Lina Lapelytė’s performance We make years out of hours transforms the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof into a space for collective action and singing as part of the second Chanel Commission. The exhibition transcends boundaries between sculpture and performance, the individual and the collective: 400,000 wooden cubes spread across the floor, stack into piles, connect into architectural and then hill-like structures. The blocks move through the hands of performers and visitors, continuously reshaping the wooden landscape. We make years out of hours is a living monument to time, care, and coexistence. By actively involving the audience, the participatory format emphasises the concept of the open museum as the theme of Hamburger Bahnhof’s 30th anniversary.

The Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart becomes a shifting landscape of 400,000 wooden cubes. 12 performers and visitors build temporary structures accompanied by sound. Voices fill the space with songs. The lyrics are based on poems by 15 international authors from the early 20th century to the present. These include the poet Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), the writer and painter Etel Adnan (1925–2021), the poet and film director Forugh Farrochzad (1935–1967), the poet Layla Sarahat Rushani (1952/4–2004), the poet Mahmud Darwisch (1941–2008), the lyricist Ocean Vuong (born 1988), the poet Ilya Kaminski (born 1977), and the poet and author Arundhathi Subramaniam (born 1973). Short lines about community, formation, love, loss, and hope form the libretto of the work.

Like the exhibition space itself, the work also becomes a place of constant change. The 10 x 10 x 10 cm cubes made of spruce and pine move through the hands of performers and visitors. Structures emerge and disappear. Each new form requires another to give way. The work raises questions about what remains and what passes away. It also asks who decides what is built and what must be removed, and whose lives carry the weight of these changes. The title We make years out of hours describes the significance of the part for the whole: hours become years, individuals become a community.

The 400,000 wooden cubes used in the installation and performance will become part of a public artwork in Eisenhüttenstadt in 2027 as part of Lina Lapelytė’s project for Die Neuen Auftraggeber.