Little Escap(ad)e: Freising, Germany

 ow long it has been since I used this particular category for a blog post! Almost six years, and reasons must have been the epidemic, for one thing, and work. (Although I now think I could have put the excursion to Paris with my son in there, as well, when we went to see l'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped. I didn't think of that then.)

Now we are living in a new place that is still a bit foreign to us, and I felt the need to get out, see a friend, taste a bit of the world. Last Saturday I wanted to go to Freising and took the train. Deutsche Bahn unfortunately being what it is right now, the train I had planned on was canceled. Instead of waiting around in a cold and drafty station for over an hour for the next one, I hopped onto another which brought me to Nuremberg. That had not been on my schedule, but gave me an opportunity to make a small detour when changing trains, as I had been wanting to take a look at the oldest globe model, the Behaim Globe, on display at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. 

 

Which I may want to use as inspiration for a quilt I am thinking about. It turned out that the globe’s colors are so faded that the digital presentation, which has been color enhanced, enlarged, and turned into an interactive display, is more attractive to look at than the globe itself. But it gave me enough material to keep contemplating the idea.

As I still had time before I wanted to catch the next train, I tried to make my way towards the world-famous Christkindlmarkt, which I had never been to before. That was not a particularly good idea, on a Saturday, and around midday. I didn’t stay long! Travel to Freising was uneventful, and I was met at the station by my friend Barbara, before we proceeded to her quilt group’s exhibition in the Medieval Prison. (I have written about events in this location before on my German blog and here. )

I loved their exhibition, but somehow didn’t take any photos – perhaps I was too excited about seeing all the group members again after sometimes several years? Barbara and I then spent a leisurely evening at a restaurant, catching up on all that has been going on. It was very good to be talking to a friend and be allowed to vent about the entire year and all its miseries.

Next morning I wanted to – and did – visit the Diözesanmuseum on cathedral hill. However, the one exhibit that I came for specifially, namely the ‘Chapel for Luke and his scribe Lucius the Cyrene’ by James Turrell is only open for rather limited periods during visiting hours.  Which I had not researched properly beforehand – I arrived 20 minutes after the morning period ended and would have had to wait for more than two hours if I wanted to catch the afternoon period. My train home was leaving before that, so I decided to just go with the glimpses of the changes of light colors I could see through the passageway that leads into the installation. 

 

 These photos were taken within only a few minutes, and it gave a small impression of how special it must be to look at these changes when you are in the center of the rooms.

That makes for a good excuse to go to Freising again, soon, with a bit of better planning.

Little escap(ad)e: Bremen and surroundings

Earlier this week I spent a few days visiting a friend in Bremen. While I was there, I made another basket, smaller this time, and with a different kind of bottom layer, but perfectly in keeping with ‘my newest quest’ that I wrote about in my last post. I enjoy making baskets, but I don’t think I will become an expert or a real or regular basket weaver.

While up there, we took the opportunity and visited the German Museum of Emigration in the port of Bremerhaven. I have never been so impressed with a museum as this one! 

A migrant's luggage in the 1920s

Uta 'on board' a migrant sailboard - it really felt as if the boat was heaving
and swaying, and we could not figure out how they managed to get this effect!

Many Germans emigrated to the US, and so part of the tour is a replica of
New York's Grand Central Station, from where they would proceed to other cities.

Perhaps it is the topic in the urgency of the current situation, perhaps it is the knowledge that at some point my paternal grandfather contemplated emigration to Brazil – what would have been, had he actually gone? And why did he not go after all, if the thought had been so serious that his children still passed on the tale many decades later? For one thing, I would not be alive, and the other thing is what does that tell me about his political standpoint in the early 1930s ... or was it merely economical...?

One evening we went to the art museum late night opening, the Kunsthalle Bremen. One entire room is currently alive with Sarah Morris’ painting Jardim Botânico , impressive,  bold and inspirational in choice of colors and shapes.

