Theres no business like Shoa business

There is a long tradition in Germany focusing on Holocaust, WWII and postwar radical leftwing terror as part of an ongoing never-ending struggle with the legacy of fascist history and its consequences. documenta provided space for second and third generation discussions on this topic. Close to Kassel, the former monastery Breitenau is a site full of historical, institutional and architectural changes over the past 150 years, prominently represented by nazi- and later postwaroppression. Breitenau served as both topic and location for several works. Some of the following works are obsessed not only with the oppression and imprisonment of victims, but also with a very problematic process of forgetting and hiding away them and everything related to it, thus discussing the use and aim of historical memorials in general. Other works on this topic are To Be Corrected Abstracts for a Hrspiel, a radio play by Lvia Pldis about Breitenau, but also Judith Hopf and Horst Hoheisel can be said to work with commemoration and anti-monument.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

There is a long tradi/on in Germany focusing on Holocaust, WWII and postwar radical le<-wing terror as part of an ongoing never-ending struggle with the legacy of fascist history and its consequences. documenta provided some space for second and third genera/on discussions on this topic. Close to Kassel, the former monastery Breitenau is a site full of historical, ins/tu/onal and architectural changes over the past 150 years, prominently represented by nazi- and later postwar-oppression. Breitenau served as both topic and loca/on for several works. Some of the following works are obsessed not only with the oppression and imprisonment of vic/ms, but also with a very problema/c process of forgeKng and hiding away them and everything related to it, thus discussing the use and aim of historical memorials in general. Other works on this topic are To Be Corrected Abstracts for a Hrspiel, a radio play by Lvia Pldis about Breitenau, but also Judith Hopf and Horst Hoheisel can be said to work with commemora/on and an/-monument.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

Gunnar Richter was the rst to uncover and inves/gate historical facts related to the former monastery and prison Breitenau in 1981, located ca twenty miles south of Kassel along the River Fulda. During his inquiries he found evidence of the monastery being used as a hidden prison and labor educa/on camp 1933-1945, also involving execu/ons by the GeStaPo. During the Nazi era, communists, socialists, dissidents, Jewish people, and 7,000 foreign workers were imprisoned there. A<er the war, Breitenau was used as a reformatory for troublesome girls un/l 1973. Today, it houses the memorial Breitenau and a residen/al treatment facility for the mentally ill.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16tUdXpTKAU (dOCUMENTA (13) "Erinnern an Breitenau" von Gunnar Richter)

Richters research, eld study and interview series were published and he produced a commented slide show on the subject rst shown at Documenta 7, eventually leading to declare the monastery a memorial site. The slide show named Spurensicherung (Crime Scene Inves/ga/on or securing of evidence) reenacts his research step by step. The slide show contains 100 slides featuring 2 voices from a journalist and personal researchers perspec/ve. The slideshow was shown in a wooden cabin very unlike other monuments memorials of similar topics.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljw2uQbsodw (Momenta 100 | (047) Breitenau | documenta 13) Momenta 100 is the exhibition about the exhibition - an exhibition for moments. Momenta 100 is 100 days of lm.

Gunnar Richter is not an Ar/st but co-founder and Director of the Breitenau Memorial Museum in Guxhagen, close to Kassel. Richter was awarded a doctorate for his study about the labor educa/on camp Breitenau and he has published regularly. Adopted as an artwork the research provided in Spurensicherung is fundamental to the understanding of other works, mainly because it supplies factual knowledge, almost a history of imprisonment. But also because it connects the documenta even closer to Kassels forgohen/hidden history. And nally because this work connects with d13s agenda of involving thinkers and academic and scien/c research.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

The Workhouse: Room 2 http://averygordon.net/index.php?/current-projects/ workhouse-room-2/ Avery to Ines (Sound recording) Re: diary fragment and correspondence between two men who attended the 1929 Vagabond Congress

The Workhouse: Room 2 deals mostly with the Breitenau monastery being used as a reformatory for troublesome girls un/l 1973, but includes several historical periods, narra/ves and traces to correc/on, reeduca/on and imprisonment of all kinds of people considered extraneous and disposable. The work consists of audio sta/ons featuring recordings of wrihen lehers from imprisoned people. Opposite to the sta/ons divided by a white transparent curtain, several photographies and text assemblages leaning towards the showroom window were posi/oned featuring some historical or imagined sites near Breitenau. The work is opening for a dialogue with hidden and forgohen people, places and items over /me.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

