At the end of the 1960s, the German artist Irma Hünerfauth (1907-1998) abandoned painting in favor of a new series of sound experiments. In the early 1970s, Hünerfauth had started making a series of boxes filled with metal and plastic waste that played with the symbiotic relationship between humans and mechanics. The artist, then in his early sixties, was inspired by a welding course. She created her first boxes under her own name, before adopting the pseudonym IRMAanipulations.
Surprisingly, “Speaking Boxes” is Hünerfauth’s first solo exhibition since his death. It presents two variants of its containers, which the artist produced from the early 70s until the early 90s: Vibrationsobject (vibrating objects) and Sprechende Kasten (talking boxes). These objects are reminiscent of miniature dystopian landscapes, with quivering wires soldered to circuit boards, bits of sheet metal and plastic flowers that evoke nightmarish aquariums. The works are as much indebted to the feedback loop of cybernetics (defined by Norbert Wiener in 1948 as the systems of control and communication shared by man and machine) as to a fascination with the impact of new technologies on the production of art and society.
from Hünerfauth Vibrationsobject come to life at the push of a button, while Sprechende Kasten feature theatrical recordings of the artist singing or reciting poetry. Together, these kinetic assemblages speak to the crises of pollution and loneliness, industrialization and warfare of the second half of the 20th century, yet they feel eerily prescient in their anticipation of the cybernetic systems that have become part of the fabric of our society.
