With BLOOD FALLS, you conque(e)r my heart Margarete Kiss presents scenes from her text of the same name, which deals with loss, memory and longing in the melting landscape of Antarctica. The seemingly untouched, extreme Antarctic nature becomes a symbol of an insatiable desire for memory – a desire that seems to melt away and dissolve with every approach.
The central motif of the exhibition are the Blood Falls, a microbiological ecosystem on the Antarctic Taylor Glacier. Water rises to the surface from a subglacial lake in which the Gelidimuriae bacterial strain has survived for 1.5 million years. Originally clear, the water turns red as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen – a reaction in which the iron it contains oxidizes and iron oxides are formed.
BLOOD FALLS, you conque(e)r my heart is a multi-layered love story that symbolizes the search for connection and relationality in moments of pain and isolation. It thematizes the escape into intense emotions, the tension between desire and destruction. The adaptability of the Gelidimuriae bacteria to their icy, nutrient-poor environment becomes the antithesis of the heroic stories of the Antarctic – stories in which violence and exploitation are often concealed. In the installation, this quest takes shape in an immersive landscape. The silhouette of the Blood Falls flickers on the horizon, hovering between reality and imagination. The floor is covered with a large carpet of simulated animals that is both seductive and repulsive. On it lie fragments of lines of text, microscopic recordings and band shirts, creating an atmosphere somewhere between a teenager’s bedroom, snowy landscape and laboratory. This fragile, resistant image is complemented by a collection of YouTube snippets showing crying teenagers from the early 2000s sharing their emotions on camera. These videos not only bring into play a form of voyeurism reminiscent of passive observation of the climate crisis – a fascination with destruction without direct intervention – but also reflect the artist's personal self-identification with this time.
The installation is not only dedicated to the visual phenomenon of the Blood Falls, but also understands it as a metaphor for the complex interweaving of beauty, pain and resistance, and their temporal dimensions. The text BLOOD FALLS, you conque(e)r my heartwhich will also be available in the exhibition in the form of a zine, offers an intimate reflection on individual pain in the mirror of history. The recurring connection between pleasure and pain in the narrative becomes the key to deconstructing personal experiences and the colonial and patriarchal narratives of Antarctica.
The exhibition at soft power takes place in the context of Margarete Kiss' presentation of her Master's thesis in Spatial Strategies at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin.