Rebecca Horn: Concert for Buchenwald - Hardcover

Horn, Rebecca; Drathen, Doris Von; Mosebach, Martin; Groys, Boris; Von Drathen, Doris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3908247225 ISBN 13: 9783908247227

Publisher: Scalo Verlag Ac, 2000

Synopsis

Essays by Doris von Drahten, Boris Groys, Rebecca Horn, Bernd Kauffmann, and Martin Mosebach

In 1999, acclaimed German multimedia artist Rebecca Horn created Concert for Buchenwald, a large-scale, two-part installation in Weimar/Germany commemorating the horrors of genocide and emigration. This darkly intense work evokes both the shoah and the mass murders in former Yugoslavia. The first part of the installation is set in an abandoned train depot. Its walls are lined with glass panes behind whose shiny surfaces you can make out layer upon layer of ashes. Running alongside one of the walls, railroad tracks are blocked up by densely entangled heaps of various stringed instruments, reminiscent of the piles of corpses that were discovered in Buchenwald. The second part of Concert for Buchenwald is installed in Schloss Ettersburg, an 18th century palatial residence. Here, the humming sound of panicked bees is audible from hives suspended from the ceiling of an opulent ballroom, and suggests memories of expulsion and escape. This book includes several essays that explore various aspects and interpretations of Horn's installation, as well as her own notes tracing the origins of the installation's prominent metaphors.

About this title

From Booklist:

German sculptor Horn, one of the world's most poetic multimedia artists, has created a haunting commemoration of the Holocaust in Weimar, Germany, Goethe's birthplace and the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Concert for Buchenwald consists of two stunning installations that use sound, motion, and light to dramatic effect. The first, set in an abandoned tram depot, contains layers of ash pressed behind walls of glass, a wagon from Buchenwald that runs back and forth on a track, and stacks of smashed and silenced violins, cellos, guitars, and mandolins. Part two occupies an eighteenth-century castle, Schloss Ettersburg, and it contains suspended beehives (replete with buzzing bees), mirrors broken and whole, and a cello that plays itself with two bows. Arresting and mysterious, Horn's memorial encompasses the stark horror and infinite sorrow of the Holocaust with exquisite sensitivity. Critics Boris Groys and Martin Mosebach describe the spirit and dynamics of the piece, and Doris von Drathen insightfully discusses Horn's politically and historically conscious oeuvre as a whole, thus deepening readers' responses to the photographs of these remarkable works of compassion and engagement. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Scalo Verlag Ac
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 3908247225
• ISBN 13: 9783908247227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104