Herbert Hossmann: Strange Coincidences - On the Re-Installation of the Ensemble »Paradoxical Intentions« in Celle Palace, in the catalog: "Paradoxe Intentionen (Das Blaue vom Himmel herunterlügen)", Hamburg and Brussels, 1998, pp. 4-5 Original German text

Hamburg, 1984: a voice down the phone asks Anna Opperman whether she would be willing to accept the Heitland Prize, and set up an exhibition in Celle Palace. She is surprised, having never before heard of the new award, which was established in 1980 and generously furnished with prize money of DM 25,000. What makes the invitation all the more startling is that the prize is associated with the town of Celle, where she has just forged personal bonds.
In 1987, some three years later, Anna and I moved into a house-cum-studio in Celle, in the elbow of the tributary between the rivers Lachte and Aller. Not far from there, in a small village named Bargfeld, Arno Schmidt wrote his monumental novel »Zettels Traum« (»Zettel's Dream«). The author defined the location thus: »We are at the mouth of the narrow water, where 20 degrees, 20 minutes 50 seconds longitude east meets 52 degrees, 42 minutes 30 seconds northern latitude. Here, at this very point, the water pours into the Lutter. And to where does the Lutter flow? -- Into the Lachte. And the Lachte? -- Into the Aller. -- The latter flows, by Verden, into the Weser. It flows in turn into the North Sea. And so it goes on.« Anna Brenken pointed out this geographic connection in a feature she made for TV, emphasizing the word »Zettel« (»slip of paper«) to draw parallels between what Heinz Ohff termed Oppermann's »Kunst aus dem Zettelkasten« (»slip-box art«) and the creator of »Zettels Traum«. Anna had little sympathy for either Arno Schmidt's personality or narrative fiction, however, and always repudiated such imputations. Only after Schmidt's death in Celle in 1979 did she discover some similarities in the posthumously published theoretical text »Berechnungen III«, remarking that in her ensembles she was attempting, not unlike the author, to »display in visualized or articulated form various states of consciousness, planes of consciousness, reference systems (assessment spaces, meta-planes)«.
In a similar vein, critics have seldom neglected to point out the relationship between the art of Anna Oppermann and that of Kurt Schwitters, frequently describing her ensembles as collages transported into three-dimensional space, as sequels to the »Merzbau« (»merz building«). Again, Anna resolutely denied any connection, saying »the basic differences predominate«. The Sprengel Museum in Hanover now houses Anna Oppermann's large-scale ensemble »Embraces, inexplicables, and a line from a poem by R.M.R.« alongside the reconstructed »Merzbau« and a considerable collection of further works by Kurt Schwitters. Yet other, more peculiar, links to Kurt Schwitters can be traced via Celle and the studio house which became Anna's creative sanctuary. It was built as a country house around 1930 by a young assistant to Otto Haesler, the famous architect and close friend of Kurt Schwitters. Haesler, whose own buildings in Celle have a place in the annals of modern architectural history, presumably talked to Schwitters about the unusual house built by his gifted assistant, perhaps even took him there to show him around.
The coincidences don't end there. At a symposium in Bonn in 1989, Anna met the Berlin-based art historian Ines Lindner, who invited her to participate in the forthcoming »Dialogues -- Aesthetic Practice in Women's Art and Science« project in Kiel. If Ines Lindner was surprised to find out that an invitation to visit Anna's studio entailed a trip to Celle, and not Hamburg as she had assumed, then Anna was no less astonished to learn that her visitor came from Celle, and since early childhood had been familiar with both the house and its inhabitants. The ensemble »Paradoxical Intentions -- Lying the blue down from the sky« was in the studio when the visitor came, and both women quickly agreed it should go on show in Kiel. By the time the ensemble was installed in the Sophienhof, Kiel, in April 1991, Anna, still working in Celle, had added over 30 canvases and over 200 drawings. In July 1991, Bernice Murphy, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, came to Celle to discuss details of the show scheduled to take place in Spring 1993. She was looking for a large installation to display in Australia over a longer period of time, and »Paradoxical Intentions« was chosen again. Anna was unable to carry out the installation in Australia -- she died, in Celle, on 8 March 1993. When the ensemble was posthumously re-assembled in 1994, Bernice Murphy wrote: »The installation in Sydney, while being able to be viewed as a detachment, complete in itself, should also be understood in its open-ended character, in its itineraries of connection to a more complex history: the history of Anna Oppermann's work, and of her links to the larger social and intellectual body of German (and European) art as she experienced these in her lifetime.«
Five years after Anna's death, the ensemble now returns to Celle, the town where it was essentially produced, a place with which the artist was linked by more than »strange coincidences« of the Kleistian variety. However slight and incidental they seem, the influence exerted on her work by the coincidences was meaningful, after all.


[Translation by Tom Morrison]


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