Via Detour – Ueber Umwege

Curated by Maria Hinze and Peter Becker

Robins Nest 2022

A short train ride from Kassel, the treehouse hotel "Robins Nest" provides the location for an art project conceived to run in parallel to Documenta 15. On one level, the project explores a connection between nature and archaic architecture, with light installations, sound art, performances and paintings creating an immersive artistic space in the woods. The nearby castle garden of Schloss Berlepsch offers an expanded terrain for artistic intervention. Sustainability and local procurement are at the heart of the project. Most of the artworks will be created from recycled materials sourced by Becker Recycling and placed poignantly in the hotel and natural surroundings of Robins Nest. These works will dialogue with the unique nature the place offers while also acting as a statement about art production and reception, reflecting on a vision of art that is locally sourced, sustainable and environmentally conscious. The invited artists will collaborate and live together at the Nest for one week. Site-specific artworks, such as installations, field recordings and other pieces will evolve organically in symbiosis with the pre-existing landscape. On another level, the exhibition conceptualizes the transformation of linear economic systems into circular systems. What circular systems arise from the scenario constructed here? There is a conceptual openness to this project, meaning that there is no plot, no storyline, but a background template that artists can choose to work with. The site, the artists and the artworks interlink to examine the complexity of the links between partial processes and overall processes and questions around system correlations. How do sub-processes relate to the overall processes and why is this important for the exhibition’s circular economy?

Maria Hinze, Peter Becker 

An Exhibition Project

Deep in the woods between Göttingen and Kassel is where you will find "Robins Nest", the treehouse hotel. Five treehouses of different sizes float between the treetops right around the corner from the enchanted Berlepsch Castle. It’s a half-hour journey from Kassel before you stand in the middle of the forest, feeling that you have left the city far behind. On the occasion of Documenta 15, the treehouse hotel and the forest around it will be shown in a new light through artistic interventions. Peter Becker – project initiator of “Via Detour” founder of "Robins Nest” and art collector – is building upon the legacy of his grandfather who founded one of the earliest recycling centers in Germany. There, tons of glass, plastic and cardboard arrive daily to be prepared for recycling.  This process relates directly to the inspiration behind the artistic interventions into "Robin's Nest" and the surrounding forest. Sustainability and recycling drive this project’s conception and implementation as well as being central to its artistic themes. Maria Hinze, the abstract painter co-curating this project, invited artists from North America and Europe who work with a variety of approaches, technologies and materials. Some of them are sculptors, others paint or work performatively; all of them use nature as their setting, some use analog film material and techniques, others have one foot on the forest floor and the other in digital space. What they all have in common is that sound and music play a dominant role in their work. They will live at "Robins Nest" for a week, developing works together for display in the treehouse hotel and its surroundings. The recycling center provides much of the material for the artistic works. Thus, the unwanted remnants of civilization meet a secluded, eco-concerned way of life amongst the trees of the Sandwald forest. Maria Hinze and the also involved Christian Jankowski represent two formal poles of the project – she as an abstract painter, he as a conceptual artist. This unusual exhibition unfolds between these two poles. In today`s world, the contradiction between human consumption and environmental concern resists resolution. This is precisely why they can and should be wielded productively. It is not only a matter of producing works of art from recycled material, but also of bringing their creation process into a cycle: Working with the invited artists, conceptual artist Christian Jankowski will realize one of his works on site, applying his method of building on the interaction among different groups. In terms of Jankowski's film, the participants fluidly switch between their roles as musicians, independent artists and movie protagonists. In addition to Jankowski’s conceptual work, another film will be produced during this collaborative residency. Peter Becker and Maria Hinze will produce what is set to become both a contemporary document and work of art, moving between the individuals and the larger cycle of the forest as an ecosystem and the place of humans within it. What is presented here is a circular economy of art that uses everything; one that never stops developing.

Laura Helena Wurth