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Press Release

TORSTRASSE 166
The House of Imagination

In an empty apartment building owned by WBM in Berlin Mitte, 12 internationally known artists are given an apartment to present their positions on the topic ‘imagination’.

Ralf Schmerberg, Jaana Prüss, and Peter Weber take up the challenge of initiating a discourse on the topic space and imagination, and have invited various contemporary artists to participate.

Raumlabor Berlin, a Berlin collective of architects and artists, will stage a P2-Modellwohnung (a flat in a prefab high-rise) from remains of condemned buildings in Halle-Neustadt.

In her flat, the Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota weaves furniture and everyday objects into expansive thread installations. Her installations give rise to multiple associations and interpretations, from frozen to disturbing images. The renowned artist also developed a large-scale work especially for the facade of TORSTRASSE 166.

Laura Kikauka will create an installative site that invites visitors to stop and take pause. Whether somebody is in the process of moving in or out is left for the beholders’ imagination to decide. The Canadian artist lives at her Funny Farms in Berlin and Ontario.

The Berlin musicians mosermeyer work with acoustic elements and create events and spatial experiences in the dark virtually. Visitors can give free reign to their imagination and experience spaces and imaginative worlds through sound.

The Norwegian scent researcher Sissel Tolaas transforms the scents of her apartment artistically into a memory of life traces. In her archive, she has collected over 1800 scents. She animates the space by telling hidden stories through scents, thus revealing the true life of a flat.

Christine Rebet has fox and magpie live with her and watches Sandmännchen with them. Sound installations are played in the condensed space. The artist, originally from France, is well known for taking a psychological look behind the scenes.

Harald Smykla, based in London, projects drawn situations in a white living room. He produces short-term, changing room designs and living atmospheres between illusion and reality in which the visitors can participate interactively.

Plastique Fantastique, known for their works with pneumatic spaces, in cooperation with Soundexperiencedesign, furnish both an apartment and the courtyard with huge floating bubbles on which film and sound installations can be experienced.

Souzihaas, together with about 200 children, will develop an imaginative continent in her apartment. This results in large works and sculptures, using various materials and techniques.

Manfred Reuter condenses all objects of his household into one cubic metre: together with his own body weight, this weighs as much as the Sumo wrestler Konishiki: 288 kilograms. He provides detailed photographic information about all objects in his possession.

(e.) twin Gabriel address the topic of Alice in Wonderland. In their apartment, they will build a set for the dream world of Alice, documented in film and photographic performances.

Under the working title ‘Neubau’, the artist duo Franz Höfner and Harry Sachs offer a new declination of the grammar of hardware store materials like woodchip, laminate, tiles etc. In their artistic and spatial interventions, the two Berlin artists use the vocabulary of renovation and tell stories around renovation that are both ironic and critical.

TORSTRASSE 166 is the House of Imagination. The artistically transformed rooms and apartments appeal to all senses with sound, scent or space installations. The project will open up new experiences of space and inspire visitors’ imagination in many different ways.

Initiator and sponsor of the art project TORSTRASSE 166 is the hardware store company HORNBACH. Known for its innovative and unconventional communication style, this project reflects the philosophy of the company’s current campaign: ‘You can imagine it. Then you can also build it.’ HORNBACH is a pioneer and breaks new ground here, for the first time sponsoring and supporting an innovative art project as a partner.

Responsibility for the realisation of the project TORSTRASSE 166, (after an idea of HEIMAT, Berlin), lies with trigger happy productions, also from Berlin. <p>Torstrasse 166, 10115 Berlin<br>torstrasse166.de /p>