Recent activities, 2008–

Friedhelm Mennekes’ departure as both the pastor of Saint Peter and the director of Kunst- Station entailed a number of changes. First of all, the exceptionality of his achievements stemmed from the duality of his position as well as personal commitment to both the life of the parish and organization of contemporary art exhibitions. In 2008 Werner Holter SJ (b. 1946), appointed by Cardinal Joachim Meisner, became the new pastor of the Jesuit church and, accordingly, the new head of Kunst-Station. Simultaneously occupied as the head of Karl-Rahner Academy, city chaplain, and preceptor of spiritual exercises for the Jesuit order, he soon delegated the running of art related activities to Dr. Guido Schlimbach (b. 1966).296 The latter was a member of Saint Peter’s community since 1993 and assisted Mennekes with art exhibitions since 2000.297 Schlimbach’s dissertation dedicated to the history of Kunst-Station Sankt Peter under the leadership of Mennekes remains the most comprehensive account of the church and its engagement with contemporary art.298 Yet in the beginning of his years in Cologne, Mennekes established a parish art council that would aid him on various advisory levels.299 It usually consisted of art historians from both local or regional museums and universities. Since 2008, the role of the council became more prominent and, indicatively, more distanced from Holter’s duties as a pastor. This growing separation has marked the most recent exhibitions in the church and contributed to the changing character of art shown in Saint Peter over the last decade.

296 _{Werner Holter, ed., Erfüllte Leere: Sankt Peter Köln (Annweiler: Plöger, 2014), 285. Holter remained the pastor} of Saint Peter until September 1, 2017. His follower was Stephan Ch. Kessler SJ.

297 _{Schlimbach, Für einen lange währenden Augenblick, 389.} 298 _Ibid.

299 _{Dr. Lesa Mason, art historian and former educator at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter (1987–1999), in email} conversation with the author, June–July 2017.

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In 2014, Holter edited and largely authored a book about the life and multifaceted work of the Cologne Jesuit church.300 It included texts about the liturgical year and its relation to the space of Saint Peter as well as music and art that interacted with it. At times Holter’s own writing appears opposed to the ideas of his predecessor. In particular the former’s position regarding both doubt and emptiness deviate from Mennekes’ reasoning of their liberating qualities. Holter contradicts the value of doubt and questioning:

Saint Peter, our church, is the space in which questions can be raised. We can leave [this debate] undecided whether questions are more important than answers. But to only propose questions–according to communicology–is not far-reaching. Pure questioning results in the stalemate of the dialogue. We rely on answers, even if provisional, which enable new, broader questions and closer examination.301

Correspondingly, his definition of religion differs from that of Mennekes and consists of “calling, challenge, and answer.”302 _{As for the role of Saint Peter’s space, Holter acknowledges}

the void as its foremost feature but simultaneously underlines that the church strives for an effect of “fulfilled emptiness” (“erfüllte Leere”).303 _{For him, the church is first and foremost the place}

of the word of God, of the revelation (“Offenbarung”).304 _{It is not surprising then that the}

discussion of artworks and installations is theologically colored; e.g. Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus (2014) compared to a cloud in the Book of Exodus or the Mount of Transfiguration in the Gospel of Luke.305 Even though Holter claims to embrace the freedom and sovereignty of contemporary art, he nonetheless subdues its voice to that of Christian teaching. Moreover, the contribution to

300 _{Holter, ed., Erfüllte Leere.}

301 _{Holter, “Der Dialog zwischen Kunst und Religion,” in ibid., 237. The original reads, “Sankt Peter, unsere Kirche,} ist der Raum, in der Fragen gestellt werden dürfen. Ob Fragen immer wichtiger sind als Antworten, lassen wir einmal dahingestellt sein. Nur Fragen zu stellen–so sagen Kommunikationswissenschaftler–führe nicht weiter. Reines Fragen führt zum Stillstand des Dialogs. Wir sind angewiesen auf Antworten, auch wenn sie vorläufig sind, die neues, weitergehendes Fragen und Hinterfragen ermöglichen.”

302 _{“Angerufensein, Infragestellung und Antwort,” in ibid., 240.} 303 _{Holter, “Erfüllte Leere: Oxymora,” in ibid., 11–3.}

304 _{Ibid., 240–1.} 305 _{Ibid., 203–4.}

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the discussion of art in the volume by Schlimbach, who has adopted Mennekes’ approach and argues for art’s ability to provoke individual doubts and existential search, is conspicuously minimal. For example, his text about Simon Ungers’ outdoor sculpture Monolith (2009) is strongly reminiscent of Mennekes’ ideas outlined in Begeisterung und Zweifel: “[Monolith] mirrors the human doubt and questioning of one’s life and place in the here and now. It binds together the big themes addressed by both religion and art: the fullness and finitude of life, the meaning of beauty and the longing for something that cannot be expressed in words.”306 _{It can be}

therefore noted that Schlimbach’s resistance to definitive interpretation of an artwork presents a diametrical difference from Holter’s rendering of the subject. Thus, this recent publication reveals the growing separation between the perspectives of the pastor on the one hand and the Art Council, represented by Schlimbach, on the other.

