Michael Beutler’s workshop is based in Berlin. His studio looks like a cross between an impeccably arranged DIY shop and an industrial workplace. With an array of materials, homemade gadgets, and well-honed methods, he and his team manufacture the components for his installations. The creative process is more important than the final result. Finishing touches are always made on-site, and local materials and methods are often used.
Time to rotate!
First and foremost, Butler views the Horta Hall as a passageway, not an exhibition space. He wants to turn it into a place where people can stay, an orientation point. For this reason, he chooses what he calls a ‘floating situation’. He is building a cylindrical structure for the middle of the hall. This edifice will sit atop a water feature, with a revolving platform in its centre, where visitors can sit. We are in the midst of a massive zoetrope, an early predecessor to the movie projector that can be found at the Cinematek. A zoetrope consists of a vertical cylinder with slits and drawings on its interior wall. If you rotate the cylinder and look through the viewing holes, the images blend together into a primitive animation. In Beutler’s design, we are not just spectators, but participants, gazing out through the holes and animating the surrounding space. Thankful that we have come to take a look.
Work in Progress
Over the past few weeks, Michael Beutler and his team have been hard at work transforming the Horta Hall, step by step. As always, he works with hand-powered tools of his own design. For Beutler, the process is just as important as the result: open, collaborative, and visible. He develops his own techniques, often produces his own building materials, and responds to each space like a true bricoleur — guided by the moment, the place, and the possibilities at hand.
His installations are playful and imaginative, inviting interaction and wonder. This latest construction is no exception: it is built on site, in dialogue with the architecture and shaped by the team’s hands.
Curious to experience it for yourself? Come by this summer and step into the rotating structure. Look around, slow down — or take a spin. From 27 June to 31 August at Bozar.
