MÜNSTER //

Travel Tips & General Information

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From June 10 to October 1, the city of Münster will hold Skulptur Projekte Münster for the fifth time. Held every ten years (1977, 1987, 1997, 2007), Skulptur Projekte Münster presents the works of international artists in a wide variety of spaces around the city. The curatorial team, presently made up of Kasper König, Britta Peters, and Marianne Wagner, has invited artists from all over the world to investigate the relationship between , the public realm, and the urban environment, and to develop new, site-specific works. Past editions have seen the work of artists such as Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenberg, Daniel Buren, Jorge Pardo, and , to name a few.

Additionally, from June 10 to September 17, the city of Kassel will hold 14 (held every five years). Alongside ’s Biennale, Documenta is seen as the most important, regularly occurring exhibition for modern and in the world. Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk has been building up a team of curators that include Pierre Bal-Blanc, the director of Contemporary Art Center (CAC) Brétigny; Hendrik Folkerts, curator of performance, , and discursive programs at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; , the founder and artistic director of the Berlin Documentary Forum; Dieter Roelstraete, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and, Monika Szewczyk, visual program curator at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, where she also lectures in the departments of Visual Arts and Art History. As usual, the list of artists is kept confidential until the opening of the show.

1. ACCOMMODATIONS

Mauritzhof Hotel Munster Eisenbahnstr. 17, 48143 Münster, Tel: +49 (0)251 41720 http://www.mauritzhof.de/default-en.html

The Mauritzhof Hotel, sometimes referred to as the Designhotel Mauritzhof, is a stylish four-star hotel near Münster's railroad station, the inner ring road, and the Altstadt. Although its building was constructed in 1957, the Mauritzhof underwent a complete overhaul in the mid-1990s under the direction of the Ranier Maria Kresing architectural firm. The rebuilt hotel is a glass-fronted structure that visitors might expect to see in Berlin or , with large windows, light woods, and bright ultramodern furnishings. The public rooms and the north-facing bedrooms overlook the Promenade (the pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly green belt that surrounds Münster's old town). Amenities include free Wi-Fi for guests, a library, and a terrace café next to the Promenade during the warm months.

Every one of the Mauritzhof's 39 rooms is unique in size and decor. Rooms are grouped in four basic categories: Komfort, Studio, Junior Suite, and Suite. Ask for a room facing the Promenade--you'll pay more than you would for a view of the busy Eisenbahnstrasse, but you won't regret the modest surcharge. (Most rooms on the Promenade side have small terraces or balconies, making them even more desirable.)

Schlosshotel Bad Wilhelmshöhe Conference & SPA Schlosspark 8, 34131 Kassel, Germany Tel: +49 (0)561/ 30 88-0 http://www.schlosshotel-kassel.de/fileadmin/pdf/Imageflyer_Schlosshotel_von_August_2016_Englisch_3_Web.pdf

The Schlosshotel Bad Wilhelmshohe Conference & SPA is situated in Europe’s largest and most beautiful mountain park, which was recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The calm and tranquility of the location in combination with the modern interior of the hotel offer the ideal atmosphere for restful days. The four-star hotel offers breathtaking views over Kassel and most rooms include a balcony.

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The new luxury spa has an indoor pool, an ecological outdoor swimming pond, different saunas, and extensive wellness treatments. Regional and international cuisine is served in the restaurants, and guests can also dine on the terrace.

Cultural highlights that are within short walking distance include the Castle Wilhelmshohe, Lowenburg Castle ruins, Ornamental Water Displays, and the town’s landmark – the Herkules Monument. In Kassel, the landmark city of German fairytales, visitors can experience where the Grimms brothers lived and were inspired. They can also enjoy an exquisite shopping experience at the Konigs-Galerie Kassel.

Waldorf Astoria Berlin Hardenbergstr. 28, 10623 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49-(0)30/814000-0 http://waldorfastoria3.hilton.com/en/hotels/berlin/waldorf-astoria-berlin-BERWAWA/index.html

Timeless elegance is artfully blended with the vibrant, modern attitude of Berlin in the Waldorf Astoria Berlin hotel. Located 7 minutes from the beach, in the heart of the prestigious neighborhoods of Berlin City West, by the luxury shopping district of Kurfürstendamm and Berlin zoo, the hotel offers an array of world-famous landmarks and activities to discover within simple walking distance or by the efficient S and U-Bahn transport systems.

Admire incredible panoramic views of the Berlin skyline from every guest room, with floor to ceiling windows, and the 15th floor library. The upper floors have Berlin's highest suites and some have their own private terrace. In addition, all rooms boast large marble bathrooms and the latest entertainment technology. Inspired by the original Waldorf Astoria design, Art Deco features are merged seamlessly with elements of modernity to create a totally unique hotel interior.

Discover serene rejuvenation in the only Guerlain Spa in Germany, featuring a wide range of signature beauty and massage treatments, an indoor pool, thermal zone and the latest fitness equipment. Modern French cuisine is served at Michelin-starred Les Solistes by Pierre Gagnaire; Mediterranean cuisine is served all day at Roca, a relaxed brasserie environment; and signature drinks and light snacks are served at the 1920s-themed Lang Bar.

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2. GERMANY OVERVIEW

About Germany Misunderstood by many, Germany is one of the most varied and charming countries on the continent. Anyone expecting a homogenous nation conforming to old Teutonic stereotypes is in for a shock. As a destination, it offers a clutch of truly lovely cities, served up in hefty portions and rural scenery so pretty you’ll wonder why it isn't on every tourist hit list.

The country occupies a prime position at the heart of Europe – both literally and figuratively. It is home to the biggest economy on the continent, has more inhabitants than anywhere else in the EU and shares land borders with no less than nine other nations. It's no surprise, then, that today’s Germany is more diverse and cosmopolitan than old stereotypes suggest; mixing time-honored nationalism and tradition with multicultural and self-confidence.

History The territory that we now know as Germany was for many centuries a loose collection of independent (and often warring) states, occupied by rulers including the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Habsburgs. Unification was attained after a victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. There followed a period of political, military and economic advancement that placed it as a genuine world power.

Following defeat in WWI, however, the Treaty of Versailles saw the country sliced and diced. Germany was forced to cede parts of its territory to surrounding nations as well as to pay significant reparations – a punishment that would prove crippling for the already ailing German economy.

It was these dire economic circumstances, amplified by the worldwide economic Depression of 1929 and a growing tide of racism in Europe that gave rise to the emergence of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party, making head of state. His notorious legacy remains a shocking historical blight. Initial military success in WWII ended in further defeat for Germany, although this time, the country’s economy recovered more quickly.

After the war, Germany’s borders were once again redrawn, and the country and its capital city, Berlin, were divided. For more than 40 years, the communist East Germany was cut off from the US-allied West. In 1989, the Berlin Wall, which separated the eastern districts of the city from the west, started to be dismantled. Reunification took place shortly after in October 1990.

From 1995 onwards, a new leadership under would-be chancellor Gerhard Schröder emerged to challenge the long-standing Helmut Kohl Christian Democrat (CDU) government. Schröder came to power in 1998, his reign coming to an end amid confusion following September 2005's inconclusive election. Germany faced weeks of uncertainty resulting in a deal that saw Angela Merkel sworn in as Germany's first female chancellor.

Since then, Merkel has guided Germany through the global recession, helping to ensure a quick recovery for the country with stimulus packages. In 2013, she was sworn in for her third four-year term and in 2014, Merkel became the longest serving incumbent head of state in the European Union.

Getting There You will need your passport, which should be valid for the entire duration of your stay. citizens (traveling on business or on vacation) are entitled to remain in Germany for up to 90 days without a visa.

Before your departure, you will receive Art Quest International luggage tags – these should be attached to your luggage for easy identification by the tour leader and hotel staff.

How to get to the Hotel from the Airport As soon as you exit the baggage claim area, Taxi signs will be visible. If a queue has formed, please await your turn and accept the first available taxi. As all taxis abide by the same rating regulations, you can rest assured that your fare will be fair. Each taxi is equipped with a standard meter that will calculate the cost of your commute in Euros.

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The distance between the Munster Osnabruck International Airport (FMO) and the Mauritzhof Hotel in Munster is 17 miles, and should take about 20 to 30 minutes via car. The fare generally averages €48 for 1-3 persons and €56 for 4-6 persons (tip excluded). Taxis are available with cash (exchange money at airport ATM) or credit card. Among the biggest companies in the area are Taxi Zentrale Munster (+49 251 60011) or S-Klasse Taxi Munster (+49 251 34343).

Time Zone Germany lies in the “Central European Time” zone and is therefore 6 hours ahead of EST.

Getting Around Taxis are plentiful and are procurable at almost any time. You can order a taxi by phone, flag one down, or find a taxi stand at all main stations and airports, as well as outside shopping centers and hotels. Most German taxi drivers do speak English, but please be understanding if this is not the case.

Taxi rares vary by city, but generally there is a €3-4 "drop charge" or basic fee (Grundpreis), then a rate of €1-3 per km with slightly lower rates for longer distances (typically, in excess of 7 kilometers). There's also surcharge of €1.50 if paying by credit or debit card, but none for night trips.

A great way to cover short distances quickly is the Kurzstreckentarif (short-trip rate), which lets up to four people ride in a cab for up to 2km for €5. This only works if you flag down a moving taxi and tell the driver you want a 'Kurzstrecke' before he or she has activated the regular meter. If you want to continue past 2km, regular rates apply to the entire trip. Passengers love it, but cabbies don't, and there's been talk of tossing the tariff altogether.

As of May 2017, UBER is not authorized to operate in Germany.

Currency As a member of the European community, Germany’s official currency is the Euro. One Euro is comprised of 100 centimes, divided into eight different coins worth 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 centimes, plus 1 and 2 Euros. Banknotes come in 7 denominations: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 Euros.

Information about the exchange rate of the Euro can be found on the following website: http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=EUR.

ATMs/ Banks ATMs are as prevalent in Germany as they are in North America. They are located at bank branches or stand alone in busier areas like shopping districts and tourist sites; when located indoors, use your card to gain access if the door is locked. Major credit and debit cards, along with all other bank cards carrying the PLUS and NYCE symbols, are universally accepted.

Credit Cards Credit cards are commonly accepted in Germany, though not often used for everyday expenses. Most restaurants, hotels, stores, train stations, and other places regularly frequented by tourists will accept them.

Tipping The bill you receive at a hotel, restaurant, café, or bar will usually already include a service charge. A gratuitous tip is an indication of your satisfaction – 5% is average, whereas 10% is sometimes awarded for exceptional service. Taxi drivers should be tipped about 5%, while porters and others who assist you with baggage should be granted one Euro for each item they tend to.

Electricity The electrical current in Germany is 230V 50Hz. As with the rest of continental Europe, Germany’s outlets are designed to accept the standard European plug with two circular metal pins, as illustrated below:

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Country Dialing Code Germany’s country code is 49. Please inform those who wish to contact you from other countries that they must dial their country’s access code (in the U.S., this is 011), followed by 49, then followed by the local German number, dropping the “0” if it is indicated in parentheses.

Making Phone Calls Public phones in Germany operate mostly by phone cards, which can be purchased in amounts of 5, 10, and 20 Euros at newsstands, bookstores, kiosks, and other small shops. The cheapest way to call the USA will most likely be through the use of a phone card from your major North American long distance carrier.

Cell Phones In Germany, cell phone coverage is exceptionally efficient. Frequencies throughout Europe do differ from those used in North America, however, should you wish to use your cellular phone abroad, your service provider will be able to inform you as to whether your phone will be compatible with the German / European system, and to offer alternatives if this is not the case. The GSM 900/1800 system is the network standard for Germany; it is generally not compatible with North American or Japanese systems.

Health and Medicine Germany has excellent health care, but its cost reflects its caliber; please do ensure you have adequate health and travel insurance during the duration of your journey.

If you are bringing medication with you, be sure to have a written prescription and the generic name for the drugs. Pack your medications in your carry-on luggage.

If an American citizen becomes seriously ill or injured while abroad, a U. S. consular officer will assist in locating appropriate medical services and informing family or friends. If necessary, a consular officer can also assist in the transfer of funds from the United States to foreign medical or financial institutions. Payment of hospital bills and other medical expenses is, however, ultimately the responsibility of the traveler.

Before traveling abroad, investigate the terms of your health insurance policy to learn what specific medical services will be covered overseas. If your health insurance provider grants coverage outside the United States, remember to carry both your insurance policy identity card as proof of such insurance, in addition to a claim form. Although social security programs like Medicare do not provide coverage for hospitals outside the USA, many health insurance companies will pay "customary and reasonable" hospital costs abroad. Medical evacuation to transport you back to the United States, however, is rarely included in health coverage and can cost can cost $10,000 and up, depending on your location and medical condition.

Emergencies Pharmacies offer late-night service on a rotating basis and display a schedule with shop addresses on their doors. The American Hotline is a private service that assists English-speakers in need of medical, legal, or counseling referrals.

Safety Valuable personal items such as passports, cash, and credit cards are most secure when locked in a hotel safe. Do remember to make a copy of your passport to bring with you during your travels.

Germany is a very safe country to both live and travel in, with crime rates that are low by international standards. Rare crimes that do occur usually transpire in big, densely populated cities, with Berlin leading the pack, followed by Hamburg, , , and Frankfurt.

Theft, petty crime, and other violations against travelers are rare; keeping an eye out for pick-pockets in crowded places is, however, always wise. Train stations tend to be magnets for the destitute and drug- dependent who might mildly harass you or make you feel otherwise uncomfortable, especially at night. City parks should also be avoided after dark. Encounters with groups of intoxicated soccer fans, especially those whose team lost the game, can lead to unprovoked confrontations.

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Embassy of the United States Berlin Neustädtische Kirchstr. 4-5, 10117 Berlin, Tel: (030) 2385 174 Note the Embassy is closed on both American and German holidays Consular Section: Clayallee 170, 14195 Berlin

American Citizen Services Opening Hours: 8:30 am - 12:00 noon, Monday through Friday. Closed on American and German holidays Routine calls: (030) 832-9233, 2-4 pm, Monday through Friday (Fax: (030) 8305-1215) Emergencies only: (030) 8305-0

Customs German customs prohibit the private importation of firearms and ammunition, fireworks, 'literature of unconstitutional content', pornography, food, narcotics, medicines, dangerous dogs, pets (unless they have been appropriately vaccinated), animal products, and counterfeit goods. For more detailed information, check www.zoll.de

VAT Refunds & Tax-Free Shopping Prices for goods and services in Germany always include a 19% value-added tax (VAT). Some – if not all – of this VAT may be refundable on goods purchased at stores displaying the “Tax-Free for Tourists” sign. You will receive a tax-free form upon making a purchase. Before checking-in any luggage upon your departure, you should present the German authorities with your purchased goods with their accompanying receipts, plus your completed tax-free form. The German officials will certify the form as proof of legal export. You may then obtain a cash refund at one of the Tax-Free Shopping Service counters located at all major border crossings, airports, ferry ports, and train stations.

Social conventions: Handshaking is customary, and it is considered rude to address people by their first name unless invited to do so. Normal courtesies should be observed. Before eating, it is normal to say "guten appetit" to the other people at the table to which the correct reply is "danke, gleichfalls" (“Thank you, the same to you”). If you’ve been invited to eat at a German house, it is customary to present the hostess with unwrapped flowers (according to tradition, you should always give an uneven number, and it is worth noting that red roses are exclusively a lover's gift).

In shops and other businesses, courtesy dictates that visitors should utter a greeting such as "guten tag" (or "grüss gott" in Bavaria) before saying what it is that they want; to leave without saying "aufwiedersehen" or "tschüss" can also cause offence. Similarly, when making a telephone call, asking for the person you want to speak to without stating first who you are is impolite. Casual wear is widely acceptable, but more formal dress is required for some restaurants, the opera, theatre, casinos and important social functions. Smoking is prohibited where notified and on public transport and in most public buildings.

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3. MÜNSTER

About Münster Is this Germany's most beautiful city? Many people would certainly say yes. What's more, the city has won an award for having the best quality of life in the world. Münster is a place that keeps its history very much alive – and its houses, churches and squares can tell plenty of stories about the past. This is particularly true in the historical city center, for example Prinzipalmarkt. This square is surrounded by 48 gabled buildings, including the distinctive town hall and the municipal wine house, joined together by an arcade to create a delightful backdrop. Nowadays, Prinzipalmarkt is also a delight for shoppers.

Nearby Salzstrasse, Münster's oldest street, has a number of attractions to explore – most notably the baroque treasures of Erbdrostenhof Palace, the Dominican Church and the Church of St. Clement's with its beautiful baroque garden. Not far beyond that is the Ludgeri quarter with its restaurants, pubs and cafés. A few steps further and you will reach the prestigious Rothenburg, where the Picasso Museum has found a magnificent home in the Druffel'schen Hof.

From there it's not far to the cathedral square, where the mighty Cathedral of St. Paul's with its treasury and the Westphalian State Museum of Art and Art History can be found. Other fascinating places of interest in Münster's old town are the Kiepenkerl and Kuhviertel districts. This area, around the Church across the Water, is perhaps the most historical part of old Münster. It combines local history and local highlife in a maze of quaint alleys.

A detour to the Kreativkai waterfront, Münster's top night spot by the city docks, is highly recommended and not just on balmy summer evenings. Here among the old dockland buildings and their sparkling new counterparts, you can discover an exciting mixture of art and culture, cafés, restaurants and trendy clubs virtually around the clock, in a stylish riverside setting. This area is also where you will find the AZKM – Münster's contemporary art exhibition hall – which opened in 2004. It regularly puts on individual and group exhibitions by contemporary artists of national and international standing as well as displays of works by both established names and promising newcomers. Somewhat older, the independent artist community Schanze (founded in 1919) has long played a key role in Münster's cultural scene owing to the many exhibitions it arranges.

And going back even further, we reach a very significant date in European history: 24 October 1648, the day on which the Peace of Westphalia officially ended the Thirty Years' War. Although Münster will forever be associated with this event, the city is also firmly rooted in the here and now. This is evident from the proliferation of the locals' favorite mode of transport: the bicycle. As many as 100,000 people cycle in the city every day, and there are two bicycles for every resident. Even the police pedal their way to crime scenes, while the 'bike station' at the main train station can accommodate 3,500 cycles, making it Germany's largest bike parking facility. So anyone who wants to discover the real Münster should get on their bike! Finally, you should know that the bicycle is often referred to as a Leeze here.

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4. SKULPTUR PROJEKTE MÜNSTER

5th Skulptur Projekte Münster June 10 – October 1, 2017

Artistic Director: Kasper König Curators: Britta Peters, Marianne Wagner

Overview of Skulptur Projekte Munster Skulptur Projekte Münster LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur Domplatz 10, D-48143 Münster, Germany

T+ 49 (0)251-5907 252 [email protected] www.skulptur-projekte.de

Held every ten years (1977, 1987, 1997, 2007) in the German city of Münster, Skulptur Projekte Münster presents the works of international artists in a wide variety of spaces around the city.

Established as a major event on the global art circuit, the project’s time span and focus on the urban environment provides both an important snapshot of the state of sculptural practice and a discourse on the possibility of making artwork in the public realm.

Skulptur Projekte Münster takes a unique approach to the subject by examining the ambivalent relationship between art and the public space through commissioning site-specific works that respond to the urban context and encourage active public participation.

Participating Artists We now have more information on the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster (SPM) — the German festival, which began in 1977 and takes place once every ten years in the German city widely considered to be Westphalia’s cultural centre.

The 2017 edition of SPM — its fifth — will bring together 35 artists, artist duos and artist groups, hailing from Europe, Africa and South America, and will run from June 10 through October 1. This year’s theme is “Out of Body, Out of Time, Out of Place” — also the titles of three reviews anticipating the festival, the last one of which will be published later this year.

Big names such as (), (Germany), Gregor Schneider (Germany), and Nicole Eisenman (France) are making their debut at this year’s edition, whilst renowned artists Thomas Schütte (Germany) and Jeremy Deller (UK), who have participated in past editions of the festival, will return this year. Other newcomers for 2017 include Barbara Wagner (Brazil), Katharina Stöver (Germany), Michael Dean (UK) and Lara Favaretto ().

Schütte, who had participated in 1987 and 2007, has revealed plans to create a new take on his work Kirschensäule (Cherry Column), which was featured at the second edition of the festival and has become Münster Sculpture Projects’ signature work. Turkish artist Ayşe Erkmen will contribute with the construction of an underwater bridge across the city’s harbour, whilst the Romanian artist Alexandra Pirici is investing an

9 historical site — the city’s Hall of Peace, where the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia was signed — with dancers, dance having previously featured in her work in a number of ways.

For the first time in its 40-year history, the festival is also partnering with another city this year. The 2017 edition of Münster Sculpture Projects will also take place in the nearby city of Marl, which will host public , a museum exhibition and a writer-in-residence program.

The event was created in 1977 following the controversial installation of George Rickey’s sculpture Drei rotierende Quadrate in a small park off Münster’s Engelenschanze. Following public outcry from the city’s inhabitants, Klaus Bussmann, then director of Westfälisches Landesmuseum in Münster, and Kasper König, curator at Museum Ludwig at the time, decided to create the event as a way of bridging understanding about art in public spaces.

The participants from 19 countries were selected by the artistic director Kasper König and curators Britta Peters (a freelance curator based in Hamburg) and Marianne Wagner, (curator of contemporary art at the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur). Their proposals cover a range of areas including sculpture and performance art.

1 ARAKAWA, EI (*1977 Fukushima) 2 BAGHRAMIAN, NAIRY (*1971 Isfahan) 3 BARTHOLL, ARAM (*1972 Bremen) 4 VON BONIN, COSIMA (*1962 Mombasa) 5 BUNTE, ANDREAS (*1970 Mettmann) 6 BYRNE, GERARD (*1969 Dublin) 7 CAMP (Anand, Shaina *1975 Mumbai, Sukumaran, Ashok *1974 Hokkaido) 8 MICHAEL DEAN (*1977 Newcastle Upon Tyne) 9 DELLER, JEREMY (*1966 ) 10 EISENMAN, NICOLE (*1965 Verdun) 11 ERKMEN, AYŞE (*1949 ) 12 FAVARETTO, LARA (*1973 Treviso) 13 FRIÐFINNSSON, HREINN (*1943 Bær í Dölum) 14 GINTERSDORFER / KLASSEN (Gintersdorfer, Monika *1967 Lima, Klaßen, Knut *1967 Münster) 15 HUYGHE, PIERRE (*1962 ) 16 KNIGHT, JOHN (*1945 Los Angeles) 17 LE ROY, XAVIER (*1963 Juvisy sur Orge) mit/with YU, SCARLET (*1978 Hong Kong) 18 MATHERLY, JUSTIN (*1972 New York) 19 SANY (NYHOLM, SAMUEL) (*1973 Lund) 20 ODZUCK, CHRISTIAN (*1978 Halle) 21 OGBOH, EMEKA (*1977 Enugu) 22 PELES EMPIRE (Wolff, Barbara, *1980 Făgăraș, Stöver, Katharina, *1982 Gießen) 23 PIRICI, ALEXANDRA (*1982 Bukarest/Bucharest) 24 ROTTENBERG, MIKA (*1976 Buenos Aires) 25 SCHNEIDER, GREGOR (*1969 Rheydt) 26 SCHÜTTE, THOMAS (*1954 Oldenburg) 27 SCHULTZ, NORA (*1975 Frankfurt/Main) 28 SMITH, MICHAEL (*1951 Chicago) 29 STEYERL, HITO (*1966 München/Munich) 30 TANAKA, KOKI (*1975 Tochigi) 31 TUAZON, OSCAR (*1975 Seattle) 32 TUERLINCKX, JOËLLE (*1958 Brüssel/Brussels) 33 WAGNER / DE BÚRCA (Wagner, Bárbara *1980 Brasília, de Búrca, Benjamin *1975 München/Munich) 34 WYN EVANS, CERITH (*1958 Llanelli-Wales) 35 YOUMBI, HERVÉ (*1973 Bangui)

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Permanent works Unlike most art exhibitions, Münster Sculpture Projects does not entirely disappear at the closing date. A total of 39 works from previous Sculpture Projects remain in place, creating an argumentative walk-through history of site-specific sculpture, public art and monuments.

 1st Sculpture Projects (1977): Untitled by Donald Judd  1st Sculpture Projects (1977): Square Depression by Bruce Nauman, realized in 2007  1st Sculpture Projects (1977): Muenster – The 4th Ball Becomes the 4th and 5th by Claes Oldenburg  2nd Sculpture Projects (1987): Octagon for Münster by Dan Graham  2nd Sculpture Projects (1987): Look up and read the words … by Ilya Kabakov  2nd Sculpture Projects (1987): Bodennrelief für die chemischen Institute by Matt Mullican  2nd Sculpture Projects (1987): Pier by Jorge Prado  3rd Sculpture Projects (1997): Sanctorium by Herman de Vries  4th Sculpture Projects (2007): We are still and reflective by Martin Boyce  4th Sculpture Projects (2007): Less sauvage than others by

Concept

The history of Skulptur Projekte Münster is closely linked with the idea of creating a public not just with but also for art. The exhibition was started in 1977 and takes place only every ten years. Its concept is very much based on the ideas of the participating artists and has remained essentially unchanged over the past decades: the curatorial team invites artists from all over the globe to explore the relationship between art, the public space, and the urban environment and develop new, site-specific works. Selected projects are realized in the urban setting and inscribe themselves in the structural, historical and societal contexts of the city. At the same time, the projects point beyond the specific place: themes related to the global present and reflections on contemporary concepts of sculpture are as much an integral part of the artistic inquiries as investigation into the basic parameters of publicness and the public realm.

Though the exhibitions have had no concrete curatorial initiative other than dealing with sculpture and public space, each edition has been inscribed with aspects of its own era. Out of Body is the first in a series of three publications that was released in the run-up to Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017. Each publication took up a term that proved to have a meaningful relation to sculpture: the body, time and place. Out of Body surveys perceived shifts regarding the integrity of the body, especially in light of digitalization, globalization and the new economic principles that accompany them. https://admin.skulptur-projekte.de/asset/378/4281/Out_of_Body_EN.pdf

Simply through dealing with sculpture and public space, each edition has been inscribed with aspects of its era. At the same time, preceding editions have shaped the context for each following one – numerous works have remained in the city; others’ legacies have continued to exert an influence. Out of Time is the second publication that was released in the run-up to Skulptur Projekte 2017. Out of Time contains perspectives on the archive, late-capitalist time, post-socialist monuments and several works from past editions of Skulptur Projekte. https://admin.skulptur-projekte.de/asset/379/4282/1472732325_Out_of_Time_EN.pdf

Out of Place is the last publication released in the run-up to Skulptur Projekte 2017. Out of Place contains perspectives on borders, migration, displacement, the notion of smart cities and the question of art’s groundlessness. Together, these publications address that perceived shift as well as its meaning for art and public space.

In its fifth edition, Skulptur Projekte will, for the first time in its history, include a satellite location in another German city: Marl, in the neighbouring Ruhr region. The exhibition opened on June 10, 2017. https://admin.skulptur-projekte.de/asset/410/4301/1492251170_Out_of_Place_EN.pdf

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The internationally oriented Skulptur Projekte Münster have been taking place at regular ten-year intervals since 1977. The town itself plays a leading role as the point of departure for the artistic explorations. At the same time, the Projekte point far beyond the actual Münster city limits: the participating artists address topics of relevance to the global present and reflect on contemporary concepts of sculpture, while also considering the relationship between the public and private realms in times of increasing digitalization.

Kasper König, The Artistic Director Kasper König founded the exhibition of sculpture in the public space in Münster 1977. Since then he has been the curator of each edition of this exhibition. As the former director of the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, he will realize the show in cooperation with the LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster.

In developing the exhibition, it is our confidence in the themes addressed by the participating artists that serves us as a basis. The proven practice of inviting interesting artists for visits in advance, and only later asking them to submit concrete project proposals, has been maintained.

For the past decade, rapidly increasing digitalization can be considered the single most decisive change permeating every area of society: the years 2004 and 2006 saw the launching of Facebook and Twitter. In view of political networks and data storage as well as the user-generated economies of the social media – including the monitoring and evaluation of those media for marketing purposes – a shift of public and private spheres is taking place to a degree nothing short of dramatic. Virtual and non-virtual realms of experience have merged to such an extent that the only viable term for the phenomenon is a “hybrid mesh”. There is no boundary between the “analogue” and the “digital” world.

Initial contact has been made to artists, a number of whom have already visited Münster. Among those under consideration are, for example, the Romanian artist Alexandra Pirici and the French dancer and choreographer Xavier Le Roy, whose works are devoted to the relationship between the body, sculpture and the city. With this focus, we will not only reflect on the specific characteristics of the performing arts, but also on the new meaning attributed to the body in our day and age. Yet we are also inviting artists who work more in the sculptural context, for example Santiago Sierra, who integrates the theme of globalization in his political approach to sculpture, or Ayse Erkmen, who already took part in the Skulptur Projekte in 1997. Aram Bartholl, who links modern technology with the archaic image of the campfire, and Andreas Bunte, who conceives of mobile terminal devices as projection machinery, concern themselves with explicit issues of digitality and communication. Some thirty new artistic productions are to be presented in 2017.

We are presently discussing the question of whether and how a meaningful exchange between the city of Münster and structurally comparable cities on other continents might be realized within the framework of the Skulptur Projekte 2017. We are examining various models and researching possible partners. In the broader sense, the idea of incorporating artists’ books and fanzines – two less institutionalized and less internationally widespread forms of art – into the public realm can be included in this context. For the mediation of the show on site in Münster, we plan to work closely with members of all 165 nationalities represented in the town population.

“To inscribe oneself directly into cultural, political and urban-planning contexts existing in the public realm – to comment on them, contradict them, or open up entirely new spaces – that is where I see the great potential of art outside its traditional protective zones”, curator Britta Peters explained. “The challenge for 2017 will consist in holding one’s ground in the present-day ‘art-as-lifestyle’ atmosphere in terms of content – and by that I mean not only political content, but also contentuality in terms of aesthetics.”

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“The realization of the exhibition already conveys a political message per se by attempting to be as independent as possible from the economic point of view”, said Kasper König, who has been involved in the Skulptur Projekte since their inception and is now accompanying them for the fifth time. “As an old stager I’m throwing my hat into the ring one more time to prevent the planned transition to a five-year interval for the Skulptur Projekte. Ten years are perfect: Westphalian and laid back, campfire instead of beacon.”

The principal sponsor is the German Federal Culture Foundation, which is contributing one million Euros to the Skulptur Projekte. Promising negotiations are moreover presently in progress with the State of North Rhine – Westphalia. http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/skulptur-projekte-muenster/

ARTISTS

Nairy Bagrahmian Nairy Bagrahmian (* 1971 Isfahan; lives in Berlin) brings together objects and sculptures that can be assigned to different sculptural genres. Their aesthetic vocabulary incorporates fragile objects that seem as if they were shaped by a flick of the wrist or a sketching gesture as well as works that resemble prosthetics, supports, parapets, and cushions. Although Baghramian always precisely alludes to the architectural, historical, and institutional framing of the specific exhibition environment, her works possess a conceptual mutability and adaptability that the artist consciously exploits. In this way, certain groups of works are deployed more frequently and recharged with further narratives.

Baghramian chose one of the top locations in Münster for her work Beliebte Stellen (Privileged Points): the Erbdrostenhof (a baroque palace built by Johann Conrad Schlaun in 1757). In the palace forecourt she has placed an elegantly curved bronze landmark, consisting of three slender but heavy, interconnecting elements. They are held together by visible clamps and propped up in a few spots on the courtyard’s cobblestones. The open circle, measuring a diameter of approximately five metres, is explicitly interrupted by the dimensions of the objects, whose bronze casting makes for an optimal . In the palace’s rear courtyard (which can be accessed from the St Servatii church square), six similar sculpture elements are piled up and can be used to assemble two more Privileged Points.

By choosing this particular location, the artist deliberately follows the tradition of sculptural positions by artists like Richard Serra (Trunk: Johann Conrad Schlaun Recomposed, 1987) and Andreas Siekmann (Trickle Down: Der öffentliche Raum im Zeitalter seiner Privatisierung,2007) who left their mark on the same location—thirty and ten years ago respectively, both as contributions to the Skulptur Projekte. With her work, Baghramian anticipates the cultural-political before and after as well as the professed site-specificity of the previous sculptures located here, which plays a key role, especially with regard to Serra’s work. Not until the exhibition is over, provided that the work has been sold, will the separate elements of the temporary sculpture actually be welded together and the work completed. Baghramian refers specifically to the history of art at this location, but she doesn’t consciously impose any site-specific restrictions that would exclude the possibility of installing the work in another urban context or as part of a collection. She is one step ahead of the debates and the decision regarding the fate of her sculpture in Münster—they represent an immanent part of her work.

Cosima von Bonin + Tom Burr Strategies of cooperation, appropriation, and compilation are characteristic of Cosima von Bonin’s (* 1962 Mombasa; lives in Cologne) mixed-media installations. She navigates the viewer through a sea of references with her subtle humour, bringing influences ashore without any apparent effort and involving artist friends and historical perspectives in her exhibitions. Energized by and pop art, her work keeps touching on key figures like or Mike Kelley and makes countless references to the cinema, literature, music, fashion, design, and lifestyles. In this way, her artwork presents itself more as a result of traditional tendencies, networks, and recurrences rather than as an original, individual artistic

13 gesture. The large-scale arrangements, often in the form of animal motifs, mirror the conventions and rules of the art world and address von Bonin’s artistic identity within a network of relationships, dependencies, and role models.

Soft textile materials serve as the primary basis for her patchwork-like pictures and sculptural objects, which transform a repertoire of motifs drawn from the world of consumerism. Anthropomorphized animal figures inhabit her theatrical exhibition scenarios, which are reminiscent of a film studio’s prop room or a mythical setting. Von Bonin’s oversized, fluffy protagonists are partly domesticated and partly associated with a maritime environment whose imagery is of great significance. Usually the permanently exhausted creatures don’t give a damn about the societal imperatives of productivity. In their lazy mode of denial we recognize—in addition to the right to be lazy and enjoy a cigarette—an existential condition of fatigue that lends von Bonin’s cosmos a dark undercurrent. This uneasiness also expresses itself in the submissive titles of her exhibitions, such as Kapitulation or The Fatigue Empire. Authority and control are latently present as themes in this parallel world abounding with allusions.

For Skulptur Projekte 2017, von Bonin also draws on her vision of collective authorship and joins forces with Tom Burr (* 1963 New Haven; lives in New York)—the two have been friends for many years. The project is being produced in cooperation with the Westfälischer Kunstverein, which is showing Burr’s solo exhibition Surplus of Myself at the same time.

Burr has been grappling with questions relating to public space since the late 1980s. Although he makes use of the formal language of Minimal Art, it is charged (contrary to its intrinsic intention) with numerous connotations and references, frequently connected with the emancipation of subcultures and the artist’s personal biography.

For their cooperation Benz Bonin Burr, the artists intend to park a low-loader on the shared forecourt in front of the LWL-Museum and the Kunstverein, not far from where the Henry Moore sculpture is installed. A large- size black box is to be placed on the truck bed—a recurring feature of Burr’s work. Its contents are hidden from sight, thus creating an ambivalent situation that oscillates between presence and absence, inclusion and exclusion, admiration and Oedipal fixation. It also incidentally alludes to the infrastructure of the exhibition world in general by bringing to mind a potential shipment process.

Michael Dean In many of his works, Michael Dean(* 1977 Newcastle Upon Tyne; lives in London) develops a sculptural script within a space. However, his objects, which are frequently made of materials like cement, sand, and earth, don’t necessarily depict specific letters. Rather, they are to be seen as an abstract semiotic system that generates meaning via a process of interaction—like words in a sentence.

The artist has installed a large, transparent plastic sheet inside the atrium of the LWL-Museum für Kunst and Kultur, which is draped from the first storey banister to the floor, covering it like a canopy and creating a space within a space. There is only one way to enter the atrium—by the former main entrance with access to the cathedral square. The other means of entry have been covered by the plastic sheet. In this way, Dean re-establishes the original direction of movement through the arcade as designated in the historical construction plans of the old museum building. Using peepholes at eye level, visitors can take a look at the sculptures inside the plastic sheeting. The artist’s height as well as that of his wife and children served to determine the height of the peepholes. By peering through the holes, visitors are assigned roles in the performance—both watching and being watched. An essential part of the installation is a walkway in the form of the letter ‘f’ and made of concrete slabs, an element he consistently includes in his work: written in cursive, an ‘f’ is both an identifiable letter as well as a continuous abstract line. The sculptures located within the plastic sheet are reminiscent of urban objects—street lamps, public rubbish bins, refuse. Stickers have been adhered to the transparent sheet. In the adjacent external space, Dean has fastened objects to the street lamps on the cathedral square, using bicycle locks and padlocks. In so doing, he continues his urban tale in the museum context and, vice versa, returns sculptures to the city environment.

This link-up between the museum space and the urban space also played a role at the Skulptur Projekte 1977: Joseph Beuys had planned to install a wedge of tallow in the urban space as part of his project Tallow, but the work was relocated inside the atrium. Since then, the conceptual orientation of linking the city’s external space with internal architectural space has often been evident at this location, which itself

14 seems to be an external architectural construction turned outside in. The source of Dean’s sculptural work is his interest in letters, words, and sentences as part of a contingent framework of meaning. With his arbitrary and excessive use of stickers, which he designs based on existing layouts and affixes in various places and on diverse surfaces, Dean cites Street Art techniques that have been increasingly employed in the commercial sector for so-called guerrilla marketing. Dean now returns this procedure to an artistic context.

Nicole Eisenman Nicole Eisenman is primarily known for her and drawings. She makes playful use of a palette of styles and visual languages that ranges from Renaissance to modern art, combining them with everyday observations and humorous references to pop culture and pornography. Relationships, stereotypes, the body, and sexuality are assigned a key role in her figurative pictures with their underlying sense of melancholy. Since 2012, Eisenman has been increasingly involved with sculpture, a medium she appreciates for its tactile and sensual qualities.

In Münster Eisenmann has created a fountain installation with several figures in the middle of the promenade. The ensemble of five larger-than-life figures, made of bronze or plaster with a white finish, is casually grouped around a rectangular water basin. The nude figures of voluminous proportions, which cannot readily be assigned to one gender, take various poses. The relaxed formation is accompanied by narrative moments: in the middle of the water, a self-assured nude extends its body skywards in exhibitionist fashion, while the other figures chill around the water basin, sunbathing or lost in thought as they gaze into the reflections of the pool. Water trickles from three of the figures, as a culture of hand-made mushrooms sprouts at the feet of one figure. Similar to Eisenman’s colour application in her paintings, the texture of the figures is varied. The entire setting is rounded off with moss-covered stones from Marl.

With her fountain design, the artist has interpreted one of the oldest examples of public art in a new way. In antiquity, fountains served as meeting places for cult rituals. And today monumental fountains with an abundance of figures still give distinction to numerous parks and squares. Eisenman’s work responds to those opulent arrangements with a gentle sprinkle, streams of water coming from various body parts, and a placid water surface that—together with the inactivity of the figures—conveys calm. She counters these historical fountain arrangements, which are replete with a wide range of meaningful gestures, with lumpishly sluggish, cartoon-like figures that evoke associations with Cézanne, George Segal, or Tom Otterness and seem indifferent to aesthetic or societal norms.

The scene resembles those of the artist’s drawings that bring forth a queer Arcadia. Time seems to stand still; only the can of soda held by a dozing figure alludes to the present. Reduced activity, gentle splashing, and the ground-level arrangement invite visitors to join the protagonists and become part of the setting. Everything stands together as an elementary creation in fluid correlation as Mother Nature, culture, and identities intertwine. Wind and weather cause the group to age slightly over the course of the exhibition.

Ayse Erkmen Ayse Erkmen’s (* 1949; Istanbul; lives in Berlin and Instanbul) site-specific interventions call our attention to things that are overlooked, presenting in sculptural form what would otherwise remain hidden. She interferes with pre-existing structures and alters their functions or operational processes, revealing, at the very least, an unusual if not completely new view of something familiar.

For Skulptur Projekte 2017, Erkmen selected Münster’s inland harbour as her location. Just below the surface of the water between the bustling Nordkai (northern pier) and the industrialized Südkai (southern pier) she installed a jetty that links the two riverbanks. It creates the impression that visitors are walking on water. In that sense, they become visible actors on Erkmen’s stage. In addition, the artist points out problems of a sociological and city-planning nature: How are borders drawn on maps, and how is sociocultural access achieved on the drawing board? How can existing hurdles be overcome, both physically and metaphorically?

Within Erkmen’s oeuvre, the concepts of transportation, relocation, and displacement keep manifesting themselves anew. For example, during Skulptur Projekte 1997 she set objects from the collection at the Landesmuseum Westfallen-Lippe in motion in a very unusual manner when she had them circle above the city with a helicopter. Her plans for an intervention at St Paul’s Cathedral had been rejected, so Erkmen

15 made use of the airspace above it, which she was permitted to use. For her contribution this year she creates a pathway which wasn’t intended as part of Münster’s urban structure and deals once again with water, an element that frequently appears in her work. At the 54th in 2011, she had a water treatment facility installed in the city, entitled Plan B. Her piece Shipped Ships was also specifically related to waterways: in 2001 she arranged for passenger ferries rented from , Italy, and to carry local residents, turning the Main River in Frankfurt into a possible means of getting about in the city.

The courses of rivers have often been used on political maps as a possible place to draw borders, while waterways and man-made canals served as starting points and catalysts for urban development. Accordingly, waterways have had an ambiguous place in the processes of civilization, representing either possibility or restriction. Erkem not only mirrors this divide in her piece for Skulptur Projekte 2017, she literally bridges it. In addition to that, her jetty consists of sunken containers which are normally used to transport goods on ships on the surface of the water. The municipal harbour of the -Ems Canal, which is rarely used by ships, now becomes accessible on foot to Münster’s residents and visitors, thus linking two separate urban spaces that were previously separated by the harbour basin—using a water bridge rather than a land bridge.

Lara Favaretto Lara Favaretto’s (* 1973 Treviso, lives in Turin) objects and installations are characterized by a minimalistic style, yet by conscientiously embedding her work in a carefully selected location, she gives it a strong social and political impact. By using materials such as stone or metal, her objects initially convey the sense that they are designed for a much longer space of time. However, Favaretto’s art disappears at the end of an exhibition when it is either dismantled or completely destroyed.

Favaretto’s ongoing series of Momentary Monuments has been executed in various forms since 2009. For Skulptur Projekte 2017, this series will be continued on the promenade and in the neighbouring town of Marl, in each case with a hollowed-out granite boulder. At first sight, the four-metre-high stone seems to be an alien object or a glacial erratic. And yet, when you circle the boulder, it is evident that it was wrought by hand, which raises questions as to its function. There is a little slot that money can be dropped into. At the end of the exhibition the stone will be destroyed, the resulting gravel reused, and the collected money donated to charity. The artist has decided to give the money to the organization Hilfe für Menschen in Abschiebehaft Büren e.V. (offering help to people facing deportation).

Favaretto’s monument is empty at the beginning of the exhibition and meaningless in the best sense of the word. Normally public monuments or memorials refer to a particular event or a historical person to keep their memory alive in current discourse. Donations are usually collected before monuments are erected to pay the commissioned artists. Favaretto, however, changes the normal process and reinterprets certain functions. In particular, the object’s temporary existence and its destruction, with the debris and remains being put to further use, are diametrically opposed to the concept of institutionalized monument conservation. Nevertheless, the symbolic meaning of the object isn’t derived from the form itself but rather emerges as a result of the site-specific interaction: on the promenade, Favaretto’s stone begins a dialogue with the Train Monument from the 1920s and the nearby immigration office. The roundabout in the middle (Ludgeriplatz) topographically connects the two contexts. The Train Monument honours the Train Battalion as well as two high-ranking German officers who died in battle, one in the former colony of German South West Africa and the other in the Boxer Rebellion in . The donations collected inside the monument are also for a foundation that has been caring for refugees in a ‘shelter for those scheduled for deportation’ since 1996. The facility, located in a rural area near the town of Büren, is responsible for accommodating refugees from all over the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, thus corresponding to the fund-raising aim of Momentary Monuments in Marl. The charitable aspect of Favaretto’s work produces a strong sense of contemporary relevance, which, in a broader sense, critically reflects on the relationship between art and politics.

Pierre Huyghe Pierre Huyghe’s (* 1962 Paris; lives in New York) works often present themselves as complex systems characterized by a wide range of life forms, inanimate things, and technologies. His arranged organisms combine not only biological, technological, and fictional elements, they also produce an environment for humans, animals, and non-beings to evolve in no matter what, like microscopic unicellular organisms or viruses. Huyghe’s constructed situations are reminiscent of biospheres, where other laws apply than in

16 nature: structural parameters for changes as well as phenomena like swarm behaviour and cluster development are used, but, in the end—as with any other artistic material—these prove to be the final limits of the will to make new possibilities happen.

For Münster’s Skulptur Projekte 2017, Huyghe has developed a time-based bio-technical system in a former ice rink that closed in 2016. This involved bio- and media-technological interventions and required extensive architectural de- and reconstruction. All the processes taking place within the very large hall are mutually interdependent: some of them are determined by the HeLa cell line, in a constant process of division in an incubator. Among its various effects, the cells’ growth triggers the emergence of augmented reality shapes. Variations in a Conus textile pattern change the spatial configuration: for example, the opening and shutting of a pyramid-shaped window in the ceiling of the hall.

By digging into the earth, Huyghe transforms the ground into a low-level hilly landscape. In some spots, concrete and earth, layers of clay, styrofoam, gravel debris, and Ice Age sand are found as far as a few metres underground, interspersed with leftover surfaces. This space is inhabited, for instance, by algae, bacteria, beehives, and chimera peacocks. Biological life, real and symbolic architecture and landscapes, visible and invisible processes, and static and dynamic states are all fused into a precarious symbiosis.

IMPORTANT : We recommend you download the app called After Alife Ahead in your smart phone prior to arriving in Munster. This is GPS enabled and will only work in the site.

John Knight John Knight’s (* 1945 Los Angeles; lives in Los Angeles) space installations, logos, lettering, and objects are a response to the institutional framework and the commercial interests of museums and galleries. His works visualize the interaction between the specific context of his presentation, the materiality of his artwork, and the viewer’s perception of it: the meaning of any given artwork is created by the interaction of these aspects. Distancing himself from the self-referentiality of Minimal art, Knight has been conceiving projects since the late 1960s that seem to contradict the implicit purposelessness of art. They are instruments of institutional critique, formulated with razor-sharp precision, that map out their own place within the political microcosm of the art world and, at the same time, strive to open it up to sociopolitical reality.

In 1969, Knight’s series of works entitled A Work in situ marked the beginning of a long-term study of the conditions of art perception. For his work Levels, he positioned several spirit levels in an exhibition space, standard industrially manufactured carpenter tools from a building supplies store. In 2017, for Münster’s Skulptur Projekte, Knight had the Level produced by a high-tech manufacturer in California: the black- lacquered object contains three vials, filled with liquid and each containing one air bubble; the level is completely functional. It has been mounted, parallel to the vertical, at a slight distance from the sandstone façade at the pointed front of the new building on the northern side of the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur. The mounted Level shows its own degree of inclination. At the bottom end of the object there is a logo with the initials JK which the artist adds to his works like the branding used in corporate design.

Knight focuses on architecture as a conveyor of signals and targets the way art is used to serve the interests of institutional marketing strategies. The spectacular nature of the large display window that frames our view of Heinrich Brabender’s Gothic sculpture group The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (c.1516) is contrasted with his own almost incidental piece. By pointing out the productivity of a view that is always exploratory— in which a Gothic sculpture need not be any more meaningful than a carpenter’s level—Knight questions the idea of intrinsic value. His initials JK update the discussion about how to deal with Otto Piene’s work Silberne Frequenz (1970), which spans two sides of the museum’s façade. When Silberne Frequenz was reinstalled, the LWL logo was placed above the northern entrance right in the middle of Piene’s work. This decision is a manifestation of the fusion of public and private commercial interests that Knight’s work calls attention to.

Justin Matherly Justin Matherly (* 1972 New York; lives in New York) finds the visual prototypes for his sculptures in books and writings, especially in philosophical texts and the ancient classics, which he refers to both in form and content. In many cases, he even names them specifically in his titles. His porous and often fractured

17 sculptural interpretations made of cement, plaster, and plastic are supported by medical walkers. His work is complemented by photographs that are closely linked to the objects.

Matherly’s sculpture on the grassy area along the promenade looks as if it had fallen from the sky. The surface of the material exhibits cracks and holes in many places. The walkers clearly protrude in some spots and in others completely vanish inside the grey material. As ready-mades or everyday objects, they assume the function of a pedestal and also become part of the sculpture. In the artist’s conception, these objects introduce a scale that is closely related to the human body. Some of the walkers used in this sculpture are no longer new and come from the wider Münster area. Despite its massive presence, the sculpture emanates a lightness, appearing to hover above the earth.

The seemingly abstract form has a very specific point of origin: the so-called Nietzsche Rock, named after the German philosopher. On an August day in 1881, according to his own records, the rock by Lake Silvaplana in Oberengadin inspired the idea of eternal recurrence which is an alternative to the concept of a finite state as preached by Christianity. Instead of (a life)time simply running out, eternal recurrence means that ‘the eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it’.1 It is possible to see a symbol of permanent repetition in the monumental nature of the rock: if every moment in life eternally starts afresh again and again, then even the most trivial action is given tremendous weight. Man can allow himself to be crushed by this weight and view every moral act as superfluous. Or he can affirm eternal recurrence and see in it the real motivation for moral behaviour. Based on photographs of the rock, repeated shaping and moulding impacted the three-part creation process of Matherly’s sculpture. ‘I split up forms into other forms,’ says the artist. ‘Nothing ever really ceases to be.’ No copies of original models are produced in this way; rather, it is the status quo of an interpretation that is in the process of becoming an object. Matherly investigates the relevance of our philosophical and aesthetic past by means of his sculpture. Instead of being anchored to the ground like the rock at Lake Silvaplana, the weight of Matherly’s piece is held up by supports that actually symbolize weakness and the loss of mobility and independence.

Christian Odzuck Christian Odzuck (* 1978 Halle; lives in Düsseldorf) takes as his focus architectural fragments as well as urban building processes. His basic artistic approach is the reuse and further development of building materials, which he reassembles as accessible structures. The original buildings as well as individual elements, reused materials, or the memories thereof are made visible and aesthetically tangible for visitors.

The point of departure for his Skulptur Projekte piece is Münster’s former revenue office, the Oberfinanzdirektion (OFD) building complex, which was torn down in 2016/17. It was built in the 1960s from plans developed by the architecture firm HPP Heinrich-Petschnigg & Partner. Odzuck placed his work OFF OFD on the now abandoned space, getting his bearings from the clear, modern use of form in the now demolished administrative building as well as from its former dimensions and floor plan. The centrepiece of the work is the stairway, which is conspicuous in an architectural sense. Originally, it was at the main entrance of the OFD, but Odzuck reconstructed it as a mock-up, imitating its function as a walkway yet expanding it from a conceptual and structural point of view. He recycled the demolished building’s materials as a ballast bed and added on modular prefab concrete bricks made of leftover cement from previous building projects. In addition to this, the artist translocated and reactivated the 23-metre-long street light from the OFD car park.

In reference to Lucius Burckhardt’s science of strollology, Odzuck investigates urban places on his strolls through town, exploring their political, social, and historical subtexts and functions, which he documents in essays, studies, and research books. His publications trace these continuing expeditions, mapping the impressions of his walks and, at the same moment, serving as his working medium, a documentation and a true experience. Subsequently, the artist converts these concepts and visions from a two-dimensional surface to a real three-dimensional space. Odzuck understands construction phases as process-oriented, artistic strategies that challenge the possibilities of a space and render them visible. For Skulptur Projekte the artist consciously focused on urban structures and situations that were faced with impending demolition or repurposing. By placing his work in front of the anti-panorama of the abandoned construction site, Odzuck alludes to that fragile state of limbo between demolition and new construction and to the urban development potential and social opportunities that could emerge from it.

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Peles Empire The artist duo Peles Empire, consisting of Barbara Wolff and Katharina Stöver, takes its material and name from the Romanian royal castle of Peleş, built in 1883. The interior is dominated by a chaotic hodgepodge of replica furniture and décors from various stylistic periods. The two artists pick up on the historical dimension of the furnishings and adopt a postmodern process of reproduction, sampling, and quotation as the basis for their artistic practice.

For Skulptur Projekte, Peles Empire has erected a gable, nearly eight metres high, in the immediate vicinity of the city’s historic centre. The gable’s tiled façade shows an image of the castle’s crumbling terrace as well as the supports that keep it from collapsing. The façade is braced by poles and propped against a stepped volume, whose surface is covered with black-and-white streaks, mimicking a stone surface. This surface visually anticipates the Jesmonite bar inside. Both are black and white and thus create the effect of a photocopy. The object, which is located in a carpark, is not just for viewing from the outside—it can also be entered. The first impression suggests some intrinsic value, but this is misleading: what looks magnificent and solid from the outside turns out to be a print pasted on a sheet of thin aluminium-based material. The size of the tiles and the stepped element behind the façade were based on the size of standard A3 paper. This and the black-and-white imagery are a clear reference to the technology of photocopying where every copy increasingly becomes an abstraction of the original.

Peles Empire uses its piece Sculpture to allude to the historicized architecture of Münster’s historic market (the Prinzipalmarkt), which was rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II—not as an exact reconstruction but according to the historical prototype of the 1950s. Based on the original façade, the plans for the new façade, and what was actually built, the duo developed a kind of ‘standard’ gable from all three elements to define the front of the sculpture. Akin to black-and-white image interference, the object comments on the picturesque charm and homogenized narrative of the apparently medieval town centre. Peles Empire’s work also includes a social dimension: at the beginning of their collaboration, the two artists used their flat in Frankfurt am Main as a kind of salon—after moving to London, it later became an exhibition space. Photo wallpaper served as the décor for their weekly gatherings in their own living room with depictions of the rooms in Peleş Castle. At that time they had already begun utilizing photocopies, photographs, and collages to transpose the three-dimensional interior of the castle into two dimensions—before finally returning it to a three-dimensional space by using the images as wallpaper. In Münster, Peles Empire has once again taken on the role of host: the artists have organized discussions with other artists in the bar.

Alexandra Pirici In her works, Alexandra Pirici (* 1982 Bucharest; lives in Bucharest) fuses ongoing action, dance, and sculpture. She frequently deals with the history and meaning of specific places in order to playfully tackle and transform existing hierarchies. She uses her interventions to confront the monumentality of public memorials and institutions with animated gestures that express a fundamental scepticism towards the chiselled stone forms of the past and canonical fixations. A further aspect of her work involves artistic reflections on data sovereignty and filter mechanisms within the digital space.

The Friedenssaal in Münster’s historic town hall serves as the starting point for a work consisting of several parts: events which were primarily presented through media are restaged. In one sequence six performers form a collective body that dynamically cuts across the room, reconstructing an allusion to territorial conflicts and situations in which distinct lines of demarcation are challenged. This scene is strengthened by historic data and distances, giving the viewers a sense of orientation in time and space. Sporadically, the performers embody living search machines that interact with the audience. In part, the flow of visitors will overlap with the loop of ongoing action.

Pirici has situated her performance in a historic location. Today, the former town council and court chambers where the Treaty of Münster was signed in 1648 serve as a prestigious reception hall and a magnet for tourists. Within the context of the Peace of Westphalia—an act of diplomacy that brought to an end a war that was ostensibly religious but primarily hegemonic and specified territorial borders—the space symbolically stands for dialogue, tolerance, and the birth of international law. Pirici confronts this historic, museum-like re-enactment of the past by opening up the space for external influences and incorporating it in an associative, multi-perspectival network of references. The bodies serve as a medium and interface through which real media-related and mental time frames are connected—similar to a

19 hypertext. By translating the movements back to three-dimensional forms of expression, history is updated in the medium: it takes place but is also made tangible in its constructedness. Pirici’s human-body collage raises a clutch of questions that revolve around the nation-state as a static, identity-establishing construct and the ambivalence of digital technologies. At a time when nationalism and protectionism are questioning the concept of Europe, Pirici’s work makes an appeal for a culture of transnational dialogue and a diversity of voices. In this way she can be loosely associated with a legal tenet that adorns one of the ceiling beams in the council chambers: Audiatur et altera pars—Let the other side be heard too.

Nora Schultz Nora Schultz’s (* 1975 Frankfurt am Main; lives in Boston) artistic interventions develop their tension from material-related actions, forming processes, and their relationship to one another. Everyday materials, language, writing systems, and cultural displacements play just as much a role as the recourse to Post- . More recently, her focus has shifted, going via performative work with self-constructed printing presses to an engagement with the structures of the exhibition space, which she responds to with expansive installations. By reflecting on the architectural framework that shapes the way we perceive art, her work aligns itself with the tradition of institutional critique.

In Münster, the architectural arrangement of the museum’s foyer represents the starting point for Nora Schultz’s multimedia intervention. The dominant space, which is calculated to impress, is visually, acoustically, and tactually transformed. By covering the skylight with clear plastic sheeting, she modulates the intensity of the incident light entering the room. The carpet is sound-absorbent. Olle Baertling’s (1911– 1981) steel sculpture YZI from Marl has been integrated into the stairway setting. Two projections show footage that was made on location using GoPro cameras and drones. In addition to that, Schultz employs infrastructural elements like info-screens that suddenly flash up film clips. Confusing sounds recorded by the unmanned flying objects echo through the foyer.

The interventions serve to recode the entrance area, which has a central function as a framing element for the visit to the museum. The brightness of the room, with its almost virtual effect, typically makes it difficult to get a clear sense of the space, which extends to the full height of the building. Schultz’s work makes its design seem more restrained, and its contours more tangible. The flying devices in the , which were constructed for external use, drift in hectic, unstable patterns through this space, offering alternative views of the room’s dominant structure as the perspective varies back and forth from micro to macro. The drones temporarily suspend the force of gravity, and this same suspension happens in Baertling’s work in model form. The sculpture, which was made in 1969 and seems like a drawing in the space, expresses a dynamic force field with its abstract gesture. The meaning and potential of Baertling’s works lie in the transitive aspect suggestive of an unbounded spatial distance—the concept of ‘open form’ is inherent to his oeuvre.

Schultz treats the museum’s foyer as a diverse sculptural body—a negative space whose edges and apparent void can be modelled and (re-)shaped. By relocating the external form and placing it in the pristine foyer, it also works as a kind of printer: visitors successively imprint vestiges of their presence onto the floor of the museum, creating a random pattern.

Hito Steyerl Hito Steyerl’s films, installations, and writings come out of a systemic way of thinking and working, in which artistic production and the theoretical analysis of global social issues are closely linked. Steyerl investigates the interaction and synthesis of technological and artistic imagery, for example, at the level of visual mass culture—and its function within the overall dispositif of technocracy, monetary policy, the abuse of power, and violence. Her lecture Is the Museum a Battlefield? at the 13th (2013) took as its theme the question of how artists and the art industry are involved in this network. Martin Lockheed, the sponsor of her film about the death of her friend Andrea Wolf (November, 2004) is himself a manufacturer of guns and ammunition—and of the bullet that killed Andrea Wolf in 1998 while she was fighting for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The location Steyerl chose for her installation is the Westdeutsche Landesbausparkasse (LBS savings bank) with its futuristic technocratic architectural style. It was built in 1975 at the northern end of the old zoo by the banker Ludwig Poullain. In what used to be the cashier’s hall and lobby there are kinetic works by Heinz Mack, Günther Uecker, Otto Piene, etc., from the LBS collection, which has been made accessible to the

20 public again within the framework of Münster’s Skulptur Projekte. Steyerl has installed tubular steel barriers and corrugated steel partitions in the lobby of the modernistic building. Compiled audiovisual sequences can be seen on three monitors: documentary lab footage showing computer-simulated or actual physical force applied to humanoid robots to test their balance behaviour. The videos begin with the animation of a fragmented sentence: HELL YEAH WE FUCK DIE—which according to the online magazine Billboard are the most frequently used five words in the music charts of the past decade. They provide the basis for the musical compositions and also appear in neon lettering encased in concrete. In the smaller cashier’s room in the back there is a further installation with the same elements and an additional video: footage from south-eastern Turkey of the Kurdish town of Cizre on the Syrian border, which now resembles a ghost town following numerous skirmishes of escalating intensity between the government and the PKK. It is the native town of the Arabic writer and engineer Al-Jazari, who wrote a book about mechanical apparatuses in 1205 to convey knowledge about ingenious devices, a work known as Automata in Western culture. Steyerl combines the pictures of the town with questions addressed to SIRI, the software installed on the mobile phone: What role does computer technology play in war?

Koki Tanaka Since Fukushima, if not before, Koki Tanaka’s (* 1975 Tochigi; lives in Kyoto) art has been centred around crises and the temporary communities that they produce. Tanaka brings people together in unaccustomed situations that are often unsettling. In these unusual collective moments, he tests the possibility of defying existing routines. The documentary footage that was produced in these situations and workshops serves in various forms as the basis for his multichannel video installations.

For Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Tanaka asked eight residents of Münster from various generations and different cultural backgrounds to participate in workshops for ten days. Based on Roland Barthes’s book of the same title, the central question was, how to live together? Tanaka invited contributions from ‘facilitators’ acting as temporary guests and sources of inspiration.

A total of eleven video sequences document things such as the night spent together on mats in the gymnasium, cooking a wartime recipe, the interview and shoot with a globalization expert from Syria, and physical exercises in an old nuclear bunker. The camera crew was also told to capture all the breaks and interruptions. So we witness moments of exhaustion as well as the moments when stereotypical roles and argument patterns are initiated or set off. And we also see moments of irritation or displeasure. From the very beginning, the presence of a film crew transforms the participants into subjects in front of the camera and, as such, into a designated, temporary, and defined group of performers. During the shoot, Tanaka sees himself as the viewer and leaves it up to the participants to guide the process, including the decision to stop an exercise. Like the everyday objects in the workshop, the artist’s notes are an important part of the work and are designed as independent publications.

The contextual starting point of Provisional Studies: How to Live Together? was also the location where it took place: the Aegidiimarkt complex across from the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur. Built in the late 1970s, the building incorporates space for living, shopping, work, and leisure. Next to the adult education centre there is a car park for the section of the building frequented most by the public. It was erected during the Cold War and until 2015 designated as a WMD shelter which could house three thousand people in the event of an emergency. Researching the history of the place, we discover how various communities gathered or lived together there: prior to 1819, there was a monastery on the same site that had been used as a military barracks since 1830. After being destroyed in World War II, the property remained vacant for quite some time. The lines of sight that visitors are offered from the standpoint of the installation are directly connected to the Aegidiimarkt across from it.

Oscar Tuazon Oscar Tuazon’s (* 1975 Seattle, lives in Los Angeles) sculptural works have overlaps with architecture and evolve through their encounter with the exhibition’s context. His constructions of wood, concrete, or steel are characterized by a rough materiality: one can see traces of the manufacturing process and visible signs of material fatigue. His artwork refers back to the vocabulary of minimalism, but it confronts the sterile aesthetics of this style with an action-based concept of sculpture made tangible by the artist’s statement, ‘I think with my hands.’

In Münster, Tuazon has installed an object made of concrete in an industrial wasteland along a canal—an

21 undefined plot of land which is used by various groups of people. The object serves as a public fireplace. The cylindrically shaped sculpture can be used for barbecuing, warming up, and as a look-out. The work’s focal point is the chimney-like pillar with its two integrated fireplaces—its reduced form is the consequence of its function. A spiral stairway with large steps rises around the hearth, encircling two-thirds of it. In turn, the stairway is bounded by a lateral wall. The vitiated air from the separate fireplaces is conveyed to the chimney through a system of pipes beneath the stairway. The small sections of wooden boarding that were used in the construction can be removed and burned as well.

This object represents a continuation of Tuazon’s work with temporary exterior structures such as his contribution to the 2011 Biennale in Venice or his permanent installation at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The focus in both of these concrete pavilions is on their function as rudimentary shelters and meeting places. In Münster, however, the form is recast by the active use to which the work is put. Just as physical experience plays a key role for Tuazon in the production process, his contribution to Skulptur Projekte with its accessible dynamics is intended for immediate reception as a utilitarian object with a close relationship to everyday life: in contrast to the artistic practice of relational aesthetics, the art crowd is not the main recipient to whom the work is addressed. This heat-radiating sculpture, which is almost unthinkable as an official architectural structure within a regulated urban space, has a social dimension. It connotes a form of participation that eludes regulation, like the situation in an area of no-man’s land, and thus also has an inherent potential for friction. Using the archaic motif of the fireplace, it points to a communal activity. It also has a sculptural resonance with the basic home-made architecture associated with the counterculture and dropping out and characterized by pragmatic improvisation. Left to itself, the work— which emanates an element of ruinous entropy as an unwrought object in the peripheral terrain—develops a life of its own.

Pierre Huyghe’s Latest Project Is Part Biotech Lab, Part Scene from a Sci-Fi Film

ARTSY EDITORIAL BY EMILY MCDERMOTT JUN 19TH, 2017 1:10 PM

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Photo by Ola Rindal, courtesy of Skulptur Projekte.

A disused ice rink on the outskirts of the small German city of Münster is currently breeding cancer cells. Part of this year’s Skulptur Projekte Münster, a decennial art event spearheaded by influential curator Kasper König that sees more than 35 projects scattered in its city center and greater environs, the ice rink is in fact a work by the French artist Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead. Along with the cancer cells, Huyghe has placed bees, peacocks, and algae inside the excavated hangar-like structure, transforming it into a living organism and animating it via an augmented reality app.

The scene is dramatic, even if, as Huyghe tells me, this was not his goal: The former rink’s concrete floor is broken apart, with steps and a dirt ramp descending into the muddy, dugout ground. Two sections of the ceiling periodically open and close, allowing natural light, wind, and water into the artificial rink. An aquarium rests atop one of the remaining sections of concrete, its glass alternating between transparency and opacity. Though the broken floor, aquarium, and moving ceiling are the most visible elements, there

22 are many smaller, yet equally significant components at play within the space.

Unseen sensors monitor the movement of the peacocks and bees, as well as the CO2 and bacteria levels within the ice rink. An algorithm uses this data to calculate the average vitality of the space and cables buried beneath the ground then transmit the information to an incubator containing the cancer cells. When the space has a higher vitality, so does the petri dish with cancer cells. When it has a lower vitality, the algorithm slows the cells’ rate of reproduction. Huyghe says the deeply intertwined yet unpredictable and constantly evolving results of this system are what interests him most about the work.

“I’m not interested in interconnected things, in relation to each other, but in their interdependency,” he says.

Huyghe has also translated the naturally occurring patterns on shells within the aquarium into a musical score that plays throughout the space. Specific sounds initiate a shift in the glass’s transparency, which then causes the ceiling to open or close. The augmented reality app, which can be downloaded by visitors, further responds to all of these factors. When looking through the app on a phone, floating pyramids emerge and fill the space. A new pyramid is created every time a cancer cell splits, but when two pyramids are close enough together, they can also “mate” and regenerate. When the ceiling opens, however, every pyramid disappears or “dies”—except for those with a special strength, granted to them by an evolutionary algorithm integrated into the app.

He designed the system such that the technology involved is dependent on natural factors, reversing the traditional notion that technologies can somehow bring nature under control. For example, he explains that the algorithms controlling this vast system are written in such a way that they will adapt and change in their mechanics as the conditions in the space change.

“It’s not a program written to be fixed, [but] rather changing operations contaminated by other languages,” he says. “Agents react and vary according to external factors.” Huyghe explains that the project’s complexity isn’t intended to confuse viewers but instead to make them question where its processes (and thereby wider processes within our lives) begin and end. “It's a way to shift the centrality of the human position—whether as a maker or receptor. Indiscernibility and unpredictability are among other operations that could shift that position,” he says.

Many of Huyghe’s previous projects, specifically those at documenta 13 and Palais de , served as building blocks for After ALife Ahead. For his work at Palais de Tokyo, shown late last year, he experimented with cancer cells and algorithms that controlled their speed of replication. He says it was literally a test- run for Skulptur Projekte Münster. At dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012, Huyghe produced an environment with a beehive- headed sculpture, two greyhounds, a man drawing his surroundings, and much more. While many people focused upon one dog, with its leg dyed pink, Huyghe says the work was not about animals.

“It was changing, shifting, living, evolving,” he says.

Thematically, his work at Skulptur Projekte Münster remains closely linked to this initial environment. He even says the evolutionary algorithm introduced in After ALife Ahead “could be considered as an archaic attempt to mimic life” and it adds an important layer to the work. Whereas his documenta installation illustrated human beings’ place within a larger system, only parts of which we can control, After ALife Ahead more acutely reflects the extent to which we attempt to intervene in these processes through technology, believing that we can bring logic and control to them. Instead interventions— whether technological, political, or otherwise—more often than not end in a way that couldn’t have been fully foreseen at their outset.

The point is driven home by the conflicts that emerge between various elements within After ALife Ahead. For example, something as simple as a sound initiates a ripple effect: When one sound causes the the ceiling to open and kill off augmented reality pyramids, it alters the rink’s CO2 and bacteria levels, affecting the algorithm’s vitality calculations, potentially boosting the cancer cell reproduction cycle, and causing even more or stronger pyramids to be born.

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Critic's Guide: Münster A guide to the best projects included in Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017

BY HARRY THORNE CRITIC'S GUIDE - 09 JUN 2017

Nicole Eisenman, Sketch for a Fountain, © Skulptur Projekte 2017. Photo: Henning Rogge Nicole Eisenman, Sketch for a Fountain Meadow alongside Promenade, Am Kreuztor/Promenade, 48143 Münster

Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain, famed for its lapping emerald waters, its exquisite Baroque design, and its show-stopping cameo in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (‘Marcello!’), was recently renovated across a period of 17 months, at an estimated cost of €2.2 million. Somewhat contrastingly, much of Nicole Eisenman’s Sketch for a Fountain will be rubble within months, and no one will be footing the bill for repairs. Eisenman’s work will feature five large-scale figures, two of whom are cast in bronze – a fairly conventional take, thus far. The remaining three, however (lounging, lying, cross-legged), are built from nothing but plaster and glaze, an insecure material that, over the course of the coming months, will slowly deteriorate under the fountain’s spray. If you have had the pleasure of gazing upon Eisenman’s paintings first hand, you will recognise these characters. Globular, androgynous, animalistic, endearing: they are set in place but, like those poor souls who are destined to feel their limbs drip away, they ardently refuse to stay in one place – to be defined as one thing.

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead, 2017. Photo: Ola Rindal. Courtesy: the artist, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and Esther Schipper

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead Former ice-rink, Steinfurterstr. 113 -115, 48149 Münster

There is very little to be said about Pierre Huyghe’s contribution to Skulptur Projekte Münster that the artist hasn’t said already. I quote:

Ice rink concrete floor. Logic game. Ammoniac. Sand, clay, phreatic water. Bacteria, algae, bee, chimera . Aquarium, black switchable glass, conus textile, GloFish. Incubator, human cancer cells. Genetic algorithm. Augmented reality. Automated ceiling structure. Rain.

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Alright, maybe there is. Shortly after his long-term collaborator converted London’s Turbine Hall into an all-quivering, all-quaking aquatic organism, Huyghe has turned his attention to a former ice-skating rink in the northwest of the city. Having altered the atmosphere and architecture of the space through a process of burrowing (into the rink) and obliterating (parts of the roof), the Münster debutant will leave his environment to the mercy of the unpredictable, with the configuration of the space dictated by the pattern variations of snails and the growth of human cancer cells. (There is also an app, because it’s the 21st century.)

Lara Favaretto, Momentary Monument — The Stone, © Skulptur Projekte 2017. Photo: Henning Rogge Lara Favaretto, Momentary Monument — The Stone North-eastern meadow between Ludgeriplatz Square and Promenade, 48151 Münster

For Skulptur Projekte Münster, Lara Favaretto will be reviving her ‘Momentary Monuments’ series, which, since it was inaugurated in 2005, has seen vast monoliths, guarding walls and barriers of debris and scrap spring up in Liverpool, Kabul, Kassel, and Venice, only to be torn to the ground. For the latest iteration, Momentary Monument — The Stone, Favaretto will set down a vast, hollow cenotaph near Ludgeriplatz Square, where it will stand in defiant opposition to a colonial memorial commemorating those of the Westphalian Train Battalion No. 7 who died between 1901 and 1906 in China and the former ‘German Southwest Africa’. As with the project of the same name that was included in last year’s Liverpool Biennale, the monument will be marked with a deep slit into which visitors can throw their spare change. At the close of Skulptur Projekte, Momentary Monument — The Stone will be ceremonially shattered, the rubble redistributed around the city and the money donated to Hilfe für Menschen in Abschiebehaft Büren e.V., a local foundation that advocates for the abolition of deportation detention. A monument, then, yes, but one that passes up preservation for preservation’s sake in favour of a generative, future-oriented destruction of legacy.

Nairy Baghramian, Beliebte Stellen / Privileged Points, © Skulptur Projekte 2017. Photo: Henning Rogge Elsewhere: Nairy Baghramian has posed questions of the notion of ‘site specificity’, positioning a series of bronze sculptures in a location once occupied by the works of Richard Serra and Andreas Siekmann; Ayşe Erkmen has submerged a number of shipping containers in the municipal harbour, allowing visitors to walk on water; Cerith Wyn Evans has lowered the temperature of the bells in St Stephen’s Church, slightly altering their sound in the process; Michael Smith is offering bespoke tattoos designed by participating artists and esteemed friends (of course, those over the age of 65 get a special discount). For the full list of 2017, click here.

Bruce Nauman, Square Depression, 1997/2007, © Skulptur Projekte 2017. Photo: Stephanie Bringezu

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Be sure not to miss the many works that have remained in the city following previous iterations of Skulptur Projekte: Public Toilet Facilities at the Domplatz(2007), a Hans Peter Feldmann-decorated WC; Bruce Nauman’s meditative Square Depression (1997/2007), welcoming students to the Natural Science Centre; Rosemarie Trockel’s Less Savage than Others (2006/07), a row of square bushes running along the bank of the Aasee; an untitled work by Donald Judd, in which two large-scale concrete rings set the decline of a hill against the resting water level; Hermann de Vries’s Sanctuarium (1997), a walled sanctuary and safe haven for wildlife; and Rachel Whiteread’s Untitled (Books) (1997), lining the walls of the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur. For the full list of works in the public collection, click here.

Exhibition view: models of the Skulptur Projekte Archive at Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, © LWL-MKuK, Skulptur Projekte Archive. Photo: Thorsten Arendt For its fifth edition, Skulptur Projekte Münster has extended its purview and entered into a partnership with the neighbouring city of Marl and the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl that will see a number of artists working between the two cities. For more information, click here. https://frieze.com/article/critics-guide-munster

Interview with artist Koki Tanaka & Kai van Eikels on how to live together What attracts art fans from all over the world to the SKULPTUR PROJEKTE MÜNSTER is that there is a chance to witness bold aesthetic experiments— such as the project by Koki Tanaka, the Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2015. His video installation is about how people from different can coexist peacefully. Living together was put to the test in a workshop for which Tanaka cooperated with experts including the philosopher Kai van Eikels.

ArtMag: Koki Tanaka, the working title of your contribution to Skulptur Projekte Münster is programmatic: How to Live Together. You asked eight participants with totally different backgrounds to spend over a week together working on various tasks. As the location you picked Aegidiimarkt in the center of Münster. What was so fascinating about this location?

Koki Tanaka: The place I picked informs the whole project. When I first came to Münster, I decided to focus on the Aegidiimarkt—a seventies/eighties shopping mall next to the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kultur. They have a nuclear bunker in the building that is ten stories down under the underground parking. There used to be a convent and a barracks here. Today it is a shopping center. Because of the Cold War, they built the bunker underneath.

Kai van Eikels: The bunker offered space for only 3,000 people in a city whose population was 270,000 in 1978 when it was built.

KT: I used this place as a starting point to think about the idea of how we can live together. Nowadays we are facing many difficulties in living together as mixed people who have different backgrounds and thoughts, because people are probably tired of having to deal with differentness. The world is divided into different parts. When the bunker was built, they were thinking about the future after a nuclear war. They wanted to restore humanity after the disaster. Even though now it is no longer functional, there are still certain hopes embedded in this place. So I see this bunker as a kind of metaphor for building possibilities in which we can rethink how to live together.

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ArtMag: How did you choose the participants for this, let’s say, utopian group?

KT: My first idea was to try to find people with different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. I asked the curators to contact various small institutions and cultural centers in Münster. We tried to get as many participants as possible and then we had an orientation day. I think maybe twenty people showed up, which eventually turned into a group of eight. I didn't actually choose anyone. Only eight people signed up in the end. Mostly Germans, but with different cultural and family backgrounds, and there were also age differences. One of the participants/actors was Turkish-German, one Moroccan-German, and there were French, American, and Palestinian participants.

KvE: I think one reason for this turnout is that there was no fixed goal for the participants. Usually when you participate in a workshop there is a goal. You think: “I will spend one week doing this workshop and I will learn to achieve this or that,” while in this case it was completely open.

ArtMag: So what was the structure of the event?

KT: It was a one-week workshop including the two weekends. Each day there were different activities. For instance, the first day we came together the activity was to cook a wartime recipe. We made simple German food from World War IIand a soup from the Middle East. One of the participants/actors said every recipe from the Middle East is a kind of wartime recipe. This was only one of nine different activities. Each of them touched on something different: cooking, discussions, interviews, and even a film workshop.

KvE: Over three days, the participants interviewed each other in pairs, sitting in a car parked down at the former bunker level. In these videos you learn a lot about their personal history. We had a very interesting mix. Some of the people were born here, had been living here for a long time, while others grew up here but come from migrant families. Some had just arrived here to study. So there are different relations to the city of Münster and the history of this place.

ArtMag: However, this was not a sociological but an artistic project.

KvE: I hosted one day of the workshop, and this day was about using techniques from dance and performance for political purposes. But the function of the entire workshop was to produce footage, which Koki could use as material for the work he will contribute to Skulptur Projekte. He told us that we should think of ourselves as actors, playing the role of participants. All the time, there was this kind of double reality: We were performing as participants in a workshop. But at the same time we were actually doing a workshop.

ArtMag: Koki, you rarely appear in the films about the workshop you initiated. How much did you participate in the workshop? Do you see your role as that of an observer or a participant?

KT: My role has been very similar to the role of a curator who invites artists to create a group show or a thematic show. My role is that of an organizer, not an observer, because I am highly involved in the process. As for the day Kai facilitated, he could decide everything as long as his idea was in the framework of the project, and of course we discussed the practical issues for his day. When I organize these one-week workshops, I try to invite each facilitator to reflect on the place—the nuclear bunker, or/and my theme of how to live together—and develop their own idea, like an artist. In this sense, I organized the whole week and was responsible for everything in a way. If something happens, I am the one to blame. In the end, people will say this is Koki’s work, but at the same time this is not really clear. I am the artist/the organizer, of course, but maybe not in the conventional sense.

ArtMag: But, regarding authorship, it is not a collective work?

KT: No, it’s not a collective work. I think what they did during the workshop week in reality was collective work, but the documentation of the workshop is not. I edit what the film crew captured based on how I see the workshop from my point of view. So the responsibility of the result is mine.

KvE: Participation and authorship is always a problematic issue. But it usually makes matters worse, not better, when artists have the idea of “collective creativity,” because they want a more equal form of doing something together. This means that they expand their own status to the entirety of others. It takes for granted that all participants want the same deal, trading in the pleasure of practice for the more radical freedom of aesthetic production. And it fails to take into account how participants can help art to acquire a political dimension

27 precisely because they are not artists. If people who participate in art projects make helpful contributions to collective political action, they do so insofar as they are taking up, continuing, furthering, and thereby slightly bending and turning something conceived and initiated by someone else, and not by trying to position themselves as the one with the idea. They are ready to react. And only through reactions will an artistic project, whatever its initial idea, become political.

ArtMag: What kinds of reactions did you train?

KvE: For example, we tried a game Koki and I had nicknamed G8. I told the participants to think of themselves as eight sovereign rulers of the world, and whatever they decided would become reality. However, all eight of them were equally powerful. We selected a couple of important political topics, the big issues of our time, addressing one after the other. Everyone could make decisions, going on for as long as they wanted, but you could only react to a decision with another decision. Objections and critical comments as to why something was not a good idea, why it wouldn’t work, etc. were excluded. If you were not satisfied with a decision, you were free to annul it with your own decision—but you had to be prepared for the others to strike back, or for a third party to chime in with a decision that neutralized or altered your decision. Despite the unlimited power, the structure was calling for cooperation among equals.

ArtMag: You also added a special technique to the game.

KvE: After a first round with many difficulties, I suggested that every decision be made in the form of a “Yes, and…” “Yes anding” is a technique in improvisation theater. It means that whatever your response is, you start with an acknowledgement of that which you are reacting to before adding something. And if you are not okay with what the other person has just said or done, your own reaction will have to redirect it. Negation is possible, but it cannot consist in a mere rejection. You react kind of like judo or aikido fighters, who never go against their partner’s movement but use its momentum for accomplishing their own goal. Playing our game with ”Yes anding,” we got into a kind of flow. Objections would interrupt this flow less often, and the overall tendency was to become more cooperative and concentrate on modifying a measure rather than trying to disable it.

ArtMag: Koki, how optimistic were you after the workshop?

TK: Of course at some point there were tensions because the participants/actors had different opinions. But once they stayed together overnight and had some workshops together, they developed a certain level of trust between them and also toward the film crew and the organizers, including me, I think. We became a kind of temporal community.

This dialogue was assembled from parts of an interview with Koki Tanaka, a public conversation with him and Kai van Eikels, and excerpts from a talk given by Kai van Eikels. http://db-artmag.com/en/97/feature/lets-talk-koki-tanaka-kai-van-eikels-on-how-to-live-together/

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5. KASSEL

Once upon a time... there were two brothers who lived many a year in Kassel, where they penned timeless classics such as their collection of 'Children's and Household Tales' and their reference book of German grammar. Because they were so famous, the literary pair are still honored in Kassel to this day at the Grimm World, as well as at anniversary celebrations, conferences and exhibitions.

Two hundred years ago brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm published their first book of fairytales, having already made names for themselves as linguists, legal historians and committed democrats. In 2013, Kassel also paid tribute to their younger brother, painter Ludwig Emil Grimm. It goes without saying that Kassel is one of the major checkpoints along the German Fairytale Route, a 600km tour dedicated to the life and works of the .

Kassel puts as much emphasis on preserving its Grimm heritage as it does promoting the city's defining modern-day event. The documenta is the world's leading contemporary art exhibition, an occasion of great distinction, a showcase for the latest trends in international art. The venue for the exhibition has been the since 1955, while the Documenta Hall was added in 1992 for documenta 9. The number of visitors has continued to grow ever since the first show, reaching 860,000 in 2012. And with megastars such as Brad Pitt among the guests, it's likely to attract even more art fans next time round.

The outdoor exhibits are a firm fixture at the documenta. Some of the most spectacular are now integral parts of the cityscape, for instance the 7,000 Oaks project by Joseph Beuys, Claes Oldenburg's giant pickaxe on the banks of the Fulda and Jonathan Borofsky's Man Walking to the Sky. These eye-catching artistic landmarks enhance a city that owes its appearance to a conscious effort to erect new buildings after the Second World War, rather than to restore the old ones that had been destroyed – so as to make a clean break from the legacy of the past.

Today, Kassel is very proud of its numerous successful examples of 1950s architecture, such as the Treppenstrasse ensemble, which has long been under a preservation order. In recent decades, however, there has been a drive to rejuvenate the city centre and significantly increase its appeal with modern new buildings, public art and the redesign of open spaces in an unconventional style. Kassel also has one of the oldest theatre scenes in Germany. The Ottoneum, the country's first permanent theatre and the precursor to today's Kassel State Theatre, dates back to 1605. Wilhelmshöhe Palace with its spectacular collection of Rembrandts is a must-see, as are the city's excellent museums. Art from the previous two centuries is on display at the New Gallery, and Goethe's famous elephant is exhibited at the Natural History Museum in the Ottoneum. The Museum of Astronomy and Physics, meanwhile, reveals captivating insights into the secrets of astronomy, the measurement of time, geodesy, mathematics and physics. Not a secret, however, is the fact that Wilhelmshöhe with the monument is Europe's largest hillside park. Its 240 hectares, laid out in the English style, are a work of art combining nature, architecture and landscape design. And when it comes to works of art, you'll soon realize that they are everywhere you turn in Kassel.

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6. DOCUMENTA (14)

Introduction documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH is a non-profit organization supported and funded by the City of Kassel and the State of , as well as by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. will open in April 2017 in , and in June 2017 in Kassel.

In 1955, the Kassel painter and academy professor Arnold Bode endeavored to bring Germany back into dialogue with the rest of the world after the end of World War II, and to connect the international art scene through a “presentation of twentieth century art.”

He founded the “Society of Western Art of the 20th Century” in order to present art that had been deemed by the Nazis as degenerate as well as works from classical modernity that had never been seen in Germany in the destroyed Museum Fridericianum.

The first documenta was a retrospective of works from major movements (Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, the Blaue Reiter, Futurism) and brilliant individualists such as , Max Ernst, Hans Arp, , , and Henry Moore. In this journey through the art of the first fifty years of the century, German founders of modern art such as , , or Max Beckmann were presented alongside classics of modernism.

An enormous hunger to compensate for the lack of information about international tendencies in art motivated 130,000 visitors to come to Kassel for the exhibition, which acted as both a survey and a forum for contemporary art.

Encouraged by this unexpected success, Bode planned a second exhibition in 1959, thus establishing the exhibition cycle of documenta. Since 1959, the exhibition has been organized by a limited liability company with the City of Kassel and State of Hesse as shareholders.

Arnold Bode led the exhibition up until documenta 4 in 1968, in cooperation with such renowned art historians such as Werner Haftmann, Will Grohmann, Werner Schmalenbach, and Max Imdahl. documenta increasingly became a seismograph of developments in contemporary art.

A new format for the exhibition’s organization started in 1972, with Harald Szeemann appointed as “Secretary General.” On behalf of the board of documenta gGmbH, an international jury is assembled to appoint the Artistic Director for each exhibition. In 1997, became the first woman to direct documenta.

Each documenta takes its character from the ideas and concept of its Artistic Director, and is therefore not only a forum for current trends in contemporary art, but a place where innovative and standards-setting exhibition concepts are trialed. In each edition, documenta has played a leading role in taking the international discourse about art in new directions. Over the past decades, documenta has established itself as an institution that goes far beyond a survey of what is currently happening, inviting the attention of the international art world every five years for this "museum of 100 days." The discourse and the dynamics of the discussion surrounding each documenta reflects and challenges the expectations of society about art. https://www.documenta.de

30 documenta 14, 2017 - Learning from Athens Athens, : 8 April - 16 July 2017 Kassel, Germany: 10 June - 17 September 2017

Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk has proposed a twofold structure for the exhibition, as reflected in the working title "Learning from Athens." In 2017, Kassel and the Greek capital will host the exhibition on an equal footing: Kassel has relinquished its hitherto undisputed position as the central exhibition venue in favor of another role, namely that of a guest in Athens. The different locations and divergent historical, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds of Kassel and Athens have come to bear on the actual process of creating the two parts of the exhibition, while inspiring and influencing the individual works of art at the same time.

For documenta 14, participating artists have been invited to think and produce within the context of the emerging dynamic relationship between these two cities and to develop a work for each of the two locations. documenta 14 seeks to encompass a multitude of voices in, between, and beyond the two cities where it is situated, reaching outside the European context from the vantage point of the Mediterranean metropolis of Athens, where Africa, the Middle East, and Asia stand face to face. The physical and metaphorical distance between Kassel and Athens fundamentally alters the way visitors will experience documenta 14—bringing into play feelings of loss and longing while redefining their understanding of what such an exhibition can be.

Curatorial team:

Pierre Bal-Blanc, Marina Fokidis, Hendrik Folkerts, Natasha Ginwala, Candice Hopkins, Salvatore Lacagnina, Quinn Latimer, Andrea Linnenkohl, Hila Peleg, Paul B. Preciado, Dieter Roelstraete, Erzen Shkololli, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Sorokina, Monika Szewczyk, Paolo Thorsen-Nagel, Katerina Tselou

Nine Things We Know So Far About documenta 14 The quinquennial event kicks off next month in Athens https://news.artnet.com

With less than a month to go, the documenta 14 is still shrouded in mystery. Notoriously secretive about participating artists, organizers have revealed very littler about what visitors can expect. As a result, there’s much speculation around the upcoming show, which takes place April 8–July 16 in Athens, and June 10– September 17 in Kassel, Germany.

The documenta exhibition has taken place for 100 days every five years in Kassel since 1955. Founded by Arnold Bode, the “museum of 100 days” began as an exhibition of contemporary art that could bring postwar Germany up to speed on international contemporary art, following years of it being deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis, and shunned, sold, or destroyed in war.

It has historically always taken place at the Fridericianum—the first museum in mainland Europe, established in 1779—later adding other locations around the city of Kassel, which was heavily bombed in World War II.

But this year, curator Adam Szymczyk is shaking things up and splitting the exhibition between Kassel and Athens, Greece, with an exhibition titled “Learning from Athens.”

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Despite the secrecy, some details have been confirmed, so here’s everything we know so far about documenta 14:

1. There are over 150 participating artists

Around 150 living artists were sent written invitations to have current work featured at documenta 14. Generally, most create new works, and there will also be a selection of historic pieces. Artists were first invited to Athens, then to Kassel, and some will show in both cities. None have yet been revealed— Szymczyk told the Deutsche Presse Agentur he was “not a friend” of artists lists released in advance, since they build expectations before the show even opens.

“In my opinion, an exhibition should be an experience. An experience without great programmed expectations,” he said.

Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk with first team members of documenta 14

2. It will span multiple venues in both cities

Historically, the exhibition has taken place at the Fridericanium and, since DOCUMENTA IX in 1992, the nearby documenta-Halle. This year, it will also make use of “nearly all the public museums in Kassel,” Szymczyk told DPA, including the Grimmwelt museum, historic Ballhaus, and a former post office that is now a fitness studio. Friedrichsplatz, the public square around the Fridericianum, will also “play a big role.”

In Athens, the exhibition will occupy the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST), as well as an exhibition hall, the modern extension of the , and other smaller venues. EMST will be the largest venue.

3. There will be an exchange between museums in Athens and Kassel

According to a press release, a curated selection of Greek and international art from EMST’s collection will be shown at the Fridericianum, in order to make space for the Szymczyk-curated exhibition and to, presumably, allow Germans and international visitors to “Learn from Athens.”

4. Szymczyk wanted to bring the Gurlitt Collection to Athens, but couldn’t secure it

The curator wanted to show the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, a trove of more than 500 artworks said to have been wrongfully taken from their owners during World War II, including canvasses by Matisse, Courbet, and Chagall. When news of that broke, it was controversial, but it’s all irrelevant now, since “legal and political restrictions” stood in the way. Nonetheless, it continued to serve as inspiration for Szymczyk and his team, specifically in the design of the exhibit in Kassel’s Neue Galerie.

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5. There will be an obelisk

One work is out of the bag so far (It’s hard to keep an obelisk a secret). It will be installed at Königsplatz, in the neighborhood of Fridericianum. A spokesperson for documenta told DPA that work has already begun on the construction, but wouldn’t give any word on the artist behind the monument.

6. The exhibition costs €34 million ($36.25 million)

Around half of that expense is paid for with public funds by the city of Kassel, the state of Hessen, the German Federal Cultural Foundation, and the Federal Foreign Office. documenta raises the other half itself, and has sponsors including the Sparkasse Finance Foundation and Volkswagen, besides private sponsors in the form of both individuals and foundations. Artists are paid for production costs and retain the rights to their works after the exhibition.

7. It will be participatory Visitors to documenta 14 are expected to be “active participants” in the show, rather than just passive viewers.

“There is a large untapped potential when visitors come together for an exhibition—a political potential,” Szymczyk said.

Venues

Fridericianum

The exhibition at the Fridericianum marks the first time the collection of Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) is presented in Germany, through a double displacement that renders EMST’s home, the renovated building of the former Fix brewery in Athens, one of the main venues of documenta 14, and the Fridericianum, traditionally the centerpiece of a documenta exhibition, the temporary home of EMST’s collection. With this collaboration, documenta 14 and EMST strengthen each other’s public engagement, captured in documenta 14’s working title Learning from Athens as well as in the museum’s new annual exhibition series, entitled “EMST in the World.”

EMST began creating its collection in 2000. Its holdings now include more than 1,100 works by Greek and international artists from the 1960s onward. The exhibition at the Fridericianum is an adapted version of the museological study of the EMST collection by the director Katerina Koskina to be inaugurated in Athens in 2017, with the curatorial assistance of Tina Pandi and Stamatis Schizakis, the architectural design of Iro Nikolakea, and the support of all the EMST staff. The artworks that travel to Kassel comment on the complex reality in Greece today and highlight the parallel and i nternational journeys of pioneering Greek artists.

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In their transcultural decussation, documenta 14 and EMST engage border crossings, diasporas, and personal and collective memories—including issues of repatriation, or αντιδάνεια (the return of loans)—in a manifestation of the two institutions’ joint commitment to preserving and reinterpreting cultural icons and important artworks. The presentation considers the EMST collection vis-à-vis the history of the Fridericianum, the birthplace of documenta and the first public museum on mainland Europe, offering new histories while challenging prevalent ones. The Fridericianum’s brief tenure as a house of parliament serves as an important connection to the ways some artists represented in the EMST collection have dealt with the difficulty of sustaining democracy during the postwar transformation of Greek and European society, including the years of military dictatorship.

During documenta 14, the Fridericianum’s rotunda hosts the Parliament of Bodies, the exhibition’s Public Programs, ramifying the site’s short term as a house of parliament in the early nineteenth century as it operates as a critical device, queering the ruins of democratic institutions as well as the traditional forms of educational and public programming. In addition, in the basement of the Fridericianum, Ben Russell’s new film project Good Luck (2017) examines the social and global scale of the politics of mineral extraction. It is a study about the communities of workers in an illegal, small-scale gold mine in Suriname and in a state-owned copper mine in Serbia.

Gottschalk-Halle (University of Kassel)

Many threads of Kassel’s history are woven together in this abandoned warehouse. Built in the 1950s on a location belonging to two of the city’s most prominent industrial dynasties, Henschel company and the Gottschalk & Co. textile manufactory, the Gottschalk-Halle was used by the latter as a storage facility. In the 1970s it was taken over by the University of Kassel to perform much the same function. As such, the Gottschalk-Halle has always been a transitory site—neither a space of production nor of consumption but rather a reservoir and record of passage. The future of the building is uncertain: it will either be destroyed or repurposed for student housing, as it stands currently on the edge of the university’s rapidly expanding campus. While various artworks on view echo the Gottschalk-Halle’s pasts, the venue also assembles artists who work on issues of displacement and migration, connecting the economic threads that pass through the site’s history to geopolitical and sociocultural lines of transition.

Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost)

The brutalist Neue Hauptpost, renamed the Neue Neue Galerie by documenta 14, was inaugurated in 1975 as Kassel’s main post office and mail distribution center. In the wake of the partial privatization and digitization of mail services, it has been largely left vacant. The building appears as a site of post-

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Fordist labor, one that directly marks the impact of virtualization on the service sector of economic production, its empty spaces serving as a testament to the final stages of a bygone economy. Today, its architectural body is home to a combination of public services, such as the City Department of Roads and Transportation and Hephata Diakonie (an evangelical organization committed to youth support and social rehabilitation), as well as private entities—the gym chain McFit, located directly on top of documenta 14’s main exhibition.

Echoing and reconfiguring the old post office as a nexus of distribution, the artists featured here work with the axes between Kassel and Athens as lines of departure and arrival. The art on view explores the labor of dissemination—by mail, on horseback, through bodies or rituals. The concept of redistribution broadens to encompass larger questions about the production of history, of how certain political conditions form a canon that in turn produces certain types of artistic labor. Many of the artworks featured in the main hall, on the mezzanine, and on the top floor (which once served as an employee canteen and rest area) generate critical ideas about intersections in history, articulating the site as a continuously evolving and dissolving heterotopia.

Glass Pavilions on Kurt-Schumacher- Strasse

One of the main traffic corridors in Kassel, Kurt- Schumacher-Strasse also designates a border. Geographically, it traces the line between Mitte at the center and Nordstadt in the north of the city; as such, it indicates a sociopolitical boundary as well. Whereas Mitte is the comparatively homogenous commercial and cultural hub of the city, Nordstadt is where Kassel becomes home to Turkish, Ethiopian, Bulgarian, and other migrant communities based there since the 1960s and ’70s, as well as those who more recently arrived from Syria and the Middle East. Punctuating Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse are the so-called Glass Pavilions of the Hansa-Haus, once home to commercial outlets and now abandoned. Constituting the memory of an economy powered by local shop owners, the six pavilions—plus one additional site used by documenta 14—remind us of what Kassel once was and wanted to be, while exuding an air of waiting for an elusive future. A number of the artistic projects housed in these spaces engage with the architecture’s transparency in this transitional zone; the works are sometimes unapproachable, accessible only by sight. The pavilions also serve as spaces of distribution: a warehouse for goods to be sold or disseminated in the city, an active bakery, a social gathering space, and a depository for raw materials that connect to other resources in the exhibition.

Königsplatz

While Olu Oguibe’s project in Athens, The Biafra Time Capsule (2017), deals with an archive of the human tragedy of the Biafra War (1967–70), his work in Kassel refers to a critical humanitarianism toward victims of war in general. Reaffirming the timeless, universal principles of care for all under persecution and for all that have had to seek refuge, his project takes the monumental form of an obelisk placed on Königsplatz with an inscribed text in four languages. Das Fremdlinge und

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Flüchtlinge Monument (2017) takes its cue from Oguibe’s experiences as a child who survived the Biafra War, which claimed the lives of some two million civilians in just thirty months.

Königsplatz—constructed in 1767 and named after Landgrave Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel (1676– 1751), also the King of —is often a site of assembly, festivities, and political demonstrations; for example, the protest in 2015 about the living conditions of refugees. It is also where Goethe was famously refused a hotel room when he arrived there one night because he first spoke French to the innkeeper. Oguibe’s obelisk on this site is a repudiation of the anti-immigrant bigotry that certain world leaders and their followers have been fanning around the world lately, and an acknowledgment of the life-saving hospitality and refuge which others have offered to counter this bigotry. The work evokes and materializes the current crisis of humanity, and is a call for action.

Friedrichsplatz

Constructed in the late eighteenth century as a way to expand Kassel from the old medieval town toward the flourishing Huguenot settlement nearby, Friedrichsplatz has often been employed as an arena for the display of political and military power. The statue of Landgrave Friedrich II overlooks his prized museum. The Third Reich used the massive square for military parades, draping all the surrounding buildings in the red and black of the swastika flag. After World War II, Friedrichsplatz became a centerpiece of urban regeneration. It was cut in half by Frankfurter Strasse to accommodate the influx of cars—and the attendant dream of modernity—and the square’s main cultural site, the Fridericianum, hosted the first documenta in 1955, another powerful symbol of cultural restitution. Since then, Friedrichsplatz has developed into a heterochronous marketplace. The square itself sits empty most of the time, while the city’s cultural institutions on the north side, as well as the disappearing shops that fostered the local economy in recent decades on the south, observe the steadfast progression on the Obere Königsstrasse of the chain stores that shape the global marketplace today.

Marta Minujín’s The Parthenon of Books (1983/2017) stands tall on Friedrichsplatz, effectuating both the history and the displacement of documenta 14. Its columns, made up of banned books, echo the neoclassicism of the columns that support the Fridericianum and art histories within. While Walter De Maria’s quietly grand permanent installation on the square invites us to travel a kilometer underground, Monument to Victims of Violence (1974) by Vadim Sidur (1924–1986)—temporarily relocated from the other end of the square—enters into a conversation with the monument to one of Kassel’s rulers. Hiwa K’s When We Were Exhaling Images(2017) reminds us of a longer journey on the surface, one that thousands of people still make every day seeking refuge. Other new works itinerate out from the Fridericianum: Daniel Knorr’s vaporous Expiration Movement issues from the tower of the building (Zwehrenturm), and Banu Cennetoğlu’s BEINGSAFEISSCARY, replacing the signage bearing the museum’s name, marks the site’s history and comments on contemporary Kassel and Fortress Europe at large.

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Naturkundemuseum im Ottoneum

After its partial destruction during World War II, the Ottoneum performed a remarkable shift: from a theater— arguably the first theater building in Germany, constructed in the early seventeenth century—to its current status as Kassel’s natural history museum. In an attempt to reconcile the two, many of the artworks featured on the Ottoneum’s ground floor deal with the theater of land. From issues around cartography and accessing Indigenous history to reflections on landscape and the urban-rural relationship, the presentation by documenta 14 advances the question of how land rights and the politics of land become the stage—at times quite literally—for larger geopolitical and historical questions.

documenta Halle

Beyond its obvious postmodern invocations, documenta Halle seems like a body reclining on the slope that brings visitors from Friedrichsplatz to the Orangerie and Karlsaue park—an organism of steel and glass that heats up in summer and remains cold in winter. When it was inaugurated for documenta 9 in 1992, that edition’s director, Jan Hoet, compared the documenta Halle to the Acropolis in order to encourage citizens of Kassel to be proud of this recent addition to the city. Now, twenty-five years later, facing the Parthenon (of books) thanks to Marta Minujín, documenta Halle is a site of scored and libidinal movement.

In the first part of the building, movement is initiated downward with an ensemble of works that deals with the range between score and notation, on the one hand, and the act of performance on the other, with the building’s “cabinets” introducing form and color to the stage. Listening Space Kassel is also present on a mezzanine with a view onto Friedrichsplatz. Its audio archive of the various ongoing sound-based events in Athens are experienced via headphones, extending its public and offering a condensed sonic counterpoint to the visual identity of Kassel. Listening becomes a means to trace the physical space and time of Athens, its architecture, audiences, and performances, from within Germany.

Moving on through the main hall of the documenta Halle offers a concerto that transforms the musical score into utterances of a different kind: unexpected musical instruments, a score that weaves together its own words, and a stage that adjusts the space of the exhibition. At the end of the hall there is a ray of sunlight, its heat sustaining the natural material that may grow there but that cannot take root. Movement ends with a passage that will reset the stage, through the exit that leads to the Karlsaue, completing the nonchalant stretch of the lean architecture itself.

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Westpavillon (Orangerie)

The Orangerie was built by Karl I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It served him as both a summer house and a winter habitat for potted trees such as citrus and palms. During World War II, the building was bombed and left in ruins until a renovation project began in 1976. The completely restored Orangerie was reopened in 1992 as an astronomical museum with a planetarium. In the building’s left wing, documenta 14 presents two new video works by Romuald Karmakar: Byzantion and Die Entstehung des Westens (both 2017) allude to events of enormous historical importance, the end of the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople, each a catalyst for the exploration and conquest of the New World at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Antonio Vega Macotela’s Mill of Blood (2017), a fully operational reconstruction of the minting machine built by Spanish colonizers in Peru and other locations in South America and operated by Indigenous and African slaves, offers a poignant reading of the Orangerie as an epitome of the European Enlightenment, and its discontents.

Neue Galerie

Housing the Museumlandschaft Hessen- Kassel’s collection of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century art, the Neue Galerie has been an important venue in a number of previous editions of documenta. Nevertheless, documenta 14 is the first to inhabit the building in its entirety—which is fitting, perhaps, for an exhibition so self-conscious of its history, and of the broader historical forces that made the very documenta project possible. The museum’s realization in 1877 coincided with the heady early days of the . Its phalanx of eight marble Länderfiguren in particular—allegorical female figures representing the eight traditional “nations of art”: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Italy, France, Germany, , the , and England—speaks to the entanglement of nationhood, institution building, and cultural politics in this triumphant moment so soon after modern Germany’s emergence from the Franco-Prussian War.

Questions of nationhood and belonging, but also of dispersal and loss, weave a loose meshwork throughout the Neue Galerie, which effectively operates as the site of documenta 14’s memory, the primary seat of its historical consciousness. This is where the legacy of Arnold Bode, documenta’s founder in 1955, is invoked and debated—as a local avant-garde artist in dialogue with companions from his prewar years on the one hand, in the context of the Marshall Plan–financed recovery of postwar Germany on the other. And this is where that legacy is juxtaposed with geopolitical events such as the Bandung Conference of 1955, and key documents of empire, such as the infamous Code Noir, defining the legal conditions of slavery and exercise of religion in the French colonial empire, issued under Louis XIV in 1685. A quintessential postwar project, documenta reflects here on the long shadow cast by European colonialism, reaching its peak in the singular experience of World War II.

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Through the prism of the tangled, thorny story of the Gurlitt estate—the “affair” surrounding the private art collection of what was once one of Nazi Germany’s leading art dealers, discovered only in 2012—a larger history of concealment and manipulation of historical memory is addressed. Positing this story as one of the Neue Galerie’s primary organizing principles recasts the question of art’s relationship to the trauma of war or of art produced under conditions of totalitarian control; the museum’s relationship to the history of colonial conquest; the question of looting, ownership, and dispossession; and the all-consuming challenge of art’s entanglement in the realm of economy.

Palais Bellevue

One of the few historical structures in the center of Kassel to have survived the devastation of World War II relatively unscathed, the Palais Bellevue was built in the early years of the eighteenth century for Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel. It followed plans designed by the Huguenot refugee Paul du Ry, whose grandson would go on to build the Fridericianum. The Palais Bellevue was originally conceived as an astronomical observatory but soon after was converted into a royal residence: it was the primary home of Jérôme Bonaparte during his short-lived reign as the King of Westphalia, during which time the Palais first opened its doors to Kassel’s most famous native sons, the Grimm brothers (Jacob Grimm worked here as Jérôme’s librarian in the 1810s). Following the inauguration of the Neue Galerie across the street as Kassel’s principal picture gallery, the Palais Bellevue became home to the municipal art academy and, after World War II, when the Neue Galerie still lay in ruins, the repository of the city’s collection of Old Master paintings. From 1972 until 2014, it housed the Brüder - Grimm-Museum, before ceding that commemorative role to the new Grimmwelt Kassel.

Memories of violent conflict and related questions of territory shape the constellation of works inside the Palais Bellevue, with much of it confronting issues of trauma rooted in various “disasters of war.” Alternately, the palace’s eponymous beautiful view across the sprawling Auepark below, as well as the resident ghosts of two key gures of the Romantic movement, jointly bend the assembly toward an interrogation of landscape as a political project, to nature as culture.

Grimmwelt Kassel and Weinberg- Terrassen

Having opened its doors to the public in September 2015, Grimmwelt is the latest addition to Kassel’s museum landscape: perched atop the so-called Weinberg, this museum devoted to the life, work, and times of the Brothers Grimm strikes a balance between both the popular appeal of folk and fairytale culture and the monumental scholarly achievement of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as lexicographers and linguists.

In its temporary exhibition space, an ensemble of documenta 14 projects invoke language and literature and conjure the tenebrous ambivalences of fairy tales and their dark moral fervor. Less comforting narrations about our world than parables about the basic architectures of repressive, patriarchal, malevolent society—a story the documenta 14 artists here seek to overturn—the artworks on view counter the emotional refuge that such tales supposedly offer with the dread they often carry within.

Close to Grimmwelt on the Weinberg-Terrassen overlooking the Südstadt of Kassel, Rebecca Belmore’s marble tent—arriving in Kassel after the closing of the exhibition in Athens, where it faced

39 the Acropolis—finds a place alongside Nathan Pohio’s installation, which offers a complex gesture of welcome and hospitality.

Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe Train Station

To many visitors to documenta, if not most, Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe Train Station, constructed to replace what is now known as the KulturBahnhof closer to the city center, affords the first glimpse and impression of Kassel. The modern train station with its distinctive canopy dates back to 1990; though a station was built on this precise location as early as 1849, its railroad tracks crossing the imperious axis that connects Schloss Wilhelmshöhe with Kassel proper.

As a point of arrival and departure, it is a fitting location for a work by David Lamelas—a video triptych encompassing live broadcasts from both the German and Greek parliaments as well as a view of the Acropolis.

documenta 14 Kassel: the overview With the Kassel leg of documenta 14 opening to the public on Saturday, here’s what you need to know https://frieze.com/article/documenta-14-kassel-overview

BY PAUL TEASDALE

Fridericianum, which plays host to the collection of the EMST, Athens, and featuring on its facade Banu Cennetoğlu’s, Being Safe is Scary (2017)

Overview

As with the Athens chapter (or should that be movement?) of documenta 14, the curators will stress the importance of seeing the presentations in all venues before making a judgement on the show, but for what it’s worth, the venues containing the majority of the work for the Kassel leg of d14 are the Neue Hauptpost (what d14 are calling the Neue Neue Galerie), documenta Halle and the Neue Galerie.

Breaking with documenta tradition, the Fridericianum, normally the primary venue for the exhibition, has been given over to the public collection of Greek and international contemporary art of the National Museum of Contemporary Arts, Athens (EMST). Only one documenta artist features inside: a large-scale

40 video installation by Ben Russell (Good Luck, 2017). The façade of the building hosts an intervention by Banu Cennetoğlu who has reworked the museum’s name on the building’s frontispiece to read ‘Being Safe is Scary’.

Zwehrenturn, with Daniel Knorr’s Expiration Movement, 2017. Courtesy: documenta 14; photograph: Mathias Voelzke

Outside in Friederichsplatz is the large scale installation The Parthenon of Books (2017) by Marta Minujín, the result of an open call for 100,000 formerly or currently banned books fabricated into a model of the Athenian Parthenon, at the same site where numerous books were burned by the Nazis in 1933. Located on the right hand side of Fridericianum as you are facing it, the smoke bellowing out of the Zwehrenturm tower is Daniel Knorr’s Expiration Movement (2017) and outside of documenta Halle is Hiwa K’s When We Were Exhaling Images (2017), a series of steel tubes filled with personal objects, cots, lamps and books, replicas of the possessions of migrants, who featured in the artist’s wonderful film Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) (2017), installed in the Athens Conservatoire.

The Neue Hauptpost – deliberately chosen for its location in the north of Kassel which is home to many of Kassel’s immigrant communities – has the majority of newly-commissioned works; documenta Halle reprises work by many of the artists included in various parts of the Athens presentation, while the densely concentrated Neue Galerie features mainly historical works and research. One highlight worth seeing and hard to miss is a fascinating display related to a disabled, transgendered Kassel-based artist Lorenza Böttner who lost both arms in accidents, and died of Aids in 1994.

Route

According to the curators, their suggested route for seeing the works is north to south, starting from the former underground train station the Kulturbahnhof (featuring Michel Auder Nikhil Chopa, iQhiya and Zafos Xagoraris), then to the Neue Hauptpost (for the majority of the new commissions), a series of glass pavilions on the main road of Kurt-Schumacher Strasse, each devoted to one artist: Otobong Nkanga, Angelo Plessas, Vivian Soutar and Mounira Al-Solh. Heading south, you will reach documenta Halle, the Orangerie, Karlsaue park (featuring only a few works this time), then to the Neue Galerie (which has the largest concentration of works), Palais Bellevue, the Grimmwelt and the Museum für Sepalkralkultur. The film programme takes place in the Bali- Kinos and the Gloria-Kino.

In contrast to Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s dOCUMENTA (13) the works are mainly focused in and around the three main venues, with a scattering of outdoor works and a few works in the smaller venues that the curators claim are worth not missing, for instance at the Grimmwelt, drawings rarely exhibited outside of their home in the Ukraine by Bruno Schultz, that are inspired by Grimms’ fairy tales.

Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost), one of the main venues for documenta 14, Kassel. Courtesy: documenta 14; photograph: © Mathias Voelzke

Main Venues

The Neue Hauptpost (confusingly also referred to as the Neue Neue Galerie) is a disused post office, and the works there comprise the majority of the newly

41 commissioned works for d14 in Kassel. Some of these relate to the mail, distribution systems, and according to the curators, notions of ‘redistribution’. The venue begins with a large installation by Rasheed Araeen, including copies of the art magazine he founded in 1987, Third Text, as well as abstract paintings and cuboid sculpture works – here converted into stools and tables – familiar to those who visited the current Venice Biennale. Upstairs there’s a large, durational performance by Maria Hassibi. The Belgrade-born artist Irena Haiduk is given a room devoted to her 'Borosana Shoe Issue' project for which she re-incorporated a Yugoslavian state corporation that produced ergonomic shoes for women working in factories. These were unofficially used as corporate footwear in Yugoslavia and she is distributing them to the women working at documenta. There’s a large installation of photographs by Moyra Davey which she mailed one by one to the documenta team in Kassel, plus works by Beatriz González, a soap installation and performance by Otobong Nkanga and a new film by Artur Żmijewski which he filmed in .

documenta Halle. Courtesy: documenta 14;photograph: © Mathias Voelzke

documenta Halle is perhaps the airiest of the main venues but the one containing the fewest works and most minimal of hangs. The only venue purpose built for documenta – completed in 1992 for Jan Hoet’s documenta 9 – its long cavernous hall is given over to architectural installations showcasing documentation of perfomances by experimental US dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin nearby a work similar to the one presented at EMST, Athens by artist duo Marie Cool Fabio Balducci. The main hall sees large scale installations by Peruvian poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña (a new version of the monumental work she installed in the EMST); hanging fabrics and clothing dyed in various types and shades of indigo – a collection of 12 varieties of the plant are presented below – by Malian artist Aboubakar Fofana; a series of seven paintings mounted on rollers by Senagalese artist El Hadji Sy, two boats repurposed into makeshift instruments by Mexican musician and artist Guillermo Galindo and a newly constructed stage, designed by Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet with a 5% gradient, which will host later performances. Painting features too, upstairs with presentations by US artist Stanley Whitney, Pakistani artist Lala Rukh and a work by Greek artist Apostolos Georgiou and downstairs with a wonderful collection of spidery abstract works by late South African artist Ernest Mancoba and a set of of colourful abstracts by designer, violinist, composer, theorist and painter, Sedje Hémon, all made in Athens in the 1950s and early ’60s. Also downstairs in the back room, don't miss a new two-channel video performance by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Studies for Massacre – Seven Stages (2017).

Neue Galerie, Kassel. Courtesy: documenta 14; photograph: Mathias Voelzke

The Neue Galerie is the location with the greatest number of works on show. These are mostly historical works concerning relationships between Germany and Greece, reasons for documenta to be in Athens, topics of restitution, repropriation and stolen art, 19th century nationalism and its ties to 20th century museum convention and art history, as well as lesser-known politically engaged artistic figures from Eastern Europe and Latin America, and even some old Master paintings. It’s the first time that the entire venue is being used for documenta. A core argument here concerns the linking of 20th century museum

42 culture and artistic modernism around the world to 19th century colonial enterprise and exploitation, slavery and the Global South. The venue culminates with Maria Eichhorn's project about books that once belonged to German Jews which are now housed in the Zentralbibliothek in Berlin, as well the Rose Valland Institute – named after art historian Rose Valland, who secretly recorded details of Nazi looting during the German occupation of Paris – which researches, documents and investigates the ongoing impact of Raubkunst or Nazi-looted art formerly owned by Europe’s Jewish population.

Outdoor works

Hans Haacke, Wir (alle) sind das Volk (We (all) are the people, 2003/2017), five posters – the same as the ones shown in Athens. Friedrichsplatz

Olaf Holzapfel, Trassen (in der Kasseler Karlsaue) (Lines [in the Karlsaue in Kassel], 2017), painted wood , 5.5 × 4 × 8.5 m. Karlsaue Park, (100m from the Orangerie)

Hiwa K, When We Were Exhaling Images (2017). A series of steel tubes filled with personal objects, cots, lamps and books. documenta Halle, Friedrichsplatz

Daniel Knorr, Expiration Movement (2017), the smoke bellowing out of the tower. Zwehrenturm (next to Fridericianum)

Antonio Vega Macotela, The Mill of Blood (2017), steel, wood, and glass, 5 × 9 × 9 m (symbol and coin designer: Richard Massey). Orangerie

Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901–2030. (2016–2017). An installation in which two buildings have been covered entirely in shipping sacks. A similar work was included in Okwui Enwezors’ Venice Biennale in 2015. Location: Torwache Süd, Brüder-Grimm-Platz

Marta Minujín, Parthenon of Books (2017). Steel, books, and plastic sheeting ,19.5 × 29.5 × 65.5 m. The monolithic installation outside the Fridericianum featuring banned books donated by the public. Location: Friedrichsplatz

Emeka Ogboh, Sufferhead Original (2017), 50,000 bottles of craft beer, billboards, a television commercial and radio jingle, various locations

Olu Oguibe, Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument (Monument for strangers and refugees, 2017), concrete, 3 × 3 × 16.3 m. Obelisk with translated Bible verse. Königsplatz

Yngve Holen, Martinskirch’s organ, Kassel. Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin; photograph: Stefan Korte

And finally ...

Outside of the documenta programme, Yngve Holen has built a new organ for the imposing double-towered Martinskirch Kassel in collaboration with architect Ivar Heggheim. For the five year-long project, which took three months to contruct, artificial human hair hangs from the pipes, and blow as the instrument is played.

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For more information on the venues, artists and programme of documenta, including their official guide and map, visit the Press and Information office at Friedrichsplatz 4 or visit their website here.

Documenta 14 in Kassel: an instrument of soft power Artistic director Adam Szymczyk builds on highly-political themes of earlier opening in Athens by JULIA MICHALSKA, JANE MORRIS | 8 June 2017

Marta Minujin's Parthenon of Books at Documenta 14 in Athens (Image: Julia Michalska) PrintEmailFacebookTwitter MORE The curators of Documenta 14, which previewed to the press and invited guests on 7 June, have already proved that they are not afraid of taking risks. For the first time in the German quinquennial's 55-year history, half of the exhibition was unveiled first in Athens in April (until 16 July), and the other only now in its home city of Kassel (10 June-17 September). At a packed press conference, Adam Szymczyk, Documenta 14's artistic director, acknowledged that he had faced “political and financial issues” by staging the show in two locations.

In Kassel, as in Athens, the exhibition’s aim is to provide marginalised artists with an unprecedented platform while challenging dominant political, economic and cultural systems. "I accept that money has a lot of power but not the full power to determine the course of our actions," Szymczyk said in his short speech to the press. "We can ask if in the structures of power there is a space for us to negotiate; our sort of power versus their sort of power. The outcome is in our hands and to some extent in your hands too.”

Most of the 160 or so living artists in the show have works in both Kassel and Athens. The exhibition, titled Learning from Athens, has grown from its usual 100-day run to 163 days. It also features an extensive radio and television programme, as well as publications and public events. To help him organise this enormous bi-location undertaking, Szymczyk has enlisted the help of almost 20 curators and advisers. With a budget of €37.5m, half of which comes from German taxpayers, it is one of the best-funded visual arts festivals in the world.

The Kassel leg of the show is staged across 33 sites in the industrial German city. The main venues include the traditional heart of Documenta, the Fridericianum, as well as the Documenta Halle and the Neue Galerie, plus its latest additions, the “Neue Neue Galerie” (the city’s former main post office) and the Grimmwelt, a new museum opened in September 2015 dedicated to the 19th-century fairy-tale-writing brothers who lived in Kassel. Other sites being used for the first time are the Hessisches Landesmuseum, the Stadtmuseum Kassel and a number of places in the largely-immigrant neighbourhood of Nordstadt. Among the more offbeat venues this year are a disused U-Bahn station and one-time retail spaces known as the “glass pavilions”. Certain to become one of the most recognisable works of this edition is the Argentinian Pop artist Marta Minujin’s Parthenon of Books towering over the Friedrichsplatz opposite the Fridericianum (see below).

Reactions to the Athens show have so far been muted with many awaiting the Kassel iteration to

44 open; and with so much to see, this huge exhibition is sure to take some time to digest. Whether it manages to change unconvinced hearts and minds remains to be seen. Here is a look at some highlights from four of the main sites on the preview day.

Fridericianum: Gifted to the Greeks

Andreas Angelidakis's Polemos (2017) is on show at the Fridericianum (Image: © Nils Klinger)

Since Documenta’s first edition in 1955 the Fridericianum museum—built in 1779—has been the exhibition’s central venue. It is symbolic that it has been turned over to a Greek curator, Katerina Koskina. She is the director of Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (known as EMST), which was in turn the core of Documenta 14’s presentation in Greece. It presents works from the collection and loans: a mix of big international names, and lesser- known Greek artists since the 1960s who for many will be a highlight of the exhibition. It shows how Greek artists have been addressing many of the same issues as the rest of Documenta 14 over the past 50 years, as well as their relationship to major art movements such as Arte Povera.

Königsplatz and Friedrichsplatz: New monuments

Olu Oguibe's obelisk on Königsplatz in Kassel (Image: © Julia Michalska)

Monuments, memory and calls to political action are recurrent themes of this year’s Documenta. While there are major public sculptures dotted around Kassel for the duration of the show, two have been placed in juxtaposition to each other. In the Königsplatz, Olu Oguibe has built a concrete obelisk, Monument for Strangers and Refugees (2017). On its side, it has a famous line from the New Testament Book of Matthew, “I was a stranger and you took me in”, in English, German, Turkish and Arabic. Obelisks are generally associated with ancient Egypt and Africa, and were much- prized by invaders from the Romans to Mussolini who frequently removed them and took them home (the famous Obelisk of Axum was finally repatriated from Italy to Ethiopia in 2005). In the nearby Friedrichsplatz, another work draws on the architecture of antiquity, the Argentinian artist Marta Minujin’s 1:1 scale recreation of the Parthenon made from once-banned books. It stands as a reminder of the enthusiasm of governments of many political stripes for censoring words and ideas.

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Neue Galerie: Ghosts of the Gurlitts

Maria Eichhorn's display at the Neue Galerie (Image: © VG- Bildkunst 2017 © Mathias Voelzke)

The Neue Galerie is where Adam Szymczyk wanted to show the Gurlitt hoard, that now infamous cache of 1,500 works that was found stashed away in a Munich apartment in 2012. For whatever reason it proved impossible to organise but the ghost of its discovery still pervades this venue. Central to the display is Maria Eichhorn’s Rose Valland Institute. Named after the French art historian who saved countless works of art from the Nazis, Eichhorn’s project calls on the public to help solve restitution cases, a responsibility that has long been the remit of institutions and governments. Works by Cornelius Gurlitt’s aunt, Cornelia Gurlitt, an artist who committed suicide after the First World War, are also on show.

Neue Neue Galerie: Into new neighbourhoods

Theo Eshetu's Atlas Fractured (2017) is on show at the Neue Neue Galerie, "Kassel's Turbine Halle" (Image: Julia Michalska)

Described as “Kassel’s Turbine Hall”, by the Documenta 14 co-curator Dieter Roelstraete, this former post office is one of the main venues in Nordstadt, a neighbourhood largely inhabited by immigrant communities. Former loading bays on the ground floor act as impromptu galleries where artists including Joar Nango, Maret Anne Sara and Daniel Garcia Andujar are given mini solo shows, while a film by Theo Eshetu, projected onto giant reproductions of German exhibition posters of ethnographic art, dominates the space. Activism is a thread that runs through the presentation, chief among which is the harrowing account by the Society of Friends of Halit of the problematic murder inquiry of the young Turkish man, Halit Yozgat, who was gunned down by neo-Nazis in Kassel in 2006.

documenta 14 Kassel: Neue Galerie For the first in a series of our editors’ initial impressions from documenta 14 Kassel, Pablo Larios on the Neue Galerie

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BY PABLO LARIOS OPINION - 07 JUN 2017

You could be forgiven for being somewhat befuddled by the approach taken by this year’s documenta 14. For the 2017 edition of the exhibition, held every five years in Kassel, Germany, the curators decided to repatriate it to Athens, Greece – but only partly. With the second leg of this exhibition opening this week in Kassel, I find myself wondering: why bring it back to Germany at all? And how should the two parts of this exhibition relate: as iterations, segments, mirror images, chapters, or broken halves?

Those of us seeking to get a glimpse behind the curators’ thinking would be wise to turn to the Neue Galerie, the most densely occupied venue in Kassel. Here, through historical works, we find an attempt at an argument – by way of an intellectual and art historical justification – for the unusual routes taken by d14’s curatorial team. For the first time, documenta has occupied the entirety of this museum – which usually houses the state collections of Hessen of 19th to 21st century art – and devised a show along the lines of economy, restitution and politics, repatriation and commerce, material and visual culture, historical relationships between Germany and Greece, and the Global North and South. It’s an intense, ambitious effort – spanning centuries and including probably a couple of hundred works – which attempts to provide no less than an artistic-intellectual reparation for culture’s imbrication in political and economic damage throughout history. Bear with me.

Elisabeth Wild, Fantasias, 2016–17, collages, installation view, Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14

In many ways, the curators’ assessment that ‘culture’ – here meant broadly as cultural and personal maturation, in the German sense of Bildung – is couched in destruction and oppression is correct. In 1955 Arnold Bode deliberately chose the West German city of Kassel as the host for documenta because of its close proximity to the border with East Germany. His express interest was in using contemporary art as a tool or decoy to deter German culture from future nationalistic tendencies – as was expected in the wake of the Second World War. Kassel was steeped in war: shrapnel shards still littered the fields outside the Fridericianum as Bode opened the exhibition; the city’s broad avenues were made so that tanks could easily cross, and munitions factories and tank production plants had long surrounded the city. The works at the Neue Galerie that relate specifically to Bode include art by Bode himself, placed alongside ’s Portrait of Arnold Bode (1964). Bode’s deliberate instrumentalization of art in the name of preventative politics is a similar tactic that the curators seem to attempt here.

This sequence of the exhibition begins with themes of debt, alms-giving, temptation and economy. Two small Florentine old Master paintings by Niccolo di Pietro Gerini (The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1390– 1400) and Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi (Saint Anthony Abbot Tempted by Gold, c.15th century) depict Saint Anthony resisting worldly temptation and we see re-imaginations of the theme of Saint Anthony’s temptation in two abstract, monochrome canvases by contemporary Chicago artist David Schutter (DP P 587 PR and DP 588 PR, both 2017). The moral implications of debt and indebtedness are brought home by a painting by Gustave Courbet, L'Aumône d'un mendiant à Ornans (Alms from a Beggar at Ornans), an 1868 picture depicting a beggar giving alms to a small child: presumably sacrificing what he does not have for the sake of a child’s jejune desire. The moral here is that if even the poor and disadvantaged

47 can be generous, we the privileged should be ashamed of our selfishness. While painted in a realist style, the work sets up the awkward, romantic claim that lionising the less privileged is a politically valid stance.

This argument resonates with the inclusion of a number of works by 20th century modernist artists who, living in perilous historical conditions, still championed the worth of art. Close to Andrzej Wróblewski’s intense Surrealist Execution from 1949 are Pavel Filonov’s works from the 1930s that respond to political catastrophe in gouaches that combine realist tendencies with abstraction (After an Air Raid, c.1938). Nearby, there are paintings and sculptures from the 1950s by Cuban artist Antonio Vidal, who protested against the unilaterally ‘political’ framing of artists included in the second Bienal Hispanoamericanica de Arte of 1954. Nearby, an exquisite series of paintings – alternately tortured and surreal – by Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña depict figures such as Karl Marx and Salvador Allende, staring distortedly outward.

Geta Brătescu’s performance video Automation (2017) depicts a man breaking through canvases with a knife, placed next to a curious paper work in which a man is shown doing the same – until he stabs a person who bleeds. These are placed next to book works by Ulises Carrión, which also deal with art’s relationship to forms of individual autonomy. An entire room is given over to 40 of the small-format, recent, collages and works on paper of -born Guatemala-based artist Elisabeth Wild, Fantasias (2016–17). These ludic, lively scherzos, among the most vibrant in the venue, make a claim for artistic autonomy. Yet they sit uneasily with the claim levelled elsewhere in the show that art and culture are products of historical-material realities. Here Wild’s works attest to a belief that art can overcome the immediacy of politics and context: it’s an idea of artistic liberation that feels needed.

Another figure who stands with graceful autonomy is the Chilean, Kassel-based artist Lorenza Böttner: a figure (once profiled by Roberto Bolaño) who lost both arms, studied for a thesis on disability in Kassel’s university and made art about being ‘behindert’ and transgendered, before moving to New York and ultimately dying of AIDS. Hers is an emancipatory note that is all the more remarkable for its rarity in this show. Mounted above historical documentation, their thesis, photographs and paintings, we have a triumphal large-scale painting, made by the artist using their feet: a historical document says ‘Lorenza is physically handicapped, in that he has no arms, yet he is able to do everything anyone can do … One very notable talent is painting, which Lorenza does with his feet on the sidewalks of . He is also a sculptor, ceramicist and dancer.’

Upstairs, though, we find the opposite claim: the intertwining of systems of exploitation, cultural theft and historical destruction with art history and aesthetic economy. Books such as an edition of the Code Noir, an important edict concerning black slaves in the US state of Louisiana are placed near to an open book – First Complete System of German Idealism – and neo-classical and Romantic landscapes by family members of Cornelius Gurlitt, famous for the ‘trove’ of Nazi-looted art that was found in his apartment in 2012. Maria Eichhorn’s project carried on this theme centring around research, documentation and restitution of books and artworks (Rose Valland Institute, 2017).

Karl Leyhausen, Portrait of Peggy Sinclair, 1931, installation view, Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14

The connection between artistic modernism and 19th century philosophical, political and literary debates is made in part through an examination of Samuel Beckett’s relationship to Kassel, placed beside postwar German edicts and even near posters of the Marshall Plan. In the 1930s, Beckett stayed in Kassel eight times while visiting his lover (and distant cousin) Peggy Sinclair, a portrait of whom is on view in the exhibition (Karl Leyhausen, Portrait of Peggy Sinclair, 1931). Nearby, a portrait (the artist unknown) of the art historian Winckelmann (Johann Joachim Winckelmann Shown against an Italian Landscape c. 1800), opens a section on German Hellenism

48 and neo-classicism during the romantic era. This leads, quickly, into neo-classical and romantic paintings both from the estate of Cornelius Gurlitt as well as, pointedly, by Gurlitt’s own family members: his great uncle Louis Gurlitt’s Akropolis (c.1958) or his aunt Cornelia Gurlitt’s untitled works on paper from 1917. Aside from giving a glimpse into the interesting (and in part destructive) historical alliance between German culture and the ancient world, it leaves a bitter note. It’s hard not to think that here art itself is being villainized; culture in general placed in a damning relationship to forms of political terror and and economic oppression.

While a line is sketched between German philosophical pursuit in the early 1800s to colonial exploitation it remains a hazy one. Works by the Grimm brothers present caricatures of African people – a shameful and brutal typological oppression. Yet there is a lack of engagement on the critical legacy of the German philosophical models that are referenced, including reflection, for instance, on notions of ‘cosmopolitanism’, such as were already being considered by Immanuel Kant. It was Kant, after all, whom Beckett read while in Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, Kant himself was a critic of colonialism and slavery, devoting a 1795 text to condemning it. Yet in place of this balanced historical attention, there is a unilateral conflation of nation-building, romanticism, and artistic modernism that strikes me as both historically imprecise and conceptually confused.

Maria Eichhorn, Unlawfully acquired books from Jewish ownership, installation view, Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14, © Maria Eichhorn/VG Bild- Kunst, Bonn 2017, photo: Mathias Völzke

The exhibition culminates, meanly, with two works by Maria Eichhorn which drive home the somewhat distorted facts of this exhibition. A tower of works show books stolen from Jewish owners that are still held in the state libraries of Berlin. The accusatory tone of this work resonates with many works in which art is forced to recognize its sense of complicity with the structures of oppression and subjugation – while offering nothing in its place. Overall, one is left to suspect that the fundamental structure of this presentation, and the curatorial line, is a religious one: guilty, yes, but also demanding penitence, atonement, confession – but granting no absolution. So it is a relief to see the religious arguments pointed at by R.H. Quaytman, who has centred her project on Paul Klee and Martin Luther: Klee, it was discovered recently, painted his famous Angelus Novus (1920) on an image transfer depicting Luther.

R. H. Quaytman, installation view, Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke

This year’s documenta suffers, I think, from two distinct mistakes. The first is the demeaning of artwork to act as footnotes for critical arguments, a status of ‘evidence’ for historical and political catastrophes that the exhibition attempts to counter. The second is the imprecision with which these critical arguments are articulated. The works at the Neue Galerie valiantly attempt to construct an accusatory revision of art historical norms and canons. Yet this venue left me wanting, quite simply, for either aesthetic experience or philosophical depth. What results is ultimately a loveless, at times self-hating presentation that, while historically interesting, meanly subordinates art – and by implication all of us – into structures of guilt, and reparation with no chance of repayment. I, for

49 one, share in the belief of Bode himself, as well as the numerous artists and curators who have participated past editions of this important show, that art can emerge from the ruins on its own. When we deny art’s inherent critical and autonomous potential, it’s our own power that we overestimate.

Main image: works by Lorenza Böttner, installation view, Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14 https://frieze.com/article/documenta-14-kassel-neue-galerie

documenta 14 Kassel: Neue Neue Galerie The second of our editors’ first impressions from Kassel, Harry Thorne on the Neue Neue Galerie

BY HARRY THORNE 08 JUN 2017

Tell me this isn’t déjà vu. Tell me I haven’t been here before. A month ago I was at the Venice Biennale, in Anne Imhof’s , and I found myself standing over a body in motion, moving and flexing as if fighting underwater. Now I’m in Kassel, in the Neue Hauptpost (documenta is calling it the Neue Neue Galerie), a former post office and mail distribution centre, and it’s happening again. Below me, a figure enacting Maria Hassabi’s performance STAGING: Solo (2017), iterations of which are strewn across the venue’s two floors, is struggling in unnaturally slow motion. Clad in blues, tartans, pinks, and stripes, he lies and slowly extends each and every limb in an attempt to make it across a wide finish line of pink paint. The would-be-escapee is illuminated by a second work from the Cypriot artist: STAGING: Lighting Wall #1 (2017), a square of wall-mounted LED Par lights. Set beneath this blinding glare, it's hard to know whether our figure is a star beneath a spotlight, or a fugitive illuminated by a pursuing military faction. Either way, he is set in our sights; set within a performance that will never allow his body to cross that line.

A separate breakaway is attempted in Daniel García Andujar’s The Disasters of War/Trojan Horse (2017), a tall grouping of Grecian statues held in place by wooden crates (curiously, the first of very few works to actually reference documenta’s recent sojourn in Greece). Two fractured upper bodies hold discuses; a Trojan helmet sits proudly without its host; Cupid, nonchalant, prepares his bow. These are stories, lessons, legacies (all three words should be prefaced: ‘masculine’) frozen in time and place only to be revived at a later date when some generation or geography might lose its way. At the crest of the assemblage, a female figure has somehow broken away. Free, naked, unashamed, she stands with a fist in the air; no longer satisfied with re-enactments of old tales, but ready to act. The Disasters of War/Trojan Horse originates from a consideration of the practice of securing and preserving classical sculptures during periods of civil unrest – on a nearby wall, amidst a series of images tracing a non-linear history of dictatorship and despotic rule, is an extensive list of riots that have occurred since 2000. What does it mean for state-run institutions to refuse these sculptures the right to be influenced by social change? What does it mean for state run institutions to refuse society the right to influence these sculptures? While history preserves, memorializes, teaches, it also holds things in place – it preaches lethargic repetition of impulse and ideology and, in doing so, negates progression. As we move forward, should we not see history as something to mourn, but something to build upon? Something to clamber over as we reach, thrust fist first, for something better?

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Daniel García Andujar, The Disasters of War/Trojan Horse, 2017, installation view, Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14. Photograph: Mathias Völzke

Outmoded narratives, philosophies and systems of regulation are taken to task in a number of surrounding works. In Ross Birrell’s inkjet prints, Criollo (2017), for instance, we visit Buenos Aires, and a statue commemorating General José de San Martin, who is remembered on the back of a rearing bronze horse. In the foreground of Birrell’s photographs stands an actual horse, more apprehensive than war-ready. We follow the equine protagonist into a video of the same name, where it nervously attempts to make sense of the New York streets – a very different battleground, but a battleground nonetheless. For Birrell, as for Andujar, history can be celebrated, retold, but it should not be taken as the final act.

Carving through the centre of Neue Neue’s main room, Theo Eshetu’s video Atlas Fractured (2017) is projected onto a vast banner that the artist salvaged from the Ethnological Museum of Berlin in 2014. The tapestry is emblazoned with five masks, and is subtitled with the five regions represented in the museum’s collection: Afrika, Amerika, Ozeanien, Asien, Europa. Eshetu’s projections onto this all but obliterate any distinctions between the regions. Ghostly faces blur in and out of the fabric, suggesting identities but refusing to settle, while a frenetic soundtrack moves from the music of Greek composer Petros Tabouris and Glasgow-based producer Koreless to quotations from Hannah Arendt and Charlie Chaplin. The work, which uses these voices as proxies to denounce hyper-capitalist ideologies and neo-liberal notions of competition, is far from subtle. But there is something engaging about the sheer bravado of the piece, from scale to sound to subject. There is something vitalizing about hearing a multitude of voices in unison as they proclaim a single message of tolerance and transnationalism. Subtlety is overrated, anyway. Chaplin, his face stretching from floor to ceiling, his toothbrush moustache still inspiring sideways glances, is emphatic: 'More than machinery, we need humanity'.

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Theo Eshetu, Atlas Fractured, 2017, installation view, Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14. Photograph: Mathias Völzke

This drive to inspire a reinvestment in humanity via artistic process and product, as well as to divulge information and disseminate knowledge to the many (not the few), stitches together a number of otherwise disparate projects. Take Carved to Flow (2017), which has seen Otobong Nkanga produce 45,000 bars of black, marbled soap in Athens, following a number of educational workshops. The practical skills will remain in the Grecian capital, but the bars themselves have made their way to Kassel: some wrapped in tight, circular columns in one of the many loading bays that flank Neue Neue’s main space; some stacked in a wall in the neighbouring Glass Pavilions; others on the streets, being sold for a fee that will ultimately be reinvested in the initiative. A vivid presentation of recent geometric paintings by Rasheed Araeen are flanked by the bare structural chairs and tables of The Reading Room (2016/17), which allows visitors to peruse copies of Third Text, a critical journal centred around art and post- colonialism that the artist founded in 1987. In an upstairs room, Moyra Davey picks up on this idea of knowledge circulation and communication within social groups with an ongoing series of photographs that have been folded into envelopes at sent to the documenta curators. Paul B. Preciado received an image of autumnal leaves resting in mud; Adam Szymczyk, a bold, graceful letter Z, surrounded by Greek cursive. (A proposition: Zeta derives from Zayin, the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, which originally demoted a weapon or a sword. Be bold, Adam. Or, perhaps, arm yourself.)

The Society of Friends of Halit are a conglomerate of international activists, researchers, and artists brought together to investigate the murder of 21-year-old Halit Yozgat, who in 2006 was shot in a Kassel internet café by the neo-Nazi organization National Socialist Underground. The German secret service agent Andreas Temme, who was in the very same café as Halit when he was murdered, claims not to have heard the gunshot. The Society believes the judicial system is supressing this evidence. With 77sqm_9:26min (2017), they open the findings of their counter-investigation to the public. In a large- scale installation, we are presented with paper copies of the suit, digital mock-ups of the crime scene, recorded testimonies, harrowing footage of Turkish-heritage Germans mourning in the streets of Kassel and, perhaps most surprisingly, an art rediscovering its unifying potential and its oft-questioned ability to affect real-time politics.

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Rasheed Araeen, installation view, Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14. Photograph: Mathias Völzke

Above the main postal hall of Neue Neue there is a fully functioning gym – McFit. As you wander the space, considering the enforced devolution of cultural practices criticised by Máret Ánne Sara or Gordon Hookey, or the excavation of a conflicting personal history that plays out in Arin Rungjang’s touching film 246247596248914102516... And then there were none (2017), you will occasionally make out short, rapid-fire bursts of feet landing above, or the dull thuds of dumbbells dropping to a cushioned floor. This unexpected soundtrack took me back to Mark Greif’s essay ‘Against Exercise’, in which he writes: ‘Nothing can make you believe we harbour nostalgia for factory work but a modern gym.’ There is nostalgia here too, I think, amongst the work: nostalgia for a time when things were connected but fluid, when bodies could occupy space without resistance, when language was malleable, imposed systems of control absent and knowledge freely transferrable. Whether this time existed in the first place is another question (sadly, I suspect not), but there does seem to be a tangible longing for something that is now lost. It is, however, a generative longing. As with Grief’s gym-goers, who actively assuage their wistfulness within the battleground of McFit, or something similar, a number of works presented at Neue Neue refuse to revel in their lack. Instead, they lay the foundations for a new campaign, one that would not ‘unlearn in order to learn’ (a naïve and counterintuitive proposal that the curators of this exhibition seem curiously devoted to), but would allow itself to be educated by the misgiving and misanthropy of the past as it toils, sweats and stretches towards something that might be a better fit.

As I descended the stairs to leave Neue Neue Galerie, considering how I would ever tempt an article on this fractious (at times dislocated, at times contradictory, at times down right confusing) presentation to a natural close, I found my path blocked by another of Hassabi's bodies, still striving, like the first, towards some unseen finish line. I recognized this body. Actually, I recognized this very performer. I had been standing over him in Venice one month before.

Check back for more daily coverage on documenta 14 Kassel and follow our social media feeds for highlights from the exhibition.

Maria Hassabi, STAGING: Lighting Wall #1, 2017, installation view, Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14. Photograph: Mathias Völzke https://frieze.com/article/documenta-14-kassel-neue-neue-galerie

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APRIL 2017

https://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=201704&id=67184

THIS YEAR, the vaunted quinquennial Documenta 14 will take place in two cities, opening in Athens on April 8 and in Kassel on June 10. Artistic director Adam Szymczyk—who is collaborating with an extensive team that includes curators Pierre Bal-Blanc, Hendrik Folkerts, Candice Hopkins, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Hila Peleg, Dieter Roelstraete, and Monika Szewczyk— sat down with Artforum editor Michelle Kuo to discuss the broad range of sites, forms, and ideas at play, from the democratic ideals of classical antiquity to the crisis of contemporary austerity.

Cranes lift Marta Minujín’s Partenón de libros prohibidos (Parthenon of Banned Books), 1983, Avenida 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires, December 24, 1983.

MICHELLE KUO: Athens was at the epicenter of global financial and political turmoil when you began organizing Documenta 14, and of course many additional upheavals have occurred since then—the refugee crisis and the entire crisis of Europe. How has your thinking about the exhibition evolved as these events have unfolded? ADAM SZYMCZYK: In the fall of 2013, I proposed to the Documenta 14 search committee to hold the exhibition in Athens as well as in Kassel. At that time, Greece’s problems were frequently front-page news in Germany. The German press and politicians were keen on offering advice, in an admonishing tone—and they soon began to instruct this relatively poor southern European country to institute capital controls, to levy more and more taxes on people who have little if any income. The implicit or explicit theme was that Greece is a backward country, not up to European standards. That attitude was ironic, to say the least, considering that classical Greece, so widely held to be the cradle of civilization, was a touchstone in the formation of German national consciousness. The early Romantics claimed classical Greece as the origin point in a progression leading straight to them. As it happens, Kassel was also the home of two of the major protagonists in the German Romantic nationalist project, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Their collecting of German fairy tales and efforts to create a complete German dictionary provided elements of both a mythical and a linguistic foundation for the construction of German identity.

MK: So the cultural and political imaginary of Germany takes shape in and around Kassel. AS: Yes, at least to a degree. In terms of more recent events in Greece, the introduction of austerity measures was justified by Protestant moralism and a strange logic whereby the populace, the people, were blamed for their circumstances. And when you make the people as a whole culpable, you instill a sense of guilt and a sense of inferiority that produces a lot of frustration and self-hate. MK: Yes, and fear. AS: And resentment, and I think ultimately xenophobia—as demonstrated in Greece by Golden Dawn, a local neofascist party that made significant gains in parliament between 2009 and 2012 as economic turmoil increased. One of the reasons to work in Athens in parallel to Kassel is precisely to make the

54 exhibition in a place where you can see how problematic things are at the moment, and how much worse they may soon become—though not, naturally, to simply induce passive spectatorship. Our rubric “Learning from Athens” emphasizes an idea of active exchange—not an extraction but rather a distribution of knowledge that propagates outward, reconfiguring the relationship between those who speak and those who are spoken about. That notion of reciprocity also meant rejecting a geographic construct of Kassel as home base and Athens as peripheral or as an outpost. Instead, we envisioned the exhibition as a kind of divided cell, with most artists working in both places. So, from the beginning, we committed to this open-ended, ongoing process that would ideally produce knowledge about conditions within and far beyond Athens, conditions that are themselves constantly evolving. MK: Your concept of the exhibition was accompanied by the idea of a Parliament of Bodies, foregrounding the political valences of this paradigm. AS: I invited Paul B. Preciado, a philosopher and activist, to create a concept for public programs instituted in advance and as a fundamental part of the exhibition, not as its discursive, descriptive aside. The result was the Parliament of Bodies, which was inaugurated in September 2016 with “34 Exercises of Freedom,” and which explored a variety of languages of resistance in talks, art events, workshops, and so on. It took place at the Athens Municipality Arts Center in Parko Eleftherias [Freedom Park], next to a building that was a place of detention and torture during the military junta in Greece from 1967 to 1974, and that is now home to the Museum of Anti-dictatorial and Democratic Resistance, organized and run voluntarily by those persecuted during the junta. MK: The Societies, as you call them, seem especially germane here—could you say a little about how they fit into the scheme of things? AS: The Open Form Societies, which also fall under the overall Parliament rubric, are a growing constellation of self-organizing groups, each of which was convened to address or explore a particular discourse or problem or proposition. For instance, the Society for the End of Necropolitics investigates contemporary necropower and possible modes of resistance to it. Since late 2016, the Societies have been meeting once a month for discussions, screenings, whatever methodology or form of action the members choose to pursue. The choice to call them Societies invokes the precedent of late-eighteenth-century Societies of Friends, antislavery and anticolonial organizations that arose both to create and share knowledge and to function as platforms for political action. Such groups, influenced by ideals of the French Revolution, were also active in Greece in the early nineteenth century, preceding its formation as an independent nation- state. That said, all our activities during the run-up to Documenta 14 have been essential for what the exhibition is to become. These include the weekly broadcast Keimena [Texts] on Greek national television, conceived by curator Hila Peleg and cocurated by Vassily Bourikas, which focuses on experimental documentary and fiction films. We saw some statistics for it recently. It seems that more than half of the people who are watching are outside Athens and Thessaloniki, in smaller towns, in villages. The program is reaching an audience that is usually counted out, and it does produce reactions; people talk about it. And hopefully it will keep doing that beyond the end of the exhibition—it will continue for another two months after Documenta formally ends in Athens in mid-July. We are also producing an experimental-music concert series, the radio project Every Time A Ear di Soun, initiated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, curator at large of Documenta 14, who is commissioning sound works and working on archival sound material with ten international radio stations. And we’re temporarily acting as publishers of the magazine South as a State of Mind, founded in Athens by curator Marina Fokidis and edited for four issues by Quinn Latimer and me, the last of which appears this summer. The exhibition can really only be seen as coextensive with these formats—in opposition to a more conventional exhibition setup, where the events, seminars, and so forth are considered ancillary. MK: In terms of the more practical aspects of this engagement with the city, how have you approached the integration of the exhibition into preexisting institutional structures and spaces? AS: We were primarily interested in working with those institutions in Greece that are fully or partly publicly funded—the School of Fine Arts, the Athens Conservatory, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, and a whole range of smaller entities, including informal ones—to insist on their essential importance to the communities of which they’re a part and to society at large. A structure of production and consumption of culture financed entirely through private donors cannot replace the public dimension. The hope is that Documenta will raise awareness of the importance not only of contemporary art but of cultural production in general, in the social and political sphere, and will make these issues the subject of public debate. Maybe this could become one model for resistance to the predictable neoliberal pattern—to which, at the moment, Greece is subject, despite being governed by the nominally left-wing SYRIZA party. There’s a deep crisis, and under the current austerity plan, it is scheduled to continue for many years. There’s a lack

55 of any sign of serious recovery. To the contrary, the country’s current trajectory means that it will sink more and more under the weight of austerity. MK: One wonders when the breaking point will be reached in these conditions. AS: I think the breaking point has already been reached many times. A lot of people in Greece seem resigned and obviously exhausted, living on less than modest wages or unemployed. There is anger but no way of channeling it. Which means that it may turn into rage one day. MK: It’s almost like a period of mourning that follows destruction. AS: Yes, though one could say that mourning, or at least melancholy related to a profound feeling of loss, has always been part of the modern Greek nation’s self-conception. To a non-Greek person like me, the state appears to be founded on the idea of overcoming the oppression of Greece during Ottoman rule and going back to classical origins, but always lurking in the background is this idea that the Greeks of today are not worthy heirs to the classical heritage on which their society was literally built. The other day I was talking to someone about their first visit to Athens, and they said, “What amazed me most was the way the ruins of the Parthenon are actually right in the middle of this huge city, that they’re not on the outskirts— the city’s built around this ruin and this rock.” It’s a massive fragment, a completely broken thing that constitutes a sort of symbolic beginning, on the rock of the Acropolis, around which the city sprawls. MK: That resonates with one of the statements in the exhibition materials, in which democracy is characterized as a project that is unfinished—yet already lies in ruins. And you position the Parliament of Bodies as a queering of this fragmented or broken political tradition. At the same time, it’s a pointed challenge to Bruno Latour’s notion of a Parliament of Things. And that in turn raises the question of the relationship between your exhibition and the conceptual framework of the previous Documenta, which advanced certain ideas about materiality and objecthood—for example, the curator explicitly drew on Latour as well as on thing theory, and on ideas about leveling objects and subjects. Did that backdrop inform your thinking about this Documenta? AS: I think we are more interested in the body immersed in history and politics, the individual body and the kind of subjectivity that is bound to this particular body in specific contexts—where the body can become a sign while retaining agency; it can actually instantiate something of the experience of history and of political rupture. MK: This connects to the interest in necropolitics—how Foucault’s theorization of biopower has been inflected and changed by critiques that foreground other kinds of subjectivities, other kinds of histories, and other kinds of discipline and control, in a global context rather than a Western European one. That seems really relevant to how you’re thinking about bodies—especially since, as you’ve pointed out, we are witnessing the largest global movement of bodies, the largest mass migration that the world has seen, since World War II. AS: Yes, that is true. People bring very little with them, so they mostly bring their bodies, and these bodies add up to a problem that is dealt with through the power of nation-states, which means more borders and more repression against these “illegitimate” bodies. This nexus of the nation-state and neoliberalism is what interests us, particularly how these two things that are seemingly opposed to each other actually work in sync. On the one hand, you have the essentializing power of the nation-state, which works to instill in its citizens a belief in their sovereignty and uniqueness, and on the other hand you have the flattening alloverness of neoliberal economics and its attendant predatory politics. And yet these two forces somehow seamlessly work together, leaving little leeway for bodies to be freer or to escape the objectification that is part of the intersection of the political and the economic. The perfect distribution of this power, which is not located in any single agent or institution, makes it extremely difficult to address and formally demand changes of it. There’s a growing feeling that somehow electoral democracy is not sufficient, that elected representatives are not representing the people. This should not be taken as an argument justifying authoritarianism, but it does locate the beginning of authoritarianism, as I understand it, in the unfinished and currently failing democratic project.

MK: Right—as Giorgio Agamben says, it’s not just about the fact that there are apparatuses of power, but that there is now a proliferation, a mind-blowing proliferation of those apparatuses, and so it becomes hard to even conceive of or address, let alone act against, these distributed forms of power. But I wonder how you see the exhibition’s artists engaging these questions, whether through form or action or the body? AS: We are working with artists who are acutely aware of and concerned about our situation today, so their work is a response to these conditions, though it doesn’t always necessarily take the form of an overt political statement. A work is an extension of the conditions of life, not their illustration. MK: In the category of projects with a more clearly political stance, I understand that Marta Minujín, who is so fantastic, will be constructing a Parthenon of Books in Kassel.

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AS: There will be a reconstruction of the Parthenon made entirely from donated books, all of which have been banned somewhere at some point—which is probably true for all books! The Parthenon stands for the idea of democracy, and Minujín’s version of it, first realized in Argentina in 1983 after the junta fell, begins to speak through this multitude of books. They are going to form a sort of skin over a steel-tube construction. It’s one-to-one scale, so it will require many thousands of volumes. But there is certainly no shortage of banned books. We’ve listed more than seventy thousand on the Documenta 14 website, for prospective donors to consult. Whole categories of books—literature, scientific treatises—censored, forbidden, or destroyed. The list is a record of the systemic hate that many regimes of power, throughout history and around the world, have harbored toward books, their readers, and their authors. MK: It’s interesting, too, how the project speaks to the persistence of old-fashioned tactics of suppressing information and spreading misinformation. In the US, for example, it’s like they’re bringing back the old playbook from the 1950s and ’60s. AS: We were also surprised in , where I come from, that these tactics still work. Of course, there’s always resistance, but we are currently living through a period where the whole apparatus of state violence is more intact than ever and ready to intervene. So even if you resist, you might be contained easily. There are quite a lot of street protests and there is a prodemocratic movement and so forth. But it hasn’t brought about any change at all—the government is still pursuing its authoritarian course, looking to Hungary as its template, and now they have Trump as an additional role model. MK: And this question of how resistance is contained often does have to do with forms of bodily movement, like protests. Which of course we’ve been thinking about a lot in the US, but there’s also a sense that we need to think about other tactics of resistance that are more commensurate with how power actually works today. For example, it’s obvious that information leaks and hacking have had far more effect on recent world events than have traditional protests. AS: Yes, the resistance is contained as long as it is fully transparent. People hold placards on which they write statements, which are fantastic, but there is no coordinated strategy and no clear idea how to turn from the expression of critique to politically efficient action and how to organize practice—while the adversary has a strategy and adjusts it constantly. MK: And so we come back to the role of culture itself. This is precisely a question not only of commenting on but of counteracting. What are the capabilities of culture? I’m curious about what kinds of historical models you have looked to. AS: Anything from realism to avant-garde and neo-avant-garde modes of resistance or dissent to indigenous methodologies and queer guerrillas. There’s a great diversity of potential models. Art is an area of human activity that is naturally geared toward expressing a kind of disjunction—it’s one of the few areas left that is not fully mapped, territorialized, and colonized. It offers space for enacting the right to disagree, formulating counterproposals, and so forth. It’s quite telling, too, that social movements often use strategies of communication and critique originally devised by artists. MK: Absolutely. And I think one of the most ironic or shocking developments we’ve witnessed in the past two decades is the way that some of these strategies have been so handily appropriated by the Right. For example, the jettisoning of master narratives and the critique of empiricism have now been globalized and deployed in all these reactionary ways. The denial of climate change is an obvious case in point. But we face a real dilemma, because even though we need to resist the resurgence of “alternative facts,” we can’t go back to a naive conception of truth and objectivity. AS: Yes, that kind of newspeak is completely mainstream now. But it’s far from unprecedented. Totalizing political attitudes always produce these kinds of languages. MK: Realism is interesting in this regard, because it’s always had to grapple with questions of what constitutes the real and how or whether it can be represented, and yet it’s always seen as not being sufficiently critical enough. AS: I think of realism as dealing with facts of biological and individual existence, with people who are suffering here and now from some kind of trauma or oppression, physical, psychological, or otherwise. We intuitively sense what is real in how we are affected and hurt by and left vulnerable to what surrounds us. In the ideal case, an artist could help to expose some of these mechanisms, some of the ways in which the production of pain and fear is used to organize and manage people, whether we’re talking about managing the so-called “flows of migrants” arriving in Greece or managing the disturbing truth of mass incarceration and torture in Syria. Take, for example, Artur Żmijewski filming the now-burned “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais, or Ahlam Shibli photographing the results of Israeli land politics and Palestinian counterpolitics of memory.I guess when I speak about realism, I mean the degree to which these mechanisms can be decoded, exposed, and eventually disarmed—because I do believe, with Lee Lozano, that the revolution must be both personal and public, and won’t be achieved via rationality but rather through affective engagement.

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And this comes back to the idea of a Parliament of Bodies as opposed to a Parliament of Things. We were told for so many years that physical presence was no longer important in politics, that the body had been fully subsumed by social media. But suddenly, it has become important to put your body forward. Artists can again say something important here, because, whatever form their work may take, they constantly negotiate the duality of the concept and the physical action or act. Maybe in this way, the objecthood of art is also of some importance, because at least the made object has a kind of stubborn residual presence, one that must be interpreted so that the object can be put to some use. The degree to which it works can be measured by the kind of debate it produces, which doesn’t require a blunt political statement. The object can be enigmatic.

MK: It’s precisely not transparent. AS: Exactly, it’s not transparent—in contrast to our societies, which are organized around a demand for full transparency that equals full scrutiny. The object cannot be reduced to some simple statement, or even a complex one, for that matter. It’s impossible to translate it accurately, or rather, it’s possible to translate it in fifteen ways, which is great. We can read poetry written in languages we don’t speak. Language can be as irreducibly enigmatic as the object, which is why we’ve included so many literary texts in South as a State of Mind, and in the Reader published to coincide with the exhibition. I would like Documenta 14 to be as much about text and spoken word as images, still or moving, or objects. The conventionally subservient position of text to object is something we’d like to destabilize, or at least begin destabilizing. MK: Are there specific projects that enact that kind of destabilization? AS: Peter Friedl, for instance, is presenting a video in which fragments of ’s “Report to an Academy” are spoken to the camera by a number of professional and nonprofessional actors. These actors seem to be people with different class and national backgrounds, so the text acts as a kind of common denominator, or foil, that makes these differences more visible, and so watching the film becomes an exercise in catching yourself categorizing these people according to the way they look, their accents, their mannerisms. You perceive yourself becoming almost a kind of machine that sorts them. You become aware that you have an automatic way of judging conditioned by your education, class, ethnicity, and so on—one that’s difficult to shed. You, the viewer, are the subject of the film no less than the actors and the role they were given to interpret. We’ll also be showing Susan Hiller’s Last Silent Movie [2007–2008] and its companion piece, Lost and Found [2016]. Both are about languages that are extinct or nearly extinct and efforts to recover or preserve them. For many native speakers, or descendants of native speakers, it’s extremely important to reclaim these languages, as a source of empowerment and also of distinction.They’re almost like secret languages, against the normalizing power of official ones. MK: So there’s a politics of legibility or decipherability in play here, too—a question of who has access to language, or to culture in general. AS: This is something we were very concerned with, and we’ve tried to make the work in the exhibition accessible—not through explaining it, but by putting the artists in contact or into encounters with different groups, different audiences on different occasions, and having workshops or conversations or open rehearsals. For instance, last year we initiated Continuum—open-ended semipublic sessions with artists and curators at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Continuum in this sense refers to a term used by Greek composer Jani Christou [1926–1970], who moved gradually from experimental musical forms to open scores, enabling all kinds of activities—sound and performance being only two possibilities—to take place over a duration whose length was determined by participants. The show has many other such capillaries. One of them is “aneducation,” conceived by Sepake Angiama, Clare Butcher, and Arnisa Zeqo—bringing people into unusual formats for conversation, well before the show has begun. It’s inspired by the counter- and alter- pedagogical experiments of Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt, Oskar and Zofia Hansen, Fernand Deligny, and the like, and draws on the experience of art schools such as Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore in , and collective social experiments such as Ciudad Abierta in Chile. MK: You’re spanning disparate pedagogies but also histories. AS: Along with our initial desire to unsettle the exhibition geographically and to move it far south of Kassel, we also wanted to transform its temporality.We felt it was important that Documenta 14 not be limited to these hundred days when the spectacle of the exhibition is supposedly taking place. We wanted to deflate this expectation that it would open and then end and disappear—to have a before and to have an after, too. An ongoing celebration. Documenta 14 will take place Apr. 8–July 16 in Athens and June 10–Sept. 17 in Kassel.

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Daniel Knorr's Expiration Movement (2017) is the first work to be unveiled for Documenta 14 in Kassel (Image: Bernd Borchardt)

After months of secrecy, Documenta 14 has given the public another glimpse of its exhibition programme with the unveiling of the first work in Kassel, Germany. The installation by the Romanian-born, Berlin-based artist Daniel Knorr marks the beginning of the prestigious quinquennial contemporary art exhibition, which this year is split between the cities of Athens and Kassel. It kicks off in Athens on 8 April (until 16 July) and in Kassel, where it was launched in 1955, on 10 June (until 17 September). In line with previous editions of Documenta, the full artist list is kept under wraps.

Expiration Movement (2017) will turn the tower of the Fridericianum—the show’s main exhibition venue in Kassel—into a chimney, from which smoke machines will blow white smoke during the opening hours of the show in both Athens and Kassel. “The idea is that it’s the opposite of inspiration,” Knorr says, “It’s a moment of letting go.” The smoking chimney is also meant to refer to the signal that a new pope has been elected as well as the “conclave of Rothwesten”, a secret meeting held near Kassel after the Second World War that resulted in the creation of the Deutsche Mark. The artist intends the work to remind viewers of the Nazi’s burning of books and the crematoriums at concentration camps. “But [smoke] is also a sign of freedom,” he says of his multi-layered concept.

Knorr's work in Greece, meanwhile, entails collecting discarded objects from the streets of Athens, then inserting and pressing them into books. They will be sold during the show and will finance the production of the smoke in the Fridericianum in Kassel. The publications continue the theme of archaeology that he has explored in his previous work. For the books, which he has already produced in ten other countries, Knorr scoured the streets of Athens looking for everyday objects. His discoveries included a 22-millimetre gun, a gun holster, childrens’ drawings from the 1930s, but also more common objects such as empty coke cans and business papers. Some of these will go on show at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the Odeion Music School this week, while others will be pressed into the 16cm x 23cm books.

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7. BERLIN

When people think of Berlin, the first thing that usually comes to mind is its most famous landmark – the Brandenburg Gate. For decades a symbol of division, the monument has always been the beating heart of a major city bursting with ideas, inspiration, art, culture and creativity.

Highlights in the western parts of Berlin include the Kurfürstendamm, as elegant a shopping street as you'll find anywhere, the Kaufhaus des Westens department store (better known as KaDeWe), on-trend boutiques and exclusive galleries, as well as beautiful residential streets and, of course, Berlin's famous nightlife. And speaking of nightlife, no trip to Berlin would be complete without an evening at Friedrichstadt Palast, Germany's leading variety theatre.

The cosmopolitan vibe also permeates the government district, which spreads out to the east from Brandenburg Gate and from the neighboring Reichstag. There's a sense of peace and freedom in the air here – in stark contrast to the days when Berlin was responsible for unthinkable crimes. The memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, a work by New York architect Peter Eisenman located near the Brandenburg Gate, serves as a reminder of those atrocities, as does the Topography of Terror documentation centre at the former Gestapo headquarters.

Berlin's prestigious Unter den Linden boulevard extends eastwards from Brandenburg Gate towards Alexanderplatz square, passing the Museum Island World Heritage site, as well as Berlin Cathedral, the Neue Wache and the baroque Zeughaus (armoury), which today houses the German Historical Museum. Keep going far enough and you'll reach the TV tower, which to this day remains the tallest structure in Germany. The view from the top, stretching across Berlin and all the way to Brandenburg, is a major sightseeing highlight.

Nearby is Gendarmenmarkt, widely lauded as Berlin's most beautiful square. The German Cathedral, the French Cathedral and the Concert Hall form an ensemble of great majesty and grandeur here. The atmosphere of the Hackesche Höfe, also within the central Mitte district, is somewhat less grand, but all the more laid-back, easygoing and relaxed for it. This retail complex is the largest series of enclosed courtyards in Germany and has been heritage-listed since 1977.

For an authentic taste of Old Berlin, explore the courtyards' vibrant mix of art galleries, cinemas, theatres, variety venues, restaurants and bars, not to mention all the welcoming little shops and big-name flagship stores. There's also no escaping the city's artistic flair here. A characteristic that, nearly a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, remains a defining feature, perhaps more so than in any other capital.

Berlin is the creative workshop of Germany, a trendsetter and a capital of fashion, design and music. The progressive spirit of optimism that engulfed the reunified city was – and still is – astounding. Hundreds of backyard art studios emerged from the shadows and art soon began to take over streets, the walls of buildings and even entire districts. Famously, artists have also appropriated the remains of the Berlin Wall: the section from Oberbaum bridge to Ostbahnhof station, now going by the name of East Side Gallery, has become an illustrated encyclopaedia of street art.

Today, Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, Neukölln and Wedding are the districts of choice for more than 20,000 artists. It is this creative force that lies behind the city's distinctive vibe – a vibe that renders Berlin the capital for alternative and established art alike. Immerse yourself in this creative cosmos. Let yourself be inspired, seduced and enchanted.

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8. ART IN BERLIN

Berlin was given its first distinguishable face by Prussian architects – kings and princes with a predilection for the arts cultivated domestic culture, helping to make Berlin the capital of European arts during the Weimar Republic. War and destruction shaped the city then, while the pulse of new life continues to fashion the Berlin of today. As one of Europe’s most important cultural capitals, Berlin is not only at the forefront of the contemporary art scene, but also houses over 170 museums, several of which are home to some of the world's most treasured relics and artifacts, displaying a true encyclopedic compendium of history and world art from all epochs. One of the greatest cultural treasures that claims Berlin as its home is the awe- inspiring Pergamon Altar, in addition to Berlin's most beautiful woman, Nefertiti. Furthermore, Masters from Giotto to Caravaggio, Breughel to Caspar David Friedrich, Joseph Beuys to the "young wild ones" like Baselitz and Haring can all be viewed in Berlin’s art institutions.

Berlin lives, breathes, and eats art: with its finger firmly on the pulse, Berlin is the epicenter of a vital, flourishing art scene. A Mecca for contemporary art, Berlin attracts creative spirits, pioneers, and entrepreneurs from all four corners of the globe. The reconstruction and transformation of a large industrial building into a temple of contemporary art, the Hamburger Bahnhof stands as a significant, milestone event, symbolic of Berlin’s rising status as an art metropolis. Beyond this sensational event, the 90’s also saw the opening of the Berggruen Collection (at Stülerbau in Charlottenburg Palace, containing the "Picasso and his Era" exhibit), which, in conjunction with the Hamburger Bahnhof, propelled Berlin’s art scene, catalyzing its momentum and legitimizing Berlin’s ranking in the art world. The opening of the Cultural Forum in the Tiergarten, the film museum at Potsdamer Platz (containing items from Marlene Dietrich's estate), and the one of the world’s largest and most important museums of Old Masters in 1998 were the final signifiers, putting Berlin on the map as an international – and enviable – art metropolis.

Nowadays, Berlin’s art scene is self-revitalizing and ever-evolving, witnessed in an internationally-renowned and constantly-mutating gallery scene that is truly booming in the districts of Berlin Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. Berlin's annual art trade fair, Art Forum Berlin, has veritably rendered the city into a melting pot of international art and a seismograph for contemporary art trends.

Berlin is, once again, the city where trends are put in motion; it is also, however, a city of history, shaped by creativity, turmoil, and tradition. History has etched itself upon the face of Berlin; the city's creative muses have smoothed the edges.

Visual Arts and Modern Art Germany has a great artistic tradition, dating back to medieval times when it was home to famous painters such as Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer. In the 19th century, was one of the main influences upon European Romanticism, with Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Spitzweg, and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein posing as the leading figures. However, it was in the 20th century, especially in its first 30 years, that German visual arts made the strongest impression and lasting impact; expressionist works by Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, and , as well as urban images by Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and , garnered esteem for German expressionism throughout the world – respect that is still acknowledged to this day.

Since 1945, generations of young artists have claimed their significance within the German cultural landscape. Combining radical forms of painting and sculpture with new philosophies and political ideals, German artists have been absorbing new developments in society and challenging the public through their artistic expressions.

Immediately following World War II – and after the period of isolation imposed by the National Socialist regime – the youngest generation of German artists eagerly consumed, processed, and reacted to what they had been denied by Hitler’s dictatorship. Expressionists like Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, and Emil Nolde were the outstanding models of the transforming art scene. By then, a number of different groups were already playing a crucial role in the evolution of German art, including the Junger Westen (founded in Recklinghausen in 1948), Zen 49 (founded in Munich in 1949), and Quadriga (founded in Frankfurt in 1953). In the early 1950’s, nearly all the artists involved in these informal groups sought liberation from the dogmas of representational panel painting, resulting in a shift towards “Art Informel,” or abstraction. This shift unleashed an explosion of creative energies, prompting the conception of other

61 styles that greatly enriched the postwar art spectrum in Germany, including movements such as the Wolf Vostell-initated “happening” and various audience-engaging “Fluxus” activities.

It was at this point that Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) created works that dwarfed all others. His early drawings, objects, sculptures, and “actions” are testament to his realization of his own, unique, unorthodox concept of art – a concept that revealed new artistic dimensions. With his “extended concept of art” and his “actions” employing fat and felt, Beuys created an instrument that enabled him to propagate “social sculpture” as the consummation of his artistic philosophy.

Whereas artists in western Germany picked up the thread of existing traditions and drew on all new artistic currents in Western Europe and the United States, their counterparts in the East soon found their hands tied by the “socialist realism” prescribed by the Soviet-influenced regime, who were permitted to do nothing more than convey a favorable picture of the socialist society. New trends in this type of painting came largely from the Academy of Art. Among its best-known practitioners was Werner Tübke (b. 1929) and Berhard Heisig (b. 1925), whose monumental paintings, though still tied to historical or social themes, shed the sterility of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Both Tübke and Heisig (as well as Walter Libuda and Volker Stelzmann from a later generation) used this same approach to painting as a way of coming to terms with the past. In , it was Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz, and Anselm Kiefer who sought to come to reckon – and reconcile – with the dark side of German history.

Pop Art, Fluxus, Aktion, and Konzeptkunst (concept art) led to a new “tolerance” for art among western artists. This trend not only fostered new movements in painting, but also gave rise to strong individualist painters.

While Georg Baselitz (b. 1938), who won many awards and established an international reputation, expresses the misery of the human condition in his upside-down pictures, Jörg Immendorf (b. 1945) is a kind of modern history painter, illustrated in his picture Café Deutschland, where a storm of history blows the Berlin Wall away. In March 1997, Immendorf was awarded the Mexican Marco Prize, the world’s largest art prize (US$250,000), for his work Accumulation 2.

Markus Lüpertz's style is different: the current director of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art (b. 1941), projects a “drunken, rapturous” feeling of life with his dithyrambic paintings. Lüpertz is one of the fathers of the new (“wild”) representational painting style in Germany.

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) on the other hand, expresses himself by shaping massive works of art from materials such as dust, flower petals, ashes, and roots in his factory hall studios. He calls his pictures, many of which are inspired by mythology, “picture bodies” because with his typically untreated materials, he lends sculptured volume to the two-dimensionality of traditional painting. , who created a new viewpoint in 1968 when he questioned the basic structures of painting and abstract art, also commented on these questions, through irony, within his pictures.

The most popular contemporary German painter in the U.S. is probably Gerhard Richter, to whom the in New York dedicated a major retrospective in 2002. He uses the most diverse painting techniques to inquire what painting can and should do. The painter, born in Dresden in 1932, changed his style every other year to demonstrate that the beauty of art lies in its diversity.

A new group of artists emerged in the 1908’s, entitled the Junge Wilde (“New Wilds”). Adopting a postmodernist approach to art, they are mainly defined by a preference for multimedia projects and a representation of art's contexts. This virtual art is countered by another movement of New Realism that includes painters like Katharina Grosse, , and Neo Rauch.

Before World War II, Berlin was the leading German center of the arts. Berlin now shares this role with Leipzig, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Frankfurt am Main, even though Berlin’s importance is, once again, the most assertive of the bunch. The town of Kassel has a special place on this list of art- relevant cities since it has hosted, every five years since 1955, the internationally-acclaimed 100-day documenta exhibition of contemporary art that routinely draws more than 600,000 visitors.

Today, very few painters and sculptors can live solely on the proceeds from the sale of their works; many receive government aid, grants, and assistance from private companies that have a keen appreciation for

62 the arts. The Kunstfonds, founded in 1980, helps recognized artists finance ambitious projects and offers them oases of artistic activity. Businesses are also aiding in encouraging artistic activity: for more than 40 years, the cultural section of the Federation of German Industries has been awarding prizes to painters and sculptors.

Design Clean lines, exceptional quality and a modern functionalist style have made German design famous the world over. History and industry are as important in its development as are form and function.

Bauhaus The central German town of Weimar is widely heralded as the birthplace of German design. In 1919, the , probably the most influential school of design and architecture of the 20th century, was founded there, before it was forced to move to Dessau for political reasons in 1925. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Marianne Brandt were some of the leading names in Bauhaus design, which called for a basic principle to underlie all modernist design: Form follows function.

In the 1920s, German electronics company AEG commissioned designer Peter Behrens to create a corporate design, the first use of a unified “corporate identity.”

After World War II, the Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm School of Design), opened in 1953, following in the footsteps of the Bauhaus and further developing the concept of industrial aesthetics. Founded by the designer Otl Aicher, his wife Inge Aicher-Scholl and the Swiss artist Max Bill, it soon gained internationally attention for its new standards of modernist design. During its 19 years in existence, it strongly influenced many prominent designers. Among other achievements, Aicher developed the “corporate identity” of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, while others from the school designed the sleek Intercity Express trains that now criss-cross Germany.

Industrial Design For many years, the Braun brand was closely linked with the concept of German design and its combination of functionality and technology. The most influential designer at this electronics company was Dieter Rams, a key figure in the German design renaissance of the 1960s and a former teacher at Ulm. Other firms continue to set styles with their products: Jena Glas is well known for glassware and china, Leica for excellent cameras and Loewe for electronic equipment. Wilkhahn and Vitra are famous for furniture, Lamy for writing instruments and Erco for lighting.

In the 1970s, a more pop art-influenced approach hit German design. Contemporary design reflects these trends in its lightness of touch, yet it resounds with the functionalist tradition. Products of Ingo Maurer and Tobias Grau (lighting), German-based Porsche car designer Luigi Colani, Herbert Jakob Weinand and companies like Nils Holger Moormann (both furniture) all follow in this tradition. With the information age and the new opportunities created by virtual media, the importance of design is assuming an ever greater role. Thus, it comes as little surprise that according to the latest survey by Design Report magazine, 82% of design- related managers credit designers with a "considerable part of the company's success." However, these managers expect not only creativity, but pragmatism and a solid grasp of marketing, as well.

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Institutions A range of German design institutions promote the interests of both designers and the industry. The Rat für Formgebung (German Design Council) advises designers and the industry, and supplies information in matters of design. On behalf of the Minister of Trade and Industry, it awards federal prizes for product design and design promotion. The interests of designer’s vis-à-vis the political sector and the public are represented by the Deutscher Designertag (German Designer Association), which, among other things, constitutes the design section of the German Arts Council, the umbrella organization of the federal arts associations.

Several German museums feature exhibitions of historical and contemporary design, such as the Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, the Neues Museum für Kunst und Design in and the Museum for Art and Trades in Hamburg.

Architecture Berlin is a city of social and architectural experimentation. Starting with 's famous master builders, such as Schinkel, Langhans and Knobelsdorff, to the architects who worked here after the Wall came down. Their names, from Alvar Aalto to Peter Zumthor, read like a "who's who" of contemporary architecture.

Berlin's history is reflected in architecture: The Gründerzeit buildings of the late 19th century when Berlin's population exploded in just a few years, the functionality of New Objectivity in the 1920s, the totalitarian architectural style of the Nazis and the architecture of the post-war era that documents the division and competition between the political systems of east and west in the divided city. After the Wall came down, Berlin had a historically unique opportunity and challenge to revive the lost and forgotten centre and to merge the two sides of a city that had been divided for decades. 15 years after reunification, Berlin is still not "finished". However, the "New Berlin" is already clearly visible in the newly designed Pariser Platz, Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz, and in the revived Friedrichstraße. The role as capital city has strongly shaped the city's recent development: The new government and embassy district with the federal government buildings, new and refurbished embassy buildings, the representation buildings of the federal states, institutions and organizations. New projects are being planned or have already been implemented: the new design for Alexanderplatz, the central train station, the new "Zoo Window", the banks of the river Spree or the restoration of Museum Island.

The first stately urban fixtures: Prussian magnificence in the Mitte district The Hohenzollern dynasty added a very special splendor to Berlin - Prussia's glory was to be reflected in urban development. Places like Gendarmenmarkt, the most beautiful square in the city, create an almost Italian flair on the banks of the river Spree. The unmatched ensemble of buildings on Museum Island is listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The names of famous master builders - first and foremost, Schinkel, Langhans, von Knobelsdorff, Stüler and Nering - have strong ties with Berlin. Their architectural masterpieces between Frederickian Baroque and Classicism mark the city's landscape and impress us with their all-encompassing beauty.

From the suburbs to the Gründerzeit and reform architecture As a consequence of industrialization and population growth since the mid-19th century, new city quarters were erected in and around the city's historical center. These quarters replaced suburbs such as the Spandauer or Rosenthaler suburbs and today still continue to embrace the inner city. Planning was rooted in the "Hobrecht Plan" (1862). Urban apartment blocks, typical for Berlin, were built within the urban rail circle; these apartment blocks featured noble front buildings and densely built yard buildings. Examples of more middleclass Gründerzeit quarters can be found around Kurfürstendamm in Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf. Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Neukölln in the south-east and Prenzlauer Berg, Moabit and Wedding in the north are where the more proletarian tenements are to be found.

Post-war era: "West-Berlin" After the war came to an end, the main task of urban development was to rebuild a city that stood in ruins on both sides. Efforts in the west focused on the areas around Zoologischer Garten and the Kulturforum. The competition in 1947/48 titled "Around the Zoo" was the starting point for the reshaping of warravaged

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Breitscheidplatz. The so-called Ermisch Plan laid down traffic and building lines. In 1950, the "Zoo district development plan" was adopted and began 1956/57 with the "Zentrum am Zoo". The Kulturforum was built in the 1950s based on concepts by Hans Scharoun right next to the border to east Berlin in the former Tiergarten district. After 1870, this quarter had become a popular residential area for citizens and artists. During the war, the Tiergarten district was largely destroyed. Only the church of St. Matthäus on today's Kulturforum pays tribute to the historical architecture.

The post-war era: "Berlin-capital of the GDR" The eastern part of the city also saw extensive destruction caused during the war. Initial planning in 1945 was not yet marked by the east-west conflict. The reconstruction program by a commission chaired by Scharoun foresaw repair, new construction and drastic demolition programs. East Berlin became the capital city of the Soviet sector, and the Soviet Embassy was the one of the largest representative buildings to be erected, a model for the strong Neo-Classicist reference of new representative buildings. The re- creation of Stalinallee was an attempt to implement this ideal on a large scale. The capital city of the GDR was under considerable pressure to perform and later ordered a realistic architecture of socialism which to a certain extent still expressed the tradition of Bauhaus and the Weimar Republic. Between 1955 and 1970, a time of industrialization of the construction sector, the trend towards industrialized building with pre- fabricated parts came out on top.

Government and embassy district: A new political Berlin Its new dome has become the symbol of the Berlin Republic: The Reichstag building, erected from 1884 to 1894 and designed by Paul Wallot and later converted by Lord Norman Foster, is not only the seat of Germany's Bundestag. This building with its cleverly designed dome structure has also become a symbol for the upright understanding between state and society and at the same time a magnet that attracts visitors in their thousands to the new capital city. On 20 June 1991, the German Bundestag decided to make Berlin the capital city of a united Germany and the seat of government and parliament. This was followed by a Bundestag resolution on 29 October 1991 to once again use the Reichstag building as the seat of parliament. The "Spreebogen" to the north of the Reichstag building was chosen as the central location for the new federal government buildings. The winner of a once-off urban development competition was the "Band des Bundes" (Federal government river walk) put forward by architects Schultes and Frank which crosses the river Spree at two points and not only connects the Federal Chancellor's Office to the offices of the parliamentary representatives in Paul-Löbe building, but also forms a visual bridge between the two parts of the city in east and west Berlin that had been separated for 40 years.

The urban development transformation of Berlin to Germany's capital city took place in three very different city districts - in Moabit, Tiergarten and Mitte. New homes had to be found for the federal government and parliament, for ministries, federal-state representative offices and embassies. Apart from using and converting existing buildings, an enormous number of new buildings and representative buildings have been added to Berlin's urban fixtures in recent years, a very compendium of contemporary architecture with its many different personal styles. The new embassy buildings and federal-state representations display a particularly diverse range of styles where regional elements of style and building materials have a strong role to play in the architecture.

Berlin' s new Mitte district: The Potsdamer Platz After reunification, Germany had the unique opportunity to rebuild a complete city district in the heart of the city. In 1991, architects Hilmer and Sattler won the "Potsdamer Platz / Leipziger Platz urban design competition". Their concept was based on the model of the "European city" which consciously opted for dense high-rise structures. In 1993, work began on the buildings for the DaimlerChrysler quarter based on the master plan by Piano and Kohlbecker. This was performed by top international architects, such as Piano, Rogers and Isozaki. On the biggest construction site in Europe, a new urban centre was built from scratch in five years. Helmut Jahn's Sony Center with its futuristic flair, which was completed in 2000, strongly contrasts with the DaimlerChrysler quarter. Early in 2004, the noble Beisheim Center was opened at Lenné- Dreieck.

Jewels of urban modernity Even though the destruction of war and the many years as a divided city meant that Berlin had the unique opportunity after the wall came down to completely re-design entire quarters and building ensembles in central city districts, architecturally exciting projects have also been implemented at different locations as solitary urban jewels.

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Unité d´habitation - building Berlin, Flatowallee 16, Berlin-Charlottenburg Built: 1957 - 58, architect: Le Corbusier

Bauhaus-Archiv, Klingelhöferstraße 14, Berlin-Schöneberg Built: 1976 - 78, architects: Walter Gropius/TAC, Alex Civijanovic Original design by Gropius with a shed roof for the Bauhaus Archive in Darmstadt, built in modified form after the move to Berlin.

Ludwig-Erhard building, Fasanenstraße 83-84, Berlin-Charlottenburg Built: 1994 - 97, architects: Nicolas Grimshaw & Partners"Large zoomorphic figure" of the new Berlin stock exchange building, also known as the "Armadillo".

GSW headquarters, Kochstraße 22, Berlin-Kreuzberg Built: 1995 - 98 Architects: Louisa Hutton / Matthias Sauerbruch

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9. Artists

Tomas Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno - Bio and Curriculum Vitae

Born in 1973 in Tucuman, Argentina, Saraceno currently lives and works in Berlin. He studied architecture at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires in Argentina from 1992 to 1999 and received postgraduate degrees from Escuela Superior de bellas Ares de la Nación Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires (2000) and Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule-Frankfurt am Main (2003). In 2009, he attended the International Space Studies Program at NASA Center Ames in California, and was awarded the prestigious Calder Prize.

Tomás Saraceno’s oeuvre could be seen as an ongoing research, informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, astrophysics and engineering; his floating sculptures, community projects and interactive installations propose and explore new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. Aerocene, an open-source community project for artistic and scientific exploration initiated from Saraceno’s vision, becomes buoyant only by the heat of the Sun and infrared radiation from the surface of Earth.

In 2015, Saraceno achieved the world record for the first and longest certified fully-solar manned flight. During the past decade, he has initiated collaborations with renowned scientific institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute, the Nanyang Technological University of , and the Natural History Museum London. He was the first person to scan, reconstruct and reimagine spiders’ weaved spatial habitats, and possesses the only three-dimensional spider web collection to existence.

Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences and engineering, Tomas Saraceno’s floating sculptures and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment. Throughout the past decade, he has explored the possibility of a future airborne existence as part of his ongoing Air-Port-City / Cloud City project – a utopia of flying metropolises made up of habitable, cell-like platforms that migrate and recombine as freely as clouds themselves. Building on the progressive proposals and theories put forth by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Yona Friedman and other visionary architects before him, Saraceno develops engaging proposals and models that invite viewers to conceptualize innovative ways of living and interacting with one another, and with their surroundings at large.

Among his many exhibitions since the late 1990s, Saraceno’s important solo presentations include Cosmic Jive, Tomas Saraceno: The Spider Sessions, curated by Luca Cerizza at the Villa Croce in Genoa, Italy (2014), Tomás Saraceno at HfG Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany (2014), In orbit at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21 in Düsseldorf (2013), On Space time foam at Hangar Bicocca in Milan (2012- 13), Tomas Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, a site-specific installation commissioned for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2012), Cloud Specific at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Louis (2011-12), Cloud Cities at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2011-12), 14 billion, which opened at Bonniers Konsthall in in 2010 and traveled to the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK through 2011, and Lighter than Air, a travelling exhibition at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (2009-10).

Saraceno also presented a major installation at the 53rd Venice Bienale in 2009 as part of the group exhibition, Fari Mondi//Making Worlds, curated by Daniel Birnbaum.

His work is presently represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Miami Art Museum, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

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Exhibitions

2010 Pinksummer Gallery, Genova, Italy (solo) 2010 Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, curated by Angela Vettese, Milano, Italy (solo) 2010 Lighter than Air, Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX, USA (solo) 2010 Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark (solo) 2010 Spiders Weaving Stars… , Fondazione Remotti, Camogli, Italy (solo) 2010 14 Billions, Bonniers Konstholl, Stockholm (solo) 2010 Centro Cultural España- Córdoba (CCEC), Córdoba, Argentina 2010 Klimakapseln, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany 2010 Art for the World, Art Project within Expo curated by Ami Barak 2009 Cloudy House, Andersen's Contemporary Berlin (solo) 2009 Mudam Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg (solo) 2009 Lighter than air, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (solo) 2009 Life Forms, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm 2009 In Defense of Nature, Barbican, London 2009 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 2009 Wanas Exhibition 2009, Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden 2009 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale 2009 (Italian Pavillon) 2009 Dome Culture in the 21st Century, Art in General, New York 2008 ROOMING IN! Claus Andersen visits Patricia Low, Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad, Switzerland 2008 Kunst Naturligvis, Esbjerg Kunstmuseum, Esbjerg, Denmark 2008 Psycho Buildings: Artists and Architecture, Hayward Gallery, London 2008 Greenwashing, Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy 2008 Cloudy Dunes, Fondazione Garrone, Genova, Italy (solo) 2008 Artists-in-Residence: Tomás Saraceno, Walker Art Center, Minnesota, Minneapolis (solo) 2008 Galaxy Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spiders web, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (solo) 2008 Sonsbeek 2008: Grandeur, Arnhem, The Netherlands 2008

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Peripheral Vision and Collective Body, Museion Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy 2008 Experimental Marathon Reykjavic, Reykjavic Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir, Reykjavic, Iceland 2008 MULTIVERSE > Directions for the world, A.L.I., Rome, Italy 2008 we have a dream, azio Gerra, Reggio Emilia 2008 The Liverpool Biennial 2008, Liverpool 2007 Über dem Wolkenmeer, Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland (solo) 2007 Biosphere MW32 Ar-Port-City, Palazzo Ducale, Pinksummer Gallery, Genova Italy (solo) 2007 Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (solo) 2007 Microscale, Macroscale and Beyond: Large-Scale Implications of Small-Scale Experiments ⋅ Art Museum, USA (solo) 2007 Cloud, Gunpowder Park, UK (solo) 2007 Air-Port-City, De Vleeshal, Middleburg The Netherlands (solo) 2007 Opening, AEREA Christian Larsen, Stockholm, Sweden (solo) 2007 The Office, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York 2007 Brave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA 2007 The History of a Decade that Has Not Yet Been Named, Lyon Biennial, Lyon, France 2007 International Encounter Medellín 07 / Contemporary Art Practices, Spaces of Hospitality, Medellin, Colombia, 2007 Still Life: Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change, Sharjah Biennial 8 (SB8), United Arab Emirates 2007 In Cima alle Stelle, L'Universo tra Arte, Archeologia e Scienza - Aosta, Forte di Bard Italy 2007 The Re-distribution of the Sensible, Galerie Magnus Müller, Berlin, Germany 2007 Situazione Isola: a new urbanism, Isola Art Center, Milano, Italy 2007 THE FIT, Galerie Nüans, Dusseldorf 2007 The Domain of the Great Bear 3/3 Kosmische Sehnsucht, Kunstraum München, Munich 2007 Hector German Oesterheld, La Aventura Continua, Museo de Arte y Memoria, Argentina 2007 Poetic Cosmos of the Breath, Air Show Gunpowder Park, London, UK 2007 On Water, Art Basel, Switzerland 2007 Weather Report. Climate Change and Visual Arts, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain 2006 On-Water, Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain (solo) 2006 Air-Port-City, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (solo) 2006

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Personal States/Infinite Actives, Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, Germany (solo) 2006 Cumulus, The Curve, Barbican Art Centre, London, UK (solo) 2006 Cloudy Dunes_Air-Port-City, Attitudes - espace d’arts contemporains, , Switzerland (solo) 2006 How to Live Together, Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil 2006 Buenos días Santiago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile 2006 Busan Biennale, Busan, 2006 On Mobility, Berlin Büro Friedrich, Berlin 2006 Sudeley Castle Reconstruction 1, Winchcombe, UK 2006 Presented by, Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna, 2006 Luna Park. Fantastic Art, Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art, Italy 2006 I still believe in miracles*, ARC (Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris), Paris, France 2005 La Strada, Fuori uso 2005, Pescara, Italy 2005 The Opening, Andersen's Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark 2005 Dialectic of Hope, First Moscow Biennale of contemporary art, Moscow, Russia 2005 Project Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands 2005 Pursuit of Happiness, Leidsche Rijn, Netherlands 2005 Sehnsüchtig gleiten Ballone rund um die Welt, Green Light Pavilion, Berlin (solo) 2004 On-Air, Pinksummer Gallery, Genoa, Italy (solo) 2004 What is in my apartment when I'm not there, Berlin, Germany 2004 Open Duende, Duende, Rotterdam, Netherlands 2004 Universal Outstretch, Flaca Gallery, London, UK 2004 Common Prosperity, 6th, Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, Germany 2004 ZIM- Zwaanshals in Motion, Rotterdam, Netherlands 2004 Do-It ⋅ www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it 2003 Here we come, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany 2003 Utopia Station Dreams and Conflicts. The Dictatorship of the Viewer, Biennale Venice, Italy 2003 Un-build Cities, Kunstverein Bonn, Germany 2003 Art-gentia, The Buena Vista Building, Miami, USA 2003 In-migration, Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany (solo) 2002 X-position, Archtekturzentrum Wien, Vienna, Austria

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2002 Peace and Love, Palazzo Buonauguro, Bassano, Italy 2002 X-position, Berlague Institute Rotterdam, Netherlands 2002 Next, Biennale Venezia, Italy 2002 Mobile HIV/AID health Clinic for Africa, RIBA London 2001 Real Presence, Tito Museum, Belgrado, Serbia and Montenegro 2001 El Suelo en Renuncio, Ministerio de fomento Arqueria de los Nuevos Ministerios, , Spain 2001 Neue Welt, Kunstverein Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1999 City Editing, Fundaciun Proa Buenos Aires, Argentina 1999 Siglo XX Arte y Cultura en la Argentina, Centro Cultural Recoleta - Benos Aires, Argentina 1998–1999 Objetos de Jovenes Artistas, Centro cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tomás Saraceno collaborates with 7,000 spiders to make largest- ever exhibited web

Argentinian artist’s solo show in Buenos Aires also includes a sound piece played by an arachnid by José da Silva | 24 April 2017 | The Art Newspaper

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Tomás Saraceno's Quasi-social musical instrument IC 342 built by: 7000 Parawixia bistriata - six months (2017) during its installation at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Photo: © Studio Tomás Saraceno)

Arachnophobes look away now. The Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno’s first show in a public institution in his home country, which opened this month, includes an installation of the largest spider web to have ever been exhibited. Made by around 7,000 spiders, the work titled Quasi-Social Musical Instrument IC 342 built by 7000 Parawixia bistriata—six months (2017), covers an area of more than 190 sq. m.

The piece is one of two large installations that form the exhibition How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider Web (until 27 August), which opened this month at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. The particular species of spider used for the work—parawixia bistriata—is “quasi-social”, Saraceno says; they “live together in a single web for only a period”. This type of behaviour is seen in less than 1% of arachnids.

The spiders worked together for around two-and-half months spinning their webs in the museum’s gallery to make the immersive installation. Once they had created it, they were gathered together again and taken back to where they were originally collected in the north of Argentina by the artist and colleagues in collaboration with staff from the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum.

As well as the giant web installation, the show also includes a second immersive work where visitors can hear the sound that another species of spider—Nephila clavipes—makes when plucking its web. The work, titled The Cosmic Dust Spider Web Orchestra (2017), uses tiny microphones to amplify the spider’s movements. The work also includes live, three-dimensional video recordings that track 25 particles of dust in the air, lit by a beam of light, and translate their movement into sounds. These vary depending on where the particles are in relation to each other and how quickly they are moving. Among the particles in the air is cosmic dust, introduced by the artist into the museum space. The dust particles are above the speaker that is activated by the spider’s movements and, inevitably, by the movement of visitors in the gallery. “It is like a concert created by the spider, the dust and visitors,” the artist says.

Saraceno has one of the largest collections of spider webs in the world, and has worked extensively with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

At M.I.T., Science Embraces a New Chaos Theory: Art

By HILARIE M. SHEETSMARCH 4, 2016

Tomás Saraceno’s “Aerocene 10.4 & 15.3” installed at the Grand Palais, in Paris, during the climate change conference in December. Credit via Tanya Bonakdar Gallery; Andersen’s Contemporary; Pinksummer contemporary art; Esther Schipper

Mr. Saraceno, who is known for making huge inflatable sculptures and complex gallery-size webs that can evoke floating cities, neural pathways and the infinitely expanding cosmos, was CAST’s inaugural visiting artist in 2012. He has continued to work actively with M.I.T. faculty exploring his utopian vision of flying around the world on one of his buoyant sculptures kept afloat only by the differential temperature between the air inside and outside a solar balloon. “The Earth becomes the big battery of the sculpture,” said Mr. Saraceno, who exhibited two prototypes of his giant silver Mylar balloons in “Solutions COP 21” at the Grand Palais in Paris during the climate change conference in December. He has

72 successfully launched and kept them airborne for several hours with the help of scores of volunteers in recent test flights in Berlin, New Mexico and Bolivia that are part amateur science experiment, part performance art.

When the M.I.T. meteorologist Lodovica Illari first met Mr. Saraceno, she found his dream of alternative flight a bit far-fetched. “He began the conversation by asking, ‘If we were going to fly off on a balloon and ride a jet stream, where would we go?’” Ms. Illari said. “As a scientist, you want to be precise, correct. But he pushed me a little bit out of my comfort zone, saying, ‘Imagine something and see if it can be done.’”

She has embraced the proposition and has been working with him to analyze past flight trajectories of solar balloons and to simulate possible flights based on launching conditions and patterns of turbulence in the stratosphere. She plans to exhibit these during M.I.T.’s open house on April 23, celebrating the centennial of the university’s Cambridge campus. Her goal is to equip one of his solar balloons with an instrument that could sample the ozone throughout the day and night.

Mr. Saraceno, whose observation of spiders has inspired installations of webs made of elastic cord or monofilament, also collaborates with the M.I.T. civil engineer Markus Buehler, who studies the structure of the protein in spider silk as an ideal building material that could be replicated synthetically. Mr. Buehler had modeled two-dimensional webs only on the computer and was astounded by the artist’s photographs of a black widow spider’s web he had manually scanned millimeter by millimeter. They have since developed a scanning mechanism that tracks webs in three dimensions as they are being built.

“We’re working right now with Tomás on understanding how spiders build extremely complex shapes in open space without any scaffolding or help,” said Mr. Buehler, who has spiders building small cities in his M.I.T. basement. He imagines this research could be applied in the future to new architectural and engineering approaches.

Even when Mr. Saraceno careens off into flights of fancy, the scientists are tolerant.

“Tomás and I have pushed the boundaries in what we thought we could do,” Mr. Buehler said. “We ground ourselves when we actually get to work, but it’s important to be creative. That’s why I put Tomás and the students in the same room. They can learn from him as an artist to think wildly, and that’s necessary to solve a problem.”

Tomas Saraceno Expects to Revolutionize Air Travel Using Forgotten Technology at COP21 Conference in Paris

The artist traveled from Berlin to Poland with one of his spheres.

Emily Nathan, December 7, 2015 https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/tomas-saraceno-cop21-paris-386603

“We are all flying, we are all floating—don’t you know that?” smirked Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno on Friday at Paris’ Grand Palais, where press had assembled for the debut of his floating Aerocene sculptures, air-filled spheres powered only by the sun that he created to circumnavigate the planet. “Earth is always traveling,” he went on, “and it’s good to be aware that we are on such a ship. Like any ship, ours has a limited amount of resources, and we need to take stock of that, or this ship will stop being a place where we can survive.”

It was a fittingly eco-conscious opening statement for a work unveiled in conjunction with the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP21, which descended upon the City of Lights last week and

73 continues through December 11. Featuring hundreds of lectures, presentations and roundtables, the 21st edition of the global initiative has brought representatives from 190 countries together to negotiate a legally binding agreement on climate regulation that will keep global warming below 2°C.

Tomas Saraceno Aerocene 2015, Installation view at Grand Palais Photo: courtesy Tanya Bonakdar, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photography Studio Tomás Saraceno

Berlin-based Saraceno is one of many artists invited to participate—Olafur Eliasson and are others among them—and he is known for interactive sculptures and installations that combine engineering, art, architecture, and the natural sciences to propose sustainable ways of engaging with the environment. Aerocene, conceived during his ongoing residency at the French National Space Agency (he was also a resident artist in NASA’s Aims Program in 2009), constitutes the culmination of that interest. “We artists are on top of science exploration, of technology, of understanding the cosmos,” he said. “I hate the idea of knocking on the door to NASA and saying, ‘Hey, can I?’ Because we can do it already. But with their help, we can do it better.”

Powered only by the Sun’s heat, these thin aluminum globes rise up to 40 kilometers above the earth during the day and descend at night in graceful arcs, their delicate skins responding to slight changes in atmospheric temperature. But even in the dark they continue to float above ground, lifted by infrared radiation from the planet’s surface. “We are told that a shift of 2 degrees will destroy us,” Saraceno added, “but that feels intangible to us. I think this sculpture visually manifests how much subtle changes can do.”

Tomas Saraceno Aerocene 2015, Installation view at Grand Palais Photo: courtesy Tanya Bonakdar, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photography Studio Tomás Saraceno

As they work without batteries, helium, solar panels, or the burning of fossil fuels— technology already tested by the French in the 1970s, and then largely forgotten— Saraceno insists that these sculptures represent a new era, the Aerocene era, which will have to follow the geologic destruction we have wrought during the Anthropocene epoch. “We want to spark a thermodynamic imagination,” he says, “opening up a space confined at the moment for military purposes to other fields in science, art, and beyond.”

Beyond their use as research tools that help us understand wind patterns and jet streams, he expects them to revolutionize transportation. “Only 12 people in human history have been able to be lifted by the sun,” he says, explaining that he recently used a small model to travel the 500 kilometers between Berlin and Poland in 5 hours, “without burning even one drop of fuel”—winning two world records for balloon travel.

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“The only danger is to keep flying the way we fly today,” he says, “when with jet streams we have a constant highway in the sky for free. I even hope to introduce a system of club miles and memberships.”

EXIT 2008-2015 Installation view at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris Photo: ©Luc Boegly ©Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan and Ben Rubin, in collaboration with Robert Gerard Pietrusko and Stewart Smith

The planetary degradation suggested by Saraceno’s project is tackled from a different angle by EXIT, a stunning video installation conceived by French philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio with Diller Scofidio + Renfro architects, working with a team of statisticians, artists and scientists. Commissioned in 2008 by the Cartier Foundation but reprised at the Palais de Tokyo with updated information, this 45-minute, 360° projection of animated and thematic maps visually explores human migrations today and their leading causes, drawing on a wide array of sources and statistics borrowed from international organizations, NGOs and research centers, none of whom were invited to vouch for or endorse the information.

Divided into six chapters—Cities; Remittances; Political Refugees and Forced Migration; Natural Catastrophes; Rising Seas, Sinking Cities; and Deforestation—the maps are ingenious, utilizing simple graphics such as flags and colored pixels to manifest complex human issues. The passage of months and years is expressed both by dates, which click by at the bottom of the screen like the pages of a calendar, and by a harrowing soundtrack that evokes a ticking time bomb, allowing viewers to compare and contrast. And yet the work avoids dogmatism.

Both captivating and disturbing, all six maps demonstrate a connection between humans and their environment that has degenerated considerably over the past seven years. Equal populations now live in cities and the countryside, a veritable disaster for greenhouse gas emissions; remittances sent home from immigrants living abroad constitute three times those countries’ foreign aid; and the amount of global refugees and Internally Displaced People has reached nearly 60 million, the highest it has been since the end of World War II. Addressing human problems rarely seen within the bubble of the art world, EXIT paints a dire picture of the present—and suggests a dark future.

“There is no such thing as hard data or objective data but we tried to get our hands on the most reliable data sources available,” Liz Diller says. “And it can produce empathy, alarm, and awe when given form.”

Monica Bonvicini

Born in Venice in 1965.

Since 1986 she’s been living, studying and working between Berlin, Los Angeles and in Vienna, letting her language open to many different contaminations.The art of Monica Bonvicini explores the relationships among space, gender and power, using different media as drawing, video,

75 installation, photography.A pivotal aspect of Bonvicini’s work is her formal and expressive research in the field of environment sculpture: through a reflection on the gender issues, often mixed up with sharp humor, her work concentrate on the problem of building, both from the architectonic and from the social point of view.Bonvicini’s work is internationally recognized as one of the most interesting and original contribute to the art of the last years.

She won important prizes as the Preis der Nationalgalerie fuer junge Kunst of the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (2005) and the Leone d’Oro at the 48 Biennale di Venezia (1999).She was visiting professor at the Pasadena Art center (1998/1999) and she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna.

Monica Bonvicini‘s work was shown in prestigious private and public spaces: Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm, Sculpture Center New York, Triennale Bovisa, Milano (2007); 27th Sao Paulo Biennial, Galerie fόr Zeitgenφssiche Kunst Leipzig, Kunstraum Innsbruck (2006); Biennale d’Arte Contemporanea di Goeteborg, 51 Biennale di Venezia, Castello di Rivoli (2005); Migros Museum Zurigo, Sprengel Museum Hannover (2004); Secession Vienna, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 8 Biennale di Istanbul, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Torino (2003); Palais de Tokio Parigi, Hamburg Kunstverein, Kunsthaus Zurigo (2002); Le Magasin Grenoble, List Visual Arts Center Cambridge (2001); Salzburger Kunstverein Salisburgo, Kunsthaus Glarus (2000); GAM Torino, De Appel Amsterdam, PS1 New York (1999).

Monica Bonvicini included in the 15th Istanbul Biennial Curated by Elmgreen & Dragset

September 16 - November 12, 2017

MONICA BONVICINI Bent and Winded 2017 LED light tubes, wire, steel 91 by 64 by 10 in. 231.1 by 162.6 by 25.4 cm. MI&N 13885

From September 16 – November 12, the 15th Istanbul Biennial—which is curated by Elmgreen & Dragset and is centered around the concept of “a good neighbor”— will be staged across six venues in the heart of the Turkish city.

Details about the highly-anticipated exhibition have been released periodically over the past year, initially making waves in April 2016 when the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset was selected as the 2017 curators. Their appointment was a notable first for the Biennial, which had previously never seen artists moonlight in a curatorial role.

This was followed by the December press conference that announced the theme of “a good neighbor,” where the curators showed off their artistic roots: the pair enlisted 40 performers to question what defines a good neighbor before revealing their chosen theme.

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“Home is approached as an indicator of diverse identities and a vehicle for self-expression, and neighborhood as a micro-universe exemplifying some of the challenges we face in terms of co-existence today,” Elmgreen & Dragset explained of the curatorial decision.

“Your neighbor might be someone who lives quite a different life from yours,” they add. “The artists in the 15th Istanbul Biennial raise questions about ideas of home, neighborhood, belonging, and co-existence from multiple perspectives. Some of the artworks examine how our domestic living conditions and modes have changed and how our neighborhoods have transformed, while others focus on how we cope with today’s geopolitical challenges on a micro-level.”

As such, the 55 artists and collectives selected for the 15th iteration of the Istanbul Biennial— which artnet News is exclusively announcing—will look at how modes of living within our respective communities has developed throughout the past few decades.

Education

Bonvicini studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. From 1998 to 2002 Bonvicini lived and worked in Los Angeles, where she also taught at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena.[citation needed]

Career

Bonvicini began exhibiting her work internationally in the mid 1990s. Through a variety of mediums, Bonvicini described her practice as an exploration of relationships between architecture, power, gender, space, surveillance and control. Her works aim to question and investigate the meaning of making art alongside the flexible nature of language and primarily the idea of freedom and the limits and opportunities that are associated with the word. Her work has been featured in several biennals, such as the (1998, 2003), the Istanbul Biennial (2003), and the Venice Biennale (2001, 2005, 2011 and 2015), and had solo presentations in renown institutions worldwide. Her work is represented in numerous public collections. Bonvicini’s later works have ties to sadomasochism and are aimed to lead viewers to question their role as witnesses to the installments. Bonvicini’s concern with the roles of both the spectator and creator has influenced her to place the location and exhibition of her works of high importance. Though known for her work as an installation artist, Bonvicini is also recognized for her work with photography and video.

Awards

Bonvicini won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999, the National Gallery Prize for Young Art in Berlin in 2005 and the Rolandpreis für Kunst in Bremen in 2013.

Work

Bonvicini works with a great variety of materials, not limited to, steel, polyurethane, metal, chains, wood, spray paint, aluminum, ink, tempera, concrete, and glass. She describes her practice as multi-faceted and her work aims to investigate the relationship between architecture, power, shape, gender, control, surveillance, and space. She strives to create connections between her artwork and the world surrounding it, including herself as the creator, the work’s environment, the materials it’s made of, and those who engage with it as spectators.

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I Believe the Skin of Things as in That of Women, 1999

This work, entitled I Believe the Skin of Things as in That of Women, was created in 1999 by Bonvicini to explore gender relations surrounding the world of architecture and construction. Bonvicini describes the work as a confrontation of the “boys club” attitude that often encompasses the world of architecture. The work was exhibited in the 1999 Venice Biennale and takes quotes from famous male architects including August Perret and Adolf Loos. The title of the work refers to the famous quote of male architect Le Corbusier, who shared “I believe in the skin of things as in the skin of women”. The quotes are intertwined with graffiti-like compositions of naked men performing a variety of sexual acts as they gaze upon women who are decorated with jewels. Composed of drywall panels, wood panels, aluminum studs and graphite, this work is an example of Bonvicini’s dry-humour and fearless content that is seen in many of her works.

She Lies, 2010

Near the Opera Oslo House

A permanent installation, She Lies was publically revealed on May 11th, 2010. The work, commissioned by Public Art Norway, rests in the Bjorvika Fjord, standing in front of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. The work is made up of styrofoam, stainless steel, reflecting glass panels, and glass splinters and stands on a concrete pontoon that is equipped with an anchoring system. The monumental work, standing at 12 x 17 x 16 meters in size is an interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1824 painting entitled Das Elsmeer. Bonvicini reuses the imagery of the ice masses seen in Friedrich’s painting as a symbolic reference to the north and to symbols of power and change. In reaction to the changing tides surrounding it, the installation turns on an axis while the mirrors and transparent pieces provide constantly changing reflections and interpretations of the works surrounding environment. In an interview with Galerie Max Hetzler, Bonvicini describes the work as “A monument to a state of permanent change.”

RUN, 2012

A permanent installation at the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park in London, the piece was installed for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The work’s composition and title were inspired by the lyrics and language in popular music. A reflection of modern culture, the work pays reference to specific songs, including The Velvet Underground’s “Run, Run, Run”, ’s “Running Dry” and ’s “Born to Run”. Constructed from steel and reflective glass, the three installed characters are nine meters tall and each piece weighs ten tonnes. Two years after being awarded the commission in Summer 2010, Bonvicini’s work was constructed on the plaza of the London Handball Arena, also known as the Copper Box and is the largest installation in the park. Bonvicini uses the reflective nature of glass again to mirror the installment's changing environment throughout the day. At night, installed LED lights work to

78 cause a glowing effect that is spread throughout the work by the reflective surfaces that are throughout the letters.

Exhibitions (selection)

 2016: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, her hand around the room  2014: Witte de With - Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Crime was almost perfect  2013: Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Wall Works  2013: Kunsthalle Mainz, Monica Bonvicini Sterling Ruby  2012: Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, und , Hamburg, Desire, Desiese, Devise – Zeichnungen 1986–2012.  2012: La Triennale (3), Palais de Tokyo, Paris  2011: Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malága  2011: Museum Ludwig, Cologne  2011: Dublin Contemporary 2011, Dublin  2010: Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Both Ends  2009: The Art Institute of Chicago  2009: Kunstmuseum Basel  2008: MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, Vigo  2008: New Orleans Biennal (1), New Orleans  2007: Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm  2005: Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin  2002: New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York  2002: Palais de Tokyo, Paris  2002: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford  1994: Kunst-Werke, Berlin

Works in public collections (selection)

 T-B A21 - Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Wien  Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin  FRAC Lorraine, Metz  Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Castello di Rivoli, Turin  Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich  Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York  Lenbachhaus, München

Publications (selection)

• Monica Bonvicini (2014) • Disegni (2012) • A Black Hole of Needs, Hopes and Ambitions (2011) • Both Ends (2010) • 7 = 1 Project Rooms (2010) • Monica Bonvicini (2009) • This Hammer Means Business (2009) • Anxiety Attack (2003) • Break it/ Fix it (2003) • Kill Your Father (2002) • EternMale.Bonded EternMale (2002) • Scream and Shake (2001) • What Does Your Wife/Girlfriend Think of Your Rough and Dry Hands (2000) • Bau (1999) • Monica Bonvicini (1999) • Platz Machen (1994)

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Bibliography (selection)

 Alexander Alberro, Janet Kraynak and Juliane Rebentisch, Monica Bonvicini, Phaidon Press, London, 2014.  Art Agenda. "Monica Bonvicini – She Lies in Oslo." 2011. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/monica-bonvicini-she-lies-in-oslo/.  BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art . "Monica Bonvicini." Accessed February 2017. http://www.balticmill.com/whats-on/monica-bonvicini  Dan Cameron and Susanne von Falkenhausen, Monica Bonvicini, Hopefulmonster, Turin, 2000.  Harald Falkenberg, Susanne Titz and Bettina Steinbrügge, Monica Bonvicini: Disegni, Distanz, Berlin, 2012.  Harris, Jane. "Monica Bonvicini." Art Forum, 2003, Accessed February 2017. https://www.artforum.com/index.php?pn=interview&id=1061  Jan Verwoert, Matthias Mühling and Nikola Dietrich, Monica Bonvicini, DuMont, Cologne, 2009.  König Galerie. Works | Monica Bonvicini." Accessed February 06, 2017. http://www.koeniggalerie.com/artists/7613/monica-bonvicini/works/.  Marx, Jonas. "Monica Bonvicini – She Lies in Oslo." Art Agenda. 2010. Accessed February 2017. http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/monica-bonvicini-she-lies-in-oslo/.  The Museum of Modern Art. "Monica Bonvicini | Artist.". Accessed February 2017. https://www.moma.org/artists/28568  Monica Bonvicini. "Monica Bonvicini." Accessed February 2017. http://monicabonvicini.net/.  The Telegraph. "Olympic Park artwork is up and running." The Telegraph. January 13, 2012. Accessed March 15, 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012- festival/9013345/Olympic-Park-artwork-is-up-and-running.html.  Vanessa Joan Müller and Ursula Maria Probst, Monica Bonvicini: BOTH ENDS, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2010

Interview By Kate Green

Since the nineties, artist Monica Bonvicini has confronted audiences with drawings, installations, videos, and photographs that explore the construction of sexual identity through architecture. Her large-scale sculptural works provoke modernism with sheets of shattered glass and non-functional metal scaffolds and include feisty sexual references with strategic placement of riveted black leather.

Along with Bonvicini’s focus on the gendered nature of the built and building environment comes the notion of power. The force is arguably at work in all facets of our lives but weighs heavily on the ins and outs of the art world. Nowhere is power’s role in the art world more visible than during art fairs and large-scale openings.

Fresh from several art fairs and openings in Europe, Bonvicini shares thoughts about whether fairs are for artists; what she wore (or didn’t) at the 48th Venice Biennale; where modernism always fails; how politics led her to practice art; and how her art work decodes the language of architecture.

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Kate Green: You have just returned from openings of the 52nd Venice Biennale in Italy, the 38th Art Basel Fair in Switzerland, the Münster Sculpture Project 2007 in Germany, and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. I feel art world power relationships most palpably at such events – who is seated next to whom at dinners, which gallery is presented in which fair… Since your work is about power, are these events particularly stimulating for you?

Monica Bonvicini: When I am in a good mood and in good company these events are funny and enjoyable. In general, I do not find them very stimulating. They are not made for artists. I often feel out of place and I’m not the only artist to feel this way. I don’t care so much who is sitting next to whom. I have witnessed the organization of seating at a few dinners and there is often less to find out than you would think. I take good care not to sit next to boring people.

NOT FOR YOU (2006) Galvanised iron, 40-watt bulbs, dimmer, cables From time to time, I enjoy seeing the people from all over the world that you get to see only during these events. (The openings of the Biennale, Basel, Münster, and Documenta) last June were a little bit too much for everybody. You saw the same faces in different cities and could observe the mutual state of progressive degradation. Art events are a good time for sunglasses.

KG: One of your works, Don’t Miss A Sec (2004), was an outdoor toilet temporary installed on a crowded street adjacent to the Basel art fair. The one-way glass allowed users to continue seeing art and people while not being seen. It alluded to the compulsive seeing that such events foster and the power relationships inherent in looking and being looked at. Describe, in your own words, where this work was coming from.

MB: In 1998, when I started participating in biennials (Berlin Biennial, SITE Sante Fe Biennial, Biennale of Sydney), the social craziness around the events was new. I particularly remember the 1999 Venice Biennale. I had no money for the vaporetto. I had to run out of a very expensive hotel’s bar after a couple of dealers from New York I met left in a rage without paying the bill after I told them I would not show with them. I didn’t know many people. The morning we were to go on stage to receive the (Golden Lion prize for Best National Participation), I was alone. My dealers had left Venice. I didn’t know what to wear and I asked the cleaning lady of the hotel which of the two t-shirts I had was a better fit for the occasion. Neither was quite right.

Two-way mirror structure, stainless-steel, toilet unit, concrete floor, aluminum, fluorescent lights 250cm x 140cm x 190 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan and West of Rome Inc., Los Angeles © Monica Bonvicini, VG-Bildkunst

The idea for Don’t Miss a Sec.’ came in 1999. I made the drawings for it on an airplane. It relates to the urge, during big art events where so much is about “see and be seen,” to not miss anything. At any big art event, everyone needs a bathroom at some point. If you use the work for it, you are still able to see the next art work,

81 who is passing by, who is talking with whom, and who is wearing what. At the same time, you can literally show your ass to them.

Don’t Miss a Sec.’ is also an ironic comment on the idea of modernism, particularly through referencing the pavilion works of Dan Graham. Don’t Miss a Sec.’ is about the desire and failure to “see it all” which is a strong trait in modernism. This work absurdly pushes at the limits of what is public and what is private and offers a performative element in which inside and outside are blurred together.

KG: Did the recent art events provide anything memorable that you have continued to think about in relation to your work?

MB: I had a lot of fun in Venice. I was born there and I always feel at home in a city where to get lost is just part of finding your way. I was surprised by (curator Robert Storr’s) display of works at the Padiglione Italia. It was a replica of what (curator) Maria Corral did in 2005 – paintings right, videos left. (It was) not very inspiring. I was glad to see works by León and Kim Jones and Charles Gaines’ beautifully silly model. My favorite (national pavilion was Germany’s) with artist Isa Genzken – finally, something real in there. I also rediscovered Franz West and met . I am a big fan of hers.

Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan and West of Rome Inc., Los Angeles © Monica Bonvicini, VG-Bildkunst

I really enjoyed Münster. Bruce Nauman’s Square Depression is fantastic. I loved the light irony and humor of (Michael) Elmgreen and (Ingar) Dragset’s theater piece as well as (Mike Kelley’s petting zoo) that is so rich in layers of meanings, still very open to interpretations, and just enjoyable crazy. I couldn’t see all the works in Münster since I was busy installing works of mine in Düsseldorf, but I really appreciated being confronted with works independently from the curatorial umbrella that exists in (the Venice Biennale) and (Documenta).

KG: You have chosen to deal with issues of power through the visual art world rather than through the realms of architecture, law, or politics. Power plays a large role in the art world. Were you drawn to the visual arts and then came to focus on power as a subject or vice versa?

MB: I grew up during a very political period in Italy. In college, I was very much involved with political issues about really everything. I participated in strikes, public discussions, and different social activities. But just being an intellectual, studying politics or sociology (which I thought about), or writing books (I loved to write), would have been disgraceful at that time. I decided to try art because it was the only way to be a worker and an intellectual at the same time. It was very important to get dirty while thinking.

I think it was Foucault who said that, after 1968, there was no need for intellectuals. After 1977, the Italian intellectuals I cared for worked very closely with workers. This was extremely important for me growing up. I had no experience with art at all, but it offered a way to discuss issues without being authoritarian.

My interest in architecture came later. I have been always very sensitive toward space. I always preferred to be outside, on the streets, rather than inside. While studying at the California Institute of the Arts in the nineties I started rationalizing my interest in architecture. An aspect that was, and continues to be, important to me is the relationship between language and architecture – the idea of a structure and the social, political, and economic implications of architecture.

Architecture is a representation of power. In my works, I try to specify its grammar, deconstruct its sentences, and expose a codex of historical behaviors and assumptions. I don’t think I could have a language for what I do if I would have studied architecture.

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KG: Several of your works expose the relative nature of exploitation. One can be on the receiving end one moment and then dish it out in the next. The billboard work These Days Only A Few Men Know What Work Really Means (1999) presents larger-than-life images of how construction workers are fetishized in gay porn. The questionnaire piece What Does Your Wife/Girlfriend Think of Your Rough and Dry Hands? (1999) draws attention to the builders while objectifying them.

In an interview with Frieze Magazine you mention leaving Italy partly because of sexual harassment from construction workers. Foucault would say that we constantly participate in both sides of power relationships. Do you think about the world along these lines?

MB: I like the Edna St. Vincent Millay quote, “My candle burns at both ends…”

I did the work These Days Only a Few Men Know What Work Really Means specifically for the Art Basel Fair in 1999. In the work, I am addressing art as a commodity (something I did on a different level later in the video work Hard Sell (2002) and with the installation The Fetishism of Commodity (2002)). I am making fun of the idea of masculinity which doesn’t really exist, but is well-represented in the cliché and absurd representations of the construction worker. The work has been difficult to show in other contexts because of its naked male bodies and crude graphic quality. I find that interesting and surprising. Funny enough, the best review on this work has been in a German gay magazine.

What Does Your Wife/Girlfriend Think of Your Rough and Dry Hands? is an ongoing project involving interviews with construction workers. The project is an homage to the workers about whom there is really little literature compared to architects, architectural critics and theoreticians. What is stunning to me as a result of the questionnaires (distributed in the United States, Europe, and, with limited success, Asia) is the picture of a strong national work ethic.

Never Again (2005) Leather, chains, rack Dimensions vary Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan and West of Rome Inc., Los Angeles © Monica Bonvicini, VG-Bildkunst Photo: Jens Ziehe

Installation view: Hamburger Bahnhof Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst Berlin (2005)

The installation NEVER AGAIN (2005) is another work that concerns your question about exploitation. It’s a playground for adults composed of double leather “love” swings. In this work, as in others, I directly use visual material from gay and sado-masochistic culture. This has earned me the title of “(dominatrix) of the art scene.” What I don’t like here is the identification of the artist with her or his own works, but this is a different point.

KG: Several other sculptural works, such as Caged Tools (2004) and The Fetishism of Commodity (2002), use leather to transform industrial material (scaffolding, chains, power tools). These gestures conjoin two seemingly contradictory realms: sensuality and the built environment. Do you see this duality as a suggestion of contradictions everywhere?

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MB: I would like to add to your list the video installations: Wallfuckin’ (2005); Hausfrau Swinging (1997); Take one Square or two (2000); and Shotgun (2003); and the installations Black (2002), Blindshot (2004), and Bonded Eternmale (2001). I think it is every artist’s job to define situations as clearly as possible. Since the nineties, I have been interested in the construction of sexual identity though architecture. All these works are specifically about how architecture is involved in a process of construction behind its walls or because of its walls.

I do not see contradictions everywhere. That would be quite exhausting! I rarely use the word. To me, it has a cheap negative value and if something is not contradictory than what is it? Harmonious? Something like that does not exist in life.

I think more about questions of relationships. Do they work or not? Why? What does history say?

KG: Your recent Los Angeles project Not For You (2006) incorporated earlier works and seemed to deal site- specifically with Hollywood. Often parts from one of your projects resurface in another one. Do you approach each project site-specifically while giving yourself the freedom to include any past piece?

MB: Through the years, I have become more suspicious about site-specific work, but, because of the nature of many of my works, I can’t really avoid the confrontation with each space I deal with. The show in Los Angeles was in a mall context and didn’t actually deal with Hollywood. I have no interest in (Hollywood), but I know that many (Angelenos) find it impossible to see the world without thinking of Hollywood.

Not For You (also the title of a work) was one of the biggest shows I have done. I presented many new and old works in a huge empty store, the name of which was still hanging outside. I had the sign, which read, “Organized Living,” lit at night. I thought it was a perfect sub-title for the show.

For the show I had Stonewall (2006) and DESIRE (2006) outside and drawings on broken safety glass in the windows. I covered the entire floor with Plastered (1998), which I normally present in group shows.

I also included the (two channel) video installation Destroy She Said (1998). The videos are like a collage of film clips from the fifties through the seventies by various directors from (Jean-Luc) Godard to (Michelangelo) Antonioni to (Rainer Werner) Fassbinder. In each clip, women are either walking or leaning on walls. The way these intellectual European filmmakers were representing female characters was, “Forget diamonds. If a woman does not have a man to lean on at least give her a wall.” This is odd considering this was the moment when feminism was being defined.

Desire (2006) Diptych Collage Tempera and foil on paper 200cm x 160 cm Photo: Fredrik Nilsen © Monica Bonvicini, VG-Bildkunst

New works were the hanging sculpture Identify Protection (2006) and a series of large black and white drawings which were all on the subject of revolt with quotations by (Anaïs) Nin, (Ann) Sexton, and (Julia) Kristiva.

KG: DESIRE was also included in your recent solo project at Sculpture Center in New York, titled Never Missing a Line (2007). It was accompanied by another marquee – the sign reading “BUILTFORCRIME” in lights. Can you talk about those works, specifically the latter? What led you to present those two works in that context?

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MB: The sculpture DESIRE is made out of polish stainless steel letters on an aluminum holding structure. The work in L.A. was to be read from the street and it played with all of the store logos on Lake Avenue in Pasadena where the show was located. In New York, I had the piece in the yard of Sculpture Center. It was much more sculptural there than in L.A. It reflected the brick wall of the yard as well as the city bank building and the viewers walking from the entrance going inside the show. I developed the piece together with the drawings I was just talking about, specifically around a quotation by Kristeva. It reads: “Desire, if it exists, is unalterable, infinite, absolute and destructive.”

I am uninterested in determining if desire is different for males and females (whatever this distinction means), but I wanted to deal with desire in the sense of the origin of revolt and examine it through the language and thoughts of three women writers.

When the door to Sculpture Center opened, the blinking lights of Built For Crime were reflected in DESIRE. The work is a large, fourteen-meter long sculpture hanging from the ceiling. The letters are made out of broken safety glass onto which light bulbs are mounted. The lights annoyingly blink. They turn off occasionally and leave the space dark. Then they start again like in a carnival, first with the letter B and then so on. There was a Ford commercial which said, “Built For Ride.” I always find Ford commercials quite aggressive – not necessarily in a negative way, but it is hard to watch a commercial of an enormous pickup in a desert without thinking about Iraq.

The work is also a comment on modern architecture’s desire for transparency and tricks to avoid it. The installation is glass, transparent, and beautiful, but it is difficult to read. The blinking lights make you dizzy and, by the time you understand the sentence, you have it tattooed on your retina. It is not a big step to see this work and to think about (modernist architect Adolf) Loos’s (1908) essay “Ornament and Crime” and to think about architecture as a crime.

KG: Are you drawn to white cubes as much as to architecturally unconventional art spaces, such as the Sculpture Center, that reveal their history?

MB: I do not think that conventional space exists at all, but to answer your question: I find white cubes, or let’s say modernistic sorts of situations, easier to handle than spaces with, let’s say, red bricks. Last year, I was invited to a talk in Basel about artists’ experiences in various spaces and how to build an exhibition space that is really made for art. This leads to the real question: What kind of art is going to be shown in a given space?

I remember visiting (the Contemporary Arts Center designed by architect Zaha Hadid) years ago in Cincinnati. Great space, but how can you use walls which are not straight and look like they are slowly falling to the floor?

Lots of new museums have glass as outside walls. Recently, I was invited to do shows in German and Swedish art institutions that both have the same problem. The two curators asked me to do something with the big windows, but it turned out that the glass was a new type that can’t be painted on or glued on or anything.

Spaces for art are complex, new or old.

KG: You are particularly informed about the history of various art threads and theories, and fluently discuss the relationship between such ideas and your work. With whom have you had some of your best discussions about your work? Who might you like to discuss your work with, living or dead, who you haven’t yet?

MB: I have had many good discussions with different people – colleagues, curators, critics. There are people I would like to talk to about my work and art in general with whom, thank God, I haven’t yet.

Monica Bonvicini: She Lies ::

May 11, 2010 :: The fjord on the waterfront at Bjørvika, Oslo (in front of The Norwegian Opera & Ballet).

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She Lies is a monumental sculpture built out of stainless steel and glass panels that measure approximately 12 x 17 x 16 m. The piece is permanently installed and floats amidst the fjord on the water. By turning around its own axis in correspondence to the tides, the sculpture offers changing views through the reflections on the mirrored and semitransparent surfaces.

A crucial aspect of this commission is the challenge of the change expected in this location since the completion of the opera house. She Lies is meant to be a monument about change, longing and hope, a memorial for the construction itself. It stands for its implicit visions and the beauty of the un-done as a permanent state of change.

Bonvicini’s sculpture is a three dimensional interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Das Eismeer, 1823-24. It is particularly referring to the central motive of the work: the massive piles of ice that function as a symbol for power and magnificence of the north.

“The synthesis of structure/skin/ornament explore the interface between nature and culture, or that of a cultural artefact. While reconstructing a famous Romantic painting, the work represents in a visual striking way the shape of an iceberg, as if one would have, by circumstances due to the global warming, ended up in the fjord in front of the opera house. A built ruin in best modernistic style, the sculpture on water will stand for a permanent state of erection/construction.” MB

Monica Bonvicini is one of the most influential artists of her generation. Her large scale installations explore specific conventions and investigate the relationship between space, power and gender. One of the most interesting aspects of her work are the expressive formal discussions via site specific sculptures. Through the reflection on gender issues, often reinforced by biting humour, her work addresses the issues of ‘building’ in both architectural and social aspects.

Monica Bonvicini, born in 1965 in Venice, lives and works in Berlin. She was the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and institutions such as 1. und 3. berlin biennale für zeitgenössische kunst (1998, 2004); La Biennale di Venezia (1999, 2005, 2009); Magasin, Grenoble (2001); Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Art Museum; Kunstmuseum Aarhus (2002, 2009); New Museum, New York ; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Secession, Vienna (2003); Migros Museum, Zurich; Sprengel Museum, Hanover (2004), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2005); Kunstraum, Innsbruck; Museum Ludwig, Köln; Biennale de São Paulo, Brazil (2006); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY (2007), Prospect.1 Biennial, New Orleans; , Munich; MARCO Museum, Vigo (2008); Lenbachhaus, Munich; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; MUSEION, Bozen, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2009). Monica Bonvicini is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler, B erlin.

She Lies was commissioned by Public Art Norway – KORO and KISTEFOS A.S.

Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reKDMSrA-xE http://de.sevenload.com/videos/EYMhZId-Monica-Bonvicini-Dont-miss-a-moment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOikdHZ3f8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC-wyeD6gjU

Artist website http://monicabonvicini.net/ http://monicabonvicini.net/work/hard-string-2017/

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10. Collections

Julia Stoschek’s Collection

Facade of the Julia Stoschek Collection. Courtesy Julia Stoschek Collection.

Many artists and critics hesitate to use the term “post-Internet” as a serious descriptor, instead accompanying it with quotation marks and a smirk or eye roll. But with the opening of her new exhibition in a temporary space in Berlin, Düsseldorf collector Julia Stoschek embraces the post- Internet generation, the digital natives that produced the backlit banners, shining screens, and appropriative videos that open to the public on June 2.

Riffing on techno-dystopian futures, corporate identities, and, as the title, “Welt am Draht” (World on a Wire) implies, Stoschek’s selections for her Berlin satellite space explore the fine line between virtual and physical worlds, through the eyes of artists working and living with the newest technologies, dealing with themes of self-presentation, optimized imagined futures, with the help, and threat, of new media.

Of the 38 pieces on display, 11 are dated 2016, and ten from 2015. With such a focus on the ultra-contemporary, the oldest works—Hito Steyerl’s Lovely Andrea and Cao Fei’s RMB City (both from 2007)—felt already aged, not quite “post” internet, but instead precursors to artists like Ed Atkins. (Stoschek owns Us Dead Talk Love, (2012) the artist’s first two-channel, HD video featuring the CGI characters that are today his signature.) Fei’s Second Life world fails to capture the

87 viewer’s attention in the way it might have at her recent MoMA PS1 solo show; neither is the Steyerl one of the artist’s most captivating, despite the poignant personal story it traces.

Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015). Photo courtesy of the author.

With so many different shapes and sizes of screens, all accompanied by sounds equally as shiny (and only some with headphones), the viewer is more than occasionally pulled in different directions. Jon Rafman’s Betamale Trilogy (2015) is essentially a glass cabin set up in the midst of Helen Martin’s room installation, Orchids, or a Hemispherical Bottom (2013). Both blast narrative and music at the viewer, and, like keeping multiple browser tabs open at once, the viewer naturally flips back and forth between experiencing the two.

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The most exciting moving images, like the Rafman series, aren’t viewed in the museum-standard projector-and-wall setup. Wu Tsang’s A Day in the Life of Bliss (2014), a two-channel video, appears as four-channels thanks to mirrors across from each projection. Inside the installation, viewers can sink into beanbags and watch performer boychild play a fictional pop-star named Blis, dancing around an empty apartment in a future surveillance state. Britta Thie’s sound installation Translantics OST (2016) invites viewers to listen to an iPod loaded with tracks by the likes of Dan Bodan and Max McFerren while sitting on a low rocking chair.

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But trumping the many opportunities for immersion and interactivity is Neïl Baloufa’s Jaguacuzzi (2015), a sculptural cubicle containing a sort of jukebox for movies, affixed with fake cigarettes. A screen prompts participants to lick a finger and touch it to the cigarette, after which their movie of choice will play.

Neïl Beloufa, Jaguacuzzi (detail) (2015). Photo by the author.

The building, a former Czech Cultural Center on Leipziger Straße allows some works—like the large, sloping, concrete room where Ian Cheng’s massive generative evolution simulation Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015), also viewable from windows through a niche of what appears to be a former control room where the Steyerl is shown—to truly shine.

Hannah Black’s digital video Bodybuilding (2015) is installed in its own room, complete with fluorescent lighting, exercise balls, and a gym bench, creating a realistic feeling of sitting in an actual weight room. The presentation is occasionally cramped, the fault of the original architecture; and some works, like Josh Klein’s 3D-printed, Stella Artois-filled Designer’s Head in Tim Coppens (TIM) (2013), feel hidden in corners.

The décor, luxurious white ruffles of curtains covering the windows, feels far from makeshift, but the re-purposing of space is typical of Berlin, and gives it the city’s signature feeling. (During preview, fresh paint fumes and the smell of newly laid wall-to-wall carpeting filled the crowded rooms).

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Hannah Black, Bodybuilding (2015). Photo courtesy of the author.

Even this time last year, word on the street was that Berlin’s abundance of artists was threatened by the city’s lack of collectors, and at the press conference, Stoschek noted that the artists here are part of the city’s draw. Private collections in Berlin like the Sammlung Boros or Sammlung Hoffmann are modern, but largely still tied to old media—especially since neither seem to be expanding.

Stoschek’s arrival marks what many have been waiting for—a collector unafraid of contemporary, digital practices, who shuns the physicality of painting and sculpture. Indeed, the artist list has much in common with that of the 9th Berlin Biennale, which opens to the public one day later.

At risk of offending those who have already declared the phrase dead, one might even venture to call Stoschek, whose official focus is “time-based media art”, Germany’s foremost post- Internet collector.

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Christian Boros Collection

From Nazi Bunker to Artistic Haven By R. Jay Magill, Jr. in Berlin

At first it stood as a defense against Allied bombs. In the 1950s it was used to store imported fruit from Cuba, and in the 1990s it became the location for the hottest techno-parties around. On Thursday an old Berlin bunker revealed its latest transformation: It now houses a private collection of contemporary art.

Walking through the massive five-storey concrete bunker that houses the Boros Collection on Reinhardstrasse in Berlin, you wouldn't guess that it had a far more sinister past. Back in 1942 Nazi architect Albert Speer built the place to help the city sustain what he believed would be the final blowout battle leading to a German victory. It was part of his and Adolf Hitler's grand "Germania" vision, whereby Berlin would be entirely renewed -- fully devoid of degenerate art, of course -- after the Germans had triumphed.

But today the old pock-marked fortress belongs to Polish-born collector and advertising entrepreneur Christian Boros and his wife Karen. And it was here on Thursday that they unveiled their impressive art collection that they've amassed over nearly two decades. Now the spiciest of international contemporary art sits in a cavernous piece of Berlin's architectural past. "This building is a landmark, a part of German history," Boros says. "It's not the Brandenburg Gate, but it has seen Berlin change a lot over the last half century."

After the end of World War II the bunker ended up in the Soviet sector of the city and the Russian army used it as a prison for captured German soldiers. Then, as something resembling normalcy returned to Berlin, the building was used to store bananas, oranges, and other fruits imported from Cuba by East Germany. After the fall of the Wall, East Berlin became the center of the city's party scene and "The Bunker," or "Banana Bunker," was the hottest place for wild techno raves -- and gay sadomasochism parties -- in Germany. The last one was held in 1996. Since then, the bunker has stood empty.

Artsy Bunker The 3,000-square-meter interior space, which once sheltered 2,000 people from flying bombs, now holds 80 contemporary works by artists such as Damien Hirst, Olafur Eliasson, Elizabeth Payton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Anselm Reyle, and Tobias Rehberger, all spread over five floors. While there are several series of photographs, most of the works on display reveal a fascination with sculpture: a giant copper bell by Kris Martin that precariously swings over the lobby; an Olafur Eliasson swinging fan that threatens onlookers with its pendular gyrations; a fluorescent-yellow, black-lit wooden cart sitting in a dark room; bales of silver-painted hay, and, perhaps most eerily, an hyperrealist rubber sculpture of a middle-aged man lying in a hospital bed, dressed in baby blue pyjamas, hands wrapped in gauze, staring lifelessly at the heavy concrete ceiling. "I collect art that I don't understand," Boros says.

The entire building -- 38 meters (125 feet) long and 16 meters (52 feet) high, with two-meter-thick concrete- and-rebar walls -- was particularly difficult to restructure. But starting in 2004 the architects Jens Casper, Petra Petersson, and Andrew Strickland from the Berlin-based firm Realarchitektur managed to make it happen. "We had to talk a lot about what we would do here," Casper says, "A lot."

They sat down with Boros and rethought the entire internal structure before removing 40 of the 120 rooms. Now some of them thrust 13 meters upwards over several stories, freeing up the otherwise cramped quarters -- originally all of the rooms were just 2.3 meters high. And where there were no windows, there is now a wall of them in the back stairwell. While there is no daylight in the exhibition space, the architects put the windows across from an exposed, ripped-up concrete-and-rebar wall so visitors can see just how reinforced a bunker really is. The project has been such a success the firm was recently awarded the 2008 Beton Architectural Prize for its work on the building.

Most impressive perhaps is the 1,000-square-meter penthouse that sits atop the old bunker, covered by a hulking 3-meter-thick concrete-and-steel roof. Surrounded in glass and leading out onto a sprawling tree- covered terrace, it's where the couple live, overlooking the middle of Berlin, sitting on top of their art. Standing on the sidewalk outside after leading journalists through his fortress, Boros was approached by an

91 elderly man. "Does someone live up on top of this old thing?" he asked the mild-mannered collector. "I think someone does," Boros said. "I've heard it's nice."

The public can see for itself soon enough if that's true -- at least the part of the bunker that contains the impressive art collection. Starting at the beginning of June, it will be possible to request an appointment to visit on Saturday mornings through the Boros Collection Web site. "You have to remember that this is a private collection, not a museum," Boros says. "It's an incredibly subjective endeavour. It's something very much a part of our lives. Art, like history, is something to be talked about."

Interview with Collector Christian Boros Art Review Magazine December 2008 By Axel Lapp

Axel Lapp: You have been collecting for a very long time ...

Christian Boros: I’ve been collecting for eighteen years, yes. I started in 1990.

AL: How do you discover new works? How do you decide? Do you see works and then say impulsively, ‘I have to have this’, or is it a slow process of approaching and selecting?

CB: I have no interests besides art. Apart from my job, this is the only thing that occupies me. For years, for decades, I’ve spent almost half my time with art. I read, I visit as many exhibitions as possible – biennales, museums, galleries. I have an insatiable hunger for images. Just yesterday, I was in Hannover and had some time to spare, but I didn’t relax or sit in a café, I went to look at Schwitters and Klee in the Sprengel Museum. This addiction to images can hardly be satisfied. And this isn’t only specific to things that I need for the collection, because I don’t collect Klee or Schwitters. I try to record sequences of images, to store them like a databank. I’m a very visual person.

AL: You just mentioned things that you need for the collection. Does this mean that the collection has a form? Do you always have this in mind, and then look for a particular work or artist?

CB: It’s not as strategic as that. For example, I’m not the kind of person who gets hooked on media, who only collects painting, only photography or only video, who says, now I need this one position. I tend to look at a lot; and then, from time to time, I come across things that surprise me; and then this interests me. I try to pursue this, and confront this incomprehension. I only buy things that were made recently. I would never think of completing a position now that was relevant fifteen years ago or buying something retrospectively, something old. I’m only interested in trying to come to terms with the present, with art that is being produced now. The rest, I look at, but I don’t need to own it. My way of understanding this is that buying is also an attempt to understand the present – my here and now. It’s a long process before I consider whether I need another position. Because when I say, ‘yes, I’m interested in an artist’, it’s not enough for me to buy a single piece and to tick off this position on the list. I want to go into depth. Which means that when I already have the work of an artist and I see another, I naturally consider whether I need this work to resolve something for myself, to reflect the complexity also in the collection. The most difficult thing is getting involved in a new artist. That is a decision that really takes a few weeks – which is no longer possible at art fairs. At Basel, I can’t say ‘Wow, this interests me, let me think about it for two weeks.’ They would only look at me astonished. Five others are already waiting!

AL: So you have to go quickly through the fair and say, ‘that, that and that’ ...

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CB: I can’t do this. Which is why I’m an annoying customer at galleries – because I simply need time. Before I could say, ‘let me think about it for two weeks.’ It wasn’t a problem because there was no one else that would have bought it. Today, it’s naturally more extreme. Therefore, I tend to go to fairs to see what’s happening or to meet people. It has become very difficult for me to also buy something – but you don’t need to. Many people believe that you can only buy at fairs. However, there are still wonderful gallery shows and this kind of thing. I buy very slowly. Therefore, I also don’t have a problem with bad purchases or headaches after impulse buying. Even if some things don’t always get the approval of others, I still know exactly why I did it.

AL: And does that change with time? Do you say now after fifteen years, ‘I would no longer buy that’?

CB: There are occasionally positions that don’t interest me as much today. Today, I would no longer get involved with Damien Hirst. But fifteen years ago, he was a very, very important artist for me. But to say now that this is too spectacular and sensational doesn’t mean that I have to abandon it. These works have become part of my biography, and therefore their relevance and importance still exists for me.

AL: So when did you properly begin collecting?

CB: I’ve been buying art for considerably longer than eighteen years. I bought the first things when I was nineteen or twenty with money that I got for my first car after finishing school. Even during my studies, I bought art; however, this wasn’t collecting but buying for my flat. Then I went into business and had a little more money available, and I continued buying art. At some point, however, I noticed that everything was full, and I took a step that also had an extremely liberating effect. From this point on, I no longer had the problem of finding a place somewhere for, say, a 1.20 m picture, because if it no longer fits at home, it doesn’t matter whether the picture measures 1.20 or 5 m. I then bought sculptures and pictures that were enormous, just to own them – and then put them in storage. I did this for a very long time. Then I met my wife Karen Lohmann, who also comes from this area and supported this. She worked in Basel for a gallery where I bought art, and I fell in love with her. Now we do this very actively together and everything is discussed and considered together. At some point, we realised that we were sitting on hundreds of works that all belong to us, and which are all in storage. We then decided that we also wanted to see the things again, to share them with people – so we started looking around for spaces in Berlin. AL: Why Berlin?

CB: Well, we live in seclusion in the provinces in Germany, in Wuppertal. We were always also frequently in Berlin, because this is where the art that we buy is produced – the galleries are here, the artists are here. One of the reasons was the feeling that this must be brought back here. On the other hand, this is naturally a great platform. When someone comes to Berlin, all synapses are put on receive. There are curious people here, and it’s fun to share something with curious people. Every long weekend, all the motorways and trains are packed, and the whole of Germany comes to Berlin. I think that there’s no one left who celebrates the New Year in Würzburg or Schweinfurt. The whole Republic is in Berlin. And this is the case internationally. If someone comes to Germany from America, then he no longer goes to the Oktoberfest in Munich, but to Berlin. People come here; they are curious and open. I want to have the things discussed here.

AL: This is precisely what I want to come back to. There is a very long tradition of setting up such spaces in the provinces, beginning with Von der Heydt in Wuppertal, Henri Nannen in Emden, Urs Raussmüller in Schaffhausen, by collectors who deliberately wanted to stay outside the larger cities. There are many people who travel to Schaffhausen just to visit the collection there.

CB: I wanted to spare people these kinds of difficulties. I’m not interested in putting down a private treasure-trove somewhere and making a pilgrimage site out of it so that people are forced to make the arduous journey to see my collection. I would find this much too vain. I want to be part of what’s happening here. I’m a city person, I don’t want to withdraw to the provinces, build a castle and let down the drawbridge from time to time when someone comes to visit. I’m part of what’s happening; my friends are artists. When Olafur (Eliasson) is in Berlin, then he simply comes over with his children, with his wife, because he works nearby. Thomas Scheibitz lives in the neighbourhood – he comes with his wife, we eat in the evening and look at something.

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I collect contemporary art and don’t have an Expressionist collection that can be shown in Emden. I’m part of the present – which means that I also value the spontaneity. All of this – this quality of communication, of neighbourhood – I don’t have this in the provinces.

AL: So you also use this place as a private space ...

CB: It’s mainly a private space. It’s a public space only on two days of the week, and even then it’s only half public. I distinguish here very clearly. On Saturday, I don’t have visitors: I have guests. I say hello, they get something to drink, they are not just able to see art here, but they are part of my private space. They are told about the building, they get to hear about my wife and me. When I leave, they thank me. Nobody does this in a museum, and no one says thank you, because he was a visitor – and here he is a guest. This is two days per week and the rest is private anyway. Soon Paulina (Olowska) is coming over for breakfast, and that is then six, seven people, and I value this.

AL: At the moment, many private collections are opening their doors in Berlin, and one doesn’t know exactly what is the actual function of theses spaces. Partly, people want to show their collection; partly, however, they serve as representational spaces and personal PR. What is your intention?

CB: If you look at it closely, we were the second here in Berlin after the Hoffmanns. When we decided six years ago, this euphoria for showing collections still hadn’t begun. We needed a very long time, and we finished at a time in which something that we had started here years ago seems to be happening left and right, every week. We came to Berlin, went to Erika Hoffman (Sammlung Hoffmann) and asked her how she did it? We knew her from Cologne, and found it great. We always appreciated being her guests, and we asked her to explain how it worked, what we should do about fire safety, emergency exits etc. There was only her, no one else.

AL: If one looks at it now, it’s naturally considerably more impressive than some of the other presentations – simply also because the space is so fantastic, because the works are so well installed.

CB: Yesterday, some people were here who said that it was extraordinary that I had invited so many artists to make site-specific works. However, these are all old things that I have, and the fact that they fit so well is because the artists are my friends and they installed them themselves. If the Olafur (Eliasson) sphere sits so well, then this is because he installed it himself; and then it’s exactly as it should be. Or Anselm (Reyle) installed things here; for instance, he changed the light for his area. The fact that everything fits so well is also the result of trust, of the friendship I share with the artists; and they did this and took responsibility for what they got me into at some point by selling me the things. And the second point is that, here, we only have one-man shows. There is therefore one artistic position per room and not some sort of curatorial mishmash.

AL: But you also curate.

CB: I don’t curate, I host; there is a big difference. It would be curating if I made relations between three artists or something like that. I invite the artists over and ask them where they want to put the things that they sold me. Therefore, I’m a host and not a curator.

AL: But these relations definitely still exist. How did you select the artists who are now part of this presentation? It’s the first in a series and there should be a yearly change, if I understood correctly.

CB: Actually, there won’t be a yearly change, because I noticed that if I take down the presentation after a year, only about 1000 people will have seen it. But I get 400 emails a day from people who want to see it. That would be irresponsible. It will therefore be a bit longer than a year. But to come back to the question of what one sees here: one sees a small part of the collection. And these are things that deal with the space. We have been working on this place for five years and really fought with the space, room for room. Therefore, we have invited artists who respond to the space, who work with the specific conditions of the space, artists who work with light, because this is really a kind of darkroom. I’m looking forward to making a painting exhibition at some point, but now I would find it totally inappropriate just to string together a few canvases. At the beginning, it’s much more exciting just to grapple with the space.

AL: But you will show paintings?

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CB: Yes. I’m curious how it will work. This is all about trying different things. The spaces are clearly not made to accommodate art and I don’t know what it will look like when pictures hang here, but I’ll find out.

AL: This building is made to last. You don’t give it up in five years and say ...

CB: ‘That was that.’

AL: ‘Now we’ll build something else.’ Do you have long-term plans?

CB: I have two children. I seem to have made something here that is fairly permanent, which I can’t easily get rid of. So, as such, it will stay. But, fortunately, I still don’t know what will happen with the collection. If I knew, that would already be an end point around which I would know how everything is ordered. Then this would be almost a pharaoh’s tomb and I would only need a burial licence from the city. My dream isn’t for this to become a monument with buried treasures. I don’t know what will happen with it. This is what’s exciting and continues to keep me open. Perhaps I’ll get the desire to do something with the collection in a completely different place. It’s so big, that I’ll never get it together here. Nor do I think that I’m now at a point where I can say that these are my artists – or the famous fifteen years in which one collects good art and afterwards makes mistakes and can no longer get involved in anything. I want to keep it completely open. This not knowing where the journey is leading (although all this already looks so determined and finished): this is a great enrichment.

AL: One can hardly imagine the space being used for something different.

CB: After me, it will become an enormous potato cellar.

AL: This is unlikely. The place is permanent; you can’t change it so easily.

CB: You can no longer change anything here. Every change is a huge effort. More than the state it’s in now wouldn’t get planning permission. The building will stay, but the art, my God, perhaps a large part will at some point no longer be relevant. I don’t know. And it doesn’t interest me, because I really do it for now. I now have the great pleasure of sharing it.

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Olbricht Collection

Conversation with Collectors: Dr. Thomas Olbricht

Brian Poole

The fourth conversation with collectors features Jan Kage with Thomas Olbricht. The Olbricht collection is among the most comprehensive collections in Europe, containing works from the 16th to the 18th century and from the classic modern period as well as selected Art Nouveau objects and contemporary works by Eric Fischl, Franz Gertsch, Cindy Sherman, Marlene Dumas and Rachel Goodyear, among others.

Dr Olbricht, you’ve decided to call your new gallery the “me Collectors Room Berlin”. Here, the “me” is not the first person pronoun, but an abbreviation for “moving energies”. What can we expect to find at the “me Collectors Room”?

I’m looking forward to bringing the collection and my ideas to Berlin. The “me Collectors Room” is not a museum, not an exhibition hall, and not a private gallery. I would like our guests to experience an adventure with art. I’d like to introduce them to my world of art and to my peculiar ideas about art.

Coincidentally, there was still some space available in Berlin’s Auguststrasse. On one side of the property lies the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, with whom we have had an excellent relationship for years now; and on the other side there’s a sports field where young people can hang out. The space between them was available, and it just had to be filled up. That was it.

You’re planning not only to offer exhibition space, but also to have a café area and a shop that guests will enter even before they encounter the art.

We wanted to connect all the senses of enjoyment with each other – the sense of smell, of taste, but also of sight and hearing. With this long and narrow property we had no other choice but to do this from the street. You have to go to the back of the building to look at the art, and as you return you might wind up staying to drink a beer – perhaps even on the way in.

Your collection has paintings, photography and sculpture. In the middle of the 80s you started to collect post-bellum German art. How did you approach art?

I had already had considerable contact with art, although initially I didn’t have the financial resources that would allow me to collect it. When that began to change at the beginning of the 80s, I was at first attracted to the art close to home, the art from North Rhine-Westphalia. Georg Meistermann was one of the first artists I collected. Thereafter the collection developed dynamically – after the national came the international art.

What is your opinion on the appreciation in the value of art?Collecting always has something to do with money, and anyone who says anything else is blind to the facts. Once you have spent 25 years developing an eye for quality, you can’t just turn it off and say: let’s just let the heart do the talking. That’s

96 not how it works. I like to follow the development of young artists who appeal to me, particularly when their works touch me deeply.

So the contact with artists is important to you?

That’s something that develops over the course of a collector’s life. I used to be very concerned that, if I got to know the artists – and many of my collector colleagues want to do just that – I would no longer be able to judge their work objectively. Moreover, I am actually someone who is rather reserved. But that just won’t do in Berlin. And that’s what I’m going to have to change now.

You have a number of photographs by Cindy Sherman in your collection as well as a considerable number of prints by Gerhard Richter. When you are collecting, do you make a conscious attempt to obtain an entire phase of an artist’s work?

It’s a little like stamp-collecting. When I was still a kid I thought I could collect all the stamps in the world. I discovered I couldn’t. And it’s the same thing with artists. You may, for various reasons, have more works from one artist or another, but the idea behind that is not a complete collection.

You are soon going to be opening the “me Collectors Room” with an exhibition curated by Wolfgang Schoppmann entitled “Passion Fruits”. What are these fruits of passion?

When you exhibit a collection, particularly at a new location in a new building, you open your soul. I want to show my passion for art – to show that I have collected out of passion, and not with financial considerations in mind.

In one part of the building your “Wunderkammer Olbricht”, a cabinet of curiosities, is being featured as a permanent exhibit. Here you are showing the tusk of a narwhal and a portion of your stamp collection, among other things. The concept of a cabinet of curiosities extends back to the feudal tradition of collecting objects from all over the globe and exhibiting them to amaze and astonish others ...... Curiosity cabinets have existed since the renaissance. They were created after the discovery of the new world and the recognition that there were exotic animals, minerals and other such things outside of Europe that we had yet to see here. My own Wunderkammer with its sundry memento mori has rather become the heart of my collection.

You are planning to open the “me Collectors Room” to other private collections. Do you have any confirmed plans at the moment?

That is one wish I’d like to have come true. We are already negotiating with Antoine de Galbert and with Elgiz in Istanbul. The idea is to offer a mutual exchange. One international collector could exhibit his collection at the “me” in Berlin. After all, we are called “moving energies” also on account of the collectors who may perhaps come here someday.

When you walk into the exhibition rooms with their six metre high walls and the natural lighting, you can’t

97 avoid thinking of a museum. These days many museums harbour works from private collections. Wouldn’t the next logical step be for the collectors themselves to create museum-like rooms where they can share their passion with others?

No. The “me Collectors Room Berlin” will never be a museum, not even in the future. I think of it as a laboratory.

Thomas Olbricht, thank you very much for the conversation. We wish you success with your “me Collectors Room Berlin”.

Dr Dr Thomas Olbricht (born 1948) is a chemist, medical doctor and professor of endocrinology. He has been collecting art for 25 years. After curating several exhibitions, he will be opening the “me Collectors Room Berlin” on the 1st of May 2010 at Auguststrasse 68, 10117 Berlin-Mitte. Here you can see the permanent installation of Olbricht’s cabinet of curiosities – “WUNDERKAMMER OLBRICHT” – as well as the first exhibition “PASSION FRUITS picked from the Olbricht collection” curated by Wolfgang Schoppmann (running to 12 September 2010). www.me-berlin.com

Our moderator, the sociologist Jan Kage, alias Yaneq, hosts a talk show with artists and curators every Thursday evening at 7pm on “Radio Arty” at 100.6 MotorFM.

The fourth Conversation with Collectors took place on the 8th of April 2010 at the Bar Tausend in Berlin. You can listen to the unabbreviated version of the conversation as an audio file at www.kunstmagazin.de.

Public Collections

Hamburger Bahnhof The Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart was opened in 1996 as the new "museum for the present" of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, following a lengthy phase of reconstruction and conversion orchestrated by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues.

Built in 1847 as the terminal of the Hamburg-Berlin railroad line, and converted into a transport and building museum in 1906, the Hamburger Bahnhof – following more than four decades of dereliction in the aftermath of World War II – had now found a new calling within the association of state museums. As a museum for the present, the Hamburger Bahnhof's profile extends beyond the presentation of fine arts to encompass a range of aspects which have come to be associated with art in contemporary society, including media, everyday culture, discussions, music, performances, and readings.

It is appropriate to remember that the transformation of the Hamburger Bahnhof into a modern museum was largely due to a move by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – as owner of the building – to provide private collectors, in particular Erich Marx, with an interesting location in the new capital in which to show their collections. In return, Erich Marx placed his quality collection at the disposal of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the form of a long-term loan.

Outstanding ensembles by internationally acclaimed artists such as Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys provide the foundation of this collection, and, together with key works belonging to the Nationalgalerie and other museums, have played an integral part in exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof.

A major work by Joseph Beuys, Straßenbahnhaltestelle – Ein Monument für die Zukunft (“Tramstop – A Monument for the Future”), is exhibited in the center of the Historic Hall. Placed in the middle of a space designed specifically for it, this work, which is a second version of a sculpture created for the Venice Biennale in 1976, manifests an enigmatic appearance. Anselm Kiefer, who is best known for his large-scale sculptures and paintings, works the deep condemnations of German history into mythically-charged

98 material collages. Richard Long’s Berlin Circle, an earthwork on the floor at the end of the Historic Hall, endeavors to reinterpret nature through the archaic form of the circle and the materiality of the slate it employs, lending it strong meditative characteristics.

In the west wing, one encounters fragile sculptures by Rachel Whiteread that render the spatial force fields of everyday onjects visual. In their negative form, these works refer to the blocks comprising Unschlitt/Tallow. They were similarly based on a casting mold and were created by Joseph Beuys as an energetic heat reservoir.

Major works of American Pop Art are located on the upper floor of the west wing and in the Kleihues Hall: the so-called “Combine Paintings” by Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, and the bright, paraphrased works by Roy Lichtenstein refer to the close interweaving of everyday life and art after 1960.

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