Simply cross the station hall and keep to the right at platform 1, the DB employee answered the question about the “Art Lab”. Then down the stairs to the pedestrian underpass into a glowing underwater world. A coral cave glistens, schools of fish cavort on the walls. All perfect if the corals wouldn’t mutate into strange plastic forks. In general, there is a bit of plastic scrap on the tunnel floor. Or is that the bottom of the sea? And hasn’t a fish just turned into a plastic creature? Completely immersed in the underwater world, the visitor even interprets the muffled, washed-out sounding voice that is heard from time to time as belonging. It takes a moment before she realizes that it is loudspeaker announcements that announce departures and delays up in real life. And that the dull rumble that occurs at intervals does not come from ship propellers, but from freight trains.
“Enter the Plastocene” is what the artist duo Thamiko Thiel and / p (pronounced Slash Pi) called their project, which they realized for the Donumenta-Art-Lab Gleis 1. “The tunnel just gives you a unique feeling,” says the artist as she slowly moves through her work. The beautiful pictures make it possible to capture the people. “Only when you spend a bit of time here do you also let the problem of environmental degradation get to you.”
Born in Seattle and living in Munich, the artist is a pioneer in the field of digital art, known for combining new technologies with social and socially critical engagement in her work. Her fascination for the digital began in the early 1980s when she designed the supercomputer Connection Machine CM1 and CM2 as an engineer and lead product designer – the fastest computers in the world in 1989 and now in the MoMa collection in New York. She got into virtual reality when she produced “Starbright World” in 1994 alongside Steven Spielberg. She is now famous for her Augmented Reality (AR) work, in which she uses smartphone apps to recharge places with new meanings. Her interventions have already been shown at the Venice Biennale, the Tate Modern in London and the MoMa in New York.
Since 2018 she has been working with the Upper Palatinate computer scientist and multimedia artist / p alias Peter Graf. Together with him she developed, for example, the AR installation “Unexpected Growth”, a commission from the Withney Museum in New York, or the large-format outdoor projection “Evolution of Fish”, which the two presented in 2019 at the Digital Graffiti Festival in Florida.
13 exhibitions in three years
So now Regensburg. Since 2019, the Kunstverein Donumenta has been using the former underpass that connects platform 1 with platform 9 in the main station. “We can do what we want here,” says Regina Hellwig-Schmid, artist, initiator and chairwoman of the Donumenta Association, which has been setting standards in Regensburg for years, especially when it comes to art in public spaces. Since May 2019, 13 exhibitions have taken place in the tunnel, always with spatial art. New works were almost always created, because “finished goods” (Hellwig-Schmid) can only rarely be used in the 60-meter-long underpass.
The association, which was founded in 2003 and has been successfully bringing contemporary art from the Danube countries to Regensburg for years and has developed a fabulous artist-in-residence program, will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary. He still finances his exhibitions through project funding for individual projects; applications for basic financial security from the city are regularly rejected. The association would have deserved it because of the many excellent projects. “We are the ones who have given the city a contemporary character over the years,” says Hellwig-Schmidt and one cannot contradict her.
Incidentally, the plastic scrap in the tunnel is real rubbish. Tamiko Thiel has insisted on using plastic that has already been used, says Hellwig-Schmid. “You can easily see where you still have corners of comfort, I would have simply bought new foils.” Tamiko Thiel already knows this attitude from previous projects. When she asked her friends to collect plastic garbage, most of them would have said they didn’t have one because they only shop in health food stores, she says. “Only then did they notice that their vegetables are still wrapped in plastic.”
Tamiko Thiel & / p: Enter The Plastocene, until November 17th, Donumenta Art Lab platform 1 at Regensburg Central Station, open Wed. – Sun., 2 p.m. – 7 p.m., free admission