Susanne Dundler
Susanne Dundler, also known under the alias Kirsche von Bubach, appears as a performer and works in her artistic practice with the potential of sound composition, acoustic environments and systems of order - both in formal and socio-political terms.
Her works examine structures of conformity and predetermined systems and often address exclusion, disruption and contradiction. The starting point is usually the sound: lo-fi aesthetics, noise, improvisation and poetic tension unfold in performative situations, installations and experimental compositions and often expand into video, painting or expansive, sculptural interventions.
Dundler's artistic attitude is shaped by a transnational biography and a Roman Catholic socialization in Germany. Experiences that result in a critical examination of belief systems, authority, classification and cultural narratives for the artist. These elements flow together to create a multimedia and paradoxical aesthetic, highlighting rigid and chaotic, meditative and abrasive, mechanical and organic tendencies. This creates installations that exhibit states of liminality and resonance in both physical and social space and manifest themselves in forms of public presence that seem to evade clear hierarchies.
Her works point to threshold states – an in-between in which something is neither clearly one nor the other. The term liminality originally comes from anthropology (from limen, the threshold) and describes transitional phases, for example between social states, roles or orders. In such moments, fixed structures, hierarchies and meanings falter or are temporarily suspended. In artistic contexts, liminality refers to transitions between spaces, states or media, to situations without clear assignment or function, as well as to moments of openness, irritation and transformation - to states in which new meanings can arise. Liminality is therefore the space of the not-yet and the no-longer: a productive floating state that carries uncertainty, change and potential.
Susanne Dundler studied fine art at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts with Prof. Michael Munding and Prof. Jan St. Werner and completed her studies in 2021 with a large-format noise opera. In addition to her artistic training, she has a background in communication design and interaction design, which shapes her interest in perception systems, interfaces and process-based composition. In her work, intuitive gestures meet algorithmic and rule-based structures. As a co-founder of the DAF (Dynamic Acoustic Research) collective, as part of international feminist sound networks and as director of the Galvani Gallery in Nuremberg, she also sees artistic practice as a collective, discursive and open process.Dundler's work has already been presented internationally at places such as the Bauhaus Archive Berlin, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, the Funkhaus Berlin, the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo, the MIT Boston, the CCI Fabrica Moscow, the Portikus Frankfurt and at DeTao SIVA in Shanghai. She also composes for theater and contemporary dance productions and has participated in sound-based residencies such as Idensitat – Sounds of Our Cities in Belgium. Her artistic work has been recognized by numerous prizes and funding, including the cultural scholarship from the Kunstfonds Foundation, the Bavarian State Scholarship, several prizes from the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts and a DAAD scholarship for her work with DAF. She is also the recipient of the Next Generation Award from the LFA-Förderbank. Her publications include Walking in cinematic close-ups (DAF, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden & Lenbachhaus), Universal Receptivity (ed. Kerstin Stakemeier & Bill Dietz, AdBK Nürnberg), her solo album Change the Parameters a Little Bit (Otomatik Muziek), as well as several releases with DAF. Her music is also featured on the compilation For the Lack of Better Words – In Solidarity with the People of Ukraine (Otomatik Muziek).