NICE TO MEET YOU

"One of these performative installations was Nice to meet you, which arose as a site-specific intervention on the occasion of the exhibition Oppositions & Dialogues 2009 at the Kunstverein Hannover. The architectural intervention consisted of a narrow corridor, which was built out of untreated plywood, wound its way through what was in any case a narrow space of transition, and connected two exhibition rooms with each other. [...] From outside, one could not know whether the walls made out of boards concealed something or where the narrow corridor would lead. The passageway was accessible from both sides, but it was so narrow that only one person could pass through it at a time. Since the other end could not be seen, it was impossible to know whether a person was already in the corridor or was in fact coming in one's direction. If extremely thin persons could perhaps squeeze past each other, the normal case involved a confrontation which could only be resolved through negotiation: one person was compelled to move backward through the corridor. Whereas the installation, when viewed from without, is an architectural spatial intervention, it first reveals its performative character upon being entered and giving rise to a concommitant spatial experience." René Zechlin