2008

öffentlich zugänglich

Am Ende des Frauenmantelangers, 80937 München

Steg, Gondel, Anlegepfosten, Laterne mit Parkbank, bemalte Mauer

Photos: Peter Schinzler

Text: Matthias Supé

das änderungsatelier

Venice — just the word itself evokes associations with noble palazzos, the Grand Canal, or singing gondoliers. Das Änderungsatelier (Georg Schweitzer & Frau Stemmer) has transplanted elements from this symbol of faraway dreams to a “completely normal” area of new construction on the edge of Munich, the Nordheide. The title, ALITTLEMORELOVE, comes with an agenda: through the romanticism that inevitably accompanies clichés about Venice, residents are (ideally) supposed to develop a sense of positive identification with their neighborhood.

The objects installed — mooring arms, gondola, wooden dock, historical lantern with a park bench (both slightly sunken, in a reference to Venice itself), and even the sculpture of a lion — primarily aim for sensory experience and utility, and only secondly at conceptual meaning, which may be revealed to the viewer, but does not have to be. The adjacent nature preserve is like a sea, while the green of the heath recalls the canals of the city on the lagoon. Furthermore, the Elector Max Emanuel once actually planned for a canal that would lead from his residence to Castle Schleissheim and would have crossed what is today the Nordheide. These specific historical and interpretational references, however, should not be thought of as precepts but simply as suggestions, just like the subtle Christian metaphor that appears in most of the works by this pair of artists from Karlsruhe; it can also be found in the gondola, for example, in ALITTLEMORELOVE, which serves as a kind of ark. As a romantic shelter from the adversities of real urban life. And where better to indulge in romanticism than on the waves of an imaginary Grand Canal?