Constellation
Himmelszeichnerei
ongoing
Himmelszeichnerei (sky drawing) is a constellation that began on 20 August 2022 at Aachen-Merzbrück airfield. The occasion was the "Route of Innovation", a family day of the Region Aachen association within the Care and Mobility Innovation project. Around 450 people came to the airfield that afternoon.
Beforehand, children from the Catholic primary school Am Römerhof in Aachen had made single-line chalk drawings: one line, without lifting the chalk. The aerobatic pilot Walter Kampsmann translated these drawings into flight paths and wrote them into the sky with smoke. Aachen University of Applied Sciences had fitted the aircraft with sensors recording gyroscopic forces, engine power and position. Its students converted the recordings into a dataset of 5,833,333 points. Meanwhile the spectators drew surfaces with coloured pencils, which later entered the works as textures.
In the studio, flight data and drawings became, in 40 working hours on 115 computers, first the work "Himmelszeichnerei" (2022), a baryta print. The NRW-Forum Düsseldorf showed it in 2024 in the exhibition "Neue Alte Welt" (17 February to 26 May 2024); it is reproduced in the catalogue of the same name.
In 2025 the constellation returned to the dataset. From the same point cloud came the ten sheets "Gefüge:Lange Kette", unique prints measuring 88.9 × 118.8 cm. Grisebach in Berlin showed them from 16 December 2025 to 23 January 2026 under the title "Gefüge:Himmelszeichnerei", together with the work from 2022. Since 20 September 2026 the Himmelszeichnerei and four of the sheets have been on view in "Aschevogel. Bilder und Voraussetzungen" at Kunstmuseum Celle (until 29 August 2027).
The title Gefüge goes back to the term agencement in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: a working together of unequal parts without a governing order. Children, pilot, spectators and students contributed material; aircraft, sensors, weather and paper belonged to it as well. The works themselves were made in the studio, by one hand. This hand works as a systemically extended handwriting: it passes through sensors and computing processes and keeps its signature. The g-forces of the flight, the gestures of the children and the weather of that August day are contained in the data points. Each work is a phase of this process, and the dataset remains open for further ones.
Chronicle
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16. August 2022
Workshop am Römerhof
Four days before the flight: the children of the Catholic primary school Am Römerhof in Aachen draw with chalk, one line per sheet, without lifting it. On the blackboard they see how a line becomes a figure an aircraft can fly: no corners, no crossings, one beginning, one end. From the sheets the pilot chooses the drawings he will write into the sky. The remaining drawings stay in the material of the constellation.
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20. August 2022
Flugplatz Aachen-Merzbrück!
Around 450 people come to the airfield in the afternoon. Walter Kampsmann flies the children's drawings into the sky with smoke; the aircraft carries sensors from Aachen University of Applied Sciences recording gyroscopic forces, engine power and position. Below, the spectators draw surfaces with coloured pencils for the later works. The flight data become a dataset of 5,833,333 points, and from it the Himmelszeichnerei of 2022 and the ten sheets of 2025.
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4. November 2022
Der Film
Three and a half minutes on the summer of 2022: the workshop at Römerhof, the flight day at Merzbrück, the spectators at the fence, the data in the studio.
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17. Februar 2024
Neue Alte Welt
First exhibition of the Himmelszeichnerei: at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf the work from 2022 hangs in the exhibition "Neue Alte Welt" (17 February to 26 May 2024). Beside it the documentation of the constellation: in a vitrine the children's chalk drawings, sheets from the flight day and the papers on the dataset; on the wall photographs from Römerhof and from the airfield. The contributors are thus part of the exhibition, not only of the work.
Works within the constellation 11
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Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 1, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 349 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 2, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 350 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 3, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 351 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 4, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 352 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 5, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 353 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 6, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 354 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 7, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 355 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 8, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 356 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 9, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 357 -
Gefüge:Lange Kette. Blatt 10, 2025Tim Berresheim2025118,8 × 88,9 cmArchival Print on fine art paperTB25/P 358 -
Himmelszeichnerei, 2022Tim Berresheim2022180 × 145 cmFace-Mount Archival Pigment Print behind acrylic glass, mounted on aluminum backing, framed.TB22/F 408
Exhibitions within the constellation
- Neue Alte Welt
- Gefüge:Himmelszeichnerei
- Aschevogel. Bilder und Voraussetzungen
