Gut Seekamp 7. - 20.6.2015
1. International Hans Kock Symposium 2015
FORM
MATTER
SPACE
an intercontinental dialogue
Introduction
There is an island of arts and culture, almost a little paradise, surrounded by beautiful nature, in the
close neighbourhood of the Baltic Sea near Kiel in the North of Germany. A place that has a long and
interesting history. Kings, philosophers, composers, writers, painters came here. This place is the
Seekamp estate. In the 90ties of the last century the famous German sculptor Hans Kock started to
revitalize this rich tradition of the Seekamp estate by founding together with the City of Kiel the Hans
Kock Foundation. His wife Anna Kock, was daughter of the important German paintor’s dynasty of
the Oldes, the former landlords of the estate. So he had a close familiar relation to the estate.
Kock, who died 2007, had the idea to create Seekamp as entire work of art by integrating his
sculptures into the beautiful landscape, creating a gallery and a visitors centre in the old buildings. He
worked hard on his vision and before he died he managed to realize many of his plans and to form
Seekamp as a melting pot of arts, culture and nature.
One of his aims was to promote young artists and to support international art exchange. To fulfil this
aim in 2014 Dr. Johanna Beckmann, the daughter of Kock and head of the Kock foundation and the
North German sculptor Jörg Plickat created the idea to organize an international symposium with
young high talented students from Spain and China accompanied by some of their professors in
Seekamp in Summer 2015.
1. Form
Before the symposium will start in Seekamp with international students the sculptor Jörg Plickat will
held a workshop “Abstract Composition” at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University Juan Carlos in
Aranjuez near Madrid in spring 2015, similar as he did in 2014. In this workshop the participating
students will develop 3D projects to realize later as big dimensioned low budget projects for
sculptural outside interventions. The workshop will be a competition. The 5 best student works will
be selected to be realized in the 1. International Hans Kock Symposium in Seekamp.
In autumn 2014 Jörg Plickat will try to realize a similar workshop or a competition at the China
National Academy in Hangzhou, were Plickat taught also frequently before. The intention is to find
also up to 4 Chinese students to participate with their projects in the symposium.
The Hans Kock Symposium will be great chance for the young students to develop and realize their
first big size project outside their home countries in an international forum. This project intends to
help young talented student to make first international artistic experience and to start their
international career.
2. Matter
The main part of the project will take place in Seekamp. The students from China and Spain will
meet in this international event in the Seekamp Estate to discuss, interact and to realize their
selected projects in big dimensions in low budget materials like construction wood or construction
steel. Realizing their formal ideas they will be confronted with their selected matters. Students will
have to fight with technical difficulties, they will learn to handle with their materials in a professional
way, some concepts will have to be changed due to technical reasons but all this will be part of the
sculptural process on the way from idea to matter. This is part of the intension of this workshop and
it will develop the students’ formal understanding. Students will also discuss their process of form
finding and later their results in the group.
The foreign students will live in guest families in Schilksee village nearby. So they will learn about
German live. They will learn to explain their artistic ideas to their hosts in other languages. Their
accompanying professors from Madrid and Hangzhou will live in the romantic Foundation’s building
in Seekamp. There shall be invited also up to three students from Schleswig-Holstein to participate in
the workshop.
The students will work around 10 days on their project. The symposium will have a wide spread
cultural program with discussion evenings and visits of places of cultural interest in the North of
Germany and Hamburg, exhibition openings and the opening of the international Kiel festival “Kieler
Woche”.
3. Space
As final act of the symposium the students will “conquer” with their finished works the space of
Seekamp. Together they will develop a concept to integrate and install their finished works into the
Seekamp landscape in a temporary limited sensitive dialogue with the monumental sculptures of the
Foundation Founder Hans Kock.
The appearance of the students’ work will be transparent, lightly, fragile, vulnerable. It will be a great
task for the group to create an exciting contrast to the permanently installed heavy and durable
granite and metal sculptures of Kock.
The result will be dialogue full of tensions and contradictions - united in search for their language of
form. There will be a closure festival at the end of the symposium to introduce and explain the
results to the public.
Later the students’ work will be on display in other places.
