The show ECHORAUM (Echo Room) changes every two years and is the result of a co-operation between the Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany and various international media academies. The students and graduates of these institutions are given the opportunity to use the exhibition area in the basement as an experimental laboratory in which they can present their projects.

With “Echo 3” the Echo Room exhibition will be taking place for the third time. This new presentation occurred in connection with the project -1/MinusEins Experimentallabor of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and will open at the same time as the exhibition “Napoleon and Europe. Dream and Trauma”.

-1/MinusEins Experimentallabor, the Experimental Laboratory of the Academy of Media Arts KHM in Cologne, was initiated by Professor Mischa Kuball and originated in the academy’s former holography laboratory. As an interdisciplinary workshop, a place of communication and instruction, and also as a central network within the KHM this laboratory is intended to help students carry out their projects. With this idea in mind, the aim is to encourage co-operation and reciprocity with different partners outside the university both in Cologne and elsewhere.

“Echo 3” comprises works by nine different artists. This show’s influence reaches far beyond the rooms in the Art and Exhibition Hall’s basement. Each work offers its own reflections on our lives, circumstances and our approach to reality. The exhibition begins with the illustration on the invitation: it represents a work by Alwin Lay, who staged a fictitious opening situation in the Art and Exhibition Hall which could theoretically even represent the “Echo 3” vernissage. When approaching the museum itself, visitors are confronted with Laura Popplow’s intervention which consists of perplexing instructions. Commands on billboards offer advice on how to relax. On the one hand, these orders inspire a pause for thought and on the other hand, they can be seen as a comment on today’s fun-loving event society.

The work “Ornament” by Anna Sokolova will be on display on the Art and Exhibition Hall’s LED wall from 16 to 20 December 2010. For some time now, the artist has been concerning herself with video ornaments. She examines the different ways in which one and the same video element, in this case a beam, either blends with the surrounding architecture or yields to it.

The installation “Exodus # 3” by Daewook Park casts its spidery threads across the Pyramid Room in the Art and Exhibition Hall’s basement. On the other side of the room, Daniela Risch questions her own identity and singularity. Risch asked a beauty queen with the same name to have pictures taken of herself wearing the artist’s clothes which clearly do not fit her. Do the clothes or the name make a person?

In the Echo Room the works by Céline Berger and Daphné Keramidas offer an insight into the social developments of our times. In “Release” Céline Berger made recordings of 23 former employees of the semiconductor producer Qimonda AG after the company’s bankruptcy. They review the past working year in audio segments. A programme that was developed for the installation regulates the playback. In this way, 23 voices become a composition consisting of short cycles that constantly interrupt the continuity of the listening process.

In her work “Approches”, Daphné Keramidas examines the phenomenon of aging, fragility and mortality. She visited an old age home over a certain period of time, established relationships with some of the inhabitants and took photographs of them. With the help of a light source these photos, which were engraved onto aquarelle paper, are projected onto a wall. Like fleeting memories, the resulting inverted pictures almost seem to elude the viewer. In “Non Finito” Claudia Konold chose a sculptural approach in order to explore hidden mysteries, the appearance of things and disintegrating structures. Tables and chairs mysteriously emerge from polystyrene blocks. Anna Gonzales Suero’s “Diary of a Cyberbabe” also deals with concealment and the question of fiction and reality. She superimposes real pictures with virtual ones in an online sex game. In this way, stereotype concepts of motherhood are juxtaposed with male fantasies from the world of games. The artist revisits the subject of the maternal role in her pencil and toilet paper collages.