The Contingency Altar

Transcendental experience for atheists(2007)
Installation – LED light object from polystyrene, burned candles, 2007
shown on the Vienna Art Fair, April 2007

The contingency altar provides the possibility to overcome contingency without using a transcendental authority. The user of the altar is able to get in touch with the idea of chance and coincidence without a religious transmitter. Is it possible to establish a transcendental relationship with the own non-belief? Is there room for the idea of chance within a scientific world-explanation model? Is it possible to develop some kind of ritualistic imagery for fortuity? Is the belief in fortuity the belief in a higher force?

The contingency altar is very similar to a Christian altar – at the end of a ramp (200x80cm) a light object made from polystyrene cubes is showing numbers from 0 to 99 in perfectly random order, generated by the noise in a diode. Besides the light object two candles emphasise the ritual look of the altar. The visitor is invited to kneel in front of the contingency field and to wear ear protection in order not to be distracted by the surrounding noise. On both sides of the ramp are placed burnt-out candles taken from cemetery trash bins - garbage of standardized mourning work. The contingency altar can be understood as a representation of an alternative to traditional religion, with an irrational model as the central motif of faith. It can be seen as the altar for atheist persons, who want to test their (non)faith. Different beliefs lead to different ways of understanding the artwork. A Christian with a deistic faith won’t find the work offensive, whereas a conservative believer could do so.

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Photos: Joe Lucero, Karolina Horner
Thanks to: Sofie Strasser, Martin Lenz, Barbara Brunnhuber, Sophie Ertel, Patrick Strasser, Robert Hoffmann, Hanna Schwarz, Dimitrije Lawroff, Philipp Tiefenbacher, Geutebrück Consulting, Oles Zupnik, Georg Geutebrück