The Invisible Sphere
The Invisible Sphere
Augustiner Chorherrenstift Monastery
Kultur.Konvent.Öhningen
Bodensee, 7-17 August 2025
The Invisible Sphere is a body of work initiated from a residential period at Augustiner Chorherrenstift Monastery in Bodensee, where a group of international artists from the Chaos Emblematic collective were invited to research and develop a work responding to Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum — an allegorical morality play composed circa 1151, in which virtues and the devil are depicted in their wrestle for a single soul. What emerged from this period was an interdisciplinary performance in themes of identity, renunciation and rebellion: expressing an interpretation of Hildegard’s life-work through movement, sound, poetry, film and photography.
See: Ordo Virtutum – Performance über Tugend und Teufel
The following photographic works were created during this research period. These works became part of an installation by Imogen Mansfield at the monastery one year on — spanning four interconnecting cloister rooms, featuring fourteen hand printed photographs, a Lomokino film projection, as well as sculptural elements involving books, papers, silks, poetry, and natural materials gathered from the immanence of the monastery locale. The exhibition was accompanied by a series of performative readings in the church, in collaboration with organist and electronic musician Vveber.
Hildegard von Bingen was a radical artist and visionary, who explored far beyond the usual limitations of spirituality, art and imagination — and whose works still today transport the mind toward places and forms that challenge and inspire our ever evolving relationship with the supernatural. Grappling with conflict, disobedience, madness, and the erotic — themes so intrinsically associated with religious experience, yet so rarely permitted to be explicitly depicted or engaged — this project is an adventurous and contemporary interpretation of feminist theological history and iconography.
The Invisible Sphere is supported by Kultur.Konvent.Öhningen, project for the cultural revitalisation of the former Augustinian Canons' Monastery in Öhningen, Germany. The installation ran for ten days alongside the classical music festival Höri Musiktage.
Photographs by Imogen Mansfield, created in close collaboration with the artists Britt Angus, Tanit Graffelman Brucart, Alexander Weber, Wolke Milena Wilke. With silk pieces by Gemme Atelier.
Listen: The Invisible Sphere on WOLKEN - Conversations on Art and Transformation
View: The Invisible Sphere - Installation at Augustiner Chorherrenstift Monastery
