Nicolai/Peljhan
«Wardenclyffe Situations»

In 1997, the first performances of «Wardenclyffe Situation No. 1» and «Wardenclyffe Situation No. 2» took place at the «makrolab,» during the third «Ostranenie» Festival at the Bauhaus Dessau. The titles of these performances refer directly to Tesla’s «World System» and his never completed World Energy Radio Tower in Wardenclyffe, Long Island.[...] During the circa 45-minute-long performances, signals were sent and received throughout the space, using specially-constructed antenna (in Dessau these consisted of several tautened cables, seven to eight meters in length). The transmissions concerned satellite signals for radio and other wireless broadcasts, analyzed in real time. On the stage, which, physically speaking, looked more like a research construction with its three Telsa-transformers, additional acoustic or electromagnetic signals were generated; with these the received signals could be changed and transmitted again, in their altered form, back over the air.

(Source: Inke Arns, Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel. Zum Paradigmenwechsel der künstlerischen Avantgarderezeption in (Ex-)Jugoslawien und Russland von den 1980er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart, Ph.D. dissertation., Humboldt-Universität, Berlin 2003, typoscript, pp. 342f.)