BEZÜGE_FOLGELANDSCHAFTEN
Inspired by OSTEN, a seminar at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, led by Prof. Tina Bara, took a photographic look at the past and present of Wolfen. On the Parcours site between the old fire station and the Wolfen Industrial and Film Museum, the students of the Photography and Moving Image class discovered remnants of the past, relics such as empty showcases and rusted masts as image carriers for their photographs and developed works on them.
These works of art are on display:
PEACHY WASTED: MOSCOW
Haru Li Wdo
Luki Haak works with make-up remover wipes, which are collected after each of Luki’s queer-performative concert appearances. They show imprints of a clownishly made-up face that look like masks and have been spread out on the contaminated ground around the Silbersee in Wolfen and photographed – Luki uses them to create a kind of visual curtain.
IN THE WIND:IN THE SUN:IN THE DUST:WITH A FRAGRANCE
ZinaBluhm and Franziska Kühn
The joint work by Franziska Kühn and Zina Bluhm explores the all-encompassing space of nature, collects on the visual map, portrays the exchange with time, site-specifically. The artists process materials, photograph dumps, residual holes, dumpsite soils, cleared vegetation, and later a flowering meadow and combine their collected material with the old rusty displays on the meadow.
DIVISION OF FORCE
Julius C. Schreiner
Against all violence? Some people looking at the memorial stone in Bitterfeld-Wolfen will probably ask themselves whether it says “against all violence”. Most people probably think of the two totalitarian systems in German history. Others think of the equation of left and right in the political arena. But what does the statement “Against all violence” actually mean?
AT: 8000
Lea Petry
The starting point of the work is the reflection on the female employees of the former Wolfen film factory. With over 8000 employees, the “film women” made up the majority of workers in the entire factory. Lea Petry enters into a kind of dialog with the women from her present-day perspective in her performative self-presentations, using photography, body language and gestures.
FLUCHTFILTER
Kassandra and Cosmo Großbach
From the monumental film factory to the contract workers: The screen-printed banners on the flagpoles invite visitors to engage with the reality of life in Wolfen during the GDR era and its relationship to today. The collage of archive photographs and text connects individual life stories with the complex continuities in workers’ lives.
*grōbō GRUBE
İrem Özkürkçü
The installation examines the space artificially created by hegemonic power structures, where different bodies meet. GRUBE reflects on actors and continuities within this space. The starting point is a found photograph showing a couple obviously in love in the industrial landscape, in one of the few places in Wolfen where people can meet.
UNIT
klara stangl
A visual study of physicality and expression between tension and elegance, where the street of the best used to be. A large-format photo from the wrestling scene in Saxony-Anhalt reflects tradition and transformation as well as the importance of fitness, encounters and community.
DECOLONIZE CYRILLIC: THIS IS NOT WRITTEN IN RUSSIAN
Anna Perepechai
Ukrainian artist Anna Perepechai prints the sentence: “This is not written in Russian” in eight languages that use their own Cyrillic alphabet, also naming the minority languages colonized by Russia. Perepechai places posters in the entrance area of the House of Culture in Pushkin Street as a reference to the dominance of the Russian language and culture. #decolonizecyrillicfromrussian
FORWARD
Carla Maruscha Fellenz
In her photographic series, the artist works with young people on location and focuses on growing up in medium-sized towns such as Bitterfeld-Wolfen with legal and political realities. What to do with yourself in a place that spits you out, even though it wants to keep you in order to maintain the population and jobs that don’t exist? The results are presented in a place that is also used by some local young people as a meeting place.
CALF WITH A SWASTIKA SHAVED INTO ITS FUR
Mascha Breuer
The artistic work deals with the increasing growth of right-wing parties and the legitimization of fascist and racist signs and actions. The artist uses a photo from her archive, combines it with her experience and places it in a public space where right-wing extremist signs and slogans have already been sprayed.
CONTAMINATED
Luki Haak
Luki Haak works with make-up remover wipes that he collects after his queer-performative concert appearances. They show impressions of his clownishly made-up face that look like masks, which he spreads out on the contaminated floors of the Wolfen site, photographs and uses to create a kind of visual curtain.
ORWO-FILM, WOLFEN-TEHERAN-WOLFEM
Shary Talebian
The artist found an unexposed slide film produced in the 1970s at the Wolfen film factory in Tehran. She exposed it there in May 2024 and photographed a residential area that was also built in the 1970s according to modern principles. She is now bringing this developed film back to Wolfen to the former film factory, of which only a museum remains.
KATJA IM SABINENSEE
Nancy Göring
Nancy Göring has selected a photo from her Mechow series, which was taken in a rural area in eastern Germany, for the protected display case in front of the fire station. Here, she and her friends are building an artistic and creative life together, searching for positive impulses in the midst of a fragmented world with all its catastrophes.
With works by: Irem Özkürkçü, Anna Perepechai, Julius C. Schreiner, Haru Li Wdo, Luki Haak, Kassandra and Cosmo Großbach, Klara Stangl, Lea Petry, Zina Bluhm and Franziska Kühn, Carla Maruscha Fellenz, Mascha Breuer, Shary Talebian.
In cooperation with the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.