2014

25 Years of KUNST+PROJEKTE Sindelfingen e. V.

A quarter century of K+P-Si !  It all began with wonder over a symbol with magical power in the urban space. BROKEN OFF, the poetic text-sculpture by Lawrence Weiner. The turbulence that this artwork in the public space once triggered is difficult to imagine today, but in 1989 (that momentous year!), it led to the establishing of the association KUNST+PROJEKTE e. V. (a non-profit art association in Sindelfingen).

Lawrence Weiner: BROCKEN OFF (1989)

Controversies and heated discussions characterized the early years with the purchase of the panel by Weiner, a first exhibition in the barn of the photographer Norbert Frick in the old city, after that exhibitions at Karl-Heinz Reinheimer’s gallery on the Rathausplatz, lively podium discussions in the Oberlichtsaal with Lord Mayor Dieter Burger and scholars. Afterward, many young artists, many of them today artists with an international standing, were involved in the association’s projects, time and again with reference to Sindelfingen.

Cooperative projects, such as with the Bonner Kunstverein (one of the first exhibitions of Thomas Ruff, Katharina Sieverding (catalogues), followed. In the committed project of the Stuttgart region (curator Rudi Fuchs), Sieverding’s photo work “Deutschland wird deutscher” (today in the German Bundestag) was not permitted to be presented in Esslingen due to its defamation of foreigners. In our extensive Sieverding exhibition in cooperation with the Kulturgemeinschaft Stuttgart, we afterward developed discussion forums on the topic: “Nationalismus, Intoleranz, Fremdenfeindlichkeit” (nationalism, intolerance, xenophobia), which is today still seen as having broken new ground.

In collaboration with the Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen, we invited scholars and experts from various fields to be involved in our art exhibitions (the Institut für Neue Medien in Frankfurt with its director Peter Weibel, today the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, already transformed our exhibition space into a high-tech laboratory in 1995), and thus developed the exchange of creative ideas between science and art as a research project, as also in the project “liberalis” at the beginning of the financial crisis, for which we asked the economics expert Prof. Dr. Lars Feld and the Chairman of the Board of the Vereinigte Volksbank, Wolfgang Klotz, to debate in connection with a Hohenasperg-Performance – “Gedankenfreiheit” (Freedom of Thought) by Nikhil Chopra in the gallery.

Art requires science, especially in our cultural region with its innovative companies. In the exhibition “the hybrid fuels”, the head of hybrid motor development at Mercedes Benz brought his research motor with him, while the artist Thomas Bayrle, who was subsequently awarded the Arnold-Bode-Prize at dOCUMENTA (13), provided the Porsche motor.

Kyong Park: Detroit-Project (2001)

Projects have also been taken out of the gallery into the public space of the city and into companies: at city hall and on the market square, the photo project “Imagine,“ staged along with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and involving school classes from Sindelfingen; events took place in Günter Behnisch’s Glaspalast when the high costs for renovating it ecologically were considered a deterrent; in the fashionable centers in the somewhat inhospitable east end of Sindelfingen; the “Detroit-Projekt” during the DaimlerChrysler marriage in heaven presented a worker’s wooden house brought from decaying Detroit on the market square; a performance by Takehito Koganezawa from Japan at the Mercedes plant.

Over the twenty-five years, the many artists (et. al. Ai Weiwei) have perhaps brought us a bit closer to wonder, since wonder is ultimately also “a desire for knowledge” [Thomas Aquinas].

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