Sheet from documentation box 1971

Curator: This is a sheet from a documentation box by Wolf Vostell, currently held in the Harvard Art Museums. It presents, in photographic form, one of Vostell’s interventions. Editor: It's bleak, isn't it? Stark white above, this almost ghostly photograph of a car entombed in concrete below. The whole thing feels like a monument to urban decay. Curator: Vostell's happenings and environments were often critiques of consumerism and the increasing dominance of media in postwar society. The concrete car embodies this. Editor: Absolutely, it's the ultimate symbol of consumer culture, literally set in stone. A futile attempt to freeze a fleeting moment. Does the urban environment add to that futility, do you think? Curator: It certainly amplifies the sense of alienation and the dehumanizing effects of modernization that Vostell was keen to address. Editor: I see a somber beauty here, like a concrete poem. It makes me think about what we choose to immortalize. Curator: Indeed. It’s a photograph of a sculpture which is a documentation itself. Editor: Right, so many layers of meaning in this… well, document!