“Art is our medium for something bigger.”

 

Karmanoia is a Berlin-based provider of immersive experiences always eager to activate the perception of space and stimulate the deepest senses through installation art. Karmanoia’s spaces are an invitation to forget time, surrender to the imagination and spend an analogous and purposeful moment. In the innards of such creative entities, anyone can freely discover the innate human potential and the possibilities that lie in the realization of dreams. This is also what Karmanoia did when they created Doloris’ Meta Maze in 2019/2020 under the artistic supervision of Tim Henrik Schneider, and with the contribution of a thriving and diverse community of artists and helpers.

 

Karmanoia believes that the world, big and small, needs and holds creative and inspired people. Art is the medium to unlock something greater. They follow this mission by creating three-dimensional art installations, some as small as single modules for one head at a time, others as large as connection-promoting group events. Their artworks create moments of awe and fascination through spatial immersion.

 

Building on years of know-how in maze building, theater and crafts, immersion has become Karmanoia’s core artistic concept. Before the term even existed, their installation “Peristal Singum” in Berlin impressively proved what immersive art was to astonished audiences. Since then, upon entering, visitors become part of, surrounded by and interact with Karmanoia’s artwork. They experience direct access to the material and can freely explore and interpret its meaning. In this way, the immersed person becomes a holistic unity with music, sound, lighting, sculptures, painting, decoration, architecture and design.

 

Find Karmanoia in Berlin where they are busy creating new wonders!

 

www.karmanoia.org

 

‘Torus Anus’, 2021, private commission, Berlin, Germany

 

 

 

Karmanoia’s art maze ‘Peristal Singum’, 2014, Berlin, Germany

 

 

 

Karmanoia’s ‘Panoptikum’, 2020, Dream World, Berlin, Germany

 

 

Picture 1. Hands on the Meta Maze, 2019, © Karmanoia, Foto: Clear Fotografie
Picture 2. © Karmanoia, Foto: Adrian Grunert
Picture 3. © Jo Hempel
Picture 4. © Karmanoia, Foto: Adrian Grunert

“The focus of my work is creating three-dimensional paintings: Rooms”

 

Tim Henrik Schneider is the visionary and artistic creator of Doloris’ Meta Maze. As the project’s artistic director, he conceptualized the experience, led the construction and coordinated the team of artists and helpers. Before taking on the challenge of transforming an old Tilburg office building into what has now become one of the city’s most notable attractions, he had already built two other walk-through art mazes that fascinated a wide range of minds. Today, the versatile artist continues to implement immersive experiences with his Berlin-based company Karmanoia.

 

Born and raised in Berlin-Mitte, Tim has seen how spaces are constantly changing and shaping people’s experiences. As an actor, painter and set designer, he knows the power of transformation that lies in the setting the audience is in. What if, he wondered, the stage was all around and the visitor was part of the show? With this question in mind, Tim began to design immersive walk-through experiences avant la lettre. Inspired by surrealism, mysticism, the art of tableaux vivants, ritual performance, music and the science of sound, a true art form emerged from his vision.

 

In essence, this artistic work consists of creating spatial atmospheres for the individual. Tim therefore describes himself as an atmospherist. Atmosphere creation is the art of transforming an existing space into an unknown surreal realm through visual art, performance and craftsmanship. The result of this process is visible throughout Doloris’ Meta Maze. Or, as Tim recalls, “During the construction of the maze, I most enjoyed those countless hours that made time disappear as I imagined the final appearance of what was still a rough and dirty diamond.” The diamond is now ready to glow.

 

www.timschneider.life

 

Tim sketching out his vision of the Meta Maze, 2018

 

 

 

Sculpture, private commission, Montalcino, Italy, 2016

 

 

Picture 1. Portrait Tim Henrik Schneider, © Adrian Grunert
Picture 2. © Karmanoia, Foto: Clear Fotografie
Picture 3. © Tim Henrik Schneider
Picture 4. © Karmanoia, Foto: Adrian Grunert

“There is a beautiful and mysterious world out there.”

 

Esther Valk is a designer and visual artist from Eindhoven where she currently lives and works. Since childhood she has been in love with working with textiles. Wool and natural fibers are her favorite materials, which she enjoys processing into felt. Partly made in her studio, partly on location, Esther has contributed large felt sculptures to the Meta Maze.

 

After graduating from the Eindhoven Academy of Fashion and Industrial Design, she discovered the technique of making felt from wool fibers. Thus was born her passion for a very special craft. In the process of wet felting, wool is compressed with hot water under manual pressure. This creates a very sturdy and flexible material. Felting is physically demanding work, but the results are always rewarding. It is a combination of designing, painting and sculpting, with colors smoothly fusing into three-dimensional objects that can be used for a variety of purposes.

