Unfortunately the Sammlung Goetz exhibition Cyrill Lachauer. I Am Not Sea, I Am Not Land on view in Haus der Kunst is temporarily closed. An online presentation of select videos and installations from the show, however, can be viewed on our website until the time Haus der Kunst reopens. The works provide insight into the artist’s thoughts and artistic approach.
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Cyrill Lachauer was born in Rosenheim in 1979 and lives in Berlin. He studied directing, ethnology and fine arts. He is a co-founder of Flipping the Coin. Records. Films. Books. in Berlin and has conducted extensive field research. In Lachauer’s new installation, which he expressly created for the Sammlung Goetz exhibition in Haus der Kunst, the artist explores the idea of land and landscape in the most varied forms.
The film Sunken Cities, Floating Skies is a central work in the exhibition. It opens with a close-up of the famous painting, The Land of Cockaigne, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1567. In a nearly 30-minute tracking shot, Lachauer zooms into the picture. The film is accompanied by the text Sunken Cities, Floating Skies, which the artist wrote during a journey from Florida to New Mexico aboard freight trains. The film tells of encounters with marginal individuals, unfulfilled desires and places of decline. It is accompanied by a sound collage sound collage that Lachauer developed together with the artist and DJ Moritz Stumm.
Spurred by the idea of a narrative landscape in which the history of its residents is inscribed, Lachauer embarked on a journey. The trip resulted in the multimedia installation Cockaigne - I Am Not Sea, I Am Not Land, which includes films, videos, slide projections, sound installations, photographs and wall texts. It remains to be seen how much of his own history Lachauer has included in this work.
In the film Justin, we meet the eponymous queer national park ranger at the feet of El Capitan, a vertical granite rock formation that is considered an Eldorado for climbers. In this film, two very different ideas of masculinity meet.
A brightly painted room in the center of the former air raid shelter interrupts the series of small rooms. No film occupies the space, just the voice of an opera singer singing the same line, “If I could only”. It represents a moment of hope, when there is an opening above, when the boundaries of the basement fall away.
The film Amerika tells of broken dreams. In it we encounter Barrit, a US citizen living in Germany whom Lachauer met in Berlin. Together the two dreamed of traveling through the United States on freight trains in the tradition of American migrant workers. The trip, however, never came to pass. Instead, they visited the town of Amerika in Saxony, just a two and a half hour drive from Berlin.
Violent confrontations and the exploitation of nature bear witness to the theft of land. The resulting conflicts are perpetuated over generations, leaving in their wake a destroyed landscape, the loss of a homeland and a sense of placelessness.
In his film Dodging Raindrops – A Separate Reality, Lachauer follows in the footsteps of the controversial ethnologist Carlos Castaneda on a journey through the United States. He meets rodeo riders, gangster rappers and alleged indigenous shamans. The film tells of the loss of home and the search for one’s own identity.
The tour of the exhibition closes with the film Esel (Donkey), in which Lachauer explores a northern Alpine ritual. According to an old custom, archaically masked men in brightly colored tattered costumes dance through the town in early December. In his film, Lachauer places two donkeys in the northern Italian mountain landscape and sets the scene to a soundtrack composed by Moritz Stumm.
