Sigrid Sigurdsson

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Sigrid Sigurdsson (* 1943 in Oslo ) is a German artist. She grew up in Iceland and Germany and has lived in Hamburg since 1951. From 1961 to 1966 she studied at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts with Kurt Kranz (1910–1997).

Sigrid Sigurdsson is one of the most important artists of her generation who (like Christian Boltanski , Jochen Gerz , Anselm Kiefer , Anne and Patrick Poirier , Dorothee von Windheim and others) deal with history, memory and remembrance in their work. The spectrum of her extensive oeuvre includes drawings, conceptual art , painting, text, photography, film, sculpture, installation, environment and interaction . Her main work, The Architecture of Memory , can be seen as a museum in the museum in the permanent collection of the Osthaus-Museum Hagen .

Topic and artistic working method

Sigrid Sigurdsson has been grappling with the phenomenon of memory and its diverse dimensions and functions since the beginning of her artistic career. The focus of her work is the time of National Socialism with its effects in the past and present. Her main interest is the visualization of unconscious, taboo or repressed memories that are anchored in individual and collective memory and have an effect up to the present day.

The basic principle of her work is the collecting, processing and combining of authentic and fictitious materials, which she integrates into her installations and projects. By bringing together historical materials and official documents with individual biographical traces or found objects from everyday history, she arranges seemingly random connections. These refer to the unpredictability and the constructive nature of memory. Depending on the observer's previous knowledge and experience, different associations arise, personal memories are triggered and subjective interpretations are made.

Early drawings and objects

The artist's first works were created as early as 1956. These include various series of drawings made using a mixed technique of pencil, colored pencil and tempera on collaged paper or cardboard. They show anthropomorphic figures with cage-like hulls ( cage people ) or double-headed beings that are connected by a common trunk ( double heads ). 39 of these drawings from 1957 to 1982 are integrated into the architecture of memory in the Osthaus Museum in Hagen.

These drawings, as well as other early works, which consist of souvenir objects, fragments and found objects, are the result of her intensive preoccupation with the time of National Socialism and its effects on her own childhood and family biography as well as on collective history. Since then, Sigrid Sigurdsson's work has characterized the reciprocal relationship between individual biography and collective history and “relocating” memories into the memory of the individual.

prose

The autobiographical and literary writing accompanied Sigrid Sigurdsson's artistic activity from the beginning. Many of her early diary entries, memorial texts and mental reflections, which she recorded in found books or loose collections of pages, are integrated into later works and installations.

Since the early sixties, Sigrid Sigurdsson has also been writing fictional stories and fairy tales in which she tries to track down the riddle of memory and recollection. A large part of these stories is brought together in the cycle Das Wunderknäuel , which consists of over three hundred books with incorporated photos and own drawings. Each episode of this cycle conveys a wealth of images and metaphors that can be related to the labyrinthine structure of memory and its various functions. In 2000 Sigrid Sigurdsson started revising these stories. 366 books from the Wunderknäuel cycle have been shown for the first time since September 2009 as an integral part of the architecture of memory in the Osthaus-Museum Hagen.

Works on paper and installations

At the end of the 1970s, Sigrid Sigurdsson experimented with various aesthetic methods in which she applied the principle of layering and superimposition in the design of surfaces and sculptural structures. A group of works consisted of approx. 300 large-format works on paper and showed black ciphers on white primed silk and waste paper, which was repeatedly overwritten with black characters in constant alternation with further glazes and layers of paper, so that the lower layers through the upper layers like a palimpsest to slide through. Further groups of works from this period showed variations of this process through the expansion into wall-filling formats as well as the additional incorporation of different materials into the individual layers of paper. Only a few of these works have survived, all of which are privately owned.