 

“Working in the Meta Maze was an amazing experience because it was so powerful to collaborate with the dynamic artists of Karmanoia. Through lots of great ideas and energy, the project was constantly growing and evolving!”

 

Nature itself is Esther’s greatest inspiration. For her felt work, she observes plants, their shapes, their flowers and seeds – or even photographs from space. Using her craft and knowledge, she created several large felt sculptures in the Meta Maze that form the central elements of the “Cocoon,” a space that feels very organic, nest-like and transformative. Some of the wool was colored with flowers she picked.

 

www.esthervalk.nl

 

Recent work: ‘The Dream of the Astronomer’, 2019

 

 

 

Previous work: ‘Seed’, 2016

 

 

 

Making felt for the ‘Cocoon’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

Picture 1 © Esther Valk.
Picture 2 © Esther Valk.
Picture 3 © Esther Valk.
Picture 4 © Esther Valk.

“I enjoy seeing how very simple things can create very complex results.”

 

Gijs Leijdekkers is a true interdisciplinary artist. Born in Nispen, near Tilburg, and currently based in The Hague, he has trained in a wide range of disciplines including film, animation, digital painting, design, music, electronics and programming. He interweaves his skills in his own projects and in his work as an exhibition designer for museums. At the Meta Maze, Gijs created a cinematic installation with the illusion of living creatures.

 

His career as an experience designer began when he started building haunted houses, water slides and a roller coaster in the backyard of his childhood home. Now he works professionally in analog and digital installations, such as a giant float for the internationally renowned Zundert flower parade and large-scale projection mapping for Tinker Imagineers at the Tirpitz Museum in Denmark. His work with Karmanoia fitted very well with his own artistic vision:

 

“My personal work is experiential art that doesn’t easily fit into the art scene. Collaborating with Karmanoia at the Meta Maze was a unique opportunity for me because all the artworks together form one immersive world. It was a wonderful and very inspiring process to share infinite creative energy together with such a great visionary international group!”

 

In the Meta Maze, Gijs created an installation that merges sculptural and digital art. A forest invites the visitor to rest while being visited by a swarm of fireflies. In addition to the concept and set design, Gijs also composed the music, arranged the electronics and programmed the interactive real-time software, creating a very special experience.

 

Watch the making-of video here.

 

www.gijsleijdekkers.nl

 

‘Monsters’, Zundert flower parade, 2013

 

 

 

Working on the projections for ‘Fireflies’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

 

Experience Design for Tirpitz Museum, Denmark

 

Picture 1  © Adrian Grunert.
Picture 2 © Gijs Leijdekkers.
Picture 3 © Gijs Leijdekkers.
Picture 4 © Tinker Imagineers, Foto by Mike Bink.

“I am inspired by reality itself, by being alive and trying to figure out what my relationship is to the place in the world around me.”

 

Guust Persoon is a sculptor, painter and fine artist, born in Eindhoven in 1991, who has exhibited both his own work and commissioned work throughout the Netherlands. During his collaboration with Karmanoia on the Meta Maze, he created two refined wooden sculptures and their sets, controlling the construction, lighting design and optical effects himself.

 

Both artworks, inspired by Zen Buddhism and Taoism, playfully address the duality present in all things – an idea embodied in his artistic work through light and shadow, reflection and absorption, presence and absence.

 

“Working with Karmanoia was the most fascinating thing for me, changing the perspective on my artistic work. Before, I would make paintings or sculptures for an exhibition where people would come to look at them, have a drink and move on. This time, I was able to design an entire environment around my work to enhance the experience and impact of the artwork. Since then, I have not done any regular exhibitions. My work experience at the Meta Maze even inspired me to start a new career as a ‘designer,’ a sculptor who creates sets for themed worlds.”

 

Both sculptures, the “Shadow door” and the “Black dome,” can be experienced as you enter the Meta Maze. One of Karmanoia’s most striking motif t-shirts in Doloris’ gift store was also designed by Guust Persoon.

 

www.guustpersoon.nl

 

Eerder werk: ‘Verlate lente’, 2019

 

 

 

Werken aan ‘Shadow Door’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

 

Eerder werk: ‘Uit Ander Hout Gesneden’, 2015

 

Picture 1  © Adrian Grunert.
Picture 2 © Guust Persoon.
Picture 3 © Guust Persoon.
Picture 4 © Guust Persoon.

