AfkV Höchst - Amt für künstlerische Vermessung

Ausstellung von Sarah Hachem

Sarah Hachem’s work begins with a simple question: how does industry shape the everyday life of a neighborhood, and what traces does it leave behind in its materials? With Surveying in Water (Vermessung im Wasser), she follows the paths of River Main water, plants, fats, lye, and other substances through Höchst, exploring the connections between industry, the city, and everyday life.

The installation is built around a circulating water system made up of pipes and washbasins. Three different basins are connected through a closed loop, with water flowing from one basin to the next before emerging in small streams and falling back into the basins. The basins and bowls bring together different times, places, and ideas of washing and cleanliness. Water collects in buckets and is continuously pumped back into the pipes, evoking both the infrastructure of the Höchst Industrial Park and the everyday infrastructures of the city.

Water is not only visible but also audible. It drips, rushes, splashes, is pumped through the system, and falls onto different materials. The sounds of pipes, pumps, and basins make the circulation tangible as an acoustic experience, constantly shifting as the installation operates.

Hanging from the pipes are handmade soaps created in collaborative workshops with residents of Höchst. Mounted in the style of traditional French rotating soap holders, they invite visitors to wash their hands—alone or together. With each use, the soaps change: they become smaller, take on new shapes, and bear the traces of collective use.

To produce them, Sarah Hachem researches and gathers materials from Höchst wherever possible: local plants, fats collected from restaurants and butcher shops, vegetable oils, and sodium hydroxide sourced from the industrial park’s material cycles. These materials become part of the installation, and their origins, processing, and journeys through Höchst reveal the interconnected flows between industry, the city, and everyday life.

The water changes over time as well. It gradually becomes cloudier, carrying traces of soap, tiny plant fragments, dust, and the residue of many hands. Surrounding the circulation system are found objects, plants, drawings, historical documents, and materials collected in Höchst. The installation moves between washroom, fountain, soap kitchen, laboratory, studio, and archive. As time passes, the circulating system connects substances, sounds, traces, and stories, bringing water, pipes, basins, soaps, plants, and people into one shared cycle.