4. Hans Kock (1920 - 2007)
was one of the most important German sculptors of the later post war period. First he studied
architecture in Braunschweig. Then he changed to sculpture in Hamburg. As the most important
master pupil of the German Sculptor and Bauhaus teacher Gerhard Marks he was presented - beside
many other important museum shows - 1964 in the documenta III Kassel and the World Exhibitions
in Montreal 1967 and 1970 in Osaka. He realized numerous monumental works in urban space and in
churches, mostly in North Germany, but also all over the world. He got various high prizes and
awards. 1954 he got first national attention with the Hamburg Lichtwark award and scholarship. One
year in later the important scholarship award of the BDI (Association of German Industries) followed.
1962 he received the Villa Romana award of the German Federal Republic. 1989 he was Guest of
Honour in the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome, which is the Germany’s highest contribution
to a living artist. Beside that he received many local awards and prizes. Kock developed his formal
language based on his experiences in granite sculpture. He realized several monuments himself from
granite. He also worked a lot with bronze and aluminium casts. He also made numerous remarkable
portraits, very well known is his portrait of Martin Heidegger.
Hans Kock was highly interested also in western and eastern philosophy. He became a personal
friend of the famous German philosopher Heidegger, and due to his contacts to Japan - Japanese
museums and collector were highly interested in his work - he studied Zen Buddhism and the Tao.
When Hans Kock was getting older, he started to create his foundation to build up a place to
promote the international dialogue in arts, nature, culture and philosophy, and last not least, to
support young artists.
5. The Place
The Symposion will take place from the 7th to the 19th of June 2015 in the Hans Kock Foundation in
the Seekamp estate in Kiel in the North of Germany. The famous German Sculptor Hans Kock has
created a wonderfully balanced sculpture park in a landscape of soft hills, old trees and moats, close
to the Baltic coast, surrounded by grain fields.
The Seekamp estate has an interesting history. By excavations was found out that there was a first
settlement in Seekamp in Neolithic times. In historic documents Seekamp was first mentioned in the
13th century. In the 16th century there was built first a very small water castle by the Earls of Rantzau,
as it is shown on old drawings. For a short time during 17th century it was residence of the Danish
King Christian IV. In the 18th century Seekamp became an aristocratic estate and the water castle was
demolished. The estate was rebuilt with an administration building, stables and big barns. It had
become the important logistic function to support the Danish fortress Friedrichsort with
alimentation.
The former water castle
When the North of Germany became Prussian, the Seekamp estate lost his former strategic
importance. After some owners it became domicile of the important German painter Hans Olde the
older. Seekamps tradition as meeting point of art and culture started in that is period. Famous
musicians like Johannes Brahms, writers like Detlev von Liliencron, and painters like Lewis Corinth
visited Olde in Seekamp. As one of leading persons in arts and culture in that time in Germany Olde
was head of the Academy of Arts in Weimar and later in Kassel. In the twenties of the last century
after the death of Hans Olde the older, his Son Hans Olde the younger, also a painter, took over the
estate. His daughter Anna later became the wife of Hans Kock. Olde the younger preferred the urban
life stile. Seekamp was in a very bad condition due to family losses and economic after the world war
when he sold it 1926. It became property of the City of Kiel. 1927 in a unique experiment, Seekamp
became site of the first children’s republic in the world. 2000 emerging childs found their temporary
home in a tent camp with democratic structures. 1933 the Nazies closed the camp. Seekamp had no
more function.
In 1986 Hans Kock and his family founded his foundation and started to restructurate the entire
estate as a complete work of art with the integration of 12 of his monumental sculptures into the
landscape.
5. Jörg Plickat
Is a German sculptor, born 1954, from the generation following Hans Kock. After his studies in Kiel he
has participated in more than 300 shows worldwide. He has realized more than 80 monumental
works in four continents. He received numerous scholarships and national and international awards.
As lecturer and invited professor he was teaching theory of arts in China and Spain. As managing
director and member of the board of the Hanne Darboven Foundation after her death in 2009 he
brought back Hanne Darboven’s work to the leading museums and art fairs in the international art
world. In the last two years he managed and contracted serials of Hanne Darboven exbitions with
Reina Sofia Madrid, Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Frieze London, Fondazione Prada Venice, Haus der Kunst
München, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Barbican London, Hamburger Bahnhof
Berlin, Städel und MMK Frankfurt and participations in the MoMA and MoCA. Also from former
cultural EU projects he is experienced in cultural management. It was his idea to create the
conception the symposium according to the intensions of Hans Kock and the Hans Kock Foundation
by using his international network.