It looks comical: a whole collection of little red flags on a perfectly mown lawn. In search of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, who should be here somewhere in Münster working on her project for skulptur projekte münster 07, I am browsing around the city. ‘Am Kanonengraben’: this has to be it. Gonzalez-Foerster is nowhere to be seen, but it is the location that she has selected for her work – a tidy, sloping field of grass. It looks as though someone had been marking out an archaeological discovery. I have seen a drawing that explains what the flags are for: they indicate the places where Gonzalez-Foerster’s ‘mini-artworks’ will be. She has selected 39 works from the three previous editions of Skulptur Projekte Münster (1977, 1987 & 1997), along with several of this year’s projects, has had them reproduced in small format and is creating a new exhibition with them, a kind of city in miniature, a Madurodam of the Skulptur Projekte through the years.
From the highest point in the field, you look out over the Aasee, where you can still see some of the history of the Skulptur Projekte, in the form of Claes Oldenburg’s three Giant Pool Balls. They were installed here for the first exhibition in 1977 and still lie undisturbed – or sort of, because their cement surfaces are covered in dried, blue-grey slime and layers of graffiti. Very little is left of the original shock that the work must have generated when it was first installed. Oldenberg’s sculpture has become a sad relic, part of the profusion of urban furniture that nobody even sees.
Gonzalez-Foerster often punctuates the creation of environments and atmospheric ‘rooms’ in her work with references and quotations from other environments and periods. In Memory Gardens, for this year’s Skulptur Projekte Münster, she literally assumes the role of curator. Earlier in the day, I had spoken with Kasper König, who has been involved with the Skulptur Projekte from the beginning, and he praised the humour in Gonzalez-Foerster’s work. He called it a ‘romantic flashback’, in which several works from the history of the Skulptur Projekte were being assembled as a kind of artist’s collection of favourite objects. One could also look at it differently. Her bird’s-eye perspective means that she has stepped back from the event, literally and figuratively. She makes it small and insignificant, almost innocent. The Germans would say ‘harmlos’ – not exactly evidence of critical perspective.
Model: A Bird’s-Eye View
As an exhibition model, Skulptur Projekte Münster took on its definitive form in 1987, its second edition. What is immediately conspicuous about this model is that it always assimilates its own history. By re-inviting several of the same artists, each new Skulptur Projekte looks back on its own past. In a 1997 interview in Flash Art with Francesco Bonami, Kasper König explained, ‘I find it important that young artists are aware of the history of sculpture. For many young artists, the concept of sculpture is primarily an historical category.’[1]
Looking back is also an important principle in this year’s Skulptur Projekte. The first thing you notice from the list of the 37 projects is that four generations of artists are represented: from the 1970s, the 1980s, 1990s and now the new generation. The work of the American Michael Asher, the most controversial project in 1977, is now in its fourth ‘period’. Asher’s work will take the form of a camper van moving around the city, parking at different places, subtly exposing the city’s forgotten spaces and gaps. Asher did just that in 1977, when it was still a novelty that many found totally incomprehensible. He did it in 1987, when it fit into the Skulptur Projekte concept, which focussed on ortsbezug, the relationship between the work of art and its environment (in the sense of an expanded concept of site specificity, concerned with the environment as a geographical, political and social context). He did it in 1997, when it seamlessly absorbed itself into the festival atmosphere of countless other works investigating relational aesthetics. Now he is doing it again.
Gustav Metzger, famous in the 1960s for his auto-destructive art, is another familiar name on the list of invitees. Isa Genzken and Thomas Schütte, both of whom were here before, are also back. The work attracting the most attention, however, is by Bruce Nauman. It is called Square Depression, which for technical reasons could not be included back in 1977. It will be here this year, at exactly the location for which it was originally designed, an unused spot in front of the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Department of the University of Münster (WWM). It looks as though Kasper König might be trying to rectify a painful moment in the history of the exhibition.
Back in 1977, the first Skulptur Projekte Münster saw the light of day as a result of a debate that flared up when the installation of an important work by Henry Moore miscarried because the university refused to accept the donation. Instead of the Henry Moore, a kinetic sculpture by George Rickey was installed, and it met with hefty protest from the local population. Klaus Bußmann, conservator for the Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, decided to organize an exhibition around the history of modern sculpture, in order to teach the people of Münster something about the new concepts in sculpture. That museum exhibition was expanded with an outdoor project, for which Kasper König, then living in New York, invited the crème de la crème of the American avant-garde, including Michael Asher, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Claus Oldenburg and Richard Serra.
König is enthusiastic as he talks about it, but he avoids my question about what it really means now, 30 years after the fact, to realize a Bruce Nauman project proposal from 1977 in a totally changed urban context and art world. His answer is unflinching. ‘Bruce Nauman’s work has not lost any of its complexity,’ he says as he makes a sketch for me of how the work will look: a square cut into the ground, like an upside-down, blunted pyramid.
