The Werksviertel may be behind the Ostbahnhof. In the ranking of vibrant districts in Munich, however, it ranks very high. Not just at the entrance to the Container Collective, everywhere it’s squirting and squirming, even though construction is still going on in a number of places. One of the largest brownfield sites awaiting development lies behind the Ferris wheel and is surrounded by an unsightly site fence. One day the new concert hall will be here. Maybe. When Söder has declared the “pause for thought” prescribed for the city society to be over and has come to the conclusion that the concert hall should really be built on the property that has long been leased for this purpose.
Until then, however, there is still a gap in the density of the new district – and a concert hall is threatened with silence even before it has really started to sound. The curators Angela Stauber, Martina Taubenberger and Tomaz Kramberger from the Werksviertel Mitte Kunst want to counter this with the series “Spek/trum. The city as a resonance body”. They asked themselves how much resonance the Werksviertel can withstand as an urban space and how much space a city leaves for artists and society as a whole. In nine temporary, mostly site-specific works and three performances, the invited artists want to pursue this question. Most of it is already there, only the Afghan Sara Shokriyan is still stuck in Pakistan because of bureaucratic hurdles and hopes to be able to implement her contribution on the spot before the end of the exhibition.
Even if art and culture are written into the foundations of the Werksviertel-Mitte like in a DNA – just think of the early days of the Kunstpark Ost with all the clubs, bars, graffiti and creative people who had their home here – the density can also become a problem. Works of art are then disregarded by visitors as bicycle racks, by passers-by as seating furniture, and by party-goers as beer tables. But that’s how public space is. Where everything can become a stage, from the facades to the stairwells, the gastronomy, commercial areas and hotels to the underground car park, art has to assert itself. Often subversive, often ironic, sometimes marginal and casual.
Mischa Kuball’s writing installation “Dys(U)Topia” lights up alternately “Finished” …
(Photo: Mirko Schuetz)
… and “Unfinished” in the Werksviertel Mitte.
(Photo: Mirko Schuetz)
And that is exactly what characterizes the Spectrum series, which is a continuation of last year’s “Spatial Grabbing” exhibition. You often have to look or listen twice. As in Lia Sáile’s writing and sound installation “All Days Tomorrow”: In the underground car park, she plays loud everyday noises from Iraq, Ukraine and Afghanistan and thus counteracts the existing concept, in which the sound system normally uses birdsong to create a feel-good atmosphere. On a rear building she has installed the relief “Everyday Life”, which consists of characters in German, Ukrainian, Arabic, Dari/Farsi and Kurdish written one inside the other. A quiet, poetic script work that Sáile is known for.
Mischa Kuball comments on the temporary character of the Container Collective with the light installation “Dys(U)topia” alternating between “Finished” and “Unfinished” at a safe distance on the roof. Unlike Sinta Werner, who ventured into the middle of the container village with “Splitting the Moment”, colorful cubes with natural and artificial shadows – and is exposed to the encroachments of the party people. Life in the district – or in front of it or behind it? – Angela Stauber captures “Behind the World” with her luminous blue screens.
Angela Stauber’s screens “Behind the world” in the series “Spektrum. The city as a resonance body” in the Werksviertel.
(Photo: Mirko Schuetz)
Where there is light, there is also shadow: the colorful cubes with natural and artificial shadows “Splitting the Moment” by Sinta Werner.
(Photo: Mirko Schütz)
Glass islands that reflect the urban space: “L’Archipel” by Aline Brugel and Rosine Nadjar.
(Photo: Mirko Schütz)
Many of the works take up the architectural conditions of the quarter. In Werk 7, Aline Brugel and Rosine Nadjar created “L’Archipel”, a series of glass islands that reflect heaven and earth, man and nature, beauty and imperfection, old and new of the Werksviertel. Lina Zylla also picks up on everything that is weird and strange about the Werksviertel. The wall work “Years”, created from a performance, leaves a trail in an absurdly sloping passageway between two buildings. With “Wood’n’Wool”, Zahra Ghadimian, accompanied by the forest sounds of Alexandra Cumfe, spins a space that is on the ground floor of Werk 12 (the one with the big WOW), which has won awards for architecture. What has its origins in nature becomes a sign of the conquest of urban space, but currently also an indication of how Corona has caused vacancies everywhere.
Zahra Ghadimian and Alexandra Cumfe gradually weave a space with “Wood’n’Wool”.
(Photo: Mirko Schuetz)
Lina Zylla during the performance of the mural “Years”.
(Photo: Mirko Schütz)
A hunter’s seat becomes an Aeolian harp: “Play me the song” is the name of the installation by the artist collective Mediendienst Leistungshölle, which visitors can only see through holes in the site fence.
(Photo: Mirko Schuetz)
Leonie Felle also reacted to the architecture of the Werksviertel with her “resonance axes”. The three irregular panels painted with rectangles hang in a line of sight on a hotel with a perfectly uniform grid facade. A wonderfully ironic commentary on the uniformity of modern architecture in Munich. In order to finally discover the installation “Play me the song” by the artists’ collective Mediendienst Leistungshölle, you have to look through peepholes in the construction site fence to the wasteland of the planned concert hall. In the midst of a modernist hunter’s stand, a telescopic sight spinning in the wind sounds an Aeolian harp, while potatoes are said to sprout and sprout at the foot of the frame adorned with textile objects. The commissioned work is a pretty picture of how the concert hall idea is struggling to survive.
Spectrum. The city as a resonance body, Werksviertel-Mitte, to October 23, the tour is supplemented by QR codes on site and an audio guide on the website