Bio

Alexander Johannes is an architect exploring philosophical questions about how we experience the world through artistic experiments. Working across space, sound, and perception, his practice investigates the relationship between beings and their environment.

He explores the phenomenology and poetics of natural and architectural spaces through various media, seeking to establish alternative relationships with them and reconfigure our perception of the environment. He is currently continuing this line of inquiry in the One-Year Course at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague.

In 2017, he completed his B.Sc. in Architecture at the Technical University Berlin. His final project, Metaphysics of Architecture, examined analogies between natural and architectural structures.

At the ArtScience Interfaculty in The Hague, he expanded his artistic practice and research, particularly in the fields of sound and spatial perception. In 2020, he received his M.Mus. in ArtScience from the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. His graduation project, Substanzraum – A New Approach to Global Space, approached global space as a dynamic, unified body.

Alexander Johannes has participated in residency programs such as De Fabriek Eindhoven, Design Week Eindhoven, and Fieldexplorer Berlin, and has presented his work internationally in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Mexico, and elsewhere. He is co-curator of the Sensory Threshold LAB and was curator of the experimental project space Home Gallery in The Hague (2022–2024).

His current practice focuses on the resonances of public life and the ways in which sound reveals, shapes, and transforms our experience of shared environments. Working through long-term collaborations with musicians and practitioners, he develops artistic experiments that investigate the relationship between living beings and places.

Artist Statement

My 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.

CV