»Die ehrlichsten Erinnerungen sind die, an die du noch niemals gedacht hast.« Maartje T. Smits
»Damit haben wir eine weitere Definition von Atmosphäre: Es ist eine spürbare Anwesenheit von etwas oder jemandem im Raum.« Gernot Böhme

I
The white woman: a category of ghost. Seen in European castles. After I finished school I also worked in a white-woman-castle. Back then the geomancer Marko Pogačnik was a sought after expert for atmospheric problems in urban spaces. He mediated. From then on the white woman withdrew into her hidden chambers. Supposedly the Berlin City Palace also had such a spirit. Last appearance in May 1940. Is she perhaps still there? Or will she come again, when everything is finally finished? As the spirit of God’s grace and of the House of Hohenzollern?

II
I came to the question of atmosphere via WILHELM GROENER. The third part o.T. (AT) from their K-Trilogy really got me. Not immediately, but it crept up on me. The installation was on view for four hours on four consecutive days. Initially I planned to take just a quick peek. Thwe setting is straightforward: a room with two exposed concrete walls and two walls covered by theatrical curtains. A small mixing board for sound, projection and lighting flanks one wall. The centre of the space is delineated by multiple door-sized, wooden frames in the style of folding screens with two, three or four panels, some covered by a clear film, some empty. At first they are grouped together like a bouquet; by and by they are fanned out. Passageways, intimations of geometric structures and decorative forms are created, depending on arrangement and point of view. The visitors view these from the outside or move through the paths formed by the screens. The fact that some frames are covered with film, while others are empty, acts as a self-explanatory choreographic principle. Later, as the atmosphere of the space becomes increasingly charged, the empty and filled frames begin to alternate. Both are transparent. But one is a passageway; the other is not. However, it may be altogether different: Are the passageways actually passageways, or do invisible doors perhaps hang in the frames? Do the transparently covered frames indicate an inferred principle? It is this dialogue of ambiguity that captivates me.

III
At a reading at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, Unter den Linden – part of an event series on the Villa Aurora artists’ residency, Los Angeles – the poet Uljana Wolf recounted experiencing an apparition in L.A. A sort of felt presence of Marta Feuchtwanger, the wife of Lion. As Jews, both had fled Germany, escaping National Socialist persecution, and Villa Aurora was their residence. Marta as a spirit was not physically present, but nonetheless locatable, Uljana Wolf stated. It seems Marta had appeared frequently in the past, as well. After the reading the poet and psychoanalyst Georg Leß mentioned the ghost in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. The author Sarah Kahn described it in her book Die Gespenster von Berlin (The Ghosts of Berlin).

IV
Most cultures have developed entire demonologies. The history of dance is closely tied to the history of spirits and ghosts. Rituals of invocation, in which the body is transported to a state of vibration (which is likely part of the explanation). Le Sacre du Printemps as a modern exoticised form of an archaic tradition. Japanese Butoh as a contemporary – albeit more restorative – variation. Butoh is less an attempt to understand apparitions via contemporary means, but rather it creates a suggestive atmosphere using symbols. e year 2013 was named Sacre-Year, a celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the birth of modern dance. New insights into the potential realities - the psychoanalytic, psychological, parapsychological, scientific, phenomenological - of dancing and danced-for spirits were not gained.

V
I am not actually concerned with ghosts, per se. They are perhaps the last link in the chain, a kind of personification of atmosphere. And therefore surface within the context of a similar problem: they are strongly linked to the aesthetics of Romanticism, to an exaggerated subjectivism and mysticism, along with its final residue in the occultism and esotericism of the early twentieth century. A devotional principle that risks a proximity to totalitarianism. Therefore today the odd situation exists, that the entire craft of theatre in light, sound and set design is implicitly orientated toward the atmospheric, even if it is rejected. Nonetheless, the atmospheric is the least discursively addressed concept in the theatrical and performative context. The more interesting current dialogues occur in the context of architectural theory and spatial phenomenology. As Gernot Böhme first asserted in his standard text Atmosphäre. Essays zur neuen Ästhetik (Atmospheres: Essays on a New Aesthetics), Hermann Schmitz and Jakob Böhme continue to be firmly established thinkers within this discourse. Schmitz’s argument in terms of phenomenology and a theory of the felt body emphasises subjective experience; Böhme is read from the perspective of object-oriented ontology. Within this force field, the namesake Gernot Böhme rejects the concept of the soul and replaces it with a spatially conceived notion of corporeality: the felt body as location. Specifically, not in a subject-object dichotomy, but in a syntonic relationship. Böhme describes the way objects manifest as »an ecstasy of the object« and speaks of the »shared reality of the perceiver and the perceived.«