Some notes for the making of Room 2 are published in Notes for the Breitenau Room of The Workhousea Project by Ines Schaber and Avery Gordon/Notizen fr den Breitenau-Raum von The Workhouseein Projekt von Ines Schaber und Avery Gordon. No. 041 in the series 100 Notes100 Thoughts. Kassel: documenta (13) and Hatje Cantz Verlag (2011). http://www.averygordon.net/index.php?/writing-prison/ notes-for-breitenau-workhouse/ http://www.hatjecantz.de/documenta13/en/notebooks/ index.html?book=2890

Schaber/Gorden create a contempla/ve space full of tes/monies and fugi/ve stories silenced by headphones and ltered by a symbolic curtain/wall that resembles an archive of voices. Their work is claimed to be an ongoing archive of re-memory and might con/nue in other contexts. () For in bringing these troubling ideas, their makers, and their users into its walls, the prison connes or encloses within itself the very ideas it is designed to silence or make invisible. In this way, the prison becomes a repository, an archive, or a document of a fugi/ve knowledge that haunts it. (...) Room 2 presents glimpses and traces of this fugi/ve knowledge as it emerges in and around the place where it was wrongly presumed to have been safely isolated and contained.()


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UBv_zKcl3Y (Momenta 100 | (030) Anna an Ludwig | documenta 13) The audio recordings/stories are composed as a relay race of voices, together they span over past, present and not yet of the Workhouse project.

The audio recordings/stories are composed as a relay race of voices, together they span over past, present and not yet of the Workhouse project.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

Clemens von Wedemeyer on 3Sat: http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/lm/news/festivals/ 163030/index.html http://kunstundlm.de/2012/07/clemens-von-wedemeyer

Muster/Rushes exists in two versions: as a feature-lm for TV and as a triangular mul/screen lm installa/on, each giving a parallel view on the same historic place. The cinema/c narra/ve deals with 3 historical periods of Breitenau reec/ng the architecturally enclosed, yet historically consistent func/onal changes Breitenau was subject to and is presented in special-built simultaneous sets.

Gunnar Richter (Historian)

Spurensicherung, 1981 at Karlsaue Park

Ines Schaber (Artist) & Avery F. Gordon (Sociologist)

The Workhouse: Room 2, 2012 at Handwerkskammer, Scheidemannplatz 2

Clemens von Wedemeyer (Artist, Filmmaker)

Muster/Rushes, 2012 at Hauptbahnhof

While researching his contribution for dOCUMENTA (13), artist Clemens von Wedemeyer came across the lm script for Ulrike Meinhofs lm Bambule. Frsorge Sorge fr wen? (Bambule: Care Care for Whom?), with handwritten notes and drawings by director Eberhard Itzenplitz, who worked with her on the realization of the lm for a television channel. No. 092 in the series 100 Notes100 Thoughts. Kassel: documenta (13) and Hatje Cantz Verlag (2011). http://www.hatjecantz.de/controller.php? cmd=detail&titzif=00002941

While researching his contribu/on for dOCUMENTA (13), ar/st Clemens von Wedemeyer came across the lm script for Ulrike Meinhofs lm Bambule. Frsorge Sorge fr wen? (Bambule: Care Care for Whom?), with handwrihen notes and drawings by director Eberhard Itzenplitz, who worked with her on the realiza/on of the lm for a television channel. However, the broadcast, scheduled for May 1970, was cancelled because the journalist and later co-founder of the RAF had disappeared into the terrorist underground ten days earlier. () When the lm was nally broadcast twenty-four years later, the social landscape had been fundamentally transformed. The screenplay closes the temporal gap and bears witness to the discussions held among those involved.


From the lm Muster/Rushes, 2012 by Clemens von Wedemeyer

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Each part is set in its own /me frame (1945, 1973, 1990) linked together by the same /me-traveling main character ac/ng in dierent roles. In the 1990 story August and Amelie visit Breitenau as the memorial during a class trip, while their lives are dominated by lethargy, music and drugs. On the second screen in 1945 during the bahle of Kassel american soldiers are libera/ng the inmates, helped by a translator. The third and most complex screen features Amelie both in character as an imprisoned reformatory girl in the 1970s and as an actress during the making of the same lm reminiscent of Ulrike Meinhofs Bambule. Meinhofs lm whos TV-play cri/que of prison-like condi/ons in ins/tu/ons like Breitenau eventually led to the closing the monastery in 1973, appear only as a rumor among cast and crew. All three lm loops cut into each other, by means of visual eects, the overlapping soundtracks and the main actress in dierent characters. The 3 acts of Muster/Rushes circle around 3 mo/fs: music, body and language, exploring libera/on in dierent historical and storytelling /mes.

