History
When the family-run group of companies heristo AG relocated its headquarters to Bad Rothenfelde in 2004, a cultural shift emerged in the rural saline spa. Inspired by the impressive size of the historic salina, company owner Heinrich W. Risken had a vision of artistically designing the town centre. Paul Anczykowski assisted him with expert advice. Anczykowski was a freelance filmmaker in the 1960s and 1970s who won the German Federal Film Award in 1969 and participated in the Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and 1972 – his visual power was doubtlessly decisive in creating the stimulus to initiate lichtsicht. Together with the municipality
of Bad Rothenfelde, Heinrich W. Risken founded a cultural initiative in 2004, initially enabling the artist Louis Chacallis to realise his sculpture entitled “Die Träger des Himmels” in the town centre in 2005. The ambitious large-scale project lichtsicht – the world’s only Projection Biennale – followed in 2007. The cultural initiative ultimately led to the establishment of the Heinrich W. Risken Foundation, which has since been the main sponsor of lichtsicht.
Salina graduation walls as gigantic projection surfaces: the initiators discovered an ideal experimental ground for the expanding form of light art
in the bizarre shapes and coloured incrustations offered by the mesh of branches. They appointed art historian Manfred Schneckenburger, director of Documenta 6 (1977) and 8 (1987) and former Vice Chancellor of the Academy of Fine Arts Münster, to be its curator. Every second year since 2007, he has invited international artists to lichtsicht to create their latest projections, casting images onto the two salt works to explore the challenging possibilities and conditions of their art on site.
Salt works
| Salt works |
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| Photos: Manfred Nieweler |
11,000 square metres of trickling surface in Bad Rothenfelde have led to an increase in salt content from 6 to 24 % in the spring brine since the mid 18th century, thanks to evaporation and deposits of minerals. While huge salt meadows were created in Mediterranean countries, local salina, with their dense blackthorn branches, stacked in a wooden pillar construction, provide the surface required to produce salt.
In Bad Rothenfelde, two buildings made of spruce wood stand on historical foundation walls: today, the “Old Salt Works”, 13 metres high and 112 metres across, is laterally supported by wooden shafts.
The “New Salt Works”, on the other hand, measuring 10 metres high and 412 metres wide, is the largest column-free building in the whole of Europe. The spa town emerged and enjoyed its early wealth due to the discovery and development of brine deposits at a depth of 3000 metres.