We all know the climate of groundlessness from personal experience, and if we deny it, then we have managed to repress it (a dubious victory). But there are those who find themselves, so to speak, objectively groundless, either because they were taken from their reality by external forces, or because they spontaneously abandoned an apparently real situation, which they diagnosed to be phantasmagoria. Therefore, there are those who have either fallen into, or deliberately chosen, groundlessness. These are the ones that can serve as laboratories for others. They exist more intensely, if »existence« is interpreted as a life in groundlessness. Such an intensive existence will now be described.
— from the autobiographical book «Groundless» by Vilém Flusser
Exhibition concept, model, and visualizations for Hamburger Bahnhof
I. The Exhibition Concept
The installation, based on Flusser’s autobiographical book “Groundless” —which reflects his experiences of wartime flight and assimilation— is presented in the main hall of Hamburger Bahnhof, and turns it into a metaphorical station where a derailed „train“ of the past crashes into the present.
The installation, based on Flusser’s autobiographical book “Groundless” —which reflects his experiences of wartime flight and assimilation— is presented in the main hall of Hamburger Bahnhof, and turns it into a metaphorical station where a derailed „train“ of the past crashes into the present.
I wanted to tell a story about a past that seems so far away and yet suddenly appears very close – a sense of living in a photo album. Therefore, I decided to work with the main hall of Hamburger Bahnhof, which preserves the feeling of anticipation of the arrival / departure.
The starting point were the 3 drawings of dreams and ideas, which composed a short storyboard:
1. Looking for scraps / remains of memories among the destruction
2. A person building a “card house” out of scraps, photographs
3. Entering a family album photo / portal into the past
The „train“ itself is built in the form of an archival wooden crate for storing and shipping exhibits and inside is divided into separate rooms („compartments“), each representing a chapter from the book and creating the portrait of a writer simply trying to sit down at a table to write and make sense of his life at the moment of collapse. Individual rooms merge into a continuous corridor, becoming a kind of lens / a way of looking at the present.
The model of the Hamburger Bahnhof main hall with the exhibition installation, alongside drawings, the information booklet and the exhibiton text.
Teufelsberg, Berlin