In short: these are the artistic works of Steffen Rolla. WHAT DIRECTS? is an ongoing artistic work. Creative Mind Gymnastics (CMG) is a methodology. Both belong to the practice and are not the entire work.
ETWAS BLEIBT HÄNGEN.
A work can emerge from this.
The practice Close the practice
Steffen Rolla’s artistic practice moves between image, photography, film, language, sound, material, space and digital systems.
Independent works, bodies of work and artistic investigations emerge from stimuli, observations, encounters and resistances.
This practice also includes WHAT DIRECTS? as an ongoing artistic work and Creative Mind Gymnastics (CMG) as an experience-based methodology.
Both are independent, interrelated contexts within the entire artistic work.
THE WORK IS LARGER THAN CMG.
Selected works
Concrete works are at the center. Some are independent, some are related to WHAT DIRECTS? or to CMG, and some come out of an investigation or out of the methodology.
Show further works Close further works
Work · Methods · Research
-
Work
The larger context.
The work →More Close more
Where does the work come from?
The larger artistic context. WHAT DIRECTS? and CMG belong to it and are not the entire work.
-
Methods
How a work can emerge.
Methods →More Close more
How can a work emerge?
From stimulus through attention, struggle, hesitation and shift toward a possible form.
-
Research
Which questions are carried further.
Research →More Close more
Which questions stay open?
Questions that arise from works and are carried beyond a single work.
Situations
PHYSICAL · DIGITAL · HYBRID
Where works meet concrete conditions.
More Close more
Where works meet concrete conditions.
A work can appear in a room, on a street, on a website, through headphones, or between physical and digital space. The situation changes the conditions of its perception.
WHAT DIRECTS?
Investigations into what shapes how we see, think and act.
Artistic research by Steffen Rolla
WHAT DIRECTS? is an ongoing artistic work and an independent approach to artistic research.
It investigates what gives direction to our perception, our thinking and our action.
A starting point can be a concrete encounter with people, materials, objects, images, language, spaces and situations.
The investigations are open-ended. They can bring forth independent works, be a work themselves, or make existing works the subject of an investigation again.
The work develops through different investigations, their actual enactments, traces and relations to one another.
Its own questions, procedures and previous results can themselves be investigated again.
Investigations · Sessions · Editions · Commissions
Creative Mind Gymnastics
Explore and develop physical, mental and creative possibilities.
Creative Mind Gymnastics (CMG) is an experience-based methodology developed by Steffen Rolla.
It connects physical movement, perception, thinking, emotions and creative action.
The open grammar of action
STAY · WALK · LOOK · ACT · TALK
describes basic ways of meeting a situation: staying, moving, perceiving, acting and speaking.
The forms of action can be combined, repeated and changed. They set neither a fixed sequence nor a specific result.
A particularly developed material tool is the WABENPLATTE.
Through TOUCH, BEND, HOLD and RUB, and through the further working of the graphite traces that arise, physical, sensory and form-giving experiences are connected.
CMG is not limited to the WABENPLATTE. Other materials, spaces, movements and situations can also be the starting point of a CMG session.
CMG can take place independently of WHAT DIRECTS?. Conversely, CMG experiences and procedures can become the subject of artistic investigations within WHAT DIRECTS?.
CMG IS A METHODOLOGY WITHIN THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE.
NOT THE ENTIRE WORK.
Publication
Editions
Published forms of the work.
Book, print, audio, film, object or digital edition can themselves become part of the artistic form.
Archive
geistreich · 2009–2026
Archive of an artistic mediating practice and of recorded artistic enactments.
Studio
Steffen Rolla
Artist, designer, videographer and publisher.
rolla.studio is the context in which works, research and editions are developed and published. WHAT DIRECTS? is a work within this practice. CMG is a methodology that emerged from it.
