St.Open, 2017

Public art in local Parks

St.Open was a four-part, temporary public art project that took place in 2017. I invited four artists, Vera Drebusch, Sina Seifee, Thomas Garvie and Julia Weißenberg to work together with me, one for each of the four parts of the project in which a decommissioned bus stop was creatively reimagined and repurposed and installed in public parks in Cologne’s inner city.
Four different works were created at four different locations: Mediapark/ August Sander Park railway bridge, Klingelpützpark, Theodor-Heuss-Park at Ebertplatz and in the ‘Little Alhambra’ on Innere Kanalstraße. Each of the four works dealt with the immediate surroundings of the place and its history as well as with the bus stop itself as a place of waiting, lingering and encounters.
The four bus shelters – or installative, architectural and (inter-)active works - were opened successively in the various parks between April and June allowing them to be explored as places of narrative and fiction one after the other as part of a route until the end of September 2017. They are transitional places taking us along with them by arresting our own movement and flow if only for a brief moment. 

Empty and open for everything: The profane space of the bus stop temporarily became a place that brings people and their perceptions together, enabling direct encounters to take place. Something immaterial, like a non-linear atmosphere emerged from the fusion of individual elements of the bus stops as clearly visible objects to passers-by in the parks. They became something that both holds us together and that slightly changes upon our return, resulting in moments, memories and stories being shared amongst passers-by and visitors.
St.Open did not communicate what it was or where it came from. There was no indication regarding the framework of the exhibition project or the artists at the site. One of the main concepts behind St.Open was to create an installation that would suddenly appear in familiar surroundings, without asserting itself as something definite, but nevertheless claiming a part of the public space.

St.Open [sānt 'ōp en] stands for the meaning of space and the mental transgression of the idea of space and its function. The concept of freedom and our perception of it remain important, that is: what is sacred to you, whether it is especially important or not. St.Open has expanded to include outdoor rituals.

The St.Open catalogue is an extension of the exhibition project, while at the same time it forms a self-contained work.

In the first part of the catalogue, the author and curator Kay von Keitz, the artist and author René Kemp, the author and musician Marlen Pelny, and the futurologist Cornelia Daheim as well as the artists Sina Seifee and Selma Gültoprak describe their own take on the perception and function of shelters, bus stops, public and social space and the systems within them. They introduce four differing commentaries over a total of fifteen pages in red pantone.  The second part of the catalogue consists of a vivid and sculptural series of images of the individual artworks and the bus stops in the parks, documenting how they were used and the changes they went through over time – covering forty-five cmyk pages. The third part of the catalogue is a fifteen-page appendix, composed of a selection of collected images and text in green pantone. This section also presents information about the historical origins of the individual parks locations, descriptions of the individual art works as well as an amusing appendix of supplementary fragments of information and statements that, like additives, have had and continue to have an effect on the project.