Held this summer in Germany’s Northern Black Forest, art and design event Ornamenta brought a 35-year-old exhibition into the here and now.
It sounds like an invitation to Fantasia. A cultural programme that blends art and design in the German Nordschwarzwald, the Northern Black Forest. I imagined strolling among lush, towering trees, encountering surreal installations along winding paths. It wasn’t until I arrived in Pforzheim – a city filled with Brutalist architecture on the border of the Black Forest, and the point where my Ornamenta experience would begin – that I realized this event embodies expectations versus reality. That, and other forms of contrast.
That’s partly because the first (and, until this year, only) Ornamenta took place 35 years ago, and it was quite a different event. As its name suggests, the original was an international exhibition held in Pforzheim that spotlighted contemporary approaches to jewellery and decorative arts. Pforzheim was chosen for its importance in the production of gold and silverware in Germany, hence its nickname, the City of Gold and Jewellery. Around 75 per cent of German jewellery is produced there, and it’s also home to Germany’s only school of goldsmithing with a watchmaking school. Ornamenta had a legacy, albeit a short one. There were expectations for its return.
Fittingly, it’s in Pforzheim – where the stifling heat of the day contrasts sharply with the cool promise of the forest beyond – that I meet one of the comeback edition’s three curators, Willem Schenk. The trio – Schenk and Jules van den Langenberg are both from the Netherlands and Katharina Wahl hails from Southern Germany – responded to an open call to revive Ornamenta. Already instigating the unconventionality they wished to instil in the event, they pitched the organizers a process instead of an idea. ‘There are so many cultural events out there already, so what can we add?’ says Schenk. ‘Coming up with a theme beforehand felt irrelevant. The question wasn’t what we can bring here but what we should do here.’
Photo: Sander van Wettum
Haug, by German-Icelandic artist duo Veronika Sedlmair and Brynjar Sigurðarson, combines traditional craft with high-tech sensors. The sculpture shoots water into the River Enz and – depending on the light – creates a rainbow.
To find out, the trio based themselves in the region over the preceding few years, moving around almost constantly to get to know, understand and work together with the Nordschwarzwald’s various communities and creatives. And, in some cases, to challenge them. This co-creation process resulted in preliminary programming, with the curators hosting various events in the run-up to the official Ornamenta. It was their way of getting the community involved early on, to have a longer-lasting impact than a one-off event.
And, sure enough, some of the works will live beyond Ornamenta’s lifespan (the event ran from July until September 2024). Our first stop, for example, is Haug, by German-Icelandic artist duo Veronika Sedlmair and Brynjar Sigurðarson, which will remain for at least the next five years. Combining traditional craft with high-tech sensors, the sculpture shoots water into the River Enz and – depending on the light – creates a rainbow. Pforzheim has little riverside life, Schenk tells me, so this is the artists’ way of trying to change that. He looks to the sky as we approach the sculpture, mentioning that it might not work today; it depends on the weather. Expectations versus reality. And you can only see it at certain times of the day, based on the sun’s position in the sky. These may seem like drawbacks, but they highlight the immediacy and consistency that our society has (unrealistically) come to expect. The result feels more honest, more in rhythm with the natural world.
PHOTO: Sander van wettum
Hookaverse was a multisensory event by Makan Fofana’s TURFU initiative and curator Yasemin Keskintepe. Held in the Neublach forest cave – known for its cool and clean, healing air – the audio experience explored the rich shisha culture of Pforzheim.
Haug is part of Bad Databrunn: A Balancing Act Between Water, Humans and Technology, one of Ornamenta's five themes that address contemporary issues such as ecosystem collapse, mental and physical wellbeing and inclusivity, while responding to the location. Bad Databrunn, for example, reflects the famous baden (‘bathing’)culture of the Nordschwarzwald. Some of the themes are deliberately challenging – and even controversial – for this conservative area of Germany, which led to a lot of backlash from locals. Inhalatorium: Consciously Sharing Air, from Historic Breathing Caves to the Ornate Smoke of Shisha Pipes, for example, included works that reframed shisha smoking, a message that didn’t go down too well with some, who nicknamed Ornamenta ‘shisha Scheiße’. A wider goal, though, was to highlight that while you can’t privatize air, there’s a concentration of poorer people living in the valley where the air is more polluted, while the richer folks live up in the hills, breathing in the clean mountain air. And part of the pre-programming for the theme Zum Eros: New Forms of Friendship, Love and Affection was a screening of Night Soil – Economy of Love, a film about a Brooklyn-based movement of female sex workers who aim to empower women in a world of male-dominated pleasure. ‘People walked out of the room,’ recalls Wahl, ‘and there were newspaper articles about how Ornamenta was “promoting prostitution”. That was one of the moments we realized both the opportunities and the challenges of the programme we’d created.’
On Charisma, Carriages and Ceremonies playfully challenged conservatism with a constructed chapel that invited commitment ceremonies for all kinds of meaningful connections – with friends, pets, food and more.
Zum Eros also included what I consider to be one of the most successful examples of another goal of Ornamenta: to unite industry and creatives. The exhibition On Charisma, Carriages and Ceremonies playfully challenged conservatism with a constructed chapel that invited commitment ceremonies for all kinds of meaningful connections – with friends, pets, food and more. ‘The exhibition explores loneliness and relationships,’ says Schenk. ‘How do you deal with that in a small place like Pforzheim?’ In a nod to the city’s role as Germany’s main manufacturer of wedding rings and harking back to the original Ornamenta logo, designers Diane Hillebrand and Tatjana Stürmer worked with chain producers Binder Gruppe to create a symbolic moment of union: visitors would select one of the coiled metal shapes on the chains and link them together. They did so while literally stepping inside the installation, into creations made by fashion designer Philipp Schüller using surplus stock from men’s suit brand Digel. As the event progressed, the number of connections increased, enriching the appearance of the installation.
At this stage, Ornamenta is set to become a quinquennial event, with this revival standing as a test of its success. ‘The organizers say it needs to be a success, but how do you measure success?’ says Wahl. I put the question back to her: how do you measure success? ‘For us, it would be if the relationships and dialogues we initiated over the last few years continue.’ And based on the groundwork and promise laid by the 2024 edition, we hope to see the same curatorial team back to take on new challenges.
Cover image: Reuchlinhaus Pforzheim hosted the exhibition Inhalatorium: on Felt and Fumes. The works on display counterbalanced the fresh and dormant air of spa towns in the Northern Black Forest region. Photo by Sander Van Wettum.
