Livia Theuer and Daniel Roskamp
”HEL”, 2017
Name Artist: Livia Theuer and Daniel Roskamp,
Title: ”HEL”, 2017
Location:
Lippertor
The installation HEL invokes the river as boundary between life and death, the water as life-giving and simultaneously endangering element.
A gleaming “U”, looking deceptively similar to the familiar U-Bahn symbol, is installed on the bank of the Lippe. The luminescent cube changes, performs a colour-play in slow motion, turns red, vanishes, then re-appears as a barely perceptible grey silhouette. On the opposite bank, a big mirror reflects the "U" and, shadowy, the onlooker too. In this context, “U” can also mean “underworld”: “Hel” is the name of the goddess of the dead and of the world of the dead in Germanic mythology.
And, besides the explanations as a light, wide route or a salt route, there is a third interpretation for the name HELLWEG, namely Route of the Dead.