‘ZAUM MATERIAL II’ is a 10-channel video/sound installation by Ulrich Polster (video) and Christine Scherrer (sound), which is divided into 3 x 3 visual spaces and one projection. The individual visual spaces are oriented on the classical format of the triptych, which is realised digitally in this context. The work is a choreography of found components and fragments concerning the indefinable quality of memory; in formal terms, it is close to the art form of opera. In interplay with sound, the video sequences provide reflections of the ambivalence of human feelings and the moment when they waver, even turning into their opposite and revealing emotional abysses. The visual beauty is broken by the acoustic level; the apparently unleashed images are ‘restrained’, and it becomes possible to experience the sound almost physically.

Because of the way that Polster and Scherrer stage emotional isolation and a search for community and participation in society despite the decline of social institutions, ‘ZAUM MATERIAL II’ is a highly conflicting aesthetic experience, but it also highlights the beauty of memory.