Ich hab´ ein äußerst seltsames Gesicht gehabt! / Ich hatt´nen Traum – what a weird dream I had – ´s

übersteigt die menschliche Intelligenz, zu sagen, was für´n Traum ´s war: man is but an ass – n`Esel/n`Arsch, if he go about to expound this dream – tried to explain it / mir war, als wär ich / mir war, als hätt ich – no eye has ever heard, no ear has ever seen, no hand has tasted, or tongue felt, or heart described what my dream was like / but man is but a patched fool, wenn er/sie wirklich sagen will, was ich war.

The German Zettel for a weaver means warp – in German: Kettfaden, Kette, Zettel or  Werft. Christoph Martin Wieland had translated the name Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night´s Dream into Niklaus Zettel in 1762 – „because it hath no bottom“ – no ground. The bottom is a weaver in its double sense – verknäult u/a-nd verzettelt like Arno Schmidt´s Dream – the first page is based on 50 of this; lost in translation. Zettelkästen – boxes with index cards are an artistic and scientific technique, too – to weave a net.

One can not be sure about the author of that confusion, but we know the book which had been printed and published by Richard Braddock for Thomas Fisher in 1600 for the first time: A Midsummer nights dream. Asit hath sundry times publicly acted, by the Right Honorable, the Lord Chamberlain his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. You may not know the eclectic story, but the iconic title and its translations maybe sound of musical adaption or visual impressions of beautiful ferries surrounding an ass-headed man in paintings of the 19the century.

The exposition circles around Zettel's dream - about the errors and confusions of physical desires and languages - lost in translations. In collaboration with the ensemble to the director Michaela Caspar (Possible World) was over more than a year, a first stage version of in a mixture of several body-sign languages of Shakespeare's complex confusion, which had its premiere a few weeks ago at Ballhaus Ost. While the director worked with a team of sign language translators and choreographers along the content of the story, the artist and composer Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag on the space – the pictorial world and the musical composition for Renaissance ensemble starting from the conditions of the Midsummer Night's Dream as well as its reception history. The installations show photography, exhibits of research, fragments, models that were created in preparation for and next to this period of the production and also this exhibition is in transition and will change during its almost three-month term.

The production team of Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag / N-solab

Lars Gühlcke, Production Coordinator; Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag, concept, space, composition, technical development and photography; Jens Bakenhus, hardware devopemant; Eike Döring, metal construction; Jens Kupsch, video postproduction; the music was recorded by Sonntag b. c (broken consort) + Michaela Caspar & Robby Moore, speakers; Ulrike Klein, Language Direction, featuring: Biliana Voutscova, solo violin

The ensemble of the stage production (Possible World & Ballhaus Ost)

Michaela Caspar, Director; Gal Naor & Matan Zamir, choreography; Rajyashree Ramesh, Bharatanatyam Choreography; Ensemble: Anka Böttcher, Brian Duffy, Emilia von Heiseler, Eyk Kauly, Athina Lange, Peter Marty, Gal Naor, Okan Seese, Anne Zander, Will F. Zante

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag is an artist, composer and researcher. He studied fine arts, art history, music theory, composition, philosophy and cognitive science. He had been fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude 1999/2000, of the Emare Mexico 2011 and of the Villa Aurora in Los Angelos 2012. He has done more than one-hundred site-specific installations and has written and provided three chamber-operas. Since 2015 he is one the publishers of Kittlers collected writings. 2015 he had a first work show – Rauschen – at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart. In 2017 his radio opera Rundfunk Aeterna was commissioned by the documenta 14.