Pending Placement

Created for the Berlin Kulturzug (culture train), 2019

Pending Placement is an interactive sculpture installation that interacts with the journey of the train rather than with people. It reflects on the stability of home and identity at times of war or dramatic political shifts. The installation is comprised of 6 sculptures that are designed as hybrids between pre- and post-war building styles and between bunkers, and built to act as bobo-dolls (“Stehaufmenschen”); with round heavy bottoms and light top structures, they rock back and forth, always rising after falling but never staying stable.
As the train travels between Berlin and Breslau, the audience witnesses the translation of the journey into movement of physical matter: what they feel in their body is revealed and enhanced through the vertical shifts of the architectural structures. Affected by the tracks, the curves and the speed dictated by the driver, these shifts can be as gentle as rocking a cradle, or as harsh as a fatal collapse.

Excerpts from exhibition text by curator Anton Valkovsky:

"Heyne’s sculptures are not unstable and dynamic in terms of their potential kinetics – they were not created for movement in a stable space. They are designed for a moving space. The transit zone is their locus residentiae.

The sculptures, like amber with insects, contain the architectural patterns of bunkers and bomb shelters. [...] During the war, the bunker becomes not just a structure-forming element, but a coordinate system and a reference point. [...] The revelation is precisely the unexpected routine of war and addiction to chaos - when the space of bunkers is not only domesticated, but at some point becomes an analogue - a cast and imprint - of the house.[...]

Heyne's new works contain elements of Wrocław’s architecture. In this regard, the sculptures can be interpreted as “freaks” - chimeras, made from separate pieces of architectural flesh, as a visualization of architectonic transformations or a metaphor for the historical traumatic experience of the city in the 20th century [...] The place we are used to always changes inexorably, causing a nagging sense of loss, alienation and homelessness.

This is the inner dramaturgy of the project. Heyne's work is [...] About the home as the desired constant and the final point of our searches and travels. About an unattainable - and so passionately desired – sense of belonging. Trains create the appearance of an aim: a planned trip or a returning to a home. But travel exists only when there is someone to share it with. Everything else is loneliness in motion. We are waiting for the train to stop. We wish that someday it would finally stop.

But right now we are pending placement.