»Ganz nah dran!« (Up Close!)
On 18 October, Kolumba will be taking part in the 9th European Restoration Day. This year’s theme is ‘Up close!’. Using two works from the current exhibition as examples, the session will explore the issues that conservators face on a daily basis. You are warmly invited to watch, listen and join in the discussion.
The usual museum admission fee applies. No booking is required.
3.00 pm, Room 8: Photographic restoration and the question of the original
Geometric shapes and blurred figures, moving with and within the geometry, dominate the 20-part large-format photographic work in Room 8. The people in the photographs are the artist couple Anna and Bernhard Blume, who created the work ‘Transcendental Constructivism’. The work is best appreciated from a slight distance. Up close, the forms are lost. Yet it is at this level of detail that the restoration work begins. Here, damage to the photographs becomes apparent, damage that can be attributed to various causes.
What types of damage can be spotted here? How can they be explained? How does the restoration of photographs differ from that of other works on paper? Photographs are reproducible art – so what, then, is the original? Restorers Franziska Elbers and Heike Bommes will explore these and other questions in an open discussion in front of the works in Room 8.
4.00 pm, Room 12: Preserved through play. How a work of art remains functional
It hums, it rings, it rattles. The marble run is a ‘spatial installation composition for one person at the centre’ from 1977. Anyone wishing to hear Manos Tsangaris’s piece of music simply steps into the centre and activates it at the touch of a button. Three different marbles begin their journey through the marble run, synchronised and coordinated with one another. They trigger sounds, lights and even a CCTV camera, which projects a live image onto a television screen. This multitude of technical components, combined with the daily use of the marble run, raises many questions regarding the preservation of the artwork: What happens if parts of the marble run break? How do we replace them? How much are we allowed to alter the appearance of the marble run in the interests of smoother functionality? Which signs of wear and tear are part of the object’s history?
The director of Kolumba, Marc Steinmann, the artist Manos Tsangaris and the conservator Heike Bommes cordially invite you to an open discussion on the preservation and functionality of the installation in Room 12.