Ulrike Meinhofs Bambule

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Wedemeyer came across the lm script for Ulrike Meinhofs Bambule. Frsorge Sorge fr wen? (Bambule: Care Care for Whom?), with handwrihen notes and drawings by director Eberhard Itzenplitz, who worked with her on the realiza/on of the lm for a television channel. However, the broadcast, scheduled for May 1970, was cancelled because the journalist and later co-founder of the RAF had disappeared into the terrorist underground ten days earlier. Bambule is a jargon expression for the drumming against doors and furniture in correc/on referring to revolu/on, resistance and riots, originally taken from an african dance Bamboula, accompanied by drums.

Susan Hiller
Die Gedanken sind frei, 2012 at Neue Galerie, Cafs

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A dierent approach to the memorial, collec/ve recollec/on and the aesthe/cs of memory is Susan Hillers jukebox, claimed to be the soundtrack for the 100 days of the documenta 13. This personal collec/on of popular songs searches for a social-historical consciousness in its audience. An accessible, incomplete and interac/ve archive of songs haunted by their past, Die Gedanken sind frei (Thoughts are free) relies on familiarity with unforgehable tunes. On each side of the jukebox at Neue Galerie one could sit back with headphones and listen to the songs played back. Anybody could choose and add songs to the ongoing playlist, while at the same /me reading the lyrics on the surrounding walls or reading in a fanzine-like magazine with texts and graphical references to the songs and historical /mes.

Susan Hiller
Die Gedanken sind frei, 2012 at Neue Galerie, Cafs

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Susan Hiller: In Die Gedanken sind frei, voices of dead and living singers present themselves as technological ghosts, [...] captured in a heterogenous collec/on of popular songs in dierent languages. Cri/cizing, commemora/ng, mourning, celebra/ng, mocking and narra/ng 100 dierent points of view, the songs represent (...) opinions and experiences of many people, from the Peasants revolt to the recent revolu/ons in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, from the Suragehes to the par/sans of WWII, from the Warsaw Gheho to American civil rights movement. (...) The various responses and posi/ons of audience members are the works focus. Die Gedanken sind frei is a German protest song da/ng back to 1524 and became widely known in connec/on with the White Rose and other ant-Nazi movements.

The artist as scientist as archivist as fool

The maniac artist, the mad professor, and the fool - a series of personas used by some artists working at the intersection of science, art and fairy tale. Fueled with scientific and artistic knowledge and mixed with stubborn foolishness the clich of a male modernist genius becomes a critical position in its own right. The artists attempt to transcend time, archive life or to make dreams come true can nothing but generate failure, fiasco and almost farce. Artists and thinkers find themselves acting in the present on stage / under siege / in a state of hope / on retreat according to Christov-Bakargiev. With self-iconical and selfironical gestures there is a certain feeling of on stage to these artists, but a stage far off the main sites, in an ancient future or a futuristic past.

Erkki Kurenniemi (Electronic artist, scientist)

Self-archive, ongoing & featuring in The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 at Orangerie

Mika Taanila (Artist)

The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 at Orangerie

Nedko Solakov (Artist)

Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 at Brder-Grimm-Museum

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The maniac ar/st, the mad professor, and the fool - a series of personas used by some ar/sts working at the intersec/on of science, art and fairy tale. Fueled with scien/c and ar/s/c knowledge and mixed with stubborn foolishness the clich of a male modernist genius becomes a cri/cal posi/on in its own right. The ar/sts ahempt to transcend /me, archive life or to make dreams come true can nothing but generate failure, asco and almost farce. Ar/sts and thinkers nd themselves ac/ng in the present on stage / under siege / in a state of hope / on retreat according to Christov-Bakargiev. With self-iconical and self-ironical gestures there is a certain feeling of on stage to these ar/sts, but a stage far o the main sites, in an ancient future or a futuris/c past.

Erkki Kurenniemi (Electronic artist, scientist)

Self-archive, ongoing & featuring in The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 at Orangerie

Mika Taanila (Artist)

The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 at Orangerie

Nedko Solakov (Artist)

Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 at Brder-Grimm-Museum

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A former student of mathema/cs, theore/cal physics, philosophy and nuclear physics, Erkki Kurenniemi founded the electronic music studio for the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki in 196162. Working on media art, happenings, and short lms, Kurenniemi also built several electronic musical instruments for himself and for others, such as Ralph Lundsten, Osmo Lindeman, and M. A. Numminen. In the early 1970s he developed a series of digital synthesizers, called DIMI.

