Carsten Höller.
SOMA November 5th, 2010 - February 6th, 2011
Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of the Present

Duration November 5th, 2010 - February 6th, 2011

Location Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of the Present

An exhibition by the Berlin State Museums, made possible by the Association of Friends of the National Gallery and with the support of the Schering Foundation. We would like to thank the Berlin-Mitte Veterinary and Food Office for their cooperation.

The song of canaries fills the room, a hint of the smell of stables is in the air. These sensory impressions, which are truly unexpected for a museum, come from the fantastic scenario that unfolds over the course of a winter in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Contemporary Museum – Berlin. In search of Soma, a mythical potion, the internationally acclaimed German artist Carsten Höller (born 1961 in Brussels) created his most complex and elaborate installation to date.

“We drank the soma; we have become immortal, we have seen the light; We have found the gods.” This line of verse comes from the Rigveda, the oldest of the four founding scriptures of the Hindu religions, and it is one of many in which a miraculous potion is sung. Like us in the 2nd millennium BC. According to a scripture written in the 1st century BC, this drink promised knowledge, access to the divine sphere, happiness, wealth and victorious power. It was a drink enjoyed by gods and men alike.

The Rigveda is the basis of the scientific search that began in the 20th century for the composition of the soma and the identity of its central ingredient. Knowledge of the latter has been lost over the past millennia. In addition to linguists, botanists and ethnologists also based their search for the omnipotent substance on the poetically encoded verses of the ancient script written in Sanskrit. In doing so, they endeavored to bring the clues contained therein into line with findings from their respective disciplines. To date, however, there is no consensus about the identity of the soma plant.

The American Gordon R. Wasson, a banker by profession and mycologist by passion, published a comprehensive compendium in 1968 in which he discussed the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) as the sought-after soma plant and combined a linguistic study of the Rigvedic verses with reports of the customs of Siberian nomads. From this connection, Wasson developed the thesis that the crucial substance could be found in the fly agaric. He also assumes that the mushroom was consumed during the Somar ritual through direct consumption - presumably mixed with milk and other substances - as well as through the urine of a person or animal that had previously consumed fly agarics. Carsten Höller further develops this theory to the effect that it could have been the urine of reindeer, whose natural diet includes fly agaric. The loss of the soma and the knowledge of its composition would logically be explained by the fact that the nomadic tribes of Central Asia left the habitat of fly agarics and reindeer behind when they left the area between 2000 and 1000 BC. BC migrated from the north towards the Indus Valley.

Carsten Höller, himself a qualified agricultural scientist, takes up Wasson's thesis and takes the search for Soma into the realm of art. Citing the structure of an experimental setup, he creates a three-dimensional, living image that divides into two equal halves along its central axis. Animals were selected to take part in a comparative study (in a double-blind experiment), the starting point of which is the fly agaric and which could end with the recovery and use of the potion for humans. In the experiment imagined by Höller, canaries, mice and flies would be given the psychoactive urine of reindeer that had previously consumed fly agarics. The people who spend the night in Soma are free to be included in the experiment. Seen in this way, the exhibition represents the first phase on the way to exploring another world, an alternative reality. It is therefore a hypothetical experiment, the completion of which lies in the imagination of the viewer and the evaluation of which is left exclusively to his or her powers of observation. How do the birds sing in one field and another? Can differences be noticed? How do they fly? Is the way reindeer interact changing, and what might be the reason for this? The audience can observe the wondrous experimental field from an elevated stand. Courageous visitors are invited to continue their observations in a floating hotel bed that rises from the middle of the arrangement and to immerse themselves in the world of Soma at night in the museum.

Wasson's approach is dominant in the prevailing discussion, but contested. Therefore, a publication that accompanies the exhibition not only presents Wasson's thesis, but also offers a cross-section of the spectrum of cross-country and cross-time engagement with the fly agaric and soma. In addition to reports on the use of the fly agaric in southeast Siberia from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, exemplary excerpts from soma research are presented. Carsten Höller continues this preoccupation and closes the circle: If a literary source and the assumption of a powerful potion became the basis of scientific research, the artist now creates a return to the area of ​​hypothesis. He overlays the targeted observation of a scientific investigation with the undirected, so to speak “interestless” observation as the heart of aesthetic reception.