From the beginning of the eighties, Sigurdsson's works took on an increasingly open and interactive character. The first realizations of spatial installations and objects were created in which the viewer is included as users and contributors. Two of these works with the speaking titles Der Dialog (1984–1986) and Instructions to Wahnsinn (1987) were table installations whose surfaces could be filled with hundreds of small cubes, game pieces and other elements. Characteristic of this work was the construction of paradoxical game constellations, caused by breaking or circumventing the usual rules of the game. Additional elements such as boards that could be attached to the edges of the table or narrow, walk-in cubicles with viewing slits triggered further irritation. The users got into absurd situations of communication, observation and being observed.

In 1986 the first room installation entitled Locking and Opening was created in the Hamburger Kunsthalle . This work, which was presented in a specially set up room until 1991, was designed as a process-related work, as a work in progress. Here, the artist wanted to first finish with personal memory work and then gradually open up to dialogue with the visitors. This process took place in several phases; it began with the sealing and packaging of personal documents and diaries and ended with the display of an empty book, which was available to visitors and users of the room as a separate medium for their immediate reactions and comments. Closing and opening signifies a turning point within Sigrid Sigurdsson's work , which marks the transition from the work as a singular creation by an artist to collaborative work, to the realization of the Open Archives .

The open archives

Since the mid-1980s, the main approach of Sigrid Sigurdsson's work has been the initiation of memory installations and commemorative projects, which she realizes in cooperation with museums, institutions and individuals and subsumes under the term of the open archive . What is characteristic of the projects is their open form. This results on the one hand from its conception as a work in progress and on the other hand from the direct involvement of the recipients , who can actively participate in the construction of the archive with articles, stories and biographies they have written themselves. So far, Sigrid Sigurdsson has realized open archives at five locations in Hagen, Gdańsk / Poland, Braunschweig, Frankfurt and Munich.

The initiation of an open archive is always preceded by a detailed research of the history and the local conditions of the place where the archive is to be built. On this basis, the artist develops a concept for the organization and formal design of the archive, followed by an invitation to the residents of the place or region to contribute with their contributions. In this way, the open archives become places where individual memories and stories find their place and where they can condense in interaction with others into a virtual memory of a city or an entire region. The archive is usually taken care of by the local institution that commissioned it - a museum, a memorial or a school - and made accessible to the public in this way. Each of the open archives has its own individual structure and form. The participants' records are presented and stored in folders, linen cassettes or boxes. These are designed by the artist and handcrafted by a bookbinder. It is part of the basic method of open archives that the names of the authors involved are named and that the records are preserved in their originality. This means that they are neither sorted out nor edited in any way by the artist or anyone else. In the context of the archives, the artist often presents historical materials, documents or objects in separate storage boxes or showcases. These mark the historical or local context of the author's collection and at the same time function as association material for visitors to the archives. With the participation of numerous authors, the initiation of the Open Archives in several locations resulted in unique conglomerates of individual stories, memories and experiences.

The architecture of memory

Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum

The architecture of memory is the main work of Sigrid Sigurdsson's Open Archives . At the same time, it can be described as the artist's central work, in which individual work complexes from different work phases together with the contributions of numerous authors are condensed into a multi-layered and multi-part construct. It is an archive and library-like room installation that has been part of the contemporary collection of the Osthaus Museum in Hagen since 1988. It was constantly changed and expanded and was presented under the title Before the Silence on the upper floor of the old building until 2006 . Since the reopening of the Osthaus Museum in August 2009, the work has been outsourced and is now accessible again under the new title The Architecture of Memory - The Museum in the museum at a central location on the ground floor of the old building.

The approx. 180 m² large and approx. 6 m high room is equipped with open, mahogany brown shelves on the walls, in whose compartments an unmanageable number of books, folios, folders and approx. 200 small showcases are stored. The basis is the original collection of Vor der Stille , whose folios and showcases contain a total of several thousand documents, private letters, official forms, books, newspapers, albums, photographs, finds and objects from everyday history. Most of these materials come from the time of National Socialism or they address this history. But there are also relics from the previous and following decades. The oldest object, an edition of Cicero's works, dates from the 16th century. The artist has been collecting and assembling the materials from antiquarian holdings and private estates for over 40 years. This complex alone harbors a huge collection of relics, fragments and traces that tell of human fates and their entanglement in history.

