Fridge Poetry - To show ideas a path to the outside world
A typical museum situation: a group of people are standing in front of an abstract work of art, a guided tour is taking place, and a white square with blue dots is being viewed. "And what do we see here?" they ask. Although the answer to the question is quite simple (a white square with blue dots), no one dares to say anything. Silence. It is often difficult to find descriptive words when one wants to talk about abstract or contemporary art. Often one is afraid of saying the wrong thing and revealing one's ignorance about the "real" meaning of the work of art. Adults usually find this even more difficult than children.
A method that can solve this problem is a word pool - or just: Fridge Poetry. In our Kusama Kids Studio in the Gropius Bau, we created a sort of oversized refrigerator poetry corner as part of the exhibition "Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective", in which nouns were written on large wooden slats and sawn into individual parts. Visitors young and old can now reassemble this multitude of words, push them apart again, replace them - as often as they like and in an infinite number of combinations.
Some of the terms originate from Yayoi Kusama herself, who uses a surprisingly poetic language in her biography in poems and songs, which is often a key to understanding her works. "But they are also words that come up associatively when you look at Yayoi Kusama's works," explains Michaela Englert, workshop leader at the Kusama Kids Studio. The words are like her poems: wild, funny, exciting and very poetic. Besides obvious words like "dot" and "brush", terms like "freedom", "infinity" or "silence" also appear. The effect is that the blocks serve as a bridge, as a first starting point for a conversation or a train of thought. They work on a descriptive, but also on an emotional level. It can be very relieving to switch from picture to word and create associations here. In addition, it is relieving to first talk about the subjective perception of abstract art, because there is no right or wrong here. "One of our aims in the Kusama Kids Studio is to get people talking about the art they have seen, in other words, to create a space for dialogue," Michaela Englert explains further. What is seen is brought into its own logic, new contexts are created, art is received indirectly.
Talking about art with fridge poetry opens up a whole new space of thought. An example: If you take the words "tear" and "house", the result is the new word "Tränenhaus" (house of tears) - "But if everyone had to describe what that is exactly, it would probably be something different every time," explains Rebecca Raue, artistic director at Ephra. A house built of tears? A house where there is a lot of crying? A blue house? On the one hand, it is a condensation, because the individual word already has a certain attribution, on the other hand, it results in an expansion, in the combination something completely new and poetic.
If you think about it further, new approaches to art emerge from the playful use of words. "Once laid down in the room, these word combinations function as messages to the next visitor," explains Maxi Böhme, project manager of the programme. What inspiration did my predecessor come out of the exhibition with? Why were these words chosen?
An extension would be to write the translation of the respective word into another language on the backs of the blocks. Or: provide empty wooden blocks that can be labelled independently. Or in the group: take a word that you feel like at the moment. Or even: create a new poem from three words. Or, or, or... This method offers an immense number of possibilities, especially for group activities in museums.
And if you can't read? According to Rebecca Raue, there is a solution for that too: "The children play it with someone who can read. The little ones then build something and the older ones read aloud. Then you think of it more as a guessing game," she explains. In this way, Fridge Poetry serves as a good tool for intergenerational exchange: adults and children come together and can build, read aloud and come up with new ideas together.
It's just words on wood, but the possibilities seem endless. It's like the big cardboard box in which the great new toy is packed: in the end, the simple cardboard box is the real star, becomes a garage, a house, a doghouse, constantly repainted and rebuilt. Often the most creative moments emerge from the simplest things. It is precisely these methods that are so effective when working with children. Because the ideas in the head are all already there, someone just has to show them the way out.
