Daniel Hengst / Clemens Schöll

Daniel Hengst (*1981) and Clemens Schöll (*1994), both media artists living in Berlin, met in 2019 in the VR residency programme “creative places”.

Daniel Hengst works as a video artist on various theatre productions (including at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, Theater Dortmund, ACC Gwangju (South Korea), Staatsoper Kassel, Kampnagel Hamburg, Sophiensaele Berlin). In 2014 he received the Dr.-Otto-Kasten-Prize of the Deutschen Bühnenverein.

In addition, since 2015 he has been creating works in virtual reality, video and sound installations and performances, artistic research and web projects. The VR installation ‘my lonesome hologram’ was shown at the DOK Leipzig in 2016 and received a special mention at the ALife Award in Tokyo in 2018. Since 2018 he has been researching in four European countries for the project ‘Art for Landscapes’ whether and how it is possible to make art for non-human subjects. His works often deal with the society-changing potential of digital technologies – his tools are often algorithmic principles, generative processes or the targeted use of randomness. In autumn 2020 a new virtual reality work will be created in the RIXC gallery in Riga/Latvia.

Clemens Schöll’s mostly information technology based works range from (VR) installations to digital (net) art and performances. His artworks are experiments that question current relationships between technology and society. Through the aestheticization of complex phenomena inherent to a technological status quo or development, new approaches to supposedly inaccessible areas are generated.

He is a founding member of the Leipzig media art collective THIS IS FAKE. With this group he showed, among other exhibitions, the two VR installations ‘Vom angeblich letzten Stück Kohle’ (About the allegedly last piece of coal) and ‘Fragen zur Selbstwahrnehmung’ (Questions on self-perception) in 2017 at the Schacht Dölitz and ‘Was du willst’ (What you want) in 2018 in Untergechoss14 (Spinnereigelände Leipzig). Most recently, he developed the Wohnungsbot (presented amongst others at the 36C3) and a fully automatic puppet theatre adaptation of the software, which was shown in 2020 at the ZAK (Zitadelle Spandau) and 48 Stunden Neukölln, among others.