Sven Eggers
Die ganze Stadt ist Bühne / The Whole Town is Stage
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Prologue. There was an artist, Harald Naegli, who “tattoed” the town's walls with his graffitti. An exhibition and a poster showed all the places in town. We were invited to make the opening show of “Kunst offen” (art open), an annual event, where for a week all studios and galleries of the country are open and something is going on. This year's opening was in Wismar. We decided to not make an exhibition or a performance but an open system: We wanted to use several places around town, calling it “Die ganze Stadt ist Bühne” - the whole town is stage. We wanted to engage people of the town, inhabitants and guests. We made a similar looking poster to that Naegli one and postered it all over the town bringing these different places together, hidden ones and obvious ones, with the capability of making communication possible. In all the locations we placed the poster to encourage the visitors to search for the other locations. It was like a town map showing all the sights, but without telling where they are and why they are sights - a bit like: sites, stars for a day. A small lane - maybe the most unknown street of the town, but right in the centre - got for the time of our project the most popular way is here, closing the lane, and talked to each other. Than somebody passed by, opened the curtain to continue his walk and so everybody saw what was behind the curtain: similar chairs, and also people sitting on them, curious of what would be behind this curtain. You could watch your surprise on their faces. On the opening day of “Kunst offen” we had a “flying circus” in the harbour area, starting with a sound installation in the medievial gatetower of the Hansetown. From the clique-claque shoes on the cobblestones of the old town you went like through an acoustic curtain in this passage through the archway. The sound was two looped music-like tapes that interfered, quiet and ambivalent. On the other side, the harbour side, you again went like through a curtain, now standing on the loud street you have to cross, in front of the harbour vedute. In the harbour area, between the ships and and sheds, and partly on them, there was live music and jugglers and a lawn sprinkler ballet. We distributed postcards among the people, showing the different locations and on the back sentences in the tradition of Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder like “Give this card to the person with the sweetest smile”, also others connected in a confusing (but hopefully attracting) way with the places: Try to reach the other side without getting wet” - but you could just see a circular entrance area below datum on the card. But when you went there, the area was filled with liquid silver: aluminum folio it was. In the night we screened “Battleship Potjomkin“ 1; of Sergej Eisenstein open air at the harbour with old 35mm projectors. Uta Marchewka, Doreen Feresztyn, Tina Schmidt, Valentin Rothmaler, Sven Eggers back |