Sandra Havlicek studied at the University of Art and Design Offenbach and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, where she graduated with Prof. Tobias Rehberger. She received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation and was awarded the EXTRACT art prize by the KUNSTFORENINGEN GLStrand in Copenhagen. Havlicek has been part of the artist collective HazMatLab since 2016, which she founded together with Katharina Schücke and Tina Kohlmann. She lives and works in Frankfurt.
Her sculptural works and installations develop from questions relating to architecture and everyday objects. She questions social role patterns of function and dysfunction and focuses on the relationship between people and built structures and their mutual influence. This relationship is created through material associations and culturally influenced viewing habits, which are taken up and distorted in Havlicek's works. Implementing flexibility, movement and transformation to static elements are central themes in her artistic practice.
Sandra Havlicek is interested in the relationship between the citizens and their metropolis Bangalore and how they influence each other within an increasing use of technology. Technology, architecture and people form a system of content-related and formal relationships with one another. Sandra Havlicek plans to examine how and where these contents and forms become visible on site: the complex interlocking of materials, gestures, objects and symbols, as well as the communication and miscommunication of these elements with one another. The artist is also interested in traditional methods of building houses out of clay and the outdated feeling of being able to build one's own accommodation.
After my collision with the city of Bangalore, I have more questions than answers. That's incredibly valuable. An experience that fed me with impressions on site every day until I burst - enough material to work through for a long time.
I arrived in Bangalore without a specific project because I wanted to deal with the city's materials and the connections between the city and people on the spot.
I had only researched one specific thing in advance, namely that within the Indian architecture scene there is an interest in ecological construction using traditional construction techniques with clay, which are taught in hands-on workshops. With the prospect of staying two months in a vibrant city like Bangalore, I thought it might be a good idea to give myself the opportunity to dig my hands in clay in between.
After a good week's crash course in Bangalore: surviving in traffic, this food ok - this food no no, what costs how much, there is no place to linger except in your own room, the animals on the street, the garbage problem, the water problem, the power lines that scare you, the constant noise - constant!, the honking, how do I get from A to B and, above all, when is the best time to get moving, the dust, the speed, the flow in the chaos, the crazy tastes… I've arrived and I feel really good. I want more from this city.
I interrupt my stay in the city for the weekend workshop of Masons Ink Studio (planning and construction firm based in Bangalore) in Kozhikode (south-west coast). We mix different recipes of clay to make bricks or to plaster different surfaces. We make slaked lime ourselves, from burnt shells, which react chemically exothermically when water is added. Depending on other additives, the lime plaster takes on different consistencies.
It's fun to work physically in the shade at 35° C and learn about the possible uses of sustainable materials in the construction industry while sweating. As the only artist among all the other workshop participants who are all architecture students, I still feel a bit strange and realise that I miss dealing with the city in its current state of construction.
Back in Bangalore, I throw myself into the streets again. The city creates an ongoing tension that draws and confuses me, as well as the effort of moving through the city. My daily question is how the impenetrable structure holds together. My mantra.
Bangalore is growing at a dizzying rate, due to the expanding IT sector (it is one of the fastest growing cities in the world), the infrastructure is nowhere near keeping up and the city is bursting at the seams. An India Today article raised the question of an imminent collapse. The term sticks with me and elicits wild MadMax fantasies. The city as a fragile equilibrium, as a place of longing, as a promise, as a curse, as constant improvisation and transformation, as an oppressive force with toxic proportions and as a playground of all possibilities, interests me. I want to take up these conditions in a sculptural way.
Visually, I am struck every day by the incredible density of traffic and the presence of shrines, they are everywhere in every format. Traffic and places of worship I could not circumvent. The shrines are omnipresent, rituals and prayers are part of everyday life. They define the public space and the puja (ritual) the temporal processes on the streets. The streets are full of helmets. The scooter: the last promise of autonomous mobility. I develop an obsession with the helmet as a readymade, as a symbol of human vulnerability in the self-made nest.
I borrow a book from my host MOD Institute, The Sacred and the Public, a classification of the ashwath katte (shrines built around sacred trees) as an urban element that shapes public space through the residents themselves. I visit various ashwath katte and their aggregation of the naga, the seven or five headed serpent and I think about urban development and how much we are shaped by our built environment. In Hinduism the symbolism of the serpent is complex. A snake is not an evil creature but a divinity representing eternity as well as materiality, life as well as death, and time as well as timelessness. It symbolises the three processes of creation, namely creation, preservation and destruction. I'm buying a motorcycle helmet.
I start working on sketches and texts. I remain a sponge and soak up what the city has to offer me: how animals and people live together. The dogs, cows, ravens, many other birds, rats, chipmunks and goats. The specialisations of the shops. Not specialised shops at all. Political moods. I eat everything and too much of everything. I hear stories from everyday life of women. Meet artists. Dance on rooftops. I ride the metro, taxi, rickshaw, scooter and take walks. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Electronic City after all.
In the exhibition, Regarding the City at 1Shantiroad, I showed the results of my examination. Two sculptures, a found readymade and a text are the boiled soup of my two-month stay in Bangalore. Luckily nothing is final. A second trip is very likely.
