GESTURES OF HORIZON
Performative sound installation, inspired by Maria Reiche’s research practice
Dates
Free admission at any time during opening hours:
5 August 2026:
5 pm until sunset (8:52 pm)
6 August 2026:
5:35 am sunrise walk (1 hour) starting and ending at the venue
Exhibition open until sunset (8:48 pm)
GESTURES OF HORIZON is a sound installation inspired by the life and work of German mathematician, physicist, and researcher Maria Reiche (1903–1998), who dedicated her life to exploring and preserving the Nazca Lines in Peru.
In this work, Hang Su (composition), Nina DeLudemann (scenography), and musicians from the Ensemble MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik explore how Maria Reiche’s research resonates in the present. Today, mountains of discarded textiles are piling up in the desert that was once engraved with ancient drawings. GESTURES OF HORIZON invites viewers to shift their perspectives and reassess the scope of human actions.
On a stage made of sandpaper, the performers play instruments created especially for the event. The audience is invited to imagine the vastness of the Peruvian desert and, through the intimacy of sound, experience how it relates to their own lived experience. Four hundred and eighty-six metres of white folding rulers mark the difference in elevation between Berlin and Nazca. The performers shape them into various structures that sometimes resemble the desert geoglyphs, and at other times the mountains of used clothing that industrialized nations dump in South American deserts today. The costumes and blankets on which visitors can sit within the installation are also made from these recycled textile mountains.
The installation blurs fixed categories of what is here and now and opens up possibilities for collectively observing what is absent and what has passed. Photographs, notes, and drawings from Reiche’s estate were translated into sound, movement, and spatial structures in the installation.
As a woman in Germany in the 1930s, Maria Reiche did not see a chance to pursue her dreams. When she saw a chance to move away, she emigrated to Peru. There, too, as a woman and an outsider, she repeatedly encountered closed doors. However, this did not prevent her from standing up for the people and landscapes with whom she lived and wanted to share space. Until her death, she used her research to advocate for the significance of the desert drawings and, in doing so, for the preservation of Indigenous cultures threatened by commercial interests.
The performance brings to life the physical dimension of her research: surveying landscapes on foot, drawing lines, and repeatedly cleaning and uncovering markings that are thousands of years old. These gestures give rise to a living archive that connects the past and the present.
At the same time, the production turns its attention to current global interconnections. The question of how landscapes are shaped by human activity links the view of the Nazca Desert today with Maria Reiche’s observations.
More information and programme updates:
https://www.manufaktur-aktuelle-musik.de/projects/gestures-of-horizon
Concept & Artistic Direction
Hang Su (Composition)
Nina DeLudemann (Scenography)
Katja Cheraneva (Movement Coach)
By and with
MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik
Paul Hübner
Sabrina Ma
Caleb Salgado
Graphic design © Hang Su, 2023
The production was developed in Berlin in 2022–2023 and supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The premiere took place in 2023 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.