Former Underground Train Station (KulturBahnhof)

Former Underground Rail Station (KulturBahnhof), photo: Mathias Völzke

documenta 14 in Kassel might begin underground. Envisioned as the visitor’s point of entry into the exhibition, the decommissioned tunnel at the KulturBahnhof (formerly Kassel’s main rail station) saw its last train pass through in 2005 after nearly forty years of service. It had opened in 1968, the year of documenta founder Arnold Bode’s fourth and last documenta, to accommodate the increasing local train traffic to and from Kassel. The lower level suggests a point of transit—in this case, of artworks that have perhaps just arrived or are about to depart. The upper level, a former shopping arcade with the remains of a vandalized Kassel city plan rendered in colored glass by Dieter von Andrian (1925–1992), also functions as a threshold, across which the notion of learning and education is found to be continuously and necessarily in flux. Though a sense of desolation tinges the underground space, there is, literally, a light at the end of the tunnel: when emerging, visitors soon arrive at the main documenta 14 venues in Kassel’s Nordstadt.

Posted in Public Exhibition
Related

Monday

by iQhiya

iQhiya’s performative installation attempts to offer an alternative curriculum, defying the structural lessons of the hidden curriculum that we uncover in various experiences of (educational) institutions…

 More
Calendar

documenta 14 Opening Party

To celebrate the inauguration of documenta 14 in Kassel, we warmly invite you to join us for our Opening Party.

June 10, 2017, 10 pm
KulturBahnhof, Rainer-Dietrichs-Platz 1, 34117 Kassel
(Entrance via Franz-Ulrich-Straße…

 More
Calendar

Drawing A Line Through Landscape

by Nikhil Chopra

Nikhil Chopra’s performance marks the end of a 3000-km road trip from Athens to Kassel. A large drawing created onroute—a montage of landscapes reflecting on migration and nomadism—is presented for…

 More
Calendar