A mint green rectangle on a concrete grey background. Mint green like the tall column that was supposed to provide light but never went into operation and remained dark. Mint green like the glass benches on which plant pots suddenly rest instead of people. Mint green traces of a past where once there was something and suddenly there is nothing.
Only the rectangle indicates that a building once stood here. A pavilion with glass walls and a gabled roof. There is still an inside and an outside, the walls were glass and have now completely disappeared. The roof of the pavilion has been replaced by the green canopy of trees. What remains? Only the visible empty space on the square. A place of indeterminacy. Sometimes someone enters, pauses on the floor drawing as if on a stage - for a brief moment - and then leaves the rectangle again. Previously, however, this was not an empty space, but a stage for art. It temporarily blended into the urban surroundings: a glowing house within a house, an oversized ribbed vest on a washing line, a mountain of fortune biscuits in shiny gold packaging and more.
The glass provided a view inside,
where thoughts, dreams and hopes
found a new refuge.
Was the glass house really that big? Or so small after all? The floor plan seems displaced without being so. It is difficult to assess how the other buildings and objects on the square behaved in relation to the Palace. But the entrance, walls and seals have left traces that can be read like archaeological deposits. The surrounding light has burnt them into the ground like the diffuse outlines of ghostly apparitions captured on photographic paper. Can something be present and disappear at the same time? It feels as if you can no longer see the pavilion with your eyes, but you can still perceive its presence. It is as if the air in this place begins to oscillate, to vibrate, as if invisible electrical signals are being discharged with a crackling sound.
If the art had to go, was Worringer Platz officially abandoned? The people around it have not disappeared like the pavilion, they are still there - just less visible. They have been moved behind barriers to a new storage location, removed from view like the glass house. Could Worringer Platz be described as a so-called ‘liminal space’? A liminal place that is defined as an in-between space or waiting area. These are places where people only stay temporarily and which they pass through almost unconsciously on their way to their actual destination. In video games or films, they serve as elements of horror and unease. The unknown can lurk in the dark corridors of abandoned office buildings.
traffic stops and then flows on. The fleeting glimpse twitches through scratched tram windows, as if people trapped in ordinariness had tried to break out like caged predators with sharp claws. We hurry towards the station to catch the last train of the day. Just don't linger, the footsteps quicken as soon as they reach the square. The public order office is constantly making its rounds, and the ground pattern almost looks like a place to park vehicles. But Worringer Platz is not a liminal space for everyone, and for some it even feels like a kind of home. After all, who decides where people find their home?
The last shards of glass rotate in the brushes of the city cleaning machine. The Palace was also a home, where new artistic ideas could mature until they were realised. What remains of the broken panes and metal struts are stored in the dimly lit hall. Could the disjointed fragments of the pavilion be reassembled into a whole? In archaeological practice, sunken fossils could first be uncovered, as in ‘bonebeds’, and then used to take stock. Perhaps new insights could even be gained? Fragments with memories encased in amber. In this way, something new could be created piece by piece through painstaking work, the exhibition centre could be transformed into a glass sculpture... But the cracks remain.
Text: Julia Stellmann
