(IM)MATERIAL – fabric, body and passion

The Oberammergau Museum, one of the most important museums of culture and local history in Bavaria, is creating a spectacular gesamtkunstwerk to coincide with the 42nd Passion Play season. Entitled ‘(IM)MATERIAL – Fabric, Body and Passion’, it comprises a building and room installation as well as an exhibition.

A huge blue cube, made of costumes worn by the ‘General Populace’ in the 2000 and 2010 Passion Plays, cloaks the building and, inside the museum itself, material intersects the rooms as well. The external fabric covering, made of costumes used in the Passion Play, conceals and transforms the museum building of 1910 into an art object in the public space that is highly visible from a distance. The blue ‘wall of fabric’ extends inside the museum building over all three storeys. As a result new spatial structures are created with an alienated interior and a normal space outside the cube – areas that the visitor repeatedly enters and leaves. The rooms are transformed to bewilder. Through enveiling and alienation, the focus is reduced to just a few exhibits. The core of the museum’s holdings comprises carved wooden figures from five centuries that address the subjects of life and suffering, as well as the fears, concerns and hopes of humankind – and, as such, are closely linked to the subject of the Passion. Through the focussed presentation of the collection, the museum is turned into a place of reflection on regional, cultural and social influences and notions.