BOOK 2

AIMING HIGH

A sequence of performances by the artist group costa compagnie and solo works of the artists on historical rocket-research in Cuxhaven, Beirut and Cape Canaveral

WE WILL SHOOT OBJECTS INTO SPACE!
BRING BELOVED OBJECTS (max. Weight 850 grams)!
WARM GREETINGS TO ALL!

OPENING Thursday, May 22 at 7pm at Hapag-Hall, Albert Ballin-Platz 1, Cuxhaven

Welcome and Introduction

Hans Hochfeld
1. Chairman Cuxhaven Art Association

Prof. Dr. Holger Hettinger
Curator “Four Books”

Tarun Kade
Dramaturg Theater Bremen

Opening hours of the exhibition
Wed – Fri 10-13 am and Sa. + Su 11-14 am and by appointment

Exhibition Locations

Hapag-Hall
Albert Ballin-Platz 1, Cuxhaven

Former Nordsee Canteen, Baudirektor-Hahn-Straße 22, Cuxhaven

contact
Tel .: 04721-664941 info@kunstverein-cuxhaven.de
kunstverein-cuxhaven.de

Guided Tours
Sat 24 May by 11 clock
Sun 25 May by 11 clock

TEAM

Christina Flick
Jonas Plümke
Matthias Reiling
Zahava Rodrigo
Jascha Viehstädt

Curatorial Assistant
Silke Handelmann
Artistic Director
Felix Meyer-Christian

Utopia and Horror
A multi-dimensional object

By Christoph Brüggemeier

The Rocket: fireworks, military weapon and spacecraft. The opposing meanings of the term are associated with utopia and horror, enlightenment and terror.
The incipient in Cuxhaven in the 1930s rocket research is largely unknown in the city. Few Cuxhaven citizens have heard of the „rocketmail“ at the seaside or the V2-rocket experiments in the Werner forest in 1945. There is no plaque and no museum – the traces are obliterated.

Other regions of the world go much more open about having their rocket research history. In Lebanon, Felix Meyer-Christian visited a “Resistance Museum” by the Hizbollah as well as the Beirut Haigazian University in 2013, where militaristic and scientific uses of rockets played a vital role. He later visited the NASA Space Museum in the United States. All of these places look back proudly on their history in rocket research and use. In sprawling exhibition parks, the Museum guides reported enthusiastically about the history of the location, often accompanied by heroic music. The media’s portrayal of missiles and rockets always testified an idealization of the research, of military supremacy and of economic growth, of domination and of hope. Simultaneously, the application and contextualization of the object rocket many times reflects the respective global political situation of the time.

In the exhibition and the accompanying performative guided tour the group crosses the collected documentary material from Cuxhaven with the escalating rocket staging in Lebanon and the USA. By collecting, roaming, surveying, picking up and dropping of tracks and places the costa cie. produces performative works in diverse media.
The visitors become listeners, viewers and finally participating contributors. They are being guided through the exhibition and fragmentary knowledge is being mediated. But on the other hand this knowledge is questioned repeatedly by its own formal diversity. The visitors thus follow their own path through the exhibition and thus determine their outcome of history themselves. Fact and fiction become blurred and complement each other always. Pictures of rockets from Lebanon, from the USA and from Cuxhaven mingle with the inner imagery of the citizens of Cuxhaven. What is visible? Who’s speaking? In which process are the images being generated? And for what purpose?

Funded by

Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture
EWE Foundation
Foundation of Stadtsparkasse Cuxhaven
Niedersachsen Ports
Lang Yarns
EMME
Regional Association of the former duchies of Bremen and Verden
Cultural Cuxhaven
Syndicate pilotage district Cuxhaven activ eV