Chamber Piece
"In the small wing, the heroic epoch of German navy around 1910 is conjured up in the form of a middle-class living room with a velvet sofa, large-leaved plant as well as maritime pictures, ship models and souvenirs. These exhibits of the past bear witness to a wartime enthusiasm; they are part of history and now have a lasting effect as documents. A staged space that recalls past living environments. Today the oil paintings with torpedo boats, metal freighters and destroyers in whipped seas appear as an attempt to convey the image of supposedly heroic deeds. Picture worlds are unmasked as ideology. Oil paintings as a medium of propaganda: a distanced attitude emerges.The "Chamber Play" installation takes up the mixture of propaganda and bourgeois idyll, expands the inventory by a modified snare drum and a set of four studio boxes. While inside the silver metal drum, a radio receiver emits signals and stimulates its muted membrane with snare shells that move slightly, seeming to dance, delicate chants resound from the four sound sources that wander through the room. Eller uses the cabinet room as a pictorial event and backdrop and encourages visitors to the shipping museum to linger and ponder through the acoustic impulses of the composition. A miraculously created tension overlays the pictorial events and a mixture of chants and signals suggests itself, which attracts attention through kinetic elements of dancing snail shells.”
Christoph Metzger, in: Sonoric Ecologies, Ostseebiennale der Klangkunst, Pfau Verlag, Saarbrücken 2008, S.33 ff.
Sonoric Ecologies, Ostseebiennale der Klangkunst, Schifffahrtsmuseum, Kiel 2008
Snare drum with integrated speaker, Radiochannel, four studio speakers on tripods, inventory of the “Schifffahrtsmuseums”, electronical equipment