Model City
The second significant characteristic of Münster’s Skulptur Projekte is that artists are invited to design works specifically related to the political, geographic, and social context of the city. This had already been the project’s guiding principle back in 1977, but the concept only fully came into its own ten years later, when, well in advance of the exhibition, the artists were invited to Münster to select suitable locations in the city for which to plan their work.
In the 1997 Skulptur. Projekte in Münster catalogue, German art historian Walter Graskamp explained how history played a role in the fact that Münster, a conservative, provincial German city, could become the stage for a world-famous international exhibition.[2] Münster was largely destroyed during World War II and subsequently became an important symbol of Germany’s reconstruction. The schematic rebuilding of the city centre, which retained its historical relationships, was meant to be an ideal model for the reconstruction.
Clemens von Wedemeyer, one of this year’s artists, confirms that people refer to Münster as a model city. ‘Although it was a typical Graustadt (grey city) during the Nazi regime, Münster developed into an illustrative example for the post-war German Republic. This was reinforced in 2004, when Münster received the de LivCom Award as the best city to live in.’[3] In response to this, Von Wedemeyer has chosen a site close to the Münster train station: the abandoned Metropolis Cinema building. He wants to turn the cinema into a meeting place and film house that will connect the cinema’s semi-public space with the movement of travelling, the coming and going in the train station. In any case, to come back to the subject of Münster as a model city, there are clearly political motives underlying Münster’s fame as a model city. That much is certain.
What is now especially evident about the Skulptur Projekte is the fact that the exhibitions never had a centrally unifying theme or any theoretical orientation at all. In stark contrast to Roger M. Buergel and his team’s theoretically oversaturated and issue-laden documenta 12, and the art world’s total orientation towards theme exhibitions, Kasper König, with his intuitive working method revolving around the artists themselves, takes a lonely stand. In a 1997 interview, he said, ‘I think that if a curator adheres to a theme, it is often the case that he or she is manipulating, controlling, trying to make the artists subordinate to that theme…. It is much more interesting to remove the idea of the theme from the process, so that the artists themselves can be surprised by what they ultimately do.’[4] The fact that the exhibition is intentionally held once every ten years is an important factor. ‘It is only within such a long time span that substantial changes take place in art,’ according to König. He refused earlier requests to organize the exhibition every four years.
Festivals versus Micro-Politics
During the last two editions of the Skulptur Projekte, the capital of Westphalia served as a magnifying glass. Simply by bringing together artists, young and old, it led to a creative melting pot, which expanded and gave an agenda to the contemporary state of affairs of art in public space. Whether this will succeed again this year is a question that deserves to be looked at with some scepticism. In skulptur projekte münster 07 – Vorspann, a book that records the public discussions and a series of interviews with several of the participating artists, it is artist Andreas Siekmann, not the curators, who catalyzes the debate. With razor-sharp insight, he distinguishes the various relationships between urban space and art in the history of the Skulptur Projekte. In 1977, the focus was on the issue of site specificity. The 1987 exhibition popularized the discourse on art in public space. The emphasis lay on the function of art within the urban institutional context and the major role that artistic intervention was going to play in the new, aesthetic category. In 1997, the art responded to urban space as a social environment. In 2007, finally, according to Siekmann, art needs to be capable of showing how much public space has become a marketing phenomenon. As his starting point for his work for skulptur projekte münster 07, he is using the polyester mascots frequently seen in German cities, which are intended for promotion and urban marketing. Siekmann calls them Markedinger. He has had several produced as ‘mascots’ for the city of Münster, in order to subsequently smash them up and use the debris to make a sculptural installation for the famous Erbdrostenhof.
Siekmann is not the only artist calling attention to how obstacle-ridden the chasm is in which public art has fallen. Walter Grasskamp had already written about it ten years ago, for the 1997 Skulptur. Projekte in Münster catalogue. Art for public space is utilized to give a city regional or international status. Artists often either unscrupulously go along with the trend, or are insufficiently aware of the framework into whose hands they are playing. According to Grasskamp, a theory of public art based on that kind of conflict consequently loses its representative significance. ‘In public space, modern art can do nothing other than seek out conflict with passers-by and viewers, in order to avoid being misused as a kind of coulisse or decor for municipalities fixed on consumerism and public relations. Is it not the duty of art to make urban alienation tangible, and by doing so, expose public space as a political field of operations?’[5][please correct the Dutch, eliminate the [6] here and change the next note [7] to number [6]. Thanks…]
Are artists ready to turn that corner? Silke Wagner, a young German artist, is just such an example of someone attempting to ‘open up public space as a field of political machinations’. With Münsters Geschichte von unten (working title), she is literally turning the city’s political history to her advantage. In the city centre, she is installing a three-and-a-half-metre high statue of the anti-fascist, Paul Wulf (1921-1999). The sculpture is not only intended to honour Wulf, but will at the same time serve as a display for documentary material on Münster’s history as a left-wing city. In addition, Wagner is digitalizing material from the social movements archives at the Münster Umweltzentrum, or UWZ, in order to use it on the website for her project. According to Wagner, art is in a position to demonstrate the new images and models as alternatives for the aesthetics of commerce and consumerism, ‘because every use of public space attracts attention and can serve as a springboard for political process’.[6]
Eva Meyer and Eran Schaerf are working on the film project, Sie könnte zo Ihnen gehoren (working title), in which they will use scenes from famous films set in Münster, including Alle Jahre wieder by Ulrich Schamoni, Desperate Journey by Paul Walsch and Zwischen Hoffen und Bangen by Siegfried Gumpich. They are mixing this existing film material with newly shot film of Münster, tracing the visual development of the city in order to ask what makes a particular location specific and how we, in the way we think, make sites out of cities and cities out of sites.
