The Colonies of Bees Undermining the Moles' Subversive Effort Through Time: Concert for Buchenwald: Part 1: Tram Depot, Part 2: Schloss Ettersberg

Horn, Rebecca

ISBN 10: 3908247225 / ISBN 13: 9783908247227

Published by Scalo Publishers, Zurich, Berlin, New York, 1999

About this Item

104 pages, colour illustrations; 25 cm. Cover title: Concert for Buchenwald. BRAND NEW. A fine copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. Stated "First Scalo Edition." *** "In 1999 internationally renowned German multimedia artist Rebecca Horn created a large-scale work in Weimar/Germany, commemorating the horrors of genocide and emigration. Weimar was not only the residence of Germany's most famous poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it was also the site of the concentration camp Buchenwald, one of the most horrifying chapters in German History. Horn's darkly intense two-part installation evokes both the shoah and the mass murders in former Yugoslavia. The first part of Concert for Buchenwald is an installation in an abandoned depot. Its walls are lined with glass panes behind whose shiny surfaces you can make out layer upon layer of ashes. In a corner of the room there is a lorry on rails running alongside one of the walls. The rails 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 on Schloss Ettersburg, an 18th century palatial residence. Bee-hives are suspended from the ceiling of its opulent ballroom. You can hear the panic humming of bees expelled from their hives. The oppressive atmosphere of the installation hauntingly suggests memories of expulsion and escape. The essays in this book explore various aspects and interpretations of Horns installation that is as politically incisive as it is poetically concise. Rebecca Horn's notes trace the genesis of the installation's metaphors. In The Archive of the Ashes Russian art critic Boris Groys meditates on ashes as symbols of the holocaust. Essays by Martin Mosebach and Doris von Drahten provide the reader with valuable background information on the installation and its place in Horn's oeuvre." - Publisher. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 029600

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Colonies of Bees Undermining the Moles' Subversive Effort Through Time: Concert for Buchenwald: Part 1: Tram Depot, Part 2: Schloss Ettersberg
• Publisher: Scalo Publishers, Zurich, Berlin, New York
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3908247225
• ISBN 13: 9783908247227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: NEW
• Dust Jacket Condition: NEW
• Book Type: Collectible
• Seller catalogs:
  • European::German, Austrian & Swiss
  • XO::Standard
  • Genre & Subject::Religious::Judaica
  • Media::Installation Art
  • Women Artists
  • New Books
  • European::9. Contemporary
  • XXX::COLLECTIBLES

About this title

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.

Reviews

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
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