Wende 80 1981

Curator: Let’s turn our attention to “Wende 80” a mixed-media artwork created by Hanne Darboven in 1981. The piece incorporates photography and what looks like serial imagery within a stark, minimalist display. What's your first impression of this work? Editor: Well, it certainly feels like a mausoleum for analog media, doesn't it? The monochrome palette and orderly arrangement gives off a detached, almost clinical vibe. I can’t help but think of how these materials were once alive with information, music and the promise of tangible record, but here, arranged like this, the effect becomes completely opposite. Curator: The use of serial art and repetitive imagery is significant, it seems. Darboven was deeply concerned with concepts of time, history and memory. What looks to be framed scores, perhaps even photos from newspapers or magazines, all carefully contained...do you see them as reliquaries in some fashion? Editor: Definitely. But they're austere reliquaries! Not adorned with gold or precious jewels. It feels more like an archaeological dig cataloging fragments of a recent but irretrievable past. Almost melancholic…is that a minimalist pun, "less is more" melancholy? Curator: The symbolism is multi-layered. Wende, means 'turning point' in German, and specifically the period around the fall of the Berlin Wall is referred to as “Die Wende” in German history. These collected records, musical notation, could signify personal timelines interwoven with broader historical narratives and how history informs cultural memory through what it retains. Editor: The very act of collaging, the re-contextualization, echoes this idea. These pieces are not presented as isolated, perfect moments, but deliberately woven together, hinting at larger, complex narratives, always hinting towards how incomplete such recollection tends to be. Like scattered remnants of a dream. Curator: Perhaps Darboven presents history itself as a series of collected, arranged fragments—an interpretation open to individual reflection, like each viewer's response to musical harmony? Editor: I find that so compelling. We’re left grappling with a fragmented historical landscape, much like sorting through the remnants of one's past trying to figure out the patterns we thought we buried and were left safely locked away. Curator: This feels like a thoughtful conclusion. It's a piece which encourages individual and collective cultural remembrance. Editor: Exactly. "Wende 80" offers a silent symphony of reflection, a fittingly poignant note to end on.