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CARRIED BY THE WIND

Kunst Kraft Werk, Leipzig, Germany, 2015

Curated by Candace Goodrich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The installation was inspired by the Cold War propaganda initiative where printed material was attached to balloons, launched from West Germany, and dispersed over Communist Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. It lasted from 1951-56, and more than 500,000 balloons carried more than 300,000,000 leaflets and books.

The printed material dispersed in the installation are text fragments in German and English, selected from the Polish writer Bruno Schulz’s book, “The Street of Crocodiles” (The Cinnamon Shops). His stories embody the kind of writing that goes beyond direct metaphor into a raw, pre-psychological realm of the imagination. The objective is that the visitor can identify with Schulz’s creative voice, and be enchanted by it. The installation is meant to challenge in terms of a visualization of themes of freedom of speech and the role of the human imagination. 

Polish, English, German and Danish editions of "The Cinnamon Shops," or "The Street of Crocodiles"

Text fragments by Bruno Schulz featured on the leaflets:

I saw on these happy slopes groups of wanderers, gathering among the moss and the bushes the fallen stars which now were damp from snow.

Ich erblickte auf diesen glücklichen Hängen ganze Gruppen von Wanderern, die zwischen dem Moos und den Büschen die herabgefallenen und vom Schnee nassen Sterne sammelten.

*****

There are people who liken these days to an apocrypha, put secretly between the chapters of the great book of the year; to palimpsests, covertly included between its pages; to those white, unprinted sheets on which eyes, replete with reading and the remembered shapes of words, can imagine colors and pictures, which gradually become paler and paler from the blankness of the pages, or can rest on their neutrality before continuing the quest for new adventures in new chapters.

Andere vergleichen diese Tage mit Apokryphen, heimlich zwischen die Kapitel des großen Buches des Jahres eingefügt, mit Palimpsesten, verstohlen zwischen dessen Seiten geschoben, der mit jenen weißen, nichtbedruckten Blättern, auf denen die Augen, sattgelesen und inhaltsschwer, in Bildern waten und auf den leeren, immer mehr verblassenden Seiten die Farben verlieren können, um auf deren Nichtigkeit auszuruhen, ehe sie in die Labyrinthe neuer Abenteuer und Kapitel hineingezogen werden.

*****

There were among them two-headed birds and birds with many wings, there were cripples too, limping through the air in one-winged, awkward flight. The sky resembled those in old murals, full of monsters and fantastic beasts, which circled around, passing and eluding each other in elliptical maneuvers.

Es waren Vögel mit zwei Köpfen und vielen Flügeln unter ihnen, auch Krüppel gab es, die einflügelig und ungeschickt durch die Luft hinkten. Der Himmel glich einem alten Fresko voller Fabeltiere und Scheusale, die kreisten, einander auswichen und in bunten Ellipsen wieder zurückkehrten.

*****

The light in this room was opaque even in daytime, thick from the dreams of plaster-cast heads, from empty looks, ashen profiles, and meditations dissolving into nothingness. We liked to listen sometimes in front of that door – listen to the silence laden with the sighs and whispers of the crumbling gods withering in the boredom and monotony of their twilight.

Die Dämmerung dieses Zimmer trübte auch den Tag und rann schläfrig von den gipsernen Träumen zu den leeren Blicken bleichende Ovale und Absichten, die ins Nichts wanderten. Wir liebten es, manchmal an der Tür die mit Seufzen und Flüstern gefüllte Stille dieses in der Spinnweben eines Schutthaufen Zerfallenden, in der Langweile und Monotonie einer Götterdämmerung verwesenden Kabinetts zu belauschen. 

UTOPIA AND MAGICAL REALISM IN THE VISUAL ARTS 

Panel with the Polish art historian Karol Jozwiek, the German art historian, Constanze Fritzsch,

and the artist Lasse Antonsen

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