Nora Schultz

Nora Schultz used the countdown in earlier works, for instance in order to integrate a kind of mini-narration into an installation, a happening that already takes place through its very announcement, a performative element or something similar. In this exhibition, the countdown is used as a narrative form which creates a tension of its own between the announcement of a moment in the future and the retrospective designation of what is past.

The installation, in an armoire in the Cathedral Museum’s Cabinet of Curiosities, consists of simple materials in a fragile formal equilibrium. The basic element is a coat-rack, a folding lattice of metal with ten knobs, fixed and reproduced from various angles by means of drawings, prints and photographs. In combination with wall-mounted mirrors and semi-transparent synthetic foils, the resulting duplication and transference cancel out the apparently logical connections, offering, as it were, a different kind of authenticity.
 
Here Nora Schultz uses the intricately enhanced countdown model as the basic pattern for integrating metaphorical narrations. The existing armoire serves as a “countdown piano”, as a piano folded inwards, defining the exhibition as an instrument and presenting the story of the countdown.