hinüber. Übungen zum Tod [Across. Exercises on Death]
‚Across' [hinüber], that means in general 'from one side to the other'. Common is a disrespectful use of the word for people as well as material: ‚across‘ like ‚beyond‘, when someone or something is no longer usable, can no longer be repaired or healed, is dead. Kaputt. With a different, solemn tone, 'across' also means ‚'across the Jordan or other border rivers—into an imagined region of death or unknown promise.
Either way, who would know how to indicate for themselves the place of life if not from death? If Sigmund Freud puts it in a nutshell: