Artists in the Grottenau in Augsburg: Ars Dilettanti

Wednesday, 11 October 2023 00:00
Written by Portal Editor

A few appointments made our stay in Augsburg necessary, which we once again spent with our friends Lydia and Georg when we received an email invitation to an art exhibition in Grottenau.

Georg equated the Grottenau in the city centre with the former post office, which particularly stimulated our interest because the connection seemed unclear to us. A little later we got to know and appreciate the empty building on the upper floors, which also has a remarkable staircase and a corresponding ticket hall.

Grottenau - the ground floor used for a post office

Historically, the Grottenau is “just” the name of a street, which can, however, be traced back to 1465.

In the Augsburg region, two-wheeled wine carts used to be called "grottos", which were parked here in the Au in the immediate vicinity of the wine taverns and hostels so that they could always be reached quickly, because the wine market was held here until the 16th century.

During the Second World War, some buildings on the Grottenau were destroyed and later replaced; only the original post office remained intact.

However, only the ground floor was used for a post office, the top four floors are empty.

So what should stand in the way of around 40 creative people using the exhibition “Ars Dilettanti 2” to fill these four floors of the old post office building with poetry, images and installations for four days?

Just an interim use of the premises that housed Telekom's offices for years!

Between 40 and 50 artists from a wide variety of areas of art then used the rooms spread over three floors to show their exhibits to a broad public.

The organizers of the art event initially invited a wide range of artists who had familiarized themselves with the existing rooms in order to then distribute their performances and installations on the floors in various ways on their own initiative.

Art project “Ars Dilettanti” for the second time

The five organizers, also called “directors” in this context, are carrying out the art project “Ars Dilettanti” for the second time: art historian Hilde Strobl, qualified cultural worker Tobias Sommer, master stonemason and stone sculptor Florian Freyer and the qualified designers Simone Kunz and Christoph Sauter.

The organizers understand the term “dilettante” in its original meaning: the dilettante practices something for its own sake, i.e. out of pleasure or passion.

Therefore, the art project “Ars Dilettanti” is not subordinate to any municipal institution, does not receive any public funding and operates without any connection to municipal institutions.

The organizers describe it like this: "We don't have to, we want to...!"

What we then saw was a really broad spectrum of art from every conceivable area, sometimes absolutely technically interesting, sometimes with a lot of question marks or even hardly comprehensible.

We were missing at least some additional explanations in the sense: "What does the artist want to tell us with this object...!"

In order to exchange one's own thoughts with those of other visitors, the panorama bar was installed on the top floor with a view of the city's nighttime silhouette, a possible way back to the reality of daily life. On this way, our congratulations to the organizers.

A panoramic bar will be installed on the top floor – with a view over the city. In this form, this is also only a temporary possibility.