Two young women fall towards the visitors on the stairs: But before you have understood what is happening here, the two have already got up off the ground.
Shoved their handbags back over their shoulders.
keep running
And fall down a few steps again.
Johanna Schuckhardt and Ardesia Calderan deliberately frighten the visitors with their performance "Fallen" at the 24th tour of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Offenbach.
They practiced falling techniques from martial arts and acrobatics with Professor Kerstin Cmelka.
And they wear knee pads too.
Catherine Deschka
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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The visitors to the annual exhibition will not get off scot-free, because the students can get closer to their visitors again on this first regular tour after the pandemic-related restrictions in the two previous years.
To rouse them wonderfully, like the two performers.
Or to explain their work better, to show details more clearly and to encourage visitors to put on virtual reality glasses, for example for Minju Oh and Mona Nguyen's "Bottom Recreation Center".
Or you can ask them to individually design a poster for the 24th tour, as graphic design student Katharina Landisch democratically envisages: every poster, every invitation card is unique this time.
4000 square meters is not enough
Around 800 students invite you to a three-day tour, during which they show the work they have created in the past academic year.
On Friday, during the opening party with the CrossMediaNight from 10:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., the Schlossplatz will be transformed into a multi-media open-air club, for the film night on Saturday from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., it will be transformed into a laboratory for a remix of film footage and live DJ sets.
In addition to the buildings on the main campus, the customs office gallery and the former rooms of Saturn in the pedestrian zone will be used.
There, the HfG has found plenty of space on four floors to show exhibitions, installations and performances for which there would obviously not have been space on the main campus on Schlossstrasse.
But he can report on a milestone on the way to the new HfG building at the port, says President Bernd Kracke:
Now, however, the art students are allowed to spread out over 4,000 square meters in the former Saturn, but even this area is still not enough: so that everyone can hang up their pictures, they have put up construction fences in the abandoned sales halls, to which paintings are also attached.
Outstanding works can be admired here, such as the paintings of faces covered with hyaluron masks by Severine Meier, who is studying painting with Gunter Reski.
Or the shimmering paintings composed of tiny color mosaics by Kevin Egerer, also a student of Reski.
The sculptors are housed at the top with Professor Mike Bouchet, and in addition to a wide view over Offenbach, there are funny discoveries to be made.
Sonja Prokhorow's bedding sculptures "Sleeping With", for example, which are printed with teenage idols.
Jasper Bamberger's "Postpragmaticjoy", the absurd sculpture of a barrier on green grass that serves no purpose.
And Marina Köstel's "Softly polished mirrors", green faux fur in water tanks that are now soaking up water.
She is concerned with the phenomenon of the Fata Morgana, with the impression that arises when hiking and that says that you don't reach your destination, but when you look back you notice how far you've come.
Faucet shows water consumption
A few floors below, Heiner Blum, Professor of Experimental Spatial Concepts, observed that his students enjoy working with ceramics: "You won't find any projectors or screens here.
The digital natives love the analogue.” Like Nicholas Stewens, whose two large-format, Old Master paintings of horses can be seen.
Or Dominik Dresel, who built an unprecedented Frankfurt skyline out of postcard stands.
Another highlight of the tour is the work of the design graduates in the auditorium of the main building, for example Charlotte Moch designed a faucet that makes water consumption visible.
A small, handy tactile model by Niels Stähly shows the way to the blind.
In cooperation with the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, design students under Professor Peter Eckart have also come up with a cable car from the Kaiserlei roundabout to the ice rink.
Traffic high above the streets, a connection from Offenbach to Frankfurt: Visionary ideas are born at the Hochschule für Gestaltung.
24th tour of the University of Design in Offenbach, 15.-17. July, hfg-offenbach.de.