Deutsch
English
Background information
"'Thingstätten' were built between 1933 and 1936 as propagandistic open-air stages and meeting places for National Socialism. 400 were planned, about sixty were built, many of which can still be found today in Germany, Poland and Russia.
The interdisciplinary art project 'Thingstätten' documented in this volume developed from a series of questions about contemporary art beginning in 2012. A second question arose from the importance of national identities, and, for me, specifically Germans. For most of the (inter)national artists:inside, the topic of 'Thingstätten' was completely new. The motivation to participate in this diverse group in age, nationality and gender was quite different. Some concepts are biographical, others are based on a joy of discovering the unknown. All, however, relate, in different ways, to the haunting formal language of the Thing sites and how we interact with them today. The resulting projects fall into either the realm of 'artistic documentary photography' or 'free art'.
The texts in the volume are written in three languages: English, German, and Polish.
Content
This book, 'Thingstätten: Von der Bedeutung der Vergangenheit für die Gegenwart' (Thing Sites: The Significance of the Past for the Present), brings together the work of 23 international artists and scholars who have gone in search of traces of these little-known historical sites. Art and documentation, text and image enable an interdisciplinary and pluralistic examination of the significance of the past for the present.
The documentary photography (white pages) depicts the place in an authoritative way, with as much creative independence as possible. It does not add staged content, but refers to the real conditions on site.
The art projects (gray pages) from the fields of performance, illustration and installation are freer in the degree of staging, transfer and abstraction. All motifs are grouped geographically and are complemented by historical imagery." (lightly adapted text, © Katharina BOSSE, 2020)
About participating artists
Katharina BOSSE, Rebecca Budde de Cancino, Doug Fitch, Jan Merlin Friedrich, Jakob Ganslmeier, Andrea Grützner, Rebecca Hackemann, Konstantin Karchevskiy, Hendrik Lüders, Daniel Mirer, Felix Nürmberger, Ralph Pache, Abhijit Pal, Philipp Robien, Jewgeni Roppel, Simon Schubert, Kuno Seltmann, Erica Shires, Thomas WREDE.
Photo books by participating artists