Schwarz Zimmer, installation views, interactive chair and light, 3 black and white photographs printed with a Xerox photo copier, 2013. Materials: wooden chair, sensor, lamp, 3 large photographs (233 x 388cm) made from wheat pasted Xerox copies on cardboard.

Schwarz Zimmer is an interactive room-installation. A single visitor was allowed in the room at time, they were instructed to read short poetic text on the wall outside which suggested certain mental images such as something wet on the floor. Upon entering the room the viewer is immersed in a pitch darkness. Unable to see the visitor can spend as little or as long of a time as they wish. If the visitor explores the room they will eventually discover a chair which is fastened to the floor in the center of the room. If the visitor sits on the chair a light turns on. In front of the three walls facing the chair are black and white photographs nearly the size of the wall behind.

In the center is an image of a woman kneeling over an overturned chair, her bare ass revealed and she is being whipped in a sexually provocative pose. The photo to the left shows a similar image although this one only contains the overturned chair and the wooden floor beneath it. The photo on the right is the same photo as the left photo without the chair. Upon further inspection of the right photo there is what appears to be a small wet spot on the floor where the chair was previously.

The photo of the woman (in the center) was reproduced from an old German DDR era erotic magazine which was found in the attic of the house where the second two photos would be taken. The photos of the chair and the floor were original photographs taken in a house located at Bauhausstrasse 1, Weimar, Germany. Upon reading a short story titled Schwartz Zimmer in the same DDR erotic magazine in which we found the photograph, we became curious to explore the ideas of what is erotic and to combine this with the representation of the passage of time, or how to represent a sense of timelessness. In a black room there is no time and this too can happen that a visitor does not find the chair and has their own experience apart from what we ever imagined.

Schwarz Zimmer is a collaboration between artists Brian Bixby and Zanda Puce.

Exhibited at Summaery, June 22-25, 2013, Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany.