Back to Homepage

 



 
 

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

An Exhibition from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar MFA Program
“Public Art and New Artistic Strategies”

 

 

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD
 

Angelica Baron // Vincent Brière // Vienne Chan // Rafaella Constantinou // Sophie Foster // Kathryn Gohmert // Anke Hannemann // Yihui Liu // Matthew Lloyd // Nasir Malekijoo // Mila Panić // YunJu Park // Mariya Pavlenko // Denise Rosero Bermudez // Feng Runze // Malak Yacout Saleh // Saša Tatić // Sze Ting Wong // Yi Weihua // Ina Weise
 

(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD is an artistic research project
by the MFA-Program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies / Kunst im öffentlichen Raum und neue künstlerische Strategien”,
Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
resulting in two exhibitions in Weimar/Buchenwald and in Berlin.

 

Curated by: Bojan Vuletić, Anke Hannemann, Ina Weise

Coordinated by: Jirka Reichmann

In cooperation with Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

EXHIBITION:
 

20 – 24 January 2017 | Opening 20 January @ 3:00pm

@ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Former Disinfection Hall

Weimar Opening Hours 10:00 am – 4:00 pm (closed on Monday)
 
 

27 – 29 January 2017 | Opening 27 January @ 7:00pm

With Live Performance by Vienne Chan

@ MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

Opening Hours: Sat & Sun: 1:00 – 7:00 pm
 

MASTERCLASS:

29 January 2017 @ 1:00 – 6:00pm
 

In Cooperation with Atsuko Mochida‘s BETHANIA Installation
@ Tokyo Wondersite, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

Artist & Curator Talks:

Clark Beaumont >> Artists
Marek Claasen >> Director, ArtFacts.Net
Amir Fattal >> Artist
Mark Gisbourne: Writer, Curator, Art Historian
Sharon Horodi >> Artist & Curator of Musraramix Festival and Art-ID Festival in Jerusaem
Elana Katz >> Artist
David Krippendorff >> Artist
Anne Maier >> Head of Press, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Angela Schneider >> Chief Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Retired)
Stephan von Wiese: Writer, Curator, Art Historian, Director of Contemporary Art, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (Retired)
Irina Yurna >> Trust for Mutual Understanding, Head of Berlin Office

 

WATCH HERE THE VIDEOS OF THE MASTERCLASS >>

 

Introduction:
 

(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD is a project of the Master of Fine Arts course of study Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar in cooperation with the Buchenwald Memorial. Between November 2016 and February 2017 an interdisciplinary art production facility has been established for the international students under the guidance of guest researcher Bojan Vuletić to artistically research the present-day significance of Buchenwald. Together with the artistic assistants Anke Hannemann and Ina Weise, MFA-program coordinator Jirka Reichmann, the cooperation partners, academic experts and the student body, an exhibition project within the Buchenwald Memorial has been devised which focuses on the presence and the absence of sound, language, and voice in relation to Buchenwald as a site. Composer, physicist and internationally renowned artist Bojan Vuletić, who takes great delight in experimenting between various fields of art and science, was invited as artistic director.

His broad scientific and musical education, his vast experience in leading interdisciplinary projects as well as his theatre work provides an excellent basis for this special project. Also outstanding is guest researcher Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch, who is responsible for the theory component of the course, and for the theoretical examination of this issue. As director of MOMENTUM – an internationally renowned platform for time-based-art, located within the Künstquartier Bethanien in Berlin – she made it possible for (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD to travel to Berlin after the initial exhibition in Weimar.

I want to express my gratitude to all the people and institutions who have been involved in making this exhibition project and publication possible. In particular, I would like to thank the Kreativfonds of Bauhaus University Weimar for their generous support.

Prof. Danica Dakić
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

Curatorial Statements:
 

Art does not stand apart from the world and its complicated histories. Art is always and inextricably of and about the world. There is no such thing as ‘pure’ art. To be a good artist, one must be a historian, a writer, a philosopher, an anthropologist, a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer, a detective, a poet, whose language is image and sound. The 18 works by 20 artists from 14 countries which comprise the exhibition (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD encompass an equal diversity of views built upon the personal experiences of a multiplicity of cultures by individuals who have come to the Bauhuas-Universität, Weimar, to continue their study of contemporary art in the MFA degree program Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. In coming to Weimar from Asia, the Middle East, North and South America, and across Europe, they encounter a living city built upon the most complex of paradoxes; the juxtaposition of some of the greatest minds and talents in the history of German art, culture, and politics – Goethe, Schiller, the founders of the Weimar Republic, and those of the Bauhuas – with the unspeakable legacy of the Holocaust in the form of the Buchenwald concentration camp within walking distance from the city center. Confronting these seemingly mutually exclusive layers of history, these artists are asked to address the universal truth of the Holocaust through the rarifying lens of personal understanding, through the breadth of their experiences, emotions, and senses – with a particular focus on the sense of sound, and its opposite, silence. The resulting works – encompassing video and audio installations, performance, photography, sculptural installation, sound sculpture, transcribed choreography, and conceptual works – all address the particular history of Buchenwald as a physical place alongside the communal history of the horrors it represents. These works address history through its echoes in the present; an auditory analogy which is used equally to express sound and memory.

Just as the artists in this exhibition translate their diversity of backgrounds and approaches into visual art, so too is the exhibition itself an act of translation. Opening first at a gallery in the former Disinfection Building in the Buchenwald Memorial, the exhibition subsequently travels to the MOMENTUM Gallery in Berlin, to be translated and re-formed within the context of another historic building: the Kunstquartier Bethanien. Originally a religious institution built as a hospital and school for nurses in 1847 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Bethanien remained an active hospital until 1970. Since that time, it fought off threats of demolition to turn itself into a cultural institution with a colorful history full of squatters and anarchists, punk concerts and citizens’ collectives, activists and artists who thrive there to the present day. Situated only a few meters away from the former path of the Berlin Wall, the Bethanien built around itself a cultural community at the apex of the divide between East and West. Divided no longer, Berlin nevertheless is inevitably defined by its paradoxical legacies of astounding cultural and scientific output alongside the horrors of the Third Reich and the repressive division which followed it.

Opening first at a gallery in the former Disinfection Building in the Buchenwald Memorial, the exhibition subsequently travels to the MOMENTUM Gallery in Berlin, to open on Holocaust Memorial Day. What will happen when we translate an exhibition made for the Buchenwald Memorial to the Kunstquartier Bethanien, a historic building perpetually reinventing itself? From former disinfection hall to former hospital; from a place of death to a locus of life; how will the works in the exhibition be altered through this new context?

This second iteration of (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD opens in parallel to the CTM Festival for Adventurous Music and Art in the Kunstquartier Bethanien. CTM is a major international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well to as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound culture. It takes place concurrently and cooperatively with the Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture. Together, the two festivals annually comprise one of the most important moments in Berlin’s art calendar. CTM 2017, entitled Fear Anger Love, is focused on a confrontation with emotion and sensation. Music and sound conjure emotions more intensely than most art forms, creating meaning while transcending language through felt physical experience. CTM 2017 opens with the words of Victor Hugo: “Music expresses that which cannot be said yet about which it is impossible to remain silent.” By the same token, (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD confronts the unspeakable legacy of the Holocaust, translating the impossibility of silence into works of sound art.

MOMENTUM is proud to present the second iteration of (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD, the translation of the exhibition from the Buchenwald Memorial in Weimar to Berlin’s Kunstquartier Bethanien and CTM Festival. MOMENTUM is a non-profit platform for time-based art, active worldwide since 2010, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM focuses on video, performance, new media, and sound, while continuously seeking innovative answers expanding an understanding of the question ‘What is time-based art?’. Through an active program of international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Initiative and Archive, and a growing Collection, MOMENTUM addresses the notion of time-based art in the context of both historical and technological development. Visual languages continue to evolve in concert with the technologies which drive them, and it is the role of visual artists to push the limits of these languages. As the world speeds up, and time itself seems to flow faster, MOMENTUM provides a program focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, by taking hold of the moment to explore how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change.

Having founded MOMENTUM in Australia as a parallel event to the 17 Biennale of Sydney, and built it up into a thriving international institution based in Berlin, it is my great privilege in 2016-17 to act as a Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. It has been a great pleasure to work with such a bright and talented group of artists on the realization of this exhibition. My thanks to all of them, and to the professors and staff of the MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies who have worked so hard to realize this far-reaching project.

 

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch
Founding Director, MOMENTUM
Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

THREADSUNS

Threadsuns
above the grayblack wastes.
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.

