Farbexplosion

At the courtyard festival of the Westfälische Salzwelten, the museum becomes a stage for immersive media art for four hours. Crystals grow out of the ground and withdraw where someone passes; a touch makes them vanish and grow back from the inside outwards. Everything runs in real time — what can be seen arises from the movement in the room.

Twenty-three works are on show: nine crystal works that take up the theme of the museum, and fourteen works from the Farbexplosion series, in which posited orders — grids, paths, formations — turn at a touch into clouds of colour powder without contour.

The theme comes from the museum itself: the permanent exhibition “Das weiße Wunder” at the Westfälische Salzwelten leads into underground vaults full of crystals that formed more than 250 million years ago, shows their lattice structure under salt microscopes and tells how brine becomes salt on the Hellweg — Bad Sassendorf is an old salters' town.

The evening does not belong to art alone. Short guided tours start at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30 pm, the “Chemische Gärtnerei” grows luminous structures from salts at 7 and 8 pm, at the salt pan the master boiler shows how Sassendorf brine becomes salt, and at “Blaumachen” visitors make their own cyanotypes. There is also music by Pete Alderton, salt tasting and workshops for children.

Saturday, 17 October 2026, 6 to 10 pm, Hof Haulle, An der Rosenau 2, 59505 Bad Sassendorf. Admission 3 euros, reduced 1 euro. All details and the full programme can be found on the event page. The courtyard festival is part of FERROMONE, the regional cultural programme of the Hellweg region.