Wolfgang Tiemann

Migrating Media through 1250 Years

Engraving... Etching... Printing...

... it takes about 600 years to go. "papeRRoads" fosters a dream - an art project to reconstruct the peaceful diffusion of papermaking along the silk road, through Arabia and the Mediterranean world.

At the very beginning there is the artist's work. In an impressive effort in his studio near Hanover, Wolfgang Tiemann designed and etched 20 monumental pieces of metal.1 The enormous space of a factory building, a heavy roller and lots of people were needed to print with these plates on long strips of paper. In February 2002, the German Goethe Institue will present these twenty lithographies in Samarkand, the first capital of papermaking outside of China. During several weeks of cooperation, Wolfgang Tiemann and uzbek artists plan to perform modifications of the printed objects.

Lower Saxony, the region where the artist lives, was covered with cloisters, when reading and writing appeared. Medieval monks had to use parchment instead of paper, because a mighty barrier separated western Europe from egyptien papyrus as well as from arabian paper during long centuries of crusades and conquests. Returning from Samarkand, Tiemann's lithographic "flags" will flutter at these places of medieval erudition, performing a second open air presentation to link again the two extremities of paper history, Samarkand and Germany.

A good story never ends. In 2002, after the results of the project will have been presented in Germany, the "papeRRoad" lithographies endure as representations of a peaceful communication between world cultures. If one recalls the historical stages of papermaking - China, Bagdad, Damaskus, several places in Spain and Italy, Nuremberg in Germany, the idea of a series of exhibitions seems to suggest itself. This would make a dream come true: Wolfgang Tiemann's utopian vision of global understanding.

Ausstellungen >> Paperroads >> Migrating Media... >> From Bejing to Nuremberg ...