The Transmute Tapes by Maison Douce

This episode is in German. Willkommen bei den Transmute Tapes von Maison Douce – unserem Podcast für Gedanken zur zeitgenössischen Kunst, Auszüge aus Performances und Gespräche mit Künstler*innen und Kreativen. In einem rund anderthalbstündigen Gespräch mit Frank Berzbach berühren wir unter anderem das Feine im Archaischen, das Gebet im Jazz, Fluxus, Handwerk versus Beseeltheit, zeitgeistige und zeitlose Dimensionen von Kunstwerken, Erwachsensein und Transzendenz, Sinnfragen in der Kunst – und den Satz: „KI wird die Ölmalerei retten.“ Ein Gedanke aus dem Gespräch bleibt besonders haften: „Wir sehen nur, was wir wissen.“ Diese Episode lädt dazu ein, mehr zu sehen. -- This episode marks a new beginning: Transmute Tapes is available in German for the first time. Future episodes will be published in German and English—language as a space for resonance, not a barrier. In a conversation with Frank Berzbach, lasting around an hour and a half, we touch on, among other things, the subtlety of the archaic, prayer in jazz, Fluxus, craftsmanship versus soulfulness, the zeitgeisty and timeless dimensions of artworks, adulthood and transcendence, questions of meaning in art – and the sentence: “AI will save oil painting.” One thought from the conversation sticks in particular: “We only see what we know.” This episode invites us to see more.

Diese Liturgie eröffnet eine neue Werkreihe von Maison Douce — ein Format, das nicht aus religiöser Überlieferung stammt, sondern aus der Gewissheit, dass Kunst ihre eigene Autorität hervorbringt.
The Liturgy of Saint Inbetween stellt die erste Heilige vor, die aus unserer künstlerischen Kosmologie hervortritt: eine Gestalt, geformt durch Geschichten, Performance und rituelle Praxis. In dieser Audioaufnahme verweben sich erstmals Hagiographie und erzählende Stimme zur Ursprungsgeschichte der Schwellenheiligen — einer Wanderin zwischen den Welten, gezeichnet von Prüfung und Verwandlung.
Dieses Werk ist Teil einer lebendigen Mythologie, die sich durch unsere Performances, Objekte und unser künstlerisches Schaffen weiter entfaltet. www.maison-douce.com

This liturgy opens a new body of work by Maison Douce — a format not born from religious tradition but from the certainty that art carries its own authority.
The Liturgy of Saint Inbetween introduces the first saint to emerge from our artistic cosmology: a figure shaped through story, performance, and ritual practice. In this audio recording, hagiography and spoken voice intertwine for the first time to reveal the origin of the Threshold Saint — a wanderer between worlds, marked by trial and transformation.
This work forms part of a living mythology that continues to unfold through our performances, objects, and artistic practice. Learn more on: www.maison-douce.com

Elena Unger calls herself a painter of the apocalypse—not as spectacle, but as a lens for truth. A painter and installation artist, she works across sculpture, sound, film, and site-specific formats, building what she calls “extra-liturgical” spaces where her apocalyptic imagery can breathe. In our conversation we explore why collapse and revelation keep returning in her practice, how images arrive fully formed like waking dreams, and what it means for art to act as witness, archivist, and ritual all at once. We talk about the moment an image lands and the small rituals she uses to catch it before it fades; why “the end” isn’t an aesthetic but a way to sharpen attention, ethics, and even a stubborn kind of hope; and how Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus, refracted through Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, becomes a working philosophy in her studio—testimony to the fragments progress leaves behind. We move through historic craft and sacred sujets made urgent in the present tense, then trace the braid of her training at Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths, and in Philosophical Theology at Cambridge, and how those languages meet in practice. From there, the conversation turns to art and the sacred: when an exhibition becomes ritual, how communal attention might be rebuilt in a culture designed to splinter it, and why devotion sometimes looks like miniature painting—editing the infinite, deciding what not to render, drawing the line between revelation and noise. Find Transmute Tapes on your podcast app of choice. If the episode resonates, please follow, rate, and share—it helps new listeners discover the show.

In this episode of Transmute Tapes, Maison Douce is joined by James Freeman, founder of the James Freeman Gallery in Islington, London. Known for championing contemporary approaches to historicism, James curates exhibitions that weave myth, ritual, and history into urgent conversations for today. We first connected with him in London at Slipping the Veil, an exhibition co-curated with Elena Unger at St Bartholomew the Great. Set inside a 900-year-old church, the show transformed the sacred architecture into an active collaborator, opening up new ways of experiencing art. Our conversation explores the artworks that first sparked James’s passion, the curatorial journey from idea to exhibition, and the enduring pull of mysticism, relics, and lineage in contemporary art. A dialogue on passion, history, and the power of spaces to transmute art into ritual. Listen to this and all other episodes of Transmute Tapes wherever you get your podcasts and on our website.