Leibniz’ Lager

What would it have looked like, Leibniz’s Warehouse? What kinds of objects would the polymath have stored in a chamber of curiosities of his own? The artists Renate Heyne and Floris Neususs play with the idea of what might have happened, had Leibniz been able to realize his dream of a collection of objects and artifacts, and had begun to archive everything in a warehouse. Leibniz’s Warehouse, however, is not simply a collection of manifest objects. The artists have created a kind of theater of nature and art in the form of photograms, as they journeyed through the collections of fifteen different museums, photographing their exhibits from nature, antiquity, science, and art. Photograms are the result of a direct photocopying process in which images appear when photosensitive material is directly exposed to light. Animals, sculptures, or plants look like positive shadows in this catalogue, inviting readers to tour the history of collections in Western European museums. With photograms of exhibits from the following museums: Glyptothek, MunichBavarian National Museum, MunichMuseum of Ethnology, MunichGerman Museum, MunichMathematical Institute at the Technical University, MunichOld National Gallery, BerlinEgyptian Museum, BerlinBode Museum, BerlinGerman History Museum, BerlinBauhaus Archiv, Berlin

Berlinische Galerie, BerlinKolbe Museum, BerlinMathematical Institute at the University of HalleTinguely Museum, BaselFribourg Museum of Natural History Exhibition: ZKM | Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, 11.12.2016-5.3.2017