Current exhibition at LISBETH: "Der ewige Tanz – Forever Dance" (The Eternal Dance) with Katrin Hahner

In a mourning ritual for her deceased aunt, artist Katrin Hahner hums the words of Conny Froboess's 1958 dance hit "Schicke Schuh" ("Chic Shoes"): "Chic chic shoes, dancing all the time, dancing without pause." During their lifetime, her aunt and uncle danced to this song—now she has entered into the "eternal dance," and Hahner changes the words to "Dance yourself home." Katrin Hahner's film "HyperCycleJazz," shown in a video installation at the LISBETH Wärterhaus, is a cinematic manifestation of a ritual that serves to navigate the threshold of being in the face of non-being or no longer being. By naming things, she weaves a web between living beings and landscapes, thoughts and feelings, leaving room for wonder. 

The title of the film refers to Manfred Eigen's theory of the "hypercycle," a concept of self-sustaining cycles of interconnected processes, each of which catalyzes the next. This positive feedback loop, which could be understood as the love that remains after a person dies, raises the question of the generative qualities of repetitive cycles. When Hahner connects this phenomenon to the improvisational structure of jazz, she suggests how we can understand certain behaviors and nonlinear dynamics, as well as the continuity of human and more-than-human ancestry.

In the café rooms of LISBETH, the theme of the "eternal dance" is taken up through various representations of the last card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot: "XXI: The World." On the card, the hermaphroditic "World Dancer" dances, floating in the middle of a laurel wreath. She embodies perfection and the advanced state of the soul, which is able to effortlessly integrate all apparent contradictions and complexities in life into a flowing dance. 

Curator Alexis Hyman Wolff reached out to tarot practitioners and artists in the United States and Europe and asked them to contribute an image of card XXI from their tarot deck against the backdrop of a textile they use either to wrap or lay out the cards. The result is a series of flags with images of "the world" e.g., from Jean Noblet's Tarot de Marseille from 1650, the iconic Rider-Waite deck from 1909, and more contemporary decks such as "Motherpeace" from 1981 and the Black Power Tarot, created by King Khan under the supervision of Alejandro Jodorowsky in 2021. 

The exhibition "The Eternal Dance" opens up a space for reflection on the dance of life while also revealing possibilities for integrating life's joys and sorrows. 

Curated by Alexis Hyman Wolff