The Colonies of Bees Undermining the Moles' Subversive Effort Through Time: Concert for Buchenwald: Part 1: Tram Depot, Part 2: Schloss Ettersberg Hardcover - 1999

Zurich, Berlin, New York: Scalo Publishers, 1999. 104 pages, colour illustrations; 25 cm. BRAND NEW. A fine copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. Stated "First Scalo Edition." "In 1999 internationally renowned German multimedia artist Rebecca Horn created a large-scale work in Weimar/Germany, commemorating the horrors of genocide and emigration. Weimar was not only the residence of Germany's most famous poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it was also the site of the concentration camp Buchenwald, one of the most horrifying chapters in German History. Horn's darkly intense two-part installation evokes both the shoah and the mass murders in former Yugoslavia. The first part of Concert for Buchenwald is an installation in an abandoned depot. Its walls are lined with glass panes behind whose shiny surfaces you can make out layer upon layer of ashes. In a corner of the room there is a lorry on rails running alongside one of the walls. The rails are blocked up by densely entangled heaps of various stringed instruments, reminiscent of the piles of corpses that were discovered in Buchenwald. The second part of Concert for Buchenwald is installed on Schloss Ettersburg, an 18th century palatial residence. Bee-hives are suspended from the ceiling of its opulent ballroom. You can hear the panic humming of bees expelled from their hives. The oppressive atmosphere of the installation hauntingly suggests memories of expulsion and escape. The essays in this book explore various aspects and interpretations of Horns installation that is as politically incisive as it is poetically concise. Rebecca Horn's notes trace the genesis of the installation's metaphors. In The Archive of the Ashes Russian art critic Boris Groys meditates on ashes as symbols of the holocaust. Essays by Martin Mosebach and Doris von Drahten provide the reader with valuable background information on the installation and its place in Horn's oeuvre." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. NEW/NEW. 8vo. Collectible.