On the quest for another world, Carsten Höller follows in the Hamburger Bahnhof the origin of Soma, a mythical libation of the Indo-Germanic Vedas from the 2nd millennium BC. Soma brought the Vedas enlightenment and access to the divine sphere and was highly praised in their hymns. The herbal ingredient of this libation has not been passed on without a doubt, but from a botanic, ethnologic and etymologic view there is evidence that it could have been the fly agarics.
Based on these circumstances Carsten Höller develops a scenario between laboratory and vision, alleged objectivity and increased subjectivity.
Before the eyes of the observers unfolds an expansive “living picture”, a symmetrical experimental field, which is divided in two parts along its center line and which compares the ordinary world with the realm of Soma in a double-image experiment. This is an experiment, that find its completion in the imagination of the observer and whose evaluation is subject to your power of observation. On a mushroom like platform in midst of the arrangement resides a bed, where guests will have the opportunity to spend a night at the museum and to dive into the world of Soma.
Carsten Höller SOMA
5. November 2010 - 6. Februar 2011
Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin
Invalidenstr. 50–51,
D – 10557 Berlin
