked flowers, but most of them float in the water and surround her body. The tactile materiality that Annett Stenzel pursues in her work is also evident in the details in Millais' painting: the floating hair dissolving in the water; the delicate pattern of the robe that sparkles in the sun; the fabric of her skirt billowing in the water; the rich variety of flowers and plants on the banks of the stream. The composition of the picture gives the impression of a laying out: in Millais's work, Ophelia is not a drowning woman, but rather the neatly draped object of a production, which is linked to a Christian pictorial tradition by the segmented arch and is elevated to a devotional image. Millais presents Ophelia at the same time as untouchable, removed, and – through her devoted pose and the sexual symbolism of the water – as an erotic object that presents itself undemandingly to the male gaze.Due to the image-filling staging of the women outdoors, the sunlight illuminating individual parts of the scene as well as the direction of view, and the viewer's perspective from diagonally above, Annett Stenzel's photographs certainly have similarities with Millais' paintings. But while Ophelia in Millais offers herself devotedly to the gaze (and death) with her body turned towards her, arms and palms open, the women in Stenzel's photographs adopt a distant, closed posture: partially turned away, arms and legs drawn to her body, protecting themselves and their belongings. In Stenzel, the women's immediate surroundings are not romantically charged - as in Millais' depiction of the surrounding nature - but appear to be a clearly urban, rough space that offers the women little protection.

Ophelia can already be described as a victim at the level of literary invention: a victim of the complicated relationships in which she is presented by Shakespeare, as well as a victim of the feelings that she was not allowed to live out. And it is also at the level of the visual artistic adaptations and their reception that, through their projection, stylize the literary figure into a symbol of overcoming the separation between humans and nature and a symbol of innocent eroticism.The women sleeping outdoors in Annett Stenzel's photographs are also victims: victims of a capitalist and patriarchal system that all too often pushes women to the margins of society and in which - especially homeless women - are left without protection. But contrary to the portrayal of Ophelia in art history, Annett Stenzel's view is not a male, eroticizing view of women, but rather a view that shows us the circumstances themselves, understands the women as protagonists of their world, and allows them to use the staging - of light, which attributes colors and structures – a beauty and dignity.