2024/2025 | AI-generated images (Stable Diffusion 1.5, Stable Diffusion XL, 4o), slide projector, lullabies, bluetooth speaker, pillowcase, curtain. Lullaby in French to the tune of À la claire fontaine, sung by Laetitia Striffling, German lullaby to the melody Ade zur guten Nacht, sung by Sophie Innmann. Text: ChatGPT & Sophie Innmann, translation into French: Aurélien Albrecht.
The 26 people pictured were also selected by AI. The list does not claim to be exhaustive, but is updated on an ongoing basis.
First shown at 2nd art prize of the TechnologieRegion Karlsruhe Kann KI Kunst?, La Nef – Relais Culturel de Wissembourg (FR), 2025.

The deep-fake image series “Schlafes Bruder” (Brother of sleep) shows male people asleep. Sleep generally has a peaceful connotation. But as soon as they wake up, the people shown are anything but peaceful.
The title refers to figures from Greek mythology. Hypnos is the god of sleep, his twin brother is Thanatos, the god of death, both born of Nyx, the goddess of night. In addition to the images shown, two female voices can be heard singing lullabies.
Everyone must sleep, take a forced break from their activities. For a few hours, our consciousness disappears from the world stage and, in the case of these people, can do no harm.

And when you sleep, you are just a human being.

 

2025 | Full HD Video, duration: 22:50 min.
Exhibition view open studio BBK Brandenburg, Libken e.V., 2025. Photo: Sophie Innmann, © 2025 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Another video work I created during the residency “into the fields” in Libken is the site-specific video work 20250410-1831-1854-LibkenC5, which deals with the building of Libken and its embedding in the landscape, its history and that of its inhabitants. It is a panel house from 1965, in which workers from the local agricultural production cooperative (LPG) lived during the GDR era. Since this house has been standing, the sun has shone into the kitchens and bathrooms every morning and into the living rooms and bedrooms on the opposite side every evening. Everyone who has ever lived in this house has seen something similar like this: the wandering sunlight, which projects a moving painting of light and shadow onto the wall with window frames and trees in front of the house. Though this connects all the people over decades, it also separates them as each sunset is unique, they never saw the same. Also it is a kind of lonely event as people were all in different rooms, walls between them. As in the allegory of the cave you watch the shadows and lights of the sunset disappear in a projection of the real sunset outside on your inner wall. Here you could watch the shadow theater from April 10, 2025, 18:31 to 18:54.

Here you can watch a short summary:

My thanks go to the operators and organizers of Libken and the residency, who laid the foundations for this intensive time with their energy, commitment and expertise, as well as to my flatmate and fellow artists in Libken for this wonderful, unforgettable and unique time.

2025 | Full HD video, Duration: 18:37 min.

Exhibition view open studio BBK Brandenburg, Libken e.V., 2025.

Photo: Sophie Innmann, © 2025 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

The residency in Libken was entitled “into the fields”. I took this at its word and went on extensive forays through the landscape shaped by the Ice Age. Always with me: binoculars, camera and audio recorder. In addition to the wildlife, in particular the abundance of bird species, the so-called “Sölle” immediately aroused my interest. Sölle are indentations in the ground formed by blocks of ice that have been covered with sediment. They are popularly known as “eyes”. From then on, I used my binoculars to observe the goings-on in and around the holes, as well as the moon and the starry night sky with passing satellites and the International Space Station (ISS).

Just as we observe stars in the night sky through a telescope and thus see into times gone by, as the light from the stars took thousands of years to reach the earth, so the Sölle are the eyes into a time thousands of years ago on our earth. Today they are a habitat for numerous species and a refuge for game, if they want to escape the field of vision of the hunters who let their eyes roam over the fields through binoculars. I finally made these connections visible in the video installation Feldblende (Die Augen).

My thanks go to the operators and organizers of Libken and the residency, who laid the foundations for this intensive time with their energy, commitment and expertise, as well as to my flatmate and fellow artists in Libken for this wonderful, unforgettable and unique time.

