Museum of Lies
The Museum of Lies , formerly in the listed manor house in the Kyritz district of Gantikow in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district ( 52 ° 58 ′ 28.1 ″ N , 12 ° 21 ′ 2.1 ″ E ), was created by the object artist Reinhard Zabka alias Richard von Gigantikow from the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg artist scene in the 1980s initially designed and run as a public summer studio in Prignitz. After moving to Kyritz, the collection was significantly expanded with further works by the owner and in 1995 was accepted as a member of the Brandenburg Museum Association. In 2010 it had to move out due to rent disputes, and the exhibits were stored. At the current storage location, the Serkowitz Inn ( Kötzschenbrodaer Straße 39) rented in Radebeul-Serkowitz , Saxony , the Museum of Lies was opened on September 9, 2012 as a temporary permanent exhibition until a decision is made about the further use of the former inn.
history
Zabka, who was born in Erfurt, developed his contemporary art in protest against bourgeois life in the GDR and was suppressed accordingly by the authorities ( MfS Hauptabteilung XX - State Apparatus, Culture, Church, Underground). After repeated refusals for exhibition permits by the art supervisory authority, Zabka began to saw up, expressively rearrange and collage his works in order to take away the obvious level of meaning.
As a result, he further developed his workmanship, using a combination of installation art, collage and light and sound productions. He opened his summer studio in Babe ( Roddahn ) to the public and lived there in the summer months semi-publicly in a permanent exhibition that also included his personal living space. Without express intention and exhibition concept, he made himself unassailable to the state organs with his apparently apolitical works in the Dadaist style.
The history for the visitor describes a fictional ancestral gallery from 1884 with an Emma von Hohenbüssow , the alleged great-granddaughter of Baron Münchhausen , who at the age of 11 did not want a dollhouse, but a museum . Her parents initially granted her wish with a small pavilion , but it was soon no longer enough. During the Second World War , the collection was looted and the rest was taken to a rubbish dump in 1980, where it was picked up by the artist and taken to his summer studio, a dilapidated farmer's cottage in Prignitz. Underneath, he found a little booklet with the history of the Museum of Lies and reconstructed the collection.
At this point the artist switched to his real story.
In 1990, after reunification , Reinhard Zabka declared his studio a museum. The Museum of Lies was a great success and was invited to festivals, international art symposia and city festivals. It has received grants for international art symposia since 1992 and at times referred to itself as the German Historical Museum of Lies . In the spring of 1995, the Brandenburg State Museum Association accepted the Museum of Lies as a member and the city of Kyritz transferred the dilapidated Gantikow manor house to Reinhard Zabka's sponsoring association for use as a museum. In 2000, the Brandenburg regional association LAG-Soziokultur recognized the museum as a socio-cultural center due to its international relations and regular art workshops.
The Museum of Lies in Gantikow offered a collection of things (“relics of a traumatically collapsed interior named GDR”), which were removed of their original meaning in idiosyncratic installations. The studio was used as a private exhibition and living space. The artist lived and worked in the immediate vicinity or in the exhibition himself and also entertained his personal guests during opening hours, e.g. T. in the museum rooms. Museum visitors were often invited to private tea by the artist.
Reinhard Zabka later ran the German Historical Lies Museum as a sole proprietorship , now as a tenant in what was once his own house. Over the past few years it had developed into an important cultural and leisure offer for the region. The Museum of Lies received recognition and attention far beyond the district, but in the town itself, rejection grew steadily.
After the end of the rental agreement and the necessary move of the museum from the Gantikow premises, the exhibits were stored, the artist now operates from Radebeul in Saxony, where he has been a participant in the annual international traveling theater festival during the autumn and wine festival for many years . On September 9, 2012, the Museum of Lies was reopened as a temporary installation in the Serkowitz Inn in Radebeul , Saxony . In 2016 Zabka was awarded the Radebeul Art Prize.
In July 2017, the Saxon Landing Office for Museum Affairs wrote in a letter to Zabka that the Museum of Lies was not a museum in the sense of the criteria of the International Museum Council ICOM, but a “performative total work of art”. It can therefore not be exempt from sales tax. Zabka is taking legal action against it and is considering renaming it to "Fake News Forum" or "Culture Forum alternative facts".
Collection in Gantikow
The collection of works in the Museum of Lies was curated by the owner Reinhard Zabka . The collection of contemporary fine art showed predominantly expressionist installations on approx. 400 m² of exhibition space in 10 rooms and a sculpture garden on the property's property. The topics varied between Dadaist arrangements of bizarre kitchen and handicraft items from the beginning of the 20th century, quotes from everyday Thai culture (especially from Bali ), political reflection on the GDR past and religious-critical satiricals of Christian veneration of saints . In between there were individual works of modern video art , instructions on true lies or even Vincent van Gogh's ear in a showcase. The Gantikow Museum dealt with Theodor Fontane as ostensibly the only significant artist who ever wandered through the Prignitz, and Willy Brandt , as the founder of the basic agreement, with its own themed rooms. Numerous installation quotations opened up to the visitor either only with East German socialization or with political interest. Above all wood and concrete sculptures by artist friends were installed in the sculpture garden, including Birgit Schöne , a Berlin installation artist.
