Not without my coffee shoes! And only with clamshells full of jam do we approach the landscape artworks of the Kunstverein Springhornhof in the Lüneburg Heath. Director Bettina von Dziembowski invited the students of the Kayle Brandon/Ruth Rubers/Ingo Vetter/Olav Westphalen class from the Hochschule für Künste Bremen to Neuenkirchen to work with the Kunstverein and the sculptures in the open landscape space, which have been created since the 1960s and now number around 40 works. The Corona pandemic changed everything, the forms of physical and social engagement, permeated planning, implementation, communication and mediation. The pandemic became the condition of what we call “Forced Feral”.
Since spring 2020 we were regularly on site, meeting at the Kunstverein and occupying the guest studio. Because of Corona, we were no longer allowed to perform as a group and instead individual students wondered into the surroundings. Sinking in and getting familiar with the environment became co-created by the pandemic, desires sifted and even camping in the winter seemed like a good idea. A lot of walking, cycling and talking to local people took place, as there were many things we had no idea about: Hardpan, deep ploughing, farting cows and re-wilded wolves.
Finally ten new artworks were shown in the exhibition at Kunstverein Springhornhof, two performances happened at the opening and ten outside works remain in the open field until October 2021. In the following a summary of the project was presented in Bremen at the temporary Kunsthalle Influencers Taubenheim.
On view are new landscape artworks and artistic interventions by Siman Chen, Yunna Diao, Ada Hillebrecht, Eunhye Kim, Stéphane Krust, Ruth Lübke, Quin Maclennan, Janis Mengel, Philipp Michalski, Anne Nitzpan, Minjeong Park, Laura Pientka, Paul Putzier, Ole Prietz, Martin Reichmann, Berit Riekemann, Seung Hyun Seo, Nala Tessloff, Jana Thiel, Kaori Tomita and Raphael Wutz. The project is supervised by Kayle Brandon, Bettina von Dziembowski, Ruth Rubers, Ingo Vetter, Olav Westphalen and Monika Zimmermann.