In praxis, a new character of art exhibitions in Saint Peter can be discerned along three directions. First, a number of installations have been realized that permit an overtly theological reflection on the use of light, white color, or high suspension of art objects. For example, Claire Morgan’s Act of God, Höhere Gewalt (2015): a delicate sphere composed of minuscule polyethylene pieces and descending on shiny white threads from the church ceiling, as if from heaven. Or, Ad Lucem by Angela Glajcar (2009): an imposing white tunnel of translucent paper sheets hovering above the nave and directing the viewer’s gaze towards the altar (fig. 11). The connotation with the divine is difficult to escape: the elevated objects hint at the presence and, therefore, existence of something pure and otherworldly. For the pastor and the community, Christ’s words must resonate with power, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows me

306 _{Guido Schlimbach, “Vertraut und doch Fremd,” in ibid., 176. The original reads, “[Monolith] spiegelt die Zweifel} des Menschen und seine Fragen an das Leben, seine Verortung im hier und jetzt wieder. Er verbindet die großen Themen, mit denen sich Kunst und Religion gleichermaßen auseinandersetzen, die Fülle und Begrenztheit des Lebens, den Sinn für das Schöne und die Sehnsucht nach dem, wofür es keine Worte gibt.”

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will not walk in darkness, but will have light and life.”307 _{Even in a secular mind the connection}

with the numinous persists; white color and light are typically linked to the ideas, albeit ambiguous, of the pure and the good, ranging from to the sentiments of beauty to those of hope. Second, a number of art exhibitions since 2008 could be palpably linked to Christian spirituality. Here one can name a group of paintings Gitterköpfe by a Catholic priest Herbert Falken (2012); a project katholisch by Thomas Bayrle with a large-scale image of crucifixion filling the third of the east apse (2014); or a recent exhibition of woven abstractions by Sidival Fila, a friar from the Franciscan Convent of St. Bonaventure located on the Palatine Hill (2017). The last of these projects was organized together with the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome–a cooperation that is strikingly different from Mennekes’ work with galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Third, there has been a considerable increase of engagement with artists who tackled pressing social issues and called for public awareness. While earlier works by Holzer or Kruger are similar in this respect, the past activities at Saint Peter drew attention to the most immediate and local concerns of the Cologne public. In 2014–2015, Hermann Josef Hack transformed the interior of Sankt Peter into a refugee tent for his project Base Camp.308 He sprayed or painted color on tarpaulins, the material used for the building of emergency shelters. The artist called the installation “a space for communication and above all as a mouthpiece for those affected” and conceived it not merely as a confrontation with a problem but also as a stimulus for action in the city and country that had recently accepted thousands of refugees from Syria and North Africa. Similar goal was pursued through a performance by Wolfgang Vetten in April 2017. With a long brush soaked in water he wrote on the floor of Saint Peter’s nave excerpts from the 2016 news report about the migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. It started with “More than

307 _{John 8:12.}

308 _{Renate Goldmann, ed., Hermann Josef Hack–Basislager, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Köln,} 2015).

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5000…”–a numbing phrase that in a matter of minutes vanished from sight, just as those news reports vanish from our memory (fig. 12). While these examples are inevitably idiosyncratic, they reflect lager tendencies appearing in activities at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter since 2008. In summary it can be noted that after Mennekes’ retirement, the exhibitions at Saint Peter have been less subversive and less controversial. They have been conspicuously more concordant with expectations one might have of art in a sacred space. Indeed, contemporary art shown in the church over the past decade did not challenge Christian beliefs as it did between 1987 and 2008. This change, however, cannot be solely attributed to the attitudes of people responsible for organizing art interventions. In the first years of the twenty-first century, exhibitions of contemporary art in German churches are no longer rare phenomena but rather regularity. Hence, their ability to disturb or even surprise is significantly lessened. At the same time, the growing interest in and support for contemporary church music has been evident in thousands of Christian institutions across the country. At Saint Peter it is manifested annually in dozens of concerts of “free music” as well as the position of Dominik Susteck, the church composer since 2007, who is famous for his contemporary organ improvisations.309 In a conversation with the author, Guido Schlimbach also noted that the number of people visiting Saint Peter specifically in order to see art is gradually reducing.310 The tendency is reflected in fewer exhibitions taking place every year. While Kunst-Station Sankt Peter was once a place that attracted great critical attention and high non-parish attendance, at the moment its future seems uncertain.

309 _{“Freie[r] Musik,” in Holter, ed., Erfüllte Leere, 273 and 287.}

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4.2. Hospital Church, Stuttgart