Another complex of the work is made up of 800 so-called travel books, which interested visitors have been able to borrow for a certain period of time since 1993 and design them according to their own ideas. After the time has elapsed, the books should be returned to the architecture of memory . There they are housed in the open compartments of a shelf wall and can be removed and viewed if desired. Approx. 600 authors from all over the world have so far been involved in the project.

The middle of the room is dominated by two old, museum-like display cabinets in which the above-mentioned 366 books from the fairy tale cycle The Ball of Wonder are on display. They are presented in such a way that a glimpse into their interior is provided without being accessible - like most other objects in the room. Reading individual stories is made possible by printed excerpts on cardboard sheets, which are spread out on shelves on the display cabinets and on a specially made table.

Another table is placed in the immediate vicinity of the display cabinets with the fairy tale cycle . Its bordered table top is equipped with 1700 colored or lettered cubes and can be played with. Further elements are located in two drawers and in two large, black boxes under the table. The gaming table is not only an instrument that challenges visitors to interact, but it also illustrates in a concise form the structure of the architecture of memory . Because just as the moving game pieces on the table are not subject to any fixed order and offer infinite possibilities for variation, the individual books and elements on the shelves are also not subject to any archival order. For many visitors, surprising and unusual is the fact that, with a few exceptions, almost all parts of the work can be moved, viewed or used. But in contrast to conventional archives or libraries, there is no systematic catalog that makes it possible to find them in a targeted manner. Which elements are brought out and used depends solely on the random access of the user. In a figurative sense, this system is not based on the standards of linear historiography, but on the arbitrariness of subjective memory. The fragments and set pieces in the showcases and folios do not convey a coherent story (s) and no complete historical knowledge, but rather they act as clues and sources of impetus from which the memory and imagination of the visitors can ignite and connect with existing historical knowledge. In this sense, the architecture of memory can also be understood as a metaphor or a model for memory with all its different dimensions and functions.

The fact that in the overarching system of architecture the perspective of science is not excluded, but is consciously included as a meta and reflection level, is shown by three further complexes of the work. The database Germany - A Monument - A Research Order was designed and commissioned by Sigrid Sigurdsson back in 1996. The starting point of the project was the artist's observation that until 1996 there was no comprehensive map showing the National Socialist camp and detention center system as an overview image. Sigurdsson therefore commissioned a historian to mark all the camps, detention and internment facilities of the Nazi regime documented in the literature on a map within the 1937 borders. From 1998 the work of the Osthaus Museum was fundamentally revised and digitized. This digital version was revised again in 2009 and has been integrated into the room since the museum reopened. This database is supplemented by two academic reference libraries on the subjects of 'National Socialism' and 'Memory and Remembrance'. The objective of the libraries is, in addition to the scientifically based cartography of Germany - a monument - to provide a further scientific frame of reference for the materials and work complexes within the architecture of memory .

The individual complexes of the architecture of memory are listed again below:

