Barraque D'Dull Odde: Two Rooms, One Tension

Experience and perception in Joseph Beuys’ installation in Krefeld
Text and drawings by Gianluca Costantini

Joseph Beuys during the installation of Barraque d’Dull Odde, 1977, drawing by Gianluca Costantini

“Joseph Beuys has a profound connection to the Lower Rhine region: he was born in Krefeld in 1921…” This is how the catalogue opens, with a sentence that sounds both like a biographical fact and like a statement of rootedness. And yet, this bond—so clearly asserted—already seems to fracture within the folds of his own life.

I walk through the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. I am alone. The silence is the familiar silence of museums, but here it feels different—denser, as if it were holding something back. This often happens to me when I follow the traces of Joseph Beuys: places cease to be merely places; they become fields of tension, residues of an energy that has not entirely dissipated.
To enter the rooms, I have to ask the guard. This small gesture—almost insignificant—introduces a threshold. One does not simply walk in; one is admitted. As if access required a certain disposition, a readiness.

Jospeh Beuys and Gerhard Storck, 1976 Krefeld, drawing by Gianluca Costantini

There are two rooms. But to describe them this way is already misleading. They are rather two poles of the same field, two extremes between which something unfolds. The first room is bright, almost neutral. It could be any exhibition space. And yet I cannot quite remain there: something draws me further in, toward the back. It is a subtle but persistent pull, a kind of quiet insistence. The second room is dark. Or rather, saturated. Not only with objects, but with density. Shelves are filled, elements accumulate without offering any immediate orientation. There is no clear hierarchy, no readable order. The eye searches, but cannot settle. One moves, steps back, begins again.

It is here that one begins to sense—rather than understand—what Beuys called a “parallel process.” On the one hand, thought, concept; on the other, matter, the stubborn presence of things. Between them, a space that resists closure. A space that remains open, and precisely for that reason, active.

Joseph Beuys, Barraque d’dull Odde, 1961 – 1967, detail, drawing by Gianluca Costantini

Barraque D’Dull Odde does not present itself as an image, nor as a symbol to be decoded. It is a condition. An environment that compels one to remain within uncertainty. The objects—tools, insulating materials, traces of possible actions—seem prepared for something that does not happen. Or has already happened. Or will happen elsewhere. On one wall, almost suspended, the two images of Gundfana of the West – Genghis Khan’s Flag. Their presence does not impose itself, but works slowly, like a double register. West and East, spiritual and historical, emblem and relic. They explain nothing, yet continually shift the field of meaning. Time changes. It is no longer the linear time of a museum visit. It becomes a time of العودة—of return, hesitation, lingering. One notices returning to the same things more than once, never quite seeing them in the same way. As if the work were not in space, but in the way one moves through it.

Gundfana of the west Genghis Khan’s Flag, 1961, acquired Lauffs Collection, drawing by Gianluca Costantini

When I return to the first room, everything feels slightly altered. The fountain at the center—so simple, so clear—appears almost unreal. A pure form, unexpected after the density of the previous space. Following the tubes that feed it, one realizes they lead elsewhere, penetrating the closed interior of the Barraque. As if what appears here in clarity had its origin in something hidden, obscure, inaccessible.

In that moment, one senses—without being able to fully articulate it—that the whole is not a collection of works, but a single organism. A system of relations that cannot be broken without losing its meaning.

It is therefore not surprising that, in 2007, the possible dispersal of the Lauffs Collection was perceived as a profound threat. This was not simply a matter of relocating artworks, but of disrupting a fragile and precise equilibrium, constructed by the artist himself. As if removing one element might cause the entire field to collapse.

“Every commercial transaction,” writes Novalis, “must be approached artistically if it is to succeed in a secure, lasting, and effective way.” Here, more than elsewhere, this statement takes on a concrete weight. What is at stake is not only the preservation of a collection, but the very possibility of its continued existence as experience.

I leave the museum with the feeling of not having understood.
And yet, with the certainty that this was never the point.

Anschwebende plastische Ladug – vor – Isolationsgestell, 1960, detail, drawing by Gianluca Costantini

This article is part of the research I am conducting for the creation of a graphic novel about the life of Joseph Beuys. The articles report on individual stops of the journeys I have undertaken to document my work.