To mark the “New Nature” theme year, the Klassik Stiftung in Weimar has been inviting visitors to the exhibition in the Schiller Museum since April 2021, providing a strong counterpoint to the idyllic Weimar parks. More about the special exhibition here.
The Klassik Stiftung Weimar’s opening exhibition for the 2021 theme year bears this provocative title. The exhibition “I hate nature” explores our relationship with nature. The exhibition prompts us to ask what exactly nature is and what will become of it in the future. It runs until the end of September 2021.
The themes to which the Klassik Stiftung Weimar has so far devoted itself have ranged from Goethe to Bauhaus . It has thus been regarded as a steward of the beautiful. This is changing this year. Under the title “I Hate Nature”, the Schiller Museum explores the difficult relationship between man and nature. The exhibition is part of the “New Nature” theme year. It aims to stimulate thought and provoke discussion. It runs until September 26, 2021.
The exhibition “I hate nature” contrasts the idyllic Weimar parks. It addresses the fact that nature encounters people in many different ways. Nature can be threatening, sometimes seeming controllable and fascinating at the same time. We humans are also part of nature. Nevertheless, we want to set ourselves apart from it. We want to be something else, to be more than nature, not to be at its mercy, but rather to admire and use it. But: we exploit it and at the same time want to be in harmony with it.
The opening exhibition of the theme year is dedicated to this area of tension. The title “I hate nature” goes back to an exclamation by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. But there is more than just rejection behind his sentence. Above all, the exclamation refers to man’s relationship to what he calls nature. And it is precisely this relationship that the exhibition explores. It asks: How does nature control us? How do we control it? And what will our common future look like?
Weimar and the Klassik Stiftung, which is based there, are not actually known for provocative questions. Rather, the city is famous for its gardens. These stretch along the banks of the River Ilm, among other places . An English garden stretches for several kilometers here. It is characterized by the wide meadow landscape with its old trees and picturesque groupings of shrubs. The creation of the garden dates back to 1778. Since then, it has become a symbol of harmony between man and nature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also played his part in this. The poet was not only a lover and connoisseur of plants. He was also involved in the planning of this park, in the creation of an ideal nature that seemed more perfect than the nature from which it was taken.
Prelude to the exhibition
The exhibition “I Hate Nature” at the Schiller Museum is therefore the scene of a confrontation between man and nature. It starts in an arena with eleven projectors. They project ocean waves across the floor and seagulls pass by on the walls. Here, the exhibition simulates a place in India, an untouched coastal landscape. The more people stream into this space, the more this landscape is transformed. It becomes an industrial port shaped by man. In the end, there is nothing left of nature. With its opening, the exhibition “I hate nature” impressively demonstrates that the mere presence of people in a space causes the environment there to change. In the exhibition situation, no prefabricated video is shown. Instead, the projection reacts to how many people are in the room and adapts what is shown accordingly.
Themes, formats and exhibits
The exhibition in the Schiller Museum occupies three rooms. Each room focuses on one aspect of the relationship between man and nature. The exhibits are made up of works of contemporary art, literary texts adapted for the media and objects. The latter come from the holdings of the Klassik Stiftung as well as international collections.
The first part of the exhibition is about the beauty and horror of nature. It also explores the power that nature has over people. It is about ageing, illness and death. The exhibits include Goethe’s last medicine bottle as well as Nietzsche’s sick chair. In addition, a video shows the decomposition of a rabbit in fast motion. The complex order of nature is also thematized here using the replication of DNA as a total work of art.
The second room of “I hate nature” asks what mankind is doing to nature. Swantje Güntzel’s work of art helps with this. It is a kind of chewing gum machine containing transparent balls with plastic toys. The artist has collected these from the stomach contents of creatures from the North Pacific. These contents have killed the animals. Unfortunately, they are nothing more than worthless children’s toys that are sold all over the world. In this part of the exhibition, images are also linked to literature and poetry in video and audio stations. For example, the poem “Durchgearbeitete Landschaft” by Volker Braun about open-cast mining is combined with images of cosmetic surgery. Both show firstly destruction, secondly operations and thirdly interventions that people do to themselves and to nature.
I hate nature” is not about pointing the finger at man and his traces on the planet. Nature is presented as both vulnerable and weak. Instead, the exhibition aims to examine the relationship between these two forces. Against this background, three different future scenarios are presented in the third and final part. And it is not only mankind that plays a role in them. Find out more on site.
Fancy another exhibition tip? The exhibition “Landscape Works with Piet Oudolf and LOLA”is runningat SCHUNCK in Heerlen (NL) in 2021.
