Multimedia film/art installation on the 100th anniversary of the movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

When: 15 Oct – 21 Nov 2021

Opening: 15 Oct 2021 (Friday), 18:00

Curator: Krzysztof Stanisławski

Coordinator: Renata Prokurat, Goethe-Institut in Warsaw

Coordinator at CoCA: Alicja Hryckiewicz

Partner: Goethe-Institut in Warsaw

One hundred years ago, the premiere of one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of cinema – Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was screened at the Berlin cinema Marmur Palast. The movie initiated a new film style – Expressionism, and constituted a superb example of an art and film symbiosis.

Since November 2002, an installation titled THE CABINET / DAS KABINET, produced by the Goethe-Instutut in collaboration with partners: Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, UFA X Studio in Babelsberg and F.W. Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, has been displayed in CoCA’s Art Boulevard. This enormous, technologically complex and costly enterprise has led to the emergence of a mobile 12-tonne multimedia installation, facilitating putting on shows in public space. In 2019, it was accessible to the public in Warsaw, Wrocław, Poznań and Kraków, and for the last year to CoCA’s visitors in Toruń.

At the turn of 2019 and 2020, a ‘light’ version of THE CABINET / DAS KABINETT was produced, called THE PAVILION. CALIGARI, to be presented inside museums and galleries. It was inaugurated at the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum fr Film und Fernsehen in Berlin in February 2020 (and lasted until May 2021), and it will be on show at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń since 15 October 2021.

THE PAVILION directly refers to relations between art and film. It is a light object made of aluminium profiles and backlit printed banner panels displaying neoexpressionist works, inspired by Robert Wiene’s movie and painted by Zdzisław Nitka, an artist who originally comes from Wrocław as did the director.

At the exhibition, the PAVILION. CALIGARI installation is accompanied by a comprehensive choice of paintings made especially for the project and referencing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. They have been created by ZDZISŁAW NITKA and EUGENIUSZ MINCIEL – two Wrocław-based neoexpressionists who also made the paintings inside the containers of THE CABINET.

Inside the installation, the first volumetric film in Poland, Cesare’s Dream, is screened, to be viewed through VR glasses (all sanitary restrictions observed).

THE PAVILION. CALIGARI is lit from the inside and constitutes the centre of exhibition. There is a massive stylised chair in it bearing a laptop displaying the volumetric film.

More information on the film: CLICK!

Tags: exhibition