Grünbein, Durs; Via Lewandowsky
«The Artist's Brain»

In exchange for the preservation of his brain, Via Lewandowsky leaves his body to science. This declaration of the artist's will stands under the medical illustration of a head presented in an illuminated box. The brain is to be exhibited posthumously in a man-sized stainless steel cylinder with a glass lintel. A glass ring is set into the upper third of the metal cylinder; a poem by Durs Grünbein circles on it in blue fluorescent script. Currently, the space above the cylinder is empty; instead, a video projection there shows water flowing into the drain of a dissection table. The point is the ambivalent role of the brain between anonymous anatomical specimen and personal storehouse of memory. Grünbein and Lewandowsky already worked together at the end of the 1980s in connection with the performances of the auto-perforation artists in Dresden.