Visitors are pushed into a tube while lying on a stretcher. A feeling of coldness comes over them, the confinement becomes noticeable, accompanied by the awareness of being observed - without the possibility of quickly escaping. Inside, humming, vibrations, and loud noises intensify. Picturesque sequences flow into one another before their eyes, overlapping to form a fluid stream reminiscent of Al-generated images: motifs blur, appear, and slip away. Voices emerge - they tell of feelings, needs, and experiences during MRI examinations.

At the center is an architectural object that evokes a medical environment and at the same time creates a surreal world of experience. Abstractly alienated MRI scans enter into dialogue with a sound composition that dissolves the boundaries between inner and outer perception. This visual-acoustic symbiosis opens up a space in which visitors can question and expand their own body awareness.

Medical procedures, especially diagnostic imaging, have been repeatedly criticized in recent years.

In her artistic process, Ines Schäfer does not only start from an emotional, personal dimension in these investigations. Through her work, she also addresses cultural and power-political discourses in medicine. Schäfer's artistic research focuses on considerations of the relationship between technology and the subject, algorithms, standardization, and neutrality. In its mediality, the installation shows complementary as well as contradictory formulations that place its content in a context between tradition and current events. In the feminist manner of the 1970s, Schäfer creates an environment that allows visitors to physically re-experience feelings. Here, the body becomes both a medium and a resonance chamber - an instrument, a mirror, and a projection surface.

ECHOES OF MIND is thus an immersive art installation that makes the multilayered connections between body and mind tangible and encourages visitors to reflect on and renegotiate personal and social perspectives on medical reality.

text: Tony Bartos & Defne Kizilöz

‚Monitoring‘, 42.Kasseler Dokfestival, Kunstverein Kassel

photo: Lucas Melzer