MANNHEIM.- In his 1864 lecture titled On the dependence of our world view on the duration of our moment, Russian biologist Karl Ernst von Baer discussed the subjectivity of human sensory perception, explaining that human beings can only process one sensory stimulus per second. His insights helped to lay the foundations of a theory of virtuality, effectively making him a precursor of cybernetics. The limitations of human sensory skills, along with the resulting inexperiencability of the totality of the outside world, are a recurring concern in the discourse of cybernetics – and in the work of Susanna Hertrich.

The cybernetic perspective on the world considers human beings to be part of a larger, nonhierarchical system made up also of machines and other actors, interacting with one another in automatic reciprocity. In the face of the present dynamics of algorithmic control of our social realities, cybernetic thinking is more relevant than ever. Considering how the human is integrated into a wider system, acknowledging the limitations of humans also means opening up a space of possibility.

The artworks of Susanna Hertrich describe this space, they imply it and simultaneously move within it, then deconstruct it. In the scenarios she designs, various devices and apparatuses promise to make up for the limitations of the human spectrum of perception, and to expand it as sensory prostheses. These objects are essentially vessels for a critique of the contemporary.

In her most recent work In the Eye of the Beholder, Hertrich examines the process of seeing through special apparatuses. The object is reminiscent of a telescope, an invitation to letting one’s gaze wander far away – but the apparatus disrupts these trajectories and reorients the observer’s gaze back onto itself. It allows the observers to observe themselves in the act of looking.

Other works such as Brighter Than a Thousand Suns address environmental phenomena that remain imperceptible to the human sensorium.

In 2016 the artist traveled to the region of Japan that was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and developed a work that deals with the catastrophe in Fukushima, creating a special suit that translates invisible radioactive radiation into the visible glow of a helmet ornament.

These and newer works by Susanna Hertrich are brought together in the exhibition Die Abhängigkeit unseres Weltbildes von der Länge unseres Moments [On the dependence of our world view on the duration of our moment] at the Mannheimer Kunstverein. Together, they form an immersive multimedia installation that explores the thin line of tension between the promise of science and contemporary technology on the one hand and their uncanniness on the other.

Susanna Hertrich (Paris, 1973) lives and works in Berlin and Basel. She studied at the Peter Behrens School of Art in Düsseldorf, the Academy of Media Art in Cologne, at the Tokyo University of the Arts and the Royal College of Art in London. She exhibits internationally, among others at the Boston Center for the Arts, Vitra Design Museum, Marta Herford, Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW and HEK House of Electronic Arts in Basel.

Susanna Hertrich was an artist in residency at Goethe Institute’s Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto (2015), she was a Visiting Professor at Chiba University in Japan (2014–15) and fulfilled a professor position at the Academy of Art and Design in Bergen in Norway (2002–06). In 2019 she will attend three-months artist residency at Tokyo Art and Space with a grant by Atelier Mondial/Peter Merian Foundation.

Along with her artistic practice,, Susanna Hertrich holds a research position at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel, Switzerland.