Press Release
On the quest foranother world, Carsten Höller follows the origin of Soma, a mythical libationof the Indo-Germanic Vedas from the 2nd millennium BC, with his installation atthe Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart. Soma helped to gain enlightenmentand access to the divine sphere, to bring fortune and victory.
The passed ondescriptions suggest, that a plant delivered the core ingredient, its identityis still unknown. From a botanic, ethnologic and etymologic point of view itcould have been the fly agarics.
Based on these circumstances Carsten Höllerdeveloped a scenario between laboratory and vision, alleged objectivity andincreased subjectivity in the entire historical hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof.
Beforethe eyes of the observers unfolds an expansive ‘living picture’, a symmetricalexperimental field, which is divided in two parts along its center line andwhich compares the ordinary world with the realm of Soma in a double-imageexperiment. This is an experiment, that find its completion in the imaginationof the observer and whose evaluation is subject to your power of observation.On a mushroom like platform in midst of the arrangement resides a bed, whereguests will have the opportunity to spend a night at the museum and to diveinto the world of Soma.
The ‘floating hotel platform’ is attended by theInterContinental Berlin, who offer a special package for non-residential guestin cooperation with airberlin and the travel portal binoli. Further informationat www.airberlin-binoli.com/soma.
