23 Dinge / 23 things

In February 2021 Dorothea Koch and Alexander Mayer distributed a letter in the mailboxes of the Rosentraße in Lübeck asking for the loan of a thing from the personal possession of the residents. A total of 23 things were borrowed from 14 residents, and Koch and Mayer worked with them until the exhibition was set up at the end of April. Questions such as:

"What relationship do we have to everyday things?", "Are things also eye candy?", "When does it hurt your eyes?", "Things and materiality - why do we have stones in the household?", "Are things more taken to heart under corona conditions?", "What happens to an object when it is presented outside its original context?", "Does the relationship to the object change when you take on a different perspective, when you put on different glasses?".

For corona reasons, the exhibition had to be shown in a shop window. It was sponsored and supported by the Possehl Foundation and the Kulturfunken Lübeck.

On a table in the exhibition space lay various objects from the Artenne's attic depot: Pieces of wood, buttons, old drawings, a conductor's cap, mended stockings, newspaper pages, and others.

Dorothea Koch and Nicole Noack encountered these objects with the gaze of strangers to the place. They have created new orders and connections, shifted levels of meaning and categories, and left enough room for absurdity.

On two walls, different text levels (factual texts, personal texts, quotations, book excerpts) were combined with photos, drawings, photocopies, and small objects to form an imaginary network. The associated connections between wall works and objects on the table were facilitated for the visitors by small attached numbers. Nevertheless, it was not the quick deciphering that was important here. Connections should be found and not searched for!

As a result of an inconclusive internal discussion on renaming the former Viktoria barracks in Hamburg-Altona, the artistic research group V.F was formed. Since February 2017, it has been researching the fictitious identity of V.F (Viktoria Fuchs/Victoria Fox/Vicky Fuchs), whose constructed life story has parallel references to the barracks and Hamburg's history. In a first step, the research was based on a timeline from 1878 to the present. Discursive collections of biographies, predominantly of women, were created within this period, partly by linking them to the names Viktoria or Fuchs. Complex themes such as biography and the search for traces, memory versus recollection, re- and reconstruction of identities/biographies and history play an essential role. The project is to be understood as an ongoing interdisciplinary work process. Members of the research group V.F (Dorothea Koch, Alexander Mayer, Nicole Noack et al.) work in the former Victoria Barracks. In 2017 and 2018, the research group showed first results in the exhibition "100 Fragen an V.F""100 questions to V.F". The thematically affiliated performative house tour "Das Leben soll mich treffen wie Wetter ohne Schirm“ through the former Victoria Barracks was conceived by Dorothea Koch.