Park Fiction

Documenta11 Installation
Hamburg St. Pauli, Reeperbahn 1
June 19 - July 6
open daily from 12 a.m to 10 p.m.
Free entry
Exhibition opening on June 19, 5 pm with Ute Meta Bauer (Co-Curator Documenta11, Berlin Biennale), Schwabinggrad Ballett, Gino and pupils of Friedrichstrasse school .
In the afternoon, guided tours through the exhibition and to the park area are offered.


The installation in the documenta-Halle 2002 (Picture: Werner Maschmann, Documenta11)

After an intensive seven-year process of wishing, planning and negotiating, culminating in its presentation at Documenta11, Park Fiction, a long-term planned park project in Hamburg-St. Pauli, with and from a collective of its residents, is in the midst of realization.

Just the right time to reflect on this successful process: One year after Documenta11, Park Fiction’s installation returns to Hamburg. The work will be shown for the first time in it’s place of origin, on the Reeperbahn in the district of St. Pauli, to give all people involved in the project the possibility to see the outcome. Also, the reception of the exhibition shall invite to discuss the question how interventionist projects can be presented in "art spaces" such as exhibition rooms. The Documenta11 installation faces this challenge in a formally precise and complex way, but a comprehensive reflection is still to be achieved.

The work consists of 5 workdesks adapting the design of "Sprachlabor" (speech laboratory) – tables from the late 60’s german "Bildungsaufbruch" (educational reform agenda)- times to remind of the abandoned promises of the recent past. As in all the Park Fiction Tools, the colouring quotes constructivist designs of the 20’s while while ironically employing the Corporate Design techniques of multinationals, and thus relating to society's real existing wealth.

The desks are assigned to central working-concepts. Drawings and products from the " production of desires" are shown in elegant registers, inviting to work with the material offered and providing a dignified presentation in contrast to bourgeois hanging traditions.

As an essential part of and supplement to the installation, Margit Czenki’s film "Park Fiction – the wishes will leave the house and hit the streets" (Hamburg 1999) shows the wide range of voices involved in the project. The film captures the moment where politics, arts and musical subcultures made each other more clever. This narrative line is combined with a fast-forward ride through the history of parks and politics, presented in rich colours, from the arabic gardens via Coney Island’s Luna Park to the much disputed parks of the 20th century.

5 assorted models from the production of wishes, presented in a skyscraper style, refer to possible worlds in the ruins of post-fordism.

The congress Unlikely Encounters in Urban Space will open up the view on the global horizon, and create direct connections between similarly laid-out projects in different countries.