“I am drawn to the inexplicable, the unusual and the ridiculous.”

 

Heidi was born into a large family in Vermont, U.S., where art was valued but not necessarily encouraged as a career. It was a long, tortuous route with many different paths and studies before she realized that the most consistent and unshakable desire in her life was to make art and music. Heidi has worked with Tim Henrik Schneider and Karmanoia since 2004, where she has conceived ideas, painted, acted, designed, danced, made props, done body painting, used makeup, sang and much more. At the Meta Maze, she was part of the entire process, from conceptualization to manifestation.

 

Heidi’s favorite media are the pencil, brush and voice. She became a painter at age 3 when she was left alone with a very white kitchen wall and a refrigerator full of colorful things. The canvas expanded over time to many other walls, clothes, shoes, furniture, bicycles and body parts. She discovered her voice in stairwells, churches, woods and bathtubs, and found her first most appreciative audience in the pregnant cows grazing behind her house.

 

“My teachers are the many people, nonhumans, plants, beasts, rogues, lonely pieces of furniture and magicians who have crossed my path. Emotionally resonating with other people (or animals, or objects) is very important to me.”

 

At the Meta Maze, the impact of Heidi’s work is pervasive. Painting, decoration and surface design, sculpture and sound all carry her handwriting. She now lives and works in the countryside outside Berlin, where she is active in several musical groups and is currently working on felting female reproductive organs.

 

Working on a painting for the Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

 

Performing with the band ‘Salty Matches’, Müncheberg, 2017

 

 

 

Working on ‘Morphowurz’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

Picture 1  © Karmanoia, Photo: Clear Photography.
Picture 2 © Tim Schneider.
Picture 3 © Michel Links.
Picture 4 © Adrian Grunert.

“Handcrafted aesthetics and stories are the basis for my work.”

 

Merlijn van de Sande is a Dutch set designer and artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. In her work, she is constantly drawn to the power of creating a new, handmade, ethereal world. The creation of such imaginary worlds evokes the illusion of an existing “real” world – a concept that Merlin and Karmanoia share at its core.

 

But what is “real”? Everyone creates their own perception of reality based on their experiences and expectations. Merlin likes to play with this question when she misleads our eyes by creating three-dimensional compositions of natural or industrial objects and everyday materials, giving them new meaning by changing proportions, color or perspective. In her artworks, the spaces are not literal representations of existing places, but rather combinations of unlikely but truly possible landscapes and architecture.

 

The surreal miniature city Merlin created for the Meta Maze was designed based on a story developed in close collaboration with Karmanoia artist Robert Buschbacher. This created a collective artwork in which the space, designed and built by Robert, and Merlin’s intricate and detail-oriented miniature at the center of this space connect organically and are encapsulated by the same narrative feeling.

 

From planning to design, production and decoration, the Meta Maze was a hugely collaborative process. Merlin was happy to be part of this collective process, “I am used to working alone in my studio, but this time I really enjoyed collaborating with other artists. By developing ideas and working together you learn a lot of new perspectives and techniques.”

 

www.merligndesign.com

 

Previous work: Diorama ‘Mist’, 2018

 

 

 

Working on ‘Kleine Welt’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

 

‘Kleine Welt’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

Picture 1 © Merlijn van de Sande.
Picture 2 © Merlijn van de Sande.
Picture 3 © Doloris.
Picture 4 © Merlijn van de Sande.

“I am fascinated by the fact that people used to dedicate themselves to huge construction projects like cathedrals, knowing that they would never see it finished during their lifetime.”

 

Robert Buschbacher is a puppeteer and materials researcher. By building puppets, masks and mechanical objects, he creates extraordinary characters for stage and other theatrical contexts. Robert worked with disabled people for many years and developed a special interest in simple yet effective visual communication. Also at the Meta Maze, he explored the possibilities of conveying meaning across high communication barriers. A longtime member of Karmanoia, he not only implemented his own artwork in the maze, but also helped ensure that the concept and dramaturgy of the installation were coherent.

 

Robert studied puppetry at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, performs regularly and currently explores the more peripheral areas of classical puppetry. He draws inspiration from old and broken objects and enjoys working with unconventional materials from natural sources, such as skin, wool or dough. His solo show “Timestrudel,” for example, deals with dementia and the fleetingness of life, brilliantly depicted using a single piece of pie dough. Or when on tour with the performance crew “Maraña,” he dances in fluorescent wool knit costumes.

