Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2023
Dirk Bahmann
South Africa
About
I am an artist, architect, academic and doctoral candidate
based at the University of the Witwatersrand. My work
explores and seeks to understand the ineffable spatial
experience of numinous atmospheres, typically found in
sacral architecture / spaces. This praxis aims to develop other
ways of knowing that champions embodiment. It attempts
to find a methodology with which one can articulate, know
and communicate, to oneself and others, the nature and
qualities of the numinous experience. It uses “Making” as
an embodied performance to engage with entangled human
and non-human worlds in order to gain direct and better
understanding of architectural affect.
Exploring Numinous atmospheres
During my stay, I wandered in circles physically, mentally
and psychically. Always moving along the same path, always
available, familiar, comforting, routine and banal in its nature.
It anchored me, so I could aimlessly drift into the inner and
outer landscape. Held in delicate silence and emptiness, and
within the dim light, I became aware of the presences and
beauty that reside there: mysterious, magical, awe-inspiring
and frightening. Open to plain sight for all to see, but always
hidden from view. With each circumnavigation, with each
orbit, it revealed new vistas, new meanings, new worlds,
that in its endless rotation are twisted and bound together,
recounting and revealing a path that is simultaneously unique
and eternally unchanged.