Nachbau, Verkohlung und Vergrabung einer verschollenen Collage von Hannah Höch in einer Zeitkapsel
(2018)

Hannah Höch is considered the inventor of collage in a Dadaist context. In the Hannah Höch Archive, Schicht, Martin G.; has found some images of her collages that have been lost. There are b/w photos of them - but nobody knows where the collages are, what they look like in color, the size is unknown, the age is unclear - and whether they still exist is not known.

The collage by Hannah Höch was reproduced exactly as a collage by Schicht, Martin G.. It was then drawn over with charcoal. This erased the motivic information. At the same time, however, the collage structure was revealed.

Hannah Höch survived the Third Reich in seclusion in a house in Berlin-Heiligensee. She disguised herself as a rose seller. This is why the garden is designed to be opaque and heterogeneous in a very special way. She broke off contact with her artist friends in order to protect them. She buried many pictures and historical documents in her garden so that they could not be found by the Gestapo. After the war, she continued to live in the house and garden until her death in 1978. Since then, the house and garden have been maintained in accordance with her wishes.

Soil was removed from this garden by Schicht and filled into a so-called time capsule. The charred collage was embedded in this soil and filled with earth. The work is always removed from the time capsule for an exhibition and released for presentation. At the end of an exhibition, the collage is placed back in the soil of the time capsule and filled with soil.

When the wooden castles of the Slavs living in the area around Berlin were built, the tips of the wooden beams were charred, as this prevented them from being attacked by pests and rotting in the soil. For such conservation reasons, I have deposited the charred collage in the ground. We find better conservation conditions in a museum depot than in the ground. Nevertheless, we know very little about how long museums will last. It only seems clear that in the long term, buildings and cities will become ruins, whereas artifacts in the ground can survive for a very long time. In the present collage, the decision was made in favour of preservation in the ground, optimized by carbonization. For a real comparison of these two time concepts, the time capsule with the collage in the ground will be stored in a museum depot after a few exhibitions.