Image taken from Sarah Morris' website

Another site-specific installation in the museum is James Turrell’s Above – Between – Below, which extends over three floors of the museum and gives a different perspective on each floor, looking up, looking and and down, and looking down. 

I also took mental note of several pieces exhibited in the museum to quote for my next (pending) assignment in my online class with Jane Dunnewold. An evening very well spent!

Little escap(ad)e: Art Immersion, part 2

My next station on my trip of art immersion was the International Centre for Light Artin Unna. I had been wanting to go there since I first heard about it, and certainly since I did not make it there when I had my solo exhibition at the German Patchwork Guild’s AGM in – was it 2009 or 2010?

As a matter of fact, this leg of the journey was slightly less intensively immersed than I had originally planned for, but nevertheless very impressive and exciting indeed. Less intensively immersed because I had managed to not register the fact that this isn’t a museum where you can go in during what any slightly experienced museum visitor would consider ‘regular’ opening hours. I had dreamed of spending the whole day walking from one of the light installations to the other, and going back to the beginning once I had finished with the round. Instead, access is limited to three daily public tours, the first starting at 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

So when I arrived at the front door just before 10 a.m., all eager to go in, after getting up just after six and having left my hotel in Oberhausen at half past seven to get to Unna ‘on time’ I was a bit on the disappointed side. Luckily, there were lockers in the building, and after I had bought my ticket (which was possible at 10.30) I left my luggage and set off to see Unna. Small town in Westphalia, and, in the shop assistant’s words, there isn’t really anthing to see except for the former brewery that now houses the light museum, the public library and the city’s community college.

It has some very nice old streets with half-timbered houses and "Butzenscheiben", though, and a protestant church in gothic style, in which I saw one of the Bosna Quilts hanging by itself, ‘in the wild’ so to say (meaning: not in the context of one of the many exhibitions that I have seen already), for the first time.

"Butzenscheiben" make for nice warped reflections -
but I have always wondered how the world looks when
you live inside one of these houses. Does everything
get warped when looking from the inside, too?

A Bosna Quilt in the church, unfortunately the bad lighting
made it impossible to get any of the impression that this work
could have given visitors.

And I did treat myself to a really nice plate of waffles and white tea, sitting outside in beautiful weather (and basking in the fact that I knew people at home were sitting in the rain…)

When I went back to the museum, time for the tour was finally approaching, and there were about 12 people on it. In the building, but outside the former brewery cellars which are the location for the museum itself I saw a (non-lighted) installation by Brigitte Kowanz. On the tour, we were explicitly not allowed to take any pictures. The tour was only a tour of the permanent collection as a new temporary exhibition will open on September 14 and was not yet accessible to the public. Currently, the permanent collection includes pieces by

• JosephKosuth (Find pictures of his works here)
• MischaKuball  (find a picture of the work wecould see here), 
• Jan van Munster  
• Li Hui   
• Keith Sonnier (Find pictures here.) 
• Christina Kubisch  
• FrancoisMorellet (Find pictures of his some of his works here.)‎ 
• RebeccaHorn 
• several pieces by JamesTurrell
• and Olafur Eliasson.

While in the cellar, I think I was most impressed by Kubisch’s combination of light and sound in the brewers’s former fermentation tanks, and Eliasson’s installation of pulsating light and water. But as I was googling all these names in order to be able to supple the links I realized that perhaps it is obnoxious to talk of favorites in such an outstanding exhibition containing works of only top artists, and truth is that I liked all of them a lot.

As I did not spend the night I did not get to see Mario Merz’s “Fibonacci sequence” on the outside of the brewery’s former chimney:

Mario Merz, Fibonacci sequence,
Picture taken from here

The Centre is part of a Light Path that extends through quite a distance in the Ruhr Industrial Area, which, of course, I did not get to see this time either. It seems like I will have to go back and do a serious tour of art museums and sites in the Ruhr Industrail Area! Their having been European Cultural Region three years ago has definitely given the region quite a boost, and there is a lot out there to see!