The artist opened what had once been his family home to others and has continued to live there with people to whom he is not related by blood. After his mother died by suicide, he was confronted with the fact that caring for another person is not the same as fully understanding them, nor does it mean one can always save them.
That day, friends, companions, and people with whom he had simply shared a home came to be with him. Having sought to create a place where others could belong, the artist came to realise how much his own life had been sustained by their presence, often without his knowing it.
We can never fully understand one another, yet none of our lives is shaped by us alone. This unresolved tension forms the starting point of Poetics of Relation – resonanz.
Rather than representing these relations, the work constructs a physical space in which people, objects, and places can act upon one another. The installation brings together objects used in the artist's actual shared household with furniture and everyday things newly encountered in Venice. Each carries its own history and accumulated time.
People spend time in the space. They may sit, use cups, talk, or remain silent. They may also leave without doing anything. A chair moved by one person occupies a new position for whoever arrives after they have gone. We may know nothing of the person whose actions have shaped the space—not their face, their intentions, or the life they have led. Yet we encounter the immediate effects of their presence here and now.
At the same time, objects here are not merely passive carriers of human memories. The weight of a chair, the way cardboard deforms, the feel of tableware, and the specific arrangement of a room—these material qualities dictate our posture, our gestures, and how we navigate the space. As we act upon things, they, in turn, shape us.
Relation here does not demand visible interaction. Distance, silence, hesitation, friction, and moments where "nothing happens" are equally embraced. The artist composes the initial conditions of the space but refuses to direct the relations towards a preferred outcome. Furthermore, the maintenance and care necessary for the work to continue are themselves woven into its ongoing construction.
Therefore, there is no single finished form to be preserved. Objects are worn, people come and go, and the space takes on new configurations. The work survives not by fixing a particular state, but by sustaining the conditions for further relations to emerge. The exhibition is merely one phase in which a life already underway opens onto new people and places. Some objects will return to the artist's household after the Biennale, carrying with them the changes undergone in Venice.
Drawing upon Édouard Glissant’s insistence on the "right to opacity"—the refusal to make full transparency a prerequisite for relation—and Hartmut Rosa’s concept of unpredictable "resonance," the work embeds these philosophies into the intimate, material reality of a shared household.
Someone we thought had nothing to do with us may already have helped shape our present. And we, in turn, silently alter the world someone else is about to enter.
What does it mean for us to be together?
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To own this work does not mean preserving or reproducing the exact furniture or arrangement seen in a particular exhibition.
The work is intended to be transferred through a Certificate of Authenticity and a Reinstallation Protocol issued by the artist.
Together, these documents define the conditions necessary for Poetics of Relation – resonanz to continue as the same work, as well as the elements that may change in response to different people, objects, and sites.
What the owner inherits is not the possession of particular people, relations, or a fixed final state. Rather, it is the right to realise the work again in different contexts, together with the responsibility to keep open the possibility of relation, while respecting the agency of those involved, the use and transformation of objects, and the care necessary to sustain the space.
The aim is neither to require particular forms of interaction or behaviour from those involved, nor to recreate events that occurred during previous exhibitions.
Alongside the installation, the artist develops a series of drawings and diagrams as independent works.
These are not simply technical plans for reconstructing the installation.
Through another visual form, they explore the movement of people and objects, the passage of time, the structure and transformation of space, and the ways in which different entities act upon one another.
Spanning the process from initial conception through exhibition and transformation to the work's continuation beyond the exhibition, the drawings do not seek to preserve a single completed state. Instead, they give visual form to the thinking behind the relations that constitute the work, and to the movement of those relations themselves.
