Leibniz’ Storehouse: Collections in Photograms

Leibniz’ Storehouse is a game of ideas in which it is imagined that Leibniz did in fact realize his lifelong dream of establishing a “Theater of Nature and Art,” as he called it, and had begun to collect natural objects and artifacts that would serve to convey visual knowledge about all aspects of nature and civilization. This collection of objects, archived in a storehouse, would then have been augmented right up until the present day. The original arrangement of the objects in the storehouse certainly conformed to the traditional canon of Nature – Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture – Art – Machines, but this might not always have been observed as years went by and some items of the collection may simply have been deposited anywhere or in some other associative arrangement or context, often resulting in many a curious combination. This book takes the reader on a tour of this fictitious storehouse, the contents of which are visualized in the form of photograms created by Renate Heyne and Floris Neusüss in numerous museums and other situations since the year 2000.

Texts written by Peter Weibel, Horst Bredekamp, Martin Kemp, Renate Heyne and Floris Neusüss.