Erkki Kurenniemi (Electronic artist, scientist)

Self-archive, ongoing & featuring in The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 at Orangerie

Mika Taanila (Artist)

The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 at Orangerie

Nedko Solakov (Artist)

Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 at Brder-Grimm-Museum

A reprint of diary pages from October 1980 by Erkki Kuriennemi (b. 1941), nuclear physicist turned artist and protagonist of electronic music in Finland whose work refutes, with a radical imagination, the common place that bases technology in frigid thought and loss of sensuality. http://www.hatjecantz.de

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A reprint of diary pages from October 1980 by Erkki Kuriennemi (b. 1941), nuclear physicist turned ar/st and protagonist of electronic music in Finland whose work refutes, with a radical imagina/on, the common place that bases technology in frigid thought and loss of sensuality. Over decades, Kurenniemi built up an archive comprised of photographs, oppy discs and harddrives, hundreds of video and audiotapes as well as dozens of notebooks, like the one presented here.


From the lm The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 by Mika Taanlia

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Erkki Kurenniemi (Electronic artist, scientist)

Self-archive, ongoing & featuring in The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 at Orangerie

Mika Taanila (Artist)

The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 at Orangerie

Nedko Solakov (Artist)

Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 at Brder-Grimm-Museum

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Mika Taanila is a documentary and experimental lmmaker whose work reects on utopian futuris/c scenarios - seen from the past. His interest in technological evolu/ons and futuris/c visions occurs at the intersec/on of art and science. Mixing historical and experimental approaches in both architectural, design and electronic music projects his work is o<en both nostalgic and scien/c. Taanila has par/cipated in numerous interna/onal lm fes/vals and group exhibi/ons, such as the Shanghai Biennale (2006), the Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta 7 (2002), and the Istanbul Biennial (2001).


From the lm The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 by Mika Taanlia

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The lm The Most Electried Town in Finland, shown at the Western Orangerie Pavillion inside the Kassel museum of science history, is a three-channel video installa/on about the construc/on of the Olkiluoto Power plant in South-West Finland, the rst nuclear plant built a<er Chernobyl and the most powerful. Images outside and inside the gigan/c construc/on are shown on three screens, many shot in /me-lapse recordings, cut against landscapes and scenes from everyday life in the town of Eurajoki, known as being in total favor for building the plant.

Erkki Kurenniemi (Electronic artist, scientist)

Self-archive, ongoing & featuring in The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, 2002 at Orangerie

Mika Taanila (Artist)

The Most Electried Town in Finland, 2004-2012 at Orangerie

Nedko Solakov (Artist)

Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 at Brder-Grimm-Museum
Website with 3D-tours and video extras: http://nedkosolakov.net/content/knights_and_other_dreams/ index_eng.html

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Nedko Solakovs mul/-media mul/-story work takes on the posi/on and persona of a fool or joker, or more correctly, a jester. His work perfectly blends into the Brothers Grimm Museum, which creates a fairy tale surrounding for the sloppy and tragicomical realiza/on of his childhood dreams: becoming a knight, learning to play the drums and to y. Solakov has created a mul/-layered fairy-tale installa/on consis/ng of texts, pain/ngs, drawings, lms, photographs, and custom-made knights armor around the myth of knighthood. His naivis/c and absurdist steps in trying to fulll his mission, each documented on a video diary basis and commented with hand-wrihen status notes, follows a road of constant trial and error, and nally results in a meltdown of all dreams combined into one. Solakovs alter egos operate with human fear, neuroses and anxie/es, and uncover the knights fantasy world sideways. hhp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester


From Knight (and other dreams), 2010-2012 by Nedko Solakov

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While produced in a lo- almost un-cut style (except for the nal drumming videos on stage) Solakovs episodic storytelling is moving from real to c/onal to fake; the drama in which Solakov plays all the main characters, is challenging a documenta visitors suspension of disbelief. While playfully ironic and with a subversive eastern european (bulgarian) sense of humor, always ready to make a fool of himself, Solakov at the same /me catches revealing glimpses of ancient patriarchal power structures at work in the knights realm. In the end he suggests that some dreams should remain dreams.