Bringing City and River closer together

Interview with Dr. Annegret Laabs

In 2006/2007, an art project in your museum “DIE ELBE [in] between” dealt with Magdeburg’s great river, the Elbe. An obvious idea?

Dr. Annegret Laabs: The idea of setting up a project on the subject of the Elbe is old. When I came to Magdeburg eight years ago the view from my window was of the Elbe – as it still is today. But I felt that although the Elbe flowed through the city, the citizens of Magdeburg did not fully appreciate it. I thought that the city and the river should somehow be brought together – just like in Dresden where I came from.

The floods of 2003 were a turning point …

Dr. Annegret Laabs: … which made the city once more aware of the Elbe. From that point on it was clear to us that we had to devote ourselves to the river with our art and art projects that also last significantly longer than just one event or a festival for half the summer. We wanted to anchor something that would last to the Elbe. It took some time until we succeeded in winning over the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Eastern German Savings Bank Foundation, the Lotto Toto lottery organisation, the Artistic Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt and many other small financial backers for our idea.

“DIE ELBE [in] between” became a correspondence project to the IBA in Magdeburg.

Dr. Annegret Laabs: Cooperation was the obvious thing to do. During our work we noticed that other people were working on the same subject. And both sides will benefit if you join forces. We therefore organised the 1st Symposium for the artistic project in 2006 together with Magdeburg’s City Planning Office and shared financing, technology and staff. That worked really well.

You invited twelve artists to the Symposium in Magdeburg …

Dr. Annegret Laabs: They were artists from various countries as well as from Magdeburg and the surrounding region whose oeuvre seemed suitable to working in public space. During the interdisciplinary Symposium, they exchanged ideas with the experts on the subject of the river and the river landscape. These were town planners, naturalists as well as historians and philosophers. They familiarised themselves with the Elbe on inspection tours to the river. We wanted to achieve an initial approach to the subject of the Elbe and art.

The outcome of the artistic discussion was presented September 2007 in the exhibition “Water.Currents.Times”, and three works can be seen today along the Elbe.

Dr. Annegret Laabs: We were unfortunately only able to realise a fraction of the twelve works, and we are therefore all the more delighted with them today. They are Ian Hamilton Finlay’s “Chrysalis”, a bronze ship propeller, Gloria Friedmann’s “Time Counter” in the new City Square near the Elbe and Maurizio Nannuccis “All the way here and from here much further”, a lighting installation on the old lift bridge.

… which was reconstructed as part of the IBA and which can once more be seen from the uninterrupted public footpath on the riverbank. When the lights were switched on for the lettering on that day back in April 2008, hundreds of Magdeburg citizens were out and about in order to see the spectacle on the river. Is that what you had been hoping for?

Dr. Annegret Laabs: Art is an appropriate way of sharpening your view, and obtaining a new perspective on a place and coming to terms with the realities of life. In one respect, that is what the “Time Counter” on the new City Square at Elbebahnhof has succeeded in doing. This was a location that we found in cooperation with Magdeburg’s City Planning Office. In another respect, Nannucci’s work has shown that art can function wonderfully in a public space. The visitor’s inhibition threshold here is very low since you do not have to pay to get in or actually enter a museum building … in this respect what we had thought up for the best case with our artistic contribution matched the interests of the IBA in Magdeburg of “Living beside and with the Elbe”: people are once more out and about along the river.