The Keramiplast objects Ad Acta, Ad Acta (II.) and Ada Acta (III.) as well the video Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt [Hope Dies Last] are based on a critical examination of the Olympic Games.

In Ad Acta, three differently shaped rings of the same colour hang on five coat hooks mounted on a white wall.

The video 'Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt' [Hope Dies Last] shows a rather lacklustre hand movement with which the rings are thrown onto five metal rods stuck into the grass. They hit and shatter with the clinking sound of porcelain. Like other works, this video piece is complemented by several stills and documentary photos. They show the camera set-up and the throwing game on a meadow covered in hoarfrost, upon which the running back and forth of the artist during the action can be seen in a circular pattern. What remains at the end is a small pile of broken pieces and a few rings that have remained intact - an Olympic pile of broken pieces.

Iris Hoppe deals with various conceptual questions about the exploration of borders, which are of a mental or spatial nature, between people, art spaces and artistic productions. With her performative installation "Sense of Balance" she takes a critical look at the social complexity of ‘being out of balance’.

In her first NFT video series “move in balance”, Hoppe uses footage of a dancer exploring the Kounellis Room in the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Germany.

With the help of specific digital post-processing of the dance video, she ensures that our gaze is simultaneously directed at the limitations of the (human) body and (digital) space.

The series consists of three short videos in the colors red - yellow - blue. They exist both as NFTs and as regular mp4 videos.

Performer: Smila Vita Hoppe

Kamera: Rick Kam

Video post-processing: Jakob Gehrmann

In a choreographed performance on interactive sound sculpture Sense of Balance, the two performers show maximum attentiveness for one another in front of a clerical backdrop, with impressive body control and maximum concentration. The dialogical, coordinated movements let the audience feel how difficult it is to keep one's balance with one's counterpart.

“Our earth is out of balance.” With her participatory sound installation, Iris Hoppe lets us feel immediately that it is we who have to look for balance – some people even find that they have completely lost it. Because a digital sensor picks up the movements with almost millimeter accuracy and only controls the song "Silence" as a kind of reward when the seesaw come to rest completely and remain in perfect balance with one another.

Performers: Smila Vita Hoppe, Vincent Fuchs
Cameraman: Jakob Gehrmann
Video editing: Jakob Gehrmann, Iris Hoppe

Performative photography taken at St. Aldegundis Church Emmerich a.R., July 2021

Lyrics

Silence: Learn to keep silence, o friend. Speech is like silver but silence at the right time is pure gold.

Speech: Speak, if you are concerned for a friend. Speak, speak, to say beautiful things to a beautiful woman.

What do Ludwig von Beethoven and Joseph Beuys have in common?

On the occasion of the Beethoven year 2020 and the Beuys year 2021, Iris Hoppe developed the interactive audio sculpture Sense of Balance, in which she performed the humanistic and at the same time humorous songs Silence and Speech by Ludwig von Beethoven (3-voices canons, Lyricist Johann Gottfried Herder, 1815) - and uses the rabbit fur that Beuys often uses as a seat pad for the seesaw.

The concept of the seesaw, an eight-meter-long wooden beam painted in gold glaze, resting on a silver block of wood, is based on a dialogical process and active participation in society.  Hoppe asks in a playful way to come into balance with his counterpart.  As soon as the seesaw is in balance, the canon Silence sounds - if it rocks back and forth, the canon Speech sounds.

Try it yourself!

The installation Sense of Balance was shown for the first time during Coronopoly project of LTK4 in the atrium of the Luther Church in Cologne, DE.

The construction of the seesaw was realized with great support from Ralf Borrmann (woodwork) and Peter Ermisch (electrics).

Funded by an artist grant of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, DE.

Rundgang / Rondwandeling / Circuit 2020

Circuit is a walk through the streets of Amsterdam, in 1996 and now.

In 1996, Iris Hoppe walked the streets of Amsterdam and its surrounding area. She filmed this walk from two different viewpoints with a Super 8 camera, and turned it into an installation. She projected the two films picture-in-picture.

Almost 25 years later, the artist remade the film. This time she filmed her own daughter, walking the same streets as then. Together, the films make up a new work. The two walks are placed parallel to each other on four screens. An experience in which the meaning of movement and time is explored. - Alice Smits -

Exhibition #reallife  2020 together with Alice Musiol, curated by Raum für Gäste

INDIVIDUAL BORDERS is a participatory video work and at the same time an intervention in public space. Travelling by car from Berlin to Venice, I crossed as most as possible country borders, on the ride, approached people on the streets and asked them to define their own personal border on asphalt in front of the official border. I offered the protagonists a box full of different colored chalk with which they drew their „individual borders“ as tiny circle around themselves. The documentation shows the original single channel video from 2003 as 3-channel installation 2020 in the exhibition #reallife.

3-channel video installation in shop windows of former Lust for Life during exhibition #reallife 2020, city center, Aachen, DE

Drone photography of the performative installation "Zielübung / target practice" shown in September 2018 during Vorgebirgspark Skulptur in the water basin of Vorgebirgspark in Cologne, DE

Solo show "Zeit(ver)lauf" / Course of Time, September 2019, Open Space, Kunstverein Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich e.V., DE

Soloist (2019) is a wire figure rotating in a circle, reminiscent of a music box ballerina. The artist shows the portrait of her deceased mother on a dismantled video screen, which in turn is fed by a dismantled video player in the abdomen and vagina of the wire figure.

The old folk song "Thoughts are free" sounds from the loudspeakers, the ears of the figure. A hymn of resistance. Duration 10 min. loop.

The rotating video sculpture projects fragments from the artist's private video archive onto the surrounding walls. Memories that arose in her as she sorted her mother's estate. The complex installation contains many details that, in combination with the projected images and the music, trigger complex associations.

Video documentation: Solo exhibition Grenzzirkel 2020 at Raum für Gäste in Aachen, DE

Performative installation in public space shown on 2nd September 2018, in the water basin of Vorgebirgspark in Cologne during Vorgebirgspark Skulptur

Performative installation in public space shown on 28th of September 2019 during
"Unscharp", the 3rd Art Prize of the Evangelical Church in Württemberg in the water basin of city hall park in Göppingen, DE

Two kayakers, sisters Carla and Jule from Paddel-Club-Köln, stay in balance for more than six hours without movement, focusing the geometrical axis of the park.

The installation includes audio that comes originaly from a meditation music for professional athletes which serves for self-optimization. The overall installation provides concious an absurdistically surreal image in the public park.