Scanning the Horizon: An Immersive Archive, 2022–24
Interactive VR with point cloud scans, audio interviews (German and English options), field recordings (10–50 min.); installation with VR headset, 4K video on monitor with sound (10 min. loop), site specific interventions (e.g. colored window foil, colored lights, PVC strips)
With his interactive Virtual Reality installation, Scanning the Horizon: An Immersive Archive, Benjamin Busch maps out spaces significant to Berlin’s various queer communities. Since 2021, he has visited more than thirty spaces and scanned them using the digital imaging technique of spatial LiDAR scans. The three-dimensional point cloud virtual reality maps of legendary bars like Ficken 3000, Möbel-Olfe and Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke, the party series Gayhane at SO36, and cultural institutions such as BEGiNE, Sonntags-Club and Kino Moviemento, are enhanced with field recordings and audio interviews with their operators, alluding to the many untold stories to which these spaces are home.
See and hear these spaces and more at https://queerspaces.berlin.
Part I, 2022, with Ficken 3000, SO36 × Gayhane, and Sonntags-Club, had its World Premiere at the 39th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival.
Part II, 2023, with Kino Moviemento × XPOSED × Pornfilmfestival, had its World Premiere at the 17th XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin.
Part III, 2024, with BEGiNE – Treffpunkt und Kultur für Frauen, Möbel-Olfe, and Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke, had its World Premiere in the solo exhibition Scanning the Horizon: An Immersive Archive, Parts I–III at Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin.
Dr. Peter Rehberg’s catalog text A Psychedelic Double was published on the occasion of the BPA// Exhibition 2022 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