 

After following his calling to work with Karmanoia on the Meta Maze, Robert created the “Octoboot,” a bubble-like space that feels both cozy and alienating because its walls are made of untanned hides – a material he rescued from abandoned leather factories in the region.

 

www.robert-buschbacher.de

 

Building the ‘Oktoboot’, Meta Maze, 2019

 

 

 

Performing in ‘Macbeth’, Theater der Stadt Aalen, 2017

 

 

 

Working in the Meta Maze, 2019

 

Picture 1  © Bärbel Bosch.
Picture 2 © Robert Buschbacher.
Picture 3 © Peter Schlipf.
Picture 4 © Robert Buschbacher.

“I love mixing the digital and physical worlds in interesting new ways.”

 

Roland Smeenk is a freelance Mixed Reality developer from the Netherlands. He likes to create interactive installations that blur the boundaries between the digital and the real. Sometimes this is simply a matter of shining a different light on things. Other times it involves more high-tech solutions such as working with holograms. Lately, Roland has been increasingly trying to break free from his computer screen and explore the real world, drawing inspiration from the way we interact with our physical environment. In turn, he uses his findings in his interactions with the digital world.

 

Although Roland graduated as a mechanical engineer more than 20 years ago, during his career he has worked primarily as a developer of interactive 3D software, mainly on publicly less visible projects in research labs. But after quitting his job in 2014, he decided to take a more artistic path as a freelancer. For example, he currently works more often with holographic headsets such as the Microsoft Hololens.

 

At the Meta Maze, Roland worked on the “Octoholo,” a small room that is easily overlooked. It was inspired by his fascination with building portals between worlds. As a proof of concept, he had built a small tabletop model in advance that caught Karmanoia’s attention. Together with sculptures by Heidi Jonsson and Robert Buschbacher, he created one of the Meta Maze’s best-kept secrets, a collaboration close to his heart: “Working on the Meta Maze with Karmanoia is one of my fondest work-related memories, because of the warmth, trust and sense of belonging.”

 

www.smeenk.com

 

The Eye Of Van Gogh, interactive installation, 2016

 

 

 

A Different Take On Me, interactive installation, 2016

 

 

 

City By The Sea, Instagram filter, 2022

 

Picture 1. © Roland Smeenk
Picture 2. © Roland Smeenk
Picture 3. © Roland Smeenk
Picture 4. © Roland Smeenk

“My art conveys a sense of enigmatic logic and dystopian discomfort.”

 

Vince Donders is a cauldron of potential. During the construction of Karmanoia’s Meta Maze, the Tilburg-based artist joined the sculpture team as a featured artist. By then, the 26-year-old freshly graduated from Den Bosch fortunately not only had a Fine Arts degree in his pocket, but also knew how to make sparks fly out of a welding machine. And welding he did!

 

With great patience and finesse, Vince built a fascinating structure of steel that seems both strong and fragile, rooted and impermanent, organic and silent. Meanwhile, the space around it took shape in the hands of a number of spacecraft designers and builders from Karmanoia: “There was a great atmosphere of community, we were always doing this together.”

 

When visited, Vince’s sculpture becomes visible only to those making their way through the fluorescent light from the belly of the maze. Vince gratefully recalls, “It was my first major commission as an artist since I graduated college. And Karmanoia very generously supported me in carrying out my ideas and crafts.”

 

In other contexts, Vince is a man who is on the road a lot, placing his artworks in situ wherever he can. Within his body of work, Vince therefore prefers installation art that does not stay within the confines of a gallery space, but takes a leap into the public. While walking through the city, for example, you can sit on a bench next to a man made of industrial debris while he reads the newspaper. Vince’s sculptures seem to have risen from an apocalypse of civilization. They are representatives of a vision of the world that humanity would leave behind after its final retreat from the scene. In addition, it is Vince’s artistic story to create symbols of hope in a landscape of decay, by assembling and rearranging found objects and mechanical parts into kinetic sculptures, mysterious machines and a mirror for the present. A trait you can already discover in his early work at the Meta Maze: “Working here was a great opportunity for my personal and professional development.”

 

‘Aujourd’hui, le monde est terrible’, 2020, Tilburg, NL, created during the residency ‘Project 24 x 24’

 

 

 

Vince Donders welding

 

 

 

‘Wind from Nowhere’, 2022, solo exhibition, TAC, Eindhoven, NL

 

Picture 1. Portrait Vince Donders, © Karmanoia, Foto: Adrian Grunert
Picture 2. © Thjeu Donders
Picture 3. © Karmanoia, Foto: Clear Fotografie
Picture 4. © Almicheal Fraay