The dystopian video installation in the hall at Berghain attempts to redefine the relationship between man and cosmos, but ends up in rather old-fashioned imagery.
Even the path to art is a journey into darkness. In the cold, gray winter light, Berlin's most famous techno temple appears shabby and unwelcoming. Fortunately, there's no queue for Pierre Huyghe's work, and no strict bouncers. Anyone wanting to experience the video installation by the trendy French multimedia artist at Berghain simply books a ticket online in advance.
A back entrance leads into the boiler room of the former coal-fired power plant. Everything inside is black. A staircase leads up to the pitch-black exhibition. Hesitantly, using their cell phone lights, visitors feel their way through the bunker-like space. On the gigantic screen in the center of the room, a pale, naked female figure appears. Her face is empty. Literally. Where eyes, nose, and mouth should be, there is a gaping black hole. This transforms her head into a grotesque void. A sight darker than Edvard Munch's The Scream.
Beyond the horizon of human experience
The faceless creature doesn't scream; it emerges from crusty boulders like a pupating alien, crawls laboriously across the stony ground, writhes, slams its hollow head against the earth, digs its fingers into loose soil, raises its hands, and explores its rugged surroundings. It's bizarre and somehow unsettling, especially because the dark film images are accompanied by extreme sounds. At times, there's only atmospheric rustling and creaking. Then, during close-ups of bubbling lava flows, it becomes so deafeningly loud and low-frequency that your guts begin to vibrate. The primeval landscape culminates in a sharp edge. Beyond it, a dizzyingly black abyss opens up. Or is this the infinity of space shortly after the Big Bang, when the first life began to form on our planet?
Pierre Huyghe's film certainly aims to raise profound existential questions. The accompanying text for the Berlin exhibition states that the artist invites us to imagine new relationships with the world that transcend the horizon of human experience. "Through speculative fiction, he creates encounters intended to motivate us to consider other levels of reality." Indeed, Huyghe's works often function as thought experiments on posthuman existence. For example, he had dogs stroll through exhibitions as four-legged visitors. In Japan, he filmed a ghostly movie about a masked monkey in an abandoned restaurant (Human Mask, 2014). And in Chile's Acatama Desert, he had high-tech robots, working on human skeletons, create their own AI-generated science fiction film (Camata, 2024).
A quantum-mechanically underpinned male fantasy
For his Liminalsproject the artist has now turned his attention to quantum physics, the world of atoms and the smallest particles, whose unpredictable vibrations and energy-matter dualism represent a rather demanding field of research. However, Huyghe is less concerned with conveying scientific knowledge than with creating a multi-sensory experiential space.
He also borrowed the term "liminals" from quantum physics, which refers to complex transitional states, and from this he developed the idea for an alternative creation story. Life here doesn't arise from primordial mud and single-celled organisms, nor is Eve formed from Adam's rib – in Huyghe's version, she emerges as a faceless being from a stone cocoon. Her head may still be undefined, but with breasts, a narrow waist, and a shapely bottom, her body is clearly feminine. This considerably limits the range of possibilities for alternative worldviews. Perhaps the artist is indeed concerned with cosmic uncertainties. But on the screen, one primarily sees a naked woman on her knees, reduced to an object, whose skin the camera repeatedly zooms in on.
It becomes utterly embarrassing when the female figure caresses a phallic rock and allows "Father Earth" to penetrate her empty face. This isn't visionary, but rather a pretty hackneyed male fantasy, which doesn't become any more original by its techno-futuristic cinematic style and its presentation in a nightclub that stands for hedonism, diversity, and transgression.
For anyone who (like me) appreciates Pierre Huyghe for his innovative, multifaceted, and open-to-interpretation oeuvre the Liminals-exhibition in Berlin should be chalked up as a disappointing faux pas. And a ticket for Basel should be booked in advance. A major exhibition of the artist's work opens there at the Fondation Beyeler at the end of May – featuring newly created pieces and key works from recent years, which will hopefully generate positive vibes again.
Pierre Huyghe's LIMINALS runs until March 8, 2026 in Halle am Berghain in Berlin. A major retrospective of the artist's work opens on May 24 at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel.