PART OF AN OBJECT

2025
Performance based Multimedia Work
Recordplayer, loudspeaker, paper, textile, pigment, voice.
7 min.

In collaboration with speech therapist Johanna Joch.
Performers: Linh Lê, Ksenia Sofia Miller, Jan-Domenic Urbas.

The performance explores the transitions between different artistic media and the ways in which drawing, text, sound, and movement can influence and transform one another. Rooted in Heil’s drawing practice, the work begins with lines, gestures, symbols, and fragments of text that already contain the potential for movement and embodied expression. These elements are translated into voice, performance, sound, and sculptural form.

The installation consists of three large-scale drawings displayed as rolled paper columns, a vinyl record engraved with a hand-drawn line that becomes audible through playback, and a printed block of texts that forms part of the performative process. Together, these works examine drawing not only as a visual medium but as a score capable of generating sound, language, and physical action.

A central component of the project is a live performance involving three performers who interact with the drawings, texts, and sound. Through voice and movement, they activate the installation while physically engaging with the paper—wrapping themselves in the drawings, folding, bending, and reshaping them into new sculptural forms. During the performance, pigments from the drawings are transferred onto the performers’ white suits, which remain in the space afterwards as sculptural traces alongside the transformed paper works. The installation is completed through this process of activation, leaving behind material evidence of the performance together with its video documentation.

The work investigates the moment at which a drawing becomes a sculpture, how a drawn gesture can manifest itself through the body and sound, and how language itself can become material. A line may become a movement, a word an object, or a voice a drawing. Rather than presenting fixed forms, the installation reveals translation itself as an artistic process in which meaning, material, and form continuously shift and overlap.