VI
When I came back to the installation on the third day, Günther Wilhelm had grown like a vine on the wall. Head down, arms and legs branching out, casting shadows. In the interior of the corridor, formed by the screens, Kafka quotes hang like town signs. Quotes that reveal Kafka’s special sensorium for the quality of experience. That experience is made dynamic, also internally, through localisation within space. I place my handbag off to the side of the room. But even there it falls under the spell of the quotes. »Almost arranged with the last expenditure of energy«, suddenly appears on a paper taped to the wall above my bag. That’s true. My bag has become part of the atmosphere of the room.

VII
I reach the main concentration of the space in that active state of experience, in which a new experience of time takes over as the sense of expectancy gives way. e pulse of one’s own merging with the space begins to replace time. In this state the division between creating and experiencing disappears. And the layering, as will become apparent, has been deliberately conceived by WILHELM GROENER. There is another small room behind the black curtains that line two sides of the central space. Ambiguous whether it is part of the staged space or a backstage area. Or whether the instal- lation continues backstage. The inventory of the room includes a small stand, which Günther Wilhelm apparently uses as a place to sit during breaks, and a coat rack entwined with plastic climbing plants. For the latter, it is unclear whether it belongs there or if it is simply waiting for its appearance. The ritual division of the theatrical space (which really does not exist) into public and private areas establishes the enigmatic status of the room. The motif of the invisible doors in the folding screens returns, similar to the way in which, alone in an unfamiliar home, one must define one’s own space within a strange space. The uncertainty in terms of accessibility and restriction simultaneously increases one’s own presence and the potentialities of the space. And in this state WILHELM GROENER then begin swinging neon tubes. One of the two mounting brackets suddenly loses its tension, and the lamp swings drawing curving lines in the air. Maybe a timer controls it, or maybe it is oriented to the interaction with the visitor. This ambiguity is interestingly, perfectly synchronised with the atmospheric dramaturgy that reveals the moment, in which resonance is triggered by the heightened presence, in a precisely placed gesture.

VIII
The Agiou Mina runs parallel to the Thessaloniki Corniche. Three streets further the ocean beats against the quay. It is a small street lined with orange trees. Central Thessaloniki was extensively damaged by fire in 1917, but in the Agiou Mina there are still a few buildings dating from the Ottoman period. ey either house exclusive companies or are vacant. e facades are sometimes classical, sometimes blank. is combination of styles lends the street a nostalgic feel. This is the setting for the Cavafy-Installation Stoa Cavafy installation by the Greek architectural studio Not A Number Architects. A half-open cast iron door to a vacant building allows a glimpse on to high columns of light within. They are wrapped in multiple layers of semi-transparent paper printed with text. Some areas have been peeled down to one last layer, on which Cavafy’s poem is legible in its entirety. On a desk behind the columns, giant stamps and stacks of paper are an invitation to print the poems. The back of the space is partitioned by heavy velvet theatrical curtains, which buckle toward the inside when they catch a breeze. Along the curtains’ edge the courtyard behind is visible. Since no one instructs the visitors, something is created that – having experienced WILHELM GROENER – I will call a »K-Moment«: the atmospheric ambivalence between staged and not-staged space, the gesture of an invisible door. I decide to walk through the curtains, first into the courtyard, then up a flight of stairs that lead to a wing with apparently closed offices. Dust, old coffee sacks, files, flower pots in the corridor. I move making internal checks, with a burglar-like alertness and stop suddenly, as if caught in the act. A door is open wide. In the room behind it, files have been stacked to head height. Like Kafka and Pessoa, Cavafy worked as an office worker during the day. For that reason, I am again convinced that I am still in part of the installation. I walk into the office and see two men behind the stacks of files. One is wearing a shirt, the other an undershirt. They remain silent. »Are you staged or real?« I ask repeatedly. »No«, one of them nally answers.