2024 | 5.1 audio and full HD video installation, flags, grandstand. Duration: 19:59 min. | edition 2 + 1 AP
Videostills exhibition view Betze, K-Town, Pfaff., mpk – Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern 2024

For thousands of years, people have known about the power and energy that drums and chants can unleash. For example, the voice was used as a regulatory valve for one‘s own emotions in military conflicts to swear warriors to each other and intimidate opponents in the form of war-cries. Today, this is exemplified in stadiums around the world, where confrontations are fought on the pitch and the action is commented on by choirs from the stands, similar to Greek theater.
Rotliegend tells of timeless dramas that play out on a daily basis, of smoldering conflicts, their climaxes and turning points and, ultimately, the catharsis that follows.
The initially assumed contrast of forest, stage and mass event reveals unexpected parallels through acoustic and visual superimposition.

Below you can watch a short trailer of Rotliegend. To get the link to the full video please send me an email to >mail at sophieinnmann dot com<.
Please note that Rotliegend is conceived as a multi-channel audio installation designed for a 90m² room. Unfortunately, a notebook screen with stereo speakers cannot come close to reproducing this immersive experience.

Rotliegend is the typical type of rock found in the Palatinate Forest.

Set-up of Rotliegend: The video is mapped and projected precisely onto two original stadium flags, each measuring 3 m x 4 m. The visitors can sit down on theater grandstands arranged in a semicircle like in an amphitheatre and stadium.

2022/2025 | sound installation, 7 speakers, 7 bird nesting boxes, environmental sounds | Exhibition view Theresienstein Hof 2025 | Foto: Heidi Innmann

What does home („Heimat“) mean to you? What melodies do you associate with this individual idea of home? These were the questions I asked in order to find people in Hof who want to participate in my project “Rhapsody”.
Rhapsody tries to rethink the concept of home as a polyphonic sound, that forms a home in which all people as well as animals and nature are equally involved. To find a universal, common language, I asked people to whistle their melodies. An identification of personal characteristics such as age, sex or origin was no longer possible on the basis of voice.

The recordings of the whistled melodies are then played from small loudspeakers in the park, so that the whistling blends in the surrounding sound carpet. People, birds and the wind in the trees now whistle together. Thus a sound image of home arises, a large whole, which nevertheless allows polyphony and diversity. After the exhibition, the bird nesting boxes are left to the animals.

The melodies were whistled by Ahmad Miah, Alina Juravel, Bedir Canbay, Denis Mehmeti, Denison Pereira DaSilva, Filippo Italiano, Frank Hoffmann, Gülüzar Canbay, Hawin Canbay, Johnny Herzog von Schnarchenreuth, Katharina von Mammen, Kenan Canbay, Lina Redfearn, Lukas Nothnagel, Marija Čečović, Marina Waller, Oli Redfearn, Slawek Dudar, Sophie Innmann, Sultan Canbay, Yuliia Dobroliubova and Yvonne Rodriguez.

The project was funded by Musikfonds e. V. and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Radio report Bayerischer Rundfunk

2024 | paper on wall, cleaning material | final exhibition view every now and again, Galerie Nord – Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin

Two planets meet.
One asks: “Well, how’s it going?”
“Not good at all. I’m suffering terribly from Homo sapiens.”
“Ah…“, replies the questioner with relief,”…I know that, it will soon pass!”

#maintainance art #care #human #destruction #antinatalism

2024 | paper on wall, cleaning material | final exhibition view Vanishing Walls Festival 2024, Hof/Saale

Two planets meet.
One asks: “Well, how’s it going?”
“Not good at all. I’m suffering terribly from Homo sapiens.”
“Ah…“, replies the questioner with relief,”…I know that, it will soon pass!”

#maintainance art #care #human #destruction #antinatalism

2023 | steel object, sound collages | commissioned for the compensation area of the Städtische Galerie in the Bürgerpark, Kirchheim unter Teck | curated by the art advisory board of the Städtische Galerie im Kornhaus

The Städtische Galerie im Kornhaus Kirchheim unter Teck is closed for renovation work. As a kind of replacement, the artists Dellbrügge & de Moll had a compensation area created that transfers the dimensions of the exhibition space into the public urban space. This area, accessible at all times, consists of rubble from demolished houses.
m² to m³ to mˣ takes the approach of her colleagues further without violating the integrity of the artwork and makes the surface itself the subject: What space of possibility opens up above the compensation surface? What can the imagined space contain? How does one deal with the countless stories that are already contained in the material of the surface?
Based on these questions, different scenarios of these multi-layered possibilities are developed in workshops together with students of class 6b and 8b of Allenschule Kirchheim.