Guest appearance #3: At the indoor pond

The third installment of the guest appearances presents a collaborative text by Alison Yip, Claudia Barth, and Agnes Scherer about their recent project in Düsseldorf involving a local group of Ikebana artists in a two-day, ephemeral exhibition based on a Haiku:

“The exhibition ‘At The Indoor Pond’ was a collaboration between three female art students from The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and members of The Ikebana International Chapter of Cologne. It took place in the Parkhaus im Malkastenpark: An experimental, non-commercial art space founded by Kunstakademie graduates in the late 1990’s, one member of which still manages the space today, Karlheinz Rummeny. A small space with a vibrant history, it was and continues to be a platform for emerging artists.

‘At The Indoor Pond’ consisted of two main components: The Ikebana arrangements–measuring up to three or four feet high and embodying a strong sculptural quality and secondly, the pedestals and large wall painting as contributed by the art students. The latter element which unfolded over the span of three walls of the Parkhaus suggested an illusionistic spatial continuum of the floor by means of a ‘futuristic’ grid. The grid bled into something resembling Brutalist architectural elements set against a back drop of a pale mountain range to denote a horizon in the distance. Hovering in this illusionistic space were abstract forms reminiscent of science fiction graphics.

The title of the exhibition refers to a well known Haiku by the 17th Century Japanese Haiku master, Matsu Basho:

At the age old pond
A frog jumps in
Splash!

An ‘indoor pond’ on the other hand suggests an ambivalence towards attempts to revitalize traditional art forms to the likings and benefits of a world that might have outgrown the mental states from which these art forms were born. What remains could be called nostalgia; Something meant to transform the spirit of an age old pond into a domestic convenience.

‘At The Indoor Pond’ took place over one weekend in July of 2013.

////////////

‘At The Indoor Pond’ largely came out of a political motivation. It was put forth as a counter-proposal and response to the type of exhibitions and show concepts which dominates our Kunstakademie environment and to some extent the art community at large. The exhibition offered an alternative to the male-dominated cult around authorship and the autonomous and consumable art. What we offered was a collaborative project by a predominantly female group exhibiting non-commodifiable objects contributed by several participants and presented in a very holistic way. Our project acknowledged and reached a broader audience within Düsseldorf. It set out to disrupt binaries (German-Japanese, male-female, permanence-change, commercial-non-commercial, nature-artificiality), and played with expectation (Ikebana in an art gallery context).

Ikebana arrangements and wall murals as unusual forms of sculpture and painting, and both uncommodifiable and even untransportable, offered agency to convey our position and to pose questions to the viewer. Attention is drawn to making and process, experimentation and dialogue.

Moving away from the concept of exhibition as presentation of ‘permanent’ things that implicitly compete for museification, we wanted the objects in the show to be fleeting, malleable and open to change as is embodied in the dramatic evanescence of fresh cut flowers and inspired by the temporal nature of Haiku poetry. The nature of Ikebana exhibition is short-lived sometimes lasting only a few hours. ‘At The Indoor Pond’ was only available for viewing over one weekend thus creating something akin to an event or performance. After the exhibition everything that was made for the project ceased to exist, the wall was painted over and the flowers wilted.

In regards to our part of the exhibition, we conceptualized and executed every element in a collaborative manner, from the wall painting to the pedestals, the poster and the didactics (which was an appropriated sci-fi short story). Collaboration shaped and guided our process from the very beginning. On a larger scale, working with the Ikebana club emphasizes this approach making it a central aspect perhaps even the subject matter of the show. Neither the flower arrangements nor our ‘framework’ alone could produce such fertile discussion. The exhibition concept created a necessity for collaboration.

Naturally, it was also important to give up a certain amount of control, to take a risk (in our case we had no control over the arrangements themselves) and vice versa (the Ikebana artists had no control over the environment/context). As in Basho’s poem, we were willing to let the age old pond of meditative introspection be suddenly stirred up by an outside participant. We had an idea to create a framework that gave the space a science-fiction atmosphere giving the flower arrangements an alien or creature-like quality while some of the Ikebana artists really responded to the title of the exhibition incorporating such items as a rubber hose and containers of water in their pieces. The result was something unpredictable, exciting and highly visual– A hybrid creation and an enriching experience shared by all.”

AT THE INDOOR POND // PARKHAUS IM MALKASTENPARK // July 19-21, 2013 Düsseldorf

Claudia Barth, Yuko Costrau, Monika Kramer, Ulrike Linhorst, Angelika Löchelt, Florian Patzke, Agnes Scherer, Alison Yip

Photos (From top – bottom): exhibiton poster / exterior view / set up / Monika Kramer* / installation view* / Angelika Löchelt* / Yuko Costrau*

*photos by Stanton Taylor