Join Ornamenta for the closing chapter of Transferium 2023, a preview of ORNAMENTA 2024 taking place in Germany's Northern Black Forest in the summer months of the year 2024.
Green valleys and sacred architecture make up much of the horizon of the region and Pforzheim, Germany's Goldstadt. In Ornamenta's Solartal, art, and design practices are in conversation with supernatural forces and the inexplicable. Symbols are emancipating and appropriated by everyday modern life. With erected architecture and holistic worshipping, they are writing a new spiritual narrative for the next generations.
At project space A.K.T; different actors unite to celebrate sunny gatherings and look towards brighter futures. The Ukranian choir from Pforzheim opened the preview exhibition in the A.K.T; tower with angelic humming and otherwordly singing. Gently swaying in the sun their ethereal performance was complemented with a set of innovative sunglasses by dutch design studio Buro Bélen. Other visionary futures were also present in the sunlit tower. Under the influence of the Nordschwarzwald sun, patterns emerge from a new sun inspired textile designed by Berlin-based studio Meyers & Fügmann. Throughout summer 2023, the solar textile was tested at Hohenwart Forum in Pforzheim, hangin in the sun, slowly unveiling cryptic symbols. As the textile is exposed to UV-light, the naturally colored dyes fade while the stable synthetic colors retain their hues, gently revealing an intricate pattern.
For the Calw-based firm Perrot Turmuhren, typeface designer and feminist Charlotte Rohde proposes a new sundial. As Europe adapts to a warming climate, Ornamenta explores innovative ways to harness the sun’s power and to integrate it into the Nordchwarzwald industry. The design of the sundial will be informed by Rohde’s typeface and manufactured by Perrot. In the most ideal scenario, the work will be installed at various trading locations across the region to commemorate female entrepreneurship. Additionally, a consumer-sized sundial is also in the process of being developed and will be presented during the Solartal main show of ORNAMENTA 2024. This sundial serves as an example of how designers join forces with regional industries as part of the curated programme for 2024.
