Hotel Marienbad 001:
Douglas Gordon/FORT. eternally closed and opened the door

 

 

27 January – 7 March 08

 

 

Hotel Marienbad 001: Douglas Gordon/FORT. eternally closed and opened the door
January 27 - March 07, 2008
Opening: January 26, 2008, 5 - 10 pm

Three Steps forward and two to the right
Purple banners dropped from above
Circular saw roaring
Matches slowly lit and blown out
Face in a mirror
Now go to room five...
(Alan Kaprow)

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to present Hotel Marienbad, a genuine hotel suite which will occupy several rooms in the KW's main building from Saturday, January 26, offering accommodation for creatives from all artistic disciplines. Guests do not pay for the rooms in the usual way; the accepted currency are artistic interventions that subject the place to permanent change. Thus each guest leaves traces which combine to form part of a collective process that is reflected in the room number as a steadily rising figure.

By virtue of the unusual creative context provided by Hotel Marienbad, the resulting series of events will promote modes of presentation and performance formats that are rarely seen in art institutions, with exhibitions lasting only a single day or presenting work in progress. Hotel Marienbad offers a poetic space that opens up possibilities beyond the white cube. Eluding all attempts at defining it as either a private or a public space, it is both useful space and artistic platform.

The name of the hotel and the neon sign mounted on the façade of the KW building were created by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. Two places that made cinematic history are referenced in the hotel's name: Kino Marienbad in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Alain Resnais' movie Last Year at Marienbad. Two locations in cinematic history, these are also possible places of first encounter.

Zimmer 001, eternally closed and opened the door is the work of the artists' collective FORT, whose members designed the hotel rooms. Their works are constructed places which mesh real conditions with a fictitious world of signs and allusions. Participating artists are Claudia Heidorn, Anna Jandt, Anneli Käsmayr, Jenny Kropp, and Alberta Niemann.

The exhibition is curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

Supported by Dornbracht Culture Projects and the Friends of KW Institute for Contemporary Art.