Ornamenta Spa

In a city that is dedicated to gold, jewels and handicrafts while its greatest treasure is its inexhaustible wealth of multicultural influences, the one thing to connect it all might be the ornament. Something that lacks for itself a universal description but can describe anything at the same time. Something whose beauty lies not only in its various forms & shapes but also in the fact that it does not need words or a visual systematic to exist and to reflect a most human desire to express and create endless diversity. We find it in the 5000-year-old snake bangle from the Pforzheim jewellery museum as well as in the lettering of the Pasha kebab restaurant 200 meters away. It lives with the same intensity in the straightforward facade of the Wellendorf family business as in the embellishments of the modified vehicles of the car tuners Black Forest Society Pforzheim. And, fortunately, it is also found in the meandering course of the Enz, Nagold and Würm rivers. These drive us – with a detour to the banks of the Seine in Paris – to Bad Wildbad, where the water, and thus perhaps the ornament, is said to have special healing power. Thrown off the too straight track in this positive way, we drift on to the municipal cinema of Pforzheim, where we are allowed to bring two films into the program – together with representatives of the Queer Space Pforzheim. Charged with the ornamentality of Pforzheim, we witness not only these two film works but also experience the corporeal dimension of ornament and develop a discussion about how the beauty and power of ornament and body experience a connection. Thereby, the ornamental beauty of Pforzheim itself is not only expressed by opening up these thoughts to us – but also, and above all, by tearing us away from them and letting us fall back onto its streets where values such as excellence and precision are not only concepts to be found in the closed treasury of the jewellery manufacturer Wellendorf – but also in every corner of a city, that is its very own ornament.