Headmachine

INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE 
2019 Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Berlin

Material: textiles treated with various techniques; honeycomb; soil; tubing; tomatoes and other plants; drawings on plexiglass and PVC; plastic; bristles; ropes; pipes; chains; spotlights; speakers

© Susi Hinz. Photos: Liz Stumpf & Polina Kokotov


Headmachine was developed for the glass greenhouses of the Spacefarming facility in Berlin-Dahlem and activates the site itself as an operative system. Its point of departure is the cultivation of tomato plants for extraterrestrial habitats, where adaptation, selection, and hybridisation are conditions of survival. From this context emerged an installation comprising wearable sculpture, drawing, and performance, in which human bodies are subjected to the same regulated conditions as the plants. The transparent architecture renders processes of control, observation, and self-regulation visible. Within this constellation, the work considers the human body as sculpture and examines how identity might form under artificially engineered conditions.