Alexander Johannes
Education
2012 -2017
B.Sc. Architecture
Faculty of Architecture, Technical University Berlin
2018 – 2020
M.Mus. ArtScience
ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Conservatory / Royal Academy of Art, The Hague)
Recent Artistic Practice (selection)
2024 – 2025
Connecting Spaces Pt.1 (2024) – Pt.3 (2025), (Sound-) Installation Series, Gallery 21 at Vorwerkstift, Hamburg.
2025
Experimental Dog Walk, Workshop, Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii), The Hague.
2024
Making Music With Six Monumental Buildings, Sound Installation, Berlin Cathedral, Month of Contemporary Music, Berlin.
“In my artistic research, I engage deeply with the concept of space. Central to this is my concept of Substanzraum (the space of substance), which refers to the materiality of global space in all its states of matter — solid, liquid, gaseous, organic, and inorganic — constantly changing, permeating one another, and ultimately interconnected.”
Alexander Johannes, 2024
Bio
Alexander Johannes (Alexander Johannes Heil, *Hamburg 1986) is an artist and architect, who explores the phenomenology and poetics of natural and architectural spaces through various media, aiming to establish alternative relationships with them and reconfigure our perception of the environment.
In 2017, he completed his architecture studies (B.Sc.) at the Technical University of Berlin, where his final project, “Metaphysics of Architecture,” examined analogies between natural and architectural structures.
At the ArtScience Interfaculty (formerly Interfaculty Image and Sound) in The Hague, he expanded his artistic practice and research interests, particularly in the field of sound. In 2020, he earned his M.Mus in ArtScience from the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. His project “Substanzraum, A New Approach To Global Space” addressed global space as a dynamic unified body.
Alexander Johannes has participated in residency programs such as De Fabriek Eindhoven and Fieldexplorer Berlin and has presented his work internationally. He is a co-curator of the Sensory Threshold LAB and, from 2022 to 2024, curator of his experimental project space, the Home Gallery, in The Hague.
Currently, he is developing his artistic research project “The Whalesong Project,” which includes experimental sound installations, reaktive soundscapes, sensory (dog-) walks, and sound performances exploring the relationship between architecture, environment, space, place, sound, and personal experience.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice arises from my direct experience of space and it’s materiality.
I am interested in how the world takes form and reveals itself – in what happens when one truly listens to it without seeking to control it. From this engagement emerge installations, spatial interventions, reactive soundscapes, and collections of found objects that open a dialogue between environment, body, and consciousness.
The central field of inquiry in my work is space itself, which I refer to as Substanzraum (German: “Substanz” meaning substance; “Raum” meaning space). Substanzraum describes the material reality of our planetary environment as a system in constant transformation: things emerge, decay, and transform—often within timescales that exceed human perception. Where once there was an ocean, a mountain now rises into the sky. Architectural structures require care to avoid falling into ruin. Flowers grow and wither, animals and humans move from one place to another before they die, dissolve, and become part of other organisms, landscapes, and material bodies.
In my artistic experiments, I deliberately employ simple, everyday, or technical tools – mason’s string, wooden wedges, surveying stakes, or laser levels. Through their placement in space, their relation to one another, or their opposition to dynamic elements – such as fog, wind, temperature, light, or sound – they become aesthetically activated: they begin to respond to their surroundings and render space sensually perceptible. At the same time, they carry a semantic charge, referring to the engineering-like measurement and rationalization of space, and enter into a quiet dialogue with the uncontrollable forces of change. Space, sound, environmental phenomena, and visitors together form a continuous, relational process. Thus, a tension arises between control and chance, between fixed geometric order and the fluid, living character of Substanzraum – as well as the agents who inhabit it.
This process is not about conveying knowledge, but about activating a sensory and mental alertness toward the structures that shape our perception and action. Through moments that intertwine cognitive, emotional, and bodily experience, a heightened awareness of our existence within the material reality of the world can emerge. These moments reveal that space is not a neutral stage but a living fabric of forces, substances, vibrations, and perceptions. By exposing systems of order and control, my works simultaneously point to their limits and open an awareness of the planetary interconnectedness of all things. The exhibited spaces themselves become resonant bodies in which sound, matter, and movement interpenetrate one another.
When the systems of order through which we structure the world begin to dissolve, the subject is no longer a mere observer but becomes part of the flow – an element within the process. Perception and meaning continually shift, and space itself becomes a medium for reflecting on our relation to the world.