Oscillating between liturgical and medical nomenclature, the pompous Latin title, as if parodying the convention of speaking ‘unspeakable things’ in the secret language of scholars, proclaims that the artist has a fundamental statement to offer. The Latin title functions as a protection objectifying this statement. Incidentally, Renate Bertlmann has systematised the use of such titles. In a transparent shrine lies the ‘Fatschenkindl’, the Infant Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes like a mummy, in a style prevalent in the Alpine region. However, in this case it is the head that is ‘impudicum’ (impudent, without shame, opposed to shame), as it is the gilded head of a phallus. Here, the holy ‘infant’ displayed for adoration is the phallus itself, in a reversal of cause and effect, creating the logic of the exclusive conception of the child by the father. Without doubt Renate Bertlmann’s artistic phallus cult has parodistic traits, but it also bears psychoanalytical implications: Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud opined that the child was the woman’s ‘phallus’. The ambivalence between adoration and caricature comes to light unequivocally. Bertlmann’s extreme affirmation of the woman’s ostensible phallus fixation topples it, breaks it open, and puts it up for debate.
The ‘shameless’ child is protected in its ‘chapel’ by mantras of the Goddess Kwan Seum Bosal (about perception energy, wisdom energy, protection energy) written on the wall behind in gold vinyl. In the 1970s, the combination of Goddess and phallus was supported by the theories of Heide Göttner-Abendroth, widely read at the time in the German-speaking world, who showed in her book The Goddess and her Heros that it is thoroughly sufficient to represent Heros iconographically with the shorthand symbol of the snake=phallus.
The exterior walls of the ‘sacred space’ are treated like a closed winged altarpiece and even accessorised as such – so that the works on display around it may be interpreted as additional information, as an expansion, of the installation in the interior of the ‘chamber’.