The facade of the Gantikow manor house carried a listed fresco gallery , which thematically dealt with lies on one wing of the house and the truth on the other . The work was directed for several years by Katharina Zipser , a fresco master of Romanian origin who lives in Munich and has an international reputation.
Reception in the media
The Museum of Lies in Gantikow was regularly received in national media. The reporting mostly focused on the apparently incoherent exhibition, which always offered the visitor several levels of meaning at the same time. Since the superficial expectation in the Museum of Lies to consume ready-made lying stories was violently disappointed, some journalists also spoke of refreshing clarity, which the visitor always had to discover for himself.
“The fact that everything is a lie in the Museum of Lies is gradually turning out to be the greatest lie. You rarely get on the track of hidden truths more concretely. "
"Truth or lie? This question has preoccupied philosophy since Plato. And it has long been clear that it is a pointless undertaking to distinguish the truth from the lie from the sea of lies in everyday communication. "
"The Museum of Lies - the imaginative, lively, witty and irony-soaked foreign body in a boring village in the dreary Brandenburg, dominated by the culture of the shooting club and volunteer fire brigade."
Quotes (from the time in Gantikow)
"The lie in the service of the truth washes the dust of everyday life from the stars."
“What would the state of Brandenburg be without its museum of lies. Master of the twists and turns to Gantikow is 'Richard von Gigantikow', who locates with dreamlike certainty where the right is hidden in the wrong. "
“Behind Kyritz, on the B 5 is the village of Gantikow, that's not a lie. As soon as you have entered the castle, however, the distinction between appearance and reality becomes quite difficult, because the objects and installations on display are not what they are. They are relics of a traumatically collapsed interior called the GDR. They are compositions of sacred remnants, of everyday stuff, which here in a way misappropriated or released from its serving role and becomes an end in itself that the artistic new context makes things appear as their own caricature or glorification. Here the 'madness' word of the turn came true: altars with pennants and medals and Walter Ulbricht photos, the mausoleum with a well-deserved mouse of the people laid out in it. Most of it, however, is not meant in any way, does not want to remember anything, has almost given up the memory of oneself and revolves around itself as a useless toy with a smile: 'Machines that run nowhere'. You walk through these installed rooms and feel how the crazy clashes spark in your own head. In this maze the desire to play along grows, in world-forgotten handicrafts to pick up the leftovers - in the not entirely Hegelian sense - in order to conceal their worn-out definition and to emphasize what they never were and can now be forever: 'household appliances that expand consciousness'. Short circuits in the head can be beneficial. The founder of the house calls himself Richard von Gigantikow, his work is the 'Psychedelia Maschinka' and the place is the 'Sanctuary of the East German Resistance'. You smile and marvel. "
literature
- Evelyn Finger: The Last Dadaist of the Wild East , in: Die Zeit 39, September 18, 2008, p. 76.
- Thomas Gerlach : The Museum of Lies - a new place of pilgrimage in the historic Serkowitz Inn . In: Radebeuler Monatshefte eV (Ed.): Preview & Review; Monthly magazine for Radebeul and the surrounding area . September 2013, p. 12-15 .
- Siegmund Radtke: The museum cat as a visitor compass; An interim balance sheet from the Museum of Lies in Radebeul-Serkowitz . In: Radebeuler Monatshefte eV (Ed.): Preview & Review; Monthly magazine for Radebeul and the surrounding area . January 2014, p. 4-7 .
- Michaela Vieser u. Reto Wettach: Overlooked Sights. German places. ic! -berlin, Berlin 2004; ISBN 3-9809758-0-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Stefke: Museum of Lies Gantikow. Zabka's Museum of Lies cleared out. September 22, 2010, archived from the original on August 18, 2017 ; Retrieved on August 18, 2017 : “In the past few days, all the exhibits have been packed and taken to temporary accommodation in the town. Artist and museum founder Reinhard Zabka thus anticipated another threatened eviction. "
- ↑ Bulky waste becomes art . In: sz-online.de of September 7, 2012, accessed on September 8, 2012.
- ↑ The Gasthof Serkowitz is advertised . In: sz-online.de from July 19, 2012, accessed on September 8, 2012.
- ↑ Hendrik Lasch: A museum that shouldn't be a museum. The "Museum of Lies" in Radebeul is in trouble with a Saxon authority who thinks the whole thing is a lie. In: Neues Deutschland from 24./25. 2018, p. 16
- ^ Bernhard Honnigfort: April, April! On Sunday people joke and cheat again that the beams bend. Bernhard Honnigfort has looked around the Museum of Lies in Saxony In: Frankfurter Rundschau from March 31/1 . April 2018, p. 48
- ↑ Broadcast on ZDF ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Report on the Deutsche Welle radio station
- ↑ Article on Spiegel-Online with video
Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′ 45.5 ″ N , 13 ° 39 ′ 34 ″ E