  • Vor der Stille , works from 1956, a total of approx. 30,000 materials, 1988–2005 Curator: Michael Fehr
  • The architecture of memory , 75 books from 1996 (still in progress), 23 book folders and three showcases
  • 39 drawings from the years 1957 to 1962, loan from Michael Otto, Hamburg
  • Three drawings from 1959 and 1982, donated by Hanna Hohl, Hamburg
  • The Wunderknäuel , 366 books with texts and drawings, from 1961, revised from 2000, edited by Lothar Brandt-Sigurdsson
  • Game table with 1700 dice and letters and an additional game, Sigrid Sigurdsson, 1987/2009
  • Chess dice with original book and roulette, Sigrid Sigurdsson, from 1967/1974/2009
  • Two ship models: Wilhelm Gustloff (1996), Cap Arcona (2001)
  • approx. ten visitor books with 500 and 2000 pages, from 1988
  • 800 travel books for visitor contributions, from 1993 (around 600 authors involved so far)
  • The archive of the future , 100 folders for visitor contributions, from 2002
  • The Museum of Biographies , 100 folders for visitor contributions, from 2002
  • Database Germany - a monument - a research contract . A project to research the National Socialist camps and detention centers as well as the sites of mass murder 1933–1945. Idea and concept: Sigrid Sigurdsson, curator: Michael Fehr, scientific research and processing of the database: Bettina and Holger Sarnes 1996–2000, updated 2009
  • Reference library on the subject of National Socialism, Nils Reschke, from 2009
  • Reference library on remembrance and memory, Martina Pottek, from 2009

Michael Otto , Hamburg, is the sponsor and patron of the Architecture of Remembrance . Curator: Birgit Schulte, Osthaus-Museum Hagen.

Other implemented open archives

1994 ff. Fragment to mała całość - The fragment is a small whole

A project on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Poland, Pomerellen region near Gdańsk.

Based on the site-specific history, the artist turned directly to survivors and eyewitnesses of the so-called death marches, which started at the Stutthof concentration camp at the end of the war. Within two years of preparation, Sigrid Sigurdsson visited 24 villages on the route of the death marches. She asked the contemporary witnesses still living there to write down their memories of the events. Around 180 authors took part. The handwritten notes were placed in linen-covered cassettes and presented to the public in a ceremony on May 9, 1995 in the Old Town Hall of Gdańsk. The archive has been on display in the Stutthof Memorial Museum since 2001.

The project was realized in cooperation with the Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kułtury Gdańsk, Barbara Bergmann, Maciey Nowak and Martina Pottek.

1996 ff. Braunschweig - a city remembers

Conception and implementation of the Schillstrasse subcamp memorial in Braunschweig .

The house for the disabled , built in 1840, now houses the open archive .

The reason for this work was the competition for a memorial to commemorate the victims of a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Schillstrasse . This camp, in which several hundred political prisoners and Jewish forced laborers from the Braunschweig company Büssing NAG were imprisoned between November 1944 and the end of March 1945 , was located on an area that today belongs to the main post office.

The podium in front of the wall with text and picture panels.

In the immediate vicinity of the former concentration camp is the Schill Memorial , inaugurated in 1837 , which commemorates the Prussian major Ferdinand von Schill . The memorial, which has been the site of numerous patriotic commemorations since its erection, was rededicated in 1955 at the suggestion of traditionalist associations and dedicated to the fallen of World War II . On days of national mourning , central wreaths were laid here by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge together with representatives of the city of Braunschweig, the Bundeswehr and various traditionalist clubs and associations. In the 1980s, when the existence of the former forced labor camp on Schillstrasse became known to the general public, this led to demonstrations against the continuation of the military memorial ceremonies at this location. The controversy lasted until 1996 and finally led to the announcement of a competition by the city, whereby the jury decided on Sigrid Sigurdsson's design.

Sigurdsson's work consists of two parts:

  1. Architectural design of the square with a pedestal that can be walked on, marking the adjoining wall with text boards, marking the former camp site and today's headquarters of the main post office with lettering made of blue illuminated letters: “The future has a long past”.
  2. Initiation of an open archive with contributions from over 200 authors as well as municipal and municipal institutions that provide information about how they deal with their own history. The contributions are kept in linen-covered cassettes. Since May 2000 these have been housed in a historic building, the former invalids' house, on the memorial site. Lectures, readings and encounters with survivors and contemporary witnesses take place here on a regular basis.

The memorial, initiated by Sigrid Sigurdsson, is run by the Arbeitskreis Andere Geschichte e. V. under the direction of the historian Frank Erhardt. He is entrusted with maintaining and expanding the open archive, advising users, guiding and maintaining contact with survivors of the camp.

1996 ff. Germany - A monument - A research assignment. 1996 to ...

A project to research the National Socialist camps and detention centers 1933–1945.

First analogue version 1996: Cornelia Steinhauer, Hamburg. Fundamentally revised and digitized version from 1998 in cooperation with the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen. Curator: Michael Fehr, scientific research and processing of the database: Bettina and Holger Sarnes, scientific advice: Thomas Lutz (Foundation Topography of Terror Berlin), Institute for Contemporary History Munich.

An offline version of this database has been in the Obersalzberg documentation of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich since October 1999 . Since 2009, the revised and updated version of Germany has been part of the architecture of memory in the Osthaus-Museum Hagen.

The two long-term employees Bettina and Holger Sarnes have been continuing the project since summer 2011. In February 2012 it was put back online.

2000–2105 The library of the elderly

The library was created on the occasion of the exhibition The Memory of Art - History and Memory in Contemporary Art , which took place from December 2000 to March 2001 in the Historical Museum and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. The idea was to capture the history of the city of Frankfurt from the point of view of people who are connected to the city of Frankfurt through their origins or their place of residence. Six months before the exhibition began, we were looking for 100 participants who were willing to write a biographical, historical or scientific contribution.

In contrast to the other open archives , the conception of the Library of the Elderly is based on a precisely calculated schedule: 65 of the authors should be over 50 years old and 35 under 50 years old. The contributions of the older authors are written from a retrospective of the 20th century. They have been returned to the Historical Museum since 2004. The younger participants have up to 50 years to write “into the future” and reflect on the beginning of the 21st century.

Another author is to be added every year until 2055, so that the library will ultimately consist of 150 articles. If the last person has agreed to participate in 2055 and is (far) under 50 years of age, the completion of the project, if they return their contribution after 50 years, can be calculated by 2105. The historical period that is reflected in the contributions of the Library of the Elderly could therefore be almost 200 years at the end - provided that the oldest project participants were born at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century.

The library of the old was realized in cooperation with the Historical Museum Frankfurt am Main, Kurt Wettengl, Wolf von Wolzüge and Felicitas Gürsching.

2003 ff. (Opening 2007): Weltenwunderland - the children's library

As a counterpart to the library of the elderly , Sigrid Sigurdsson conceived the World Wonderland in May 2003 - The Children's Library , which has been in the primary school on Gebelestrasse in Munich since 2007. This project is also based on an exact calculation. The archive consists of 366 linen-bound cassettes of different colors that represent the days of a leap year. These cassettes are filled with 24 envelopes and a further 24 return envelopes, the number of which corresponds to the hours of a day. In future, the letters should be sent by the children of the Gebele School to persons of their choice, with the request that they describe a special day or a special event in their life on the blank sheet of paper and send it back to the children as a gift. In this way, the world wonderland would one day consist of 8,784 stories from around the world. The variety of stories is also reflected in the design of the cassette covers, which correspond to the six colors of Goethe's color wheel . At the same time, according to the artist's concept, the library would represent a collection "that not only publicly accompanies the development of students and schools, but could also say something about society in the 21st century."

Realization in cooperation with the Gebeleschule Munich, direction: Christine Lorbeer.

Literature and texts on Sigrid Sigurdsson (selection, by year of publication)

Monographs

  • Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Sigrid Sigurdsson - cartography of a journey. History experience in the open archive. Ed: Viola Hildebrand-Schat, modo Verlag, Freiburg i. B. 2020, ISBN 978-3-86833-270-4 .
  • Pottek, Martina: Art as a medium of memory. The concept of open archives in the work of Sigrid Sigurdsson. Weimar: VDG 2007.
  • Sigrid Sigurdsson. Before the silence. A collective memory. Edited by Michael Fehr and Barbara Schellewald. Cologne: Wienand 1995.

Exhibition catalogs

  • Germany - a monument - a research assignment. A project to research the National Socialist camps and detention centers as well as the sites of mass murder from 1933 to 1945. With contributions by Michael Fehr, Bettina Heil and Holger Sarnes as well as Sigrid Sigurdsson. Hagen: New Folkwang Verlag 1999.
  • Fragment to mała całość - The fragment is a small whole. 24 places write their story. A project by Sigrid Sigurdsson. With contributions by Barbara Bergmann and Martina Pottek. Edited by the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen and the Städtische Galerie am Fischmarkt Erfurt. Erfurt: DRV 1995.
  • Sigrid Sigurdsson. Before the silence. Edited by the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen 1989.
  • Sigrid Sigurdsson. Pictures and objects. Edited by the Overbeck-Gesellschaft Lübeck 1987.
  • Viewpoints. Sigrid Sigurdsson. Inside rooms. Edited by the Hamburger Kunsthalle 1984/85.

Articles and individual chapters

  • Monika Wagner : Sigurdsson's archive of the bad neighborhood. Use as a contamination. In: Wagner, Monika: The material of art. Another story of modernity. Munich: Beck 2001, pp. 98-107.
  • Kurt Wettengl: The memory of art. In: The memory of art. History and memory in contemporary art. Exhibition catalog for the Historisches Museum Frankfurt and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Edited by Kurt Wettengl. Frankfurt am Main: Hatje Cantz 2000, pp. 11-19.
  • Aleida Assmann: Sigrid Sigurdsson. In: Dies .: spaces of memory. Forms and transformations of cultural memory. Munich: Beck 1999, pp. 364-367.
  • Monika Wagner: image - writing - material. Concepts of memory in Boltanski, Sigurdsson and Kiefer. In: Mimesis, image, writing. Similarity and Distortion in the Relationship of the Arts. Edited by Birgit R. Erdle and Sigrid Weigel. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau 1996, pp. 23–40.
  • Monika Wagner: Sigrid Sigurdsson and Anselm Kiefer - The memory of the material. In: memory images. Forgetting and remembering in contemporary art. Edited by Kai-Uwe Hemken. Leipzig: Reclam 1996, pp. 126-134.
  • Barbara Schellewald: The museum as a place of memory. Contemporary art in dealing with history. In: Art in Context. Art museum and cultural history. [on the occasion of the conference from January 29 to December 1, 1991 as part of the exhibition Role Models in National Socialism - Dealing with Heritage in the Women's Museum Bonn]. Edited by Stefanie Poley. Alfter: VDG 1993, pp. 75-90.
  • Barbara Schellewald: Sigrid Sigurdsson. Before the silence - The art of memory. In: Thinking spaces between art and science. Edited by Silvia Baumgart, Gotlind Birkle u. a. Berlin: Reimer 1993, pp. 280-303.
  • Hanna Hohl: A living space in the museum. In: History, Image and Museum. For the presentation of history in the museum. Edited by Michael Fehr and Stefan Grohé. Cologne: Wienand 1989, pp. 212-218.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martina Pottek: Art as a Medium of Memory (2007) pp. 39–77.
  2. ^ Sigrid Sigurdsson. Pictures and objects. Lübeck catalog (1987).
  3. ↑ Hohl, Hanna: Ein Lebensraum im Museum (1989), pp. 212-218.
  4. ↑ Pottek, Martina: Art as a Medium of Memory (2007), pp. 109–200.
  5. ↑ Sigrid Sigurdsson: Before the silence . Edited by Michael Fehr, Barbara Schellwald (1995).
  6. ↑ a b Germany - A monument - A research assignment. With contributions by Michael Fehr, Bettina Heil, Holger Sarnes, Sigrid Sigurdsson (1999).
  7. ↑ Fragment to mała całość. Catalog (1995).
  8. ↑ Kurt Wettengl: The Memory of Art (2000), pp 11-19.
  9. ↑ Published by modo Verlag, Freiburg iB 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Sigurdsson, Sigrid
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Oslo