It’s the lack of space that unites all subcultures in metropolitan areas.
Es ist der Mangel an Raum, der alle Subkulturen in den Großstädten vereint.
Hello welcome to art 2023
In the following we, Francisca Markus and Laura Schneider talk about the concept and process behind.
Conserving a long walk is a collaborative work created and realized by Jasmin Hantl, Lola Bott, Liza Beutler, Ai-Nhu Vo, Tina Henkel and curated by us. For this year's ZUS Art part we have decided not to organize a group exhibition with individual positions, but to look at the process of an exhibition from a different, collective starting point.
Our goal was to create an environment where artists could connect with each other. They should work together as a temporary collective to conceive a work. For this purpose we invited artists whose working methods and artistic processes we highly appreciate. Our intention was to bring together a diverse group of individuals from different disciplines. By exchanging ideas among themselves, they were to develop an interactive work that visitors to the ZUS Fest would be able to experience. In doing so, the process of creation was to be revealed.
Since this work is created and shown in the context of the ZUS Fest, the context of the appropriation of space, through skate culture in public space, is very important to us. So we thought about a concept through which the invitees together observe, experience, appropriate space, and position themselves in it through an artistic work.
Questions we asked ourselves in advance:
How can we conceive of exhibition spaces as social spaces in which interactions happen, and which are based primarily on interactions?
How is a working process designed to function as a social encounter?
In what way does one appropriate places as an artist without directly intervening in that place?
What can a collective (temporary) appropriation of space mean for the artistic working process?
What forms of (temporary) space appropriation can be undertaken collectively, without extra effort or equipment, and without crossing real inhibition thresholds?
It was important to us that this working process as well as the final work can be arranged flexibly in order to take into account the time capacities of the participants.
We were interested in the form of the collective walk as an initiation of a collective, as the beginning of an encounter, and as a direct exploration of local occurrences.
In early August, the collaborative work process began over a long weekend.
On this we took a long walk, visiting various places around the exhibition venue PARKS on the Elbe island in Hammerbrook.
These places together form a superficial cross-section of qualities/characteristics through which we tried to approach the district.
On the long walk, the first thing was to relate to the places visited and to develop a feeling about them and document it. Afterwards these impressions were exchanged with each other, and remained for the time being only expressed and not evaluated.
The visited places left lasting impressions, pleasant as well as unpleasant feelings.
What can, and does one want to add or take away here, in a place that already exists and functions for itself?
At what point does such a gesture become intrusive, instructive, arrogant?
What can an artistic appropriation of space mean for those who occupy the space, for those who are familiar with the place, for those who live or work in this place?
A day later, at a picnic at PARKS, these questions were addressed and the work was formulated.
The blackberries that grow next to the PARKS site were to be cooked into jam and offered as a jam sandwich at the festival. For this purpose, the participants conceived works on the various places, which were formulated by them as a reaction, description, discussion, and research on the individual places visited.
However, the blackberry jam could not be cooked as planned. After talking to Julia from PARKS, it turned out that the soil of the Elbe island is unfortunately contaminated with lead, among other things.
All plants, fruits and vegetables growing on this soil are therefore poisonous and not edible in quantities. In fact, edible are only those that, as in the case of the PARKS site, where vegetables and fruits are cultivated above a cellar-like construction, which is filled with tons of sand and soil.
The original idea of dealing with forms of appropriation of space thus became a question of material, because of course no polluted jam should be offered.
Nevertheless, it should be blackberries to approach this place in its materiality.
Therefore, the group decided to collect blackberries from other places in Hamburg and to boil down some of these berries to jam on site, on the PARKS premises. To find berries, the group used the platform Mundraub.de, which, by the way, does not display berries in the PARKS area. mundraub.de, according to its own statement, is "a platform for the discovery and use of edible landscapes."
Thus, the participating artists collected blackberries together and also alone in various places in Hamburg, and brought them together to boil them down together.
Conserving a long walk consists of: 95 jars of jam, a video work, 6 audio works one of which is linked to a textile work, and a sewn canopy, as well as materials found on the PARKS grounds, such as a picnic bench and a small kiosk.
Each jam jar on display is tagged with a QR code that, when scanned, directs the viewer to a website created specifically for this work.
The audio and video works again take us on many more walks and explore this area around the PARKS site. They take us to these places and preserve perceptions, experiences, views, encounters.
The website is designed bilingual by ourselves. We didn't want language to become an exclusion mechanism, especially in a place where maybe not everyone speaks English.