History from the Bottom
These last two micro-political examples do not mask the fact that König’s idea of exhibitions without theme or concept, in which the artists themselves are the centre of focus, is not a very critical one. No public event, and hence not that in Münster, can avoid the urban issues mentioned above. The curators, however, are stoical. During a discussion on marketing and urban politics, fellow curator Carina Plath commented, ‘Marketing, the fact that a city always appears as a kind of trademark in the context of an integrated marketing strategy, is something that we are indeed confronted with, and it does influence the Skulptur Projekte. There is no point in fighting against that.’
Kasper König also seems little concerned with the changing position of public art. In his conversation with me, he listed the most important characteristics of this edition of his exhibition as reflecting on history, the use of new media, including film and video, and Vermittlung, or education. It is an approach demonstrating very little critical incisiveness. There is, of course, nothing wrong with an exhibition having an historical orientation, and breaking away from current trends in theoretical frameworks or themes can even have a refreshing effect, but only when it is a consciously chosen strategy. I cannot escape the impression that this exhibition is marching on with rather too much self-gratification with its illustrious past and that it is not taking sufficient account of the changes in time that also affect the exhibition itself.
What can work such as that of Michael Asher still mean today, now that we have explained it all so well and so thoroughly lamented what it is all about? Will anyone still make a fuss about it, or even notice it is there? Where is the critical perspective? It all sounds a little too casual, including the way the curators defend the fact that all the artists are from Europe or the United States. Reminded of this Eurocentrism, they stated that they had travelled around a good deal, but there was no cause for them to select candidates from outside those borders.
The result is that skulptur projekte münster 07 still seems to be looking backwards, obsessed with its own past. This is unfortunate, because without an up-to-date, animated and sharply-honed context for the exhibition, which, as Grasskamp described it, ‘makes urban alienation tangible, and thereby opens public space as a political field of manoeuvre’, this exhibition, once such a guiding light, will be little more than a pleasant afternoon of looking at art, perfectly attuned to the modern rules of city marketing.
skulptur projekte münster 07, 17 June-30 September, 2007, www.skulptur-projekte.de.
Notes
- Francesco Bonami, ‘Skulptur Projekte, Muenster 1997: An interview with Kasper König, curator’, Flash Art, no. 75, March-April, 1997.
- Walter Grasskamp, ‘Kunst und Stadt’, in the exhibition catalogue Skulptur.Projekte in Muenster 1997. Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1997.
- ‘Sabine Huzikiewitz im Gespräch mit Clemens von Wedemeyer’, skulptur projekte münster 07 – Vorspann. Cologne: Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2007, p. 153.
- ‘Munster ‘97 Sculpture Projects’, Sculpture Magazine, November 1997, p.36.
- Op. cit., note 2. See also: H. Häußermann,W. Siebel, ‘Festivalisierung der Stadtpolitik. Stadten-twicklung durch große Projekte’, Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, no. 13 1993, Westdeutscher Verlag; and: Inez Boogaarts, ‘Festivalisering van de stad. Een poging tot ontmythologisering’, article in Dutch available on the Internet:
www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dnpp/pp/d66/idee/1706/p17_604.pdf . In the Netherlands, this problem has been investigated by Jeroen Boomgaard, lecturer on art in public space. He argues that art in public space is too often employed as part of the combined public and private urban development processes, in which the effects of the art are far too specifically defined. He defends a new, radical form of autonomy in which art can extricate itself from the primacy of the market economy. See Jeroen Boomgaard, ‘Radicale autonomie. Kunst ten tijde van procesmanagement’, Open, no. 10 (In)tolerantie. Vrijheid van meningsuiting in kunst en cultuur, 2006. - ‘Matthias Koddenberg im Gespräch mit Silke Wagner’, skulptur projekte münster 07 – Vorspann. Cologne: Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2007, p. 13.
Opening
