IMPAKT
Following an accident in which a metal rod pierced my skull, I thought long and hard about the violence around us. The shock caused by this event was the catalyst for the creation of IMPAKT.
Beyond this brutality, I wanted to explore our perception of the elasticity of time in relation to the body in movement.
On stage, playing with the limits of ballistics, I wield a bazooka … symbol of the iniquity and brutality of objects manipulated by man.
IMPAKT will spare no one.
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How can a brutal shock be magnified under our very eyes? Can violence be transcended to attain the sublime? This is the theme that Herman Kolgen explores in his new creation Impakt. On stage, an imposing ballistic device strikes a target with projectiles. The speed, trajectory and impact of the shells are analyzed in real time, then retransmitted to a virtual body projected in the space, which reacts to the powerful blows sustained. Through live manipulations, Kolgen gradually circumvents the extreme violence and imminent destruction by placing the body in state of suspension, weightlessness, poetic grace.
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Herman Kolgen – IMPAKT
Audiovisual performance
Montreal artist Herman Kolgen’s most recent audiovisual performance unfolds in the middle of a shooting platform, on which a tactile target is subjected to the dynamics of a bazooka. At first, the missile-armed weapon bombards the target, and the ballistic data (velocity, trajectory, impetus, position) generated by the discharge are digitally interpreted.
Once transmitted, these data activate a three-dimensional human form which reacts violently according to the variable nature of the detected impacts, propelled, like a puppet, in sync with the audio algorithms. The artist thus plays with the elasticity of time, metamorphosing this audiovisual atrocity into a moment of poetic levitation.
At times, driven by an uncontrollable desire for adrenaline, Kolgen shifts gears. He fragments the algorithms, generating a random sequence of narratively powerful, graphic visuals. Between the flux of generated images and injected borrowings from the web, the artist seems to make a pact with the very essence of violence. And he needs only to rearm the bazooka and to fire again to reactivate the cycle.
IMPAKT is never the same twice. Like a game of Russian roulette, the outcome is never certain. The only certainty is that nobody will be spared.
The idea for this project was born following an accident involving a metal rod that perforated the artist’s skull. The shock of the impact triggered a reflection on the proximity of violence, its omnipresence, and the fact that the form it takes is not always evident. The fragility of the living is unquestionably heightened in face of the unpredictability of daily events: what we don’t see coming may arise from what is most familiar to us.
With IMPAKT, Herman Kolgen continues his exploration of human territory: the impact of human on human, reinforced by the urban environment, its density, and frequent harshness. Spiralling societal pressure and demands, which find particular resonance in social media, bring in their wake an insidious form of burgeoning aggression: Kolgen puts sound and images to the ensuing explosion—mental space narrows, oxygen becomes scarce, and the executory act is performed.
Nothing explains or justifies our surging impulses: they are essentially born of irrational principles. Yet channeling violence remains an imperative: this is the crux of this cycle of audiovisuals. Through radical sequences of sound and image—both seductive and repellent, Kolgen questions the ambivalence and ambiguity that lies deep within each of us.
IMPAKT is not only a state-of-the-art audiovisual work that redefines traditional scenography, but it is also a commentary on western capitalist society and the routine violence it has accustomed us to. IMPAKT invites us to observe and perceive something else within it—and to extricate it from the dangers of banality.
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CREDITS
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Concept, audiovisual composition/
Herman Kolgen
Technical Design, Programming/
Julian Coll, Lucas Paris
Fabrication/
Pipo Pierre-Louis, Mateo, Lucas Paris, uMake
Production/
Recto-Verso + Herman Kolgen