It feels like I’m sneaking in the back when I step into the Pergamon Museum. Due to the ongoing renovations of Berlin’s Museumsinsel, I find my way in via the James Simon Gallery rather than through the usual grand neoclassical main entrance. In October, the museum will close completely until the beginning of 2027, but parts of its important historical collection have already been off-limits to visitors for some time now. As a way to breathe new life into the remaining parts of the museum, British artist Liam Gillick has been invited to enter into dialogue with the collection through the site-specific sound and light installation Filtered Time.
And the objects have indeed been brought to life, in an almost cinematic way. In the first room, showcasing collections from the Near East, a three-metre-high statue is illuminated by some nearby orange spotlights. The eyes of the 2800 year old sculpture portraying the storm god Hadad have been mapped out and glow in blue; in blue; the otherwise stone-grey piece of basalt appears animated. Gillick seems to evoke what the artefact conveyed in its time by charging it with spiritual energy. Yet, there is also something parodic about the transformative representation. The light installation makes me think of the action film The Mummy (2017) or an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) where Buffy’s mum Joyce brings home an antique Nigerian mask that resurrects the dead by summoning them with its beaming red eyes.
Gillick uses special effects – just like in the movies – to suggest something magical hiding in the ancient objects. As visitors, we’re both observers and the ones behind the camera, a consequence of the spotlights being visible elements in the installation.
Curated by anthroposophical archaeologist Walter Andrae (1875-1956), the Pergamon Museum itself can be likened to a series of film sets. Andrae, who also worked as an architect and served as the museum’s director from 1928 to 1951, believed there to be a transcendental meaning behind the conceptual arrangement of the exhibition halls. As visitors, we walk along the Procession Street of Babylon towards the Ishtar Gate (7th century BCE). On both sides of the long corridor high walls are covered in blue glazed brick with a border of lions in profile. Gillick adds a yellow spotlight which travels over the wall like a sun. Its trajectory makes my eyes wander across the room, I’m humbled by the architecture’s majesty.
As a way to both reinforce and subvert the museum’s theatrical qualities, Gillick has constructed aluminium trusses, commonly used in stage productions, from which projectors and speakers are suspended. Sometimes it’s an effective trick, as in the case of the Procession Street, where the artist frames the end, compelling visitors to physically pass through the fourth wall to continue the exhibition. A projector hanging from the metal frame faintly projects an image onto the floor, causing the marble patterns to appear as though in motion.It’s as if the room is dissolving from the force of a portal into another dimension.
Elsewhere, the aluminium structures appear makeshift – possibly due to the historical museum’s limited experience in exhibiting contemporary art. A truss totem has been cordoned off in a small enclosure with barrier tape stretched between four poles like at an airport – for no apparent reason.
Gillick also makes use of sound to transport visitors through time and space. At the Victory Stele of Esarhaddon (ca. 670 BCE), covered in a pulsating red light, there are distant, distorted hoots and clucks, a wind is blowing as if we were in nature. I have to concentrate to keep the suggestive historical echoes from being drowned out by the chatter of Spanish tourists. In another room, as the room changes colour – green, red, purple, blue – there is a strong ticking sound. On one of the walls a relief from The Palace of Darius in Susa (6th century BCE) hangs, depicting three fully-armoured king’s guards with spears and bows, seemingly in motion under the changing light. It’s all quite trippy. The ticking sound brings to mind the motion of time, reminiscent of a clock or the marching steps of soldiers on the wall.
The ambiguity of the sounds allows the mind to wander. In another relief, a fragment of the façade of the Temple of Inanna (late 15th century BCE), the sound of stone on stone accentuates the materiality of the carved image, leading me to fantasies about the hands, the work, and the place where the relief was first created. One of the exhibition’s triumphs lies in Gillick’s skilfully murky, faded soundscapes that evoke the mystery surrounding the ancient artefacts in the collection. In several instances sounds are reused in a different location, creating new connotations within new contexts. We get screams, clatter, and the sound of metal hitting metal at the Ishtar Gate – or is it just birds chirping?
In another part of the exhibition, Gillick has adopted a more art-historical approach, colouring in reliefs from the Assyrian palace at Nimrud (9th century BCE) using a projector. Andrae based this room in the gallery, with dark orange-red walls and gilded wooden ceiling panels, on archaeological sources and historical descriptions of what a hall in an Assyrian palace would have looked like. Although the reliefs are now devoid of colour, Gillick has managed to faithfully reproduce their original appearance, fulfilling Andrae’s desire to reenact history. The image materialises with gradual clarity, blurring the pale colours into sharp focus, a symbolic representation of how the viewer is to be mentally transported back in time.
As I reach the end, I’m a bit tired of Gillick’s devices, the show gets somewhat repetitive. On an Assyrian water basin, a white light traces one line in the relief, making it stand out or blend back into the motif as the light fades in and out. It reminds me of a YouTube clip about some conspiracy theory where a certain detail is emphasised to reveal underlying truths. Throughout the exhibition, I’m bothered by the way things are installed: bulky visible projectors and conspicuous barriers deviate from Gillick’s neat-looking aesthetic and impeccable finish. Yet, in this presentation’s best moments, he manages to both amplify and critically examine the museum’s cinematic subconscious by twisting Andrae’s ideas into a B-movie. While we may already recognize the historical museum as scenography, Gillick somehow manages to turn that insight into a surprisingly dynamic and multi-layered experience.