Paul Celan

Creating art in the context of the Holocaust seems impossible and futile. The genocide executed by Germany and its collaborators during the Third Reich leaves us devasted and speechless, and the systematic eradication and destruction of culture through facism and barbarism still echoes today. But these echoes need to be opposed by democratic means and rituals of commemoration – and art has always taken part in this struggle. The special project (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD within the postgraduate degree programme in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the BAUHAUS University in Weimar combines art works by 20 artists from 14 nations who are balancing between their subjective artistic ideas and the many responsabilities, rules and connotations that are involved when creating art in relation to the Buchenwald Memorial. It was essential to find different approaches to what has happened at the space of the former concentration camp: its perfidious system of oppression, human exploitation and destruction, its close ties to Weimar, its surroundings and the corruption of its humanistic cultural heritage.

The collective process started with a hike from the train station along the Blutstrasse of Weimar to Buchenwald. This was followed by a historical overview and a guided tour at the Buchenwald Memorial by Daniel Gaede. A week later historian Ronald Hirte conducted excavations at a war-era camp dump site together with the artists, who were finding relics such as remains of toothbrushes, shoe soles, crockery, barbed wire, tubes of tubepaste and a personal metal cross attached to fabric. With utmost sensitivity Daniel Gaede and Ronald Hirte managed to uncover political, historical and structural dimensions of the camp as well as traces of personal human tragedies. Guided tours and researches throughout Weimar and its Stadtarchiv opened views on how strongly the city was connected to Buchenwald.

Of course the lectures of this semester reflected the Shoah and art within its context. Within my lectures entitled SPEECHLESS AND UNHEARD I have focused on principles of silence and sound, correlated and uncorrelated noise, acoustics and architecture, the acts of speaking and listening in regards to artistic processes and the negative usage of sound.

Rachel Rits-Volloch covered in her theoretical lectures under the title EARS HAVE NO EYELIDS: ON THE SPECTATORSHIP OF SOUND the construction of memory and remembrance, theories of spectatorship and languages of perception as they relate to the Shoah and the socio-cultural site-specificity of the locus of Buchenwald. Anke Hannemann and Ina Weise compiled background research as well as application-oriented guidence in their practical lecture series.

In collaboration with the contemporary ACC Gallerie Weimar Amnon Barzel (the founding director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin) and artists like Nate Wooley, Naomi T. Salmon and the art collektiv Projekt Kaufhaus Joske offered different views on the corresponding subjects.

In different steps the artists developped visions for their works for (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD which finally embodied into concrete pieces. Parallely, the group exhibited at the museum in the former Disinfection Building of Buchenwald Concentration Camp and the MOMENTUM Gallery at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin were planned and curated together with the artists, the main challenge was being that of the composition of 18 very different art pieces are to function for each individual art work and the exhibition in its entirety.

I deeply thank Dr. Sonja Staar and Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch for their openness and helpfulness in the actual realization of the exhibitions, Daniel Gaede and Ronald Hirte for showing us how to look at Buchenwald in the most human way, the staff members Jirka Reichmann, Ina Weise and Anke Hannemann for the beautiful collaboration and each participating artist for their enormous effort and contribution to (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD.

 

Bojan Vuletić
Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

Featuring:
(Click on each artist’s name to see their bio and the work description below.)

 


 

 

 

WATCH HERE THE VIDEOS OF THE [UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD MASTERCLASS

Artist & Curator Talks:

Clark Beaumont >> Artists
Marek Claasen >> Director, ArtFacts.Net
Amir Fattal >> Artist
Mark Gisbourne: Writer, Curator, Art Historian
Sharon Horodi >> Artist & Curator of Musraramix Festival and Art-ID Festival in Jerusaem
Elana Katz >> Artist
David Krippendorff >> Artist
Anne Maier >> Head of Press, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Angela Schneider >> Chief Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Retired)
Stephan von Wiese: Writer, Curator, Art Historian, Director of Contemporary Art, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (Retired)
Irina Yurna >> Trust for Mutual Understanding, Head of Berlin Office

 


Clark Beaumont

Marek Claasen



Amir Fattal

Mark Gisbourne



Sharon Horodi

Elana Katz



David Krippendorff

Anne Meier



Angela Schneider

Stephan von Wiese



Irina Yurna

 
 

EXHIBITION PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Vincent Briere

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION