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On an art safari across Harburgs harbour -
A toast to urban development being lived imaginatively.
This part on a article - appeared in German on 20 August 2005 in the newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt, by Maike Schiller, - is meant as appetizer for our planned "Hafensafari" on September 2nd during the VISP-Seminar at TuTech.
... Those who set off on a journey of discovery across Harburg's riverport harbour carve their path through shoulder-high grasses and colourfully blossoming wildflowers, watchful as they clamber over deviously stinging nettles, past thorny bushes hung sweet and ripe with blackberries. "Harbour Safari" is the name of the temporary art action that leads visitors across unaccustomed terrain; a title that does justice to this urban-development wilderness.
For what is now the third time, a group of committed landscape architects and urban developers from Hamburg are staging a discovery tour across a site undergoing radical change. Whereas the Harbour Safaris in 2003 and 2004 first led across the HafenCity harbour complex and onto the Veddel riverine peninsula, this time the initiators are tackling the area between the Schellerdamm, the Lotsekanal pilots' channel and the Holzhafen harbour segment for wood products.
18 artists were requested to make contributions. What has emerged is a wide variety of commentaries on the venue: While Maria von Lenthe brings this "terrain turned inside out" closer to visitors using coloured latex impressions literally turned inside out, Rüdiger Knott, a former programme director at radio broadcaster NDR 90.3, has mounted navigational signs, natural rubber, epoxy resins and harbour sheet metal to form new contexts in his "Dialogue of the Traces". Llaura Sünner is presenting a bulkhead made of felt, Anneli Schütz and Marie-Louise Vogt have woven nature and synthetics together to smugly ask the viewer: "Are you ready for the country?"
The works exhibited are fun, have an associative impact and open up new perspectives. Harburg is definitely worth a safari. And once the voyager has that behind them, further destinations await right away: Across the street for example, at the beach club to meet for a lounge-about cocktail. To toast to urban development being lived imaginatively.
http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/2005/08/20/473041.html
http://www.hafensafari.de
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