Playlist
Gentle Giant – I Lost My Head
King Crimson – The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson
Fehlfarben - Xenophonie
Into the Documenta today - initial thinking involved the train - so, off we went with Yvonne to the station...
I left Felsberg from here in 1981...
It's now closed...
We were on the other side...
A train did go through the station - but it wasn't ours...
We discovered there were to be no passanger trains over this weekend due to repair works - so, into the trusty Fiat Panda and along the A7 into Kassel we went - finding a place 15 minutes walk from the town centre, where we could park for free...
...and off we set...
We saw this on the Konigsplatz - a Documenta hero, Josef Beuys...
On to the ticket office and shop...
...where your correspondent partook of the Guidebook and a couple of badges...
We were not going into any of the indoor exhibition spaces today - just as well - we discovered later, that today broke all time Documenta box office records, with over 15,000 tickets being sold...
Suffice to say, it was busy...
But many of the exhibits were in the open air to see for free, on this our first of three days exploring the art...
First though, coffee and cake was called for...
...as we were overlooked from afar by a work from a previous show...
Down into the Karlsaue Park...
...where this tree cast from bronze, "Idee di pietra" by Giusseppe Penone, was a big attraction...
...as was another Italian's work - "Untitled (Wave)" by Massimo Bartolini - which seemed still but soon built up to quite a wave...
Last night, Xenia had advised that water surrounded by barley wasn't art...
On to the Orangerie, in front of which I liked these small trees...
Farther out in front of the palace was Song Dong's "Doing Nothing Garden"...
...a seemingly pointless mound of overgrown wasteland...
...which indeed it is...
The guidebook describes it as layers of rubble and biological garbage, overgrown with grass and flowers and equipped with neon signs reading "Doing" and "Nothing"...
You're not allowed to rummage around however...
We walked farther out from the Orangerie...
...to one of the many water features in this park...
...then headed back round towards the Friedrichsplatz, past the war memorial...
...and the brass tree...
Everyone likes to give it a touch to ensure it really isn't real...
Up in the square, we waited on Alan and Penny as the queues continued...
...by around 12:30 we were almost ready for some art intake...
But first, more coffee and cake and beer...
..as I sported one of what would grow to be a collection of five badges by the end of our visit...
In a day or so, we would partake of the special dOCUMENTA (13) bus - the D13...
But first, some further consumption, this time of more souvenirs...
I didn't buy the signed apple juice...
...but did want the postcards - which were temporarily out of stock...
Alan and Penny also bought a guide book...
I didn't buy this but liked it...
This poster would have been good - but too difficult to get home...
Alan shelled out...
We both bought Documenta cups in true fanboy style...
With much Geld having flowed from our pockets, it was back over to the Orangerie and Karlsaue...
Penny liked the lion...
Once again, we admired the tree...
..and I took some far off shots of things we didn't approach...
...while documenting our walk around the park...
You needed a ticket to enter the various makeshift buildings...
...but you could see many of the works without going inside...
This was "Scaffold" by American Sam Durant - and was proving very popular with the visiting throng...
It sat at the opposite end of a very long path from the Orangerie...
Can you spot the Polizei on their Segways?
Attracted by some strange noises emanating from the woods nearby, we made our way in and found ourselves in one of the most impressive exhibits we experienced over our three day visit - "Forest - For a Thousand Years" by Canadian duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller...
...where a sound collage moved around us via a series of thirty loudspeakers situated throughout the clearing...
Very impressive indeed - although, with the right sound effects CDs and judicious editing, and a big enough grant from the Arts Council, I could probably have produced it myself down Polton Woods...
Maybe...
On around the park...
While the others walked on, I was attracted to this strange shack and the drone-like noises emanating from it...
This was Shinro Ohtake's ""Sketch for MON CHERI: A Self Portrait as a Scrapped Shed"...
Hmmm...
It included the judicious use of an animal skull and an electric guitar...
...and some boats stuck on branches on the surrounding trees...
It turns out the sounds were collected over the course of a year and were triggered in no particular order by the movement of the people milling around outside the shed...
On my "like" list...
I caught up with the others...
...as we headed back to the Orangerie...
...then up into the city itself...
A quick look around a closing-at-the-end-of-the-day flea market...
...and trams that actually run around the city (on more than one line - and at a cost of less than a billion of your English pounds)...
Penny liked the golden lions...
And we all were impressed with the upside down fountain...
It was originally the right way up but, having been designed by a Jew, offended the Nazis who, in 1939, tore it down...
When it was rebuilt, it was placed upside down to give a sense of the missing...
With our culture filled day drawing to a close, we walked round to Scheibenbeisser, a record shop where Alan and I, according to Anne and Penny anyway, managed to spend 75 minutes...
There were some nice expensive things in the window...
...and plenty inside to keep us occupied...
I picked up two CDs my one of my fave German bands Fehlfarben and one by Family 5 - both bands have the same lead singer - German punk/new wave hero, Peter Hein...
Meanwhile Alan was in vinyl mode, adding some Can 7" singles, a Kraftwerk bootleg LP and a reggae album which he assured me was brilliant, to his burgeoning collection...
Time to call it a day for today, so we said our goodbyes and Anne and I headed back to the car past this NY Guggenheim Gallery type car park...
Happily, the car had not been stolen by the ne'er do wells of Westring...
...and soon we were back home enjoying Yvonne's excellent pasta...
..before Jorg gave us a spin in his restored Alfa Romeo Spider with unrestrained kids in the back...
I gave the boys a spin in the Panda...
...not sure if the Panda beat the Spider though...
Later, I enjoyed some AC/DC with my Godson...
A busy, enjoyable day...
Highlight of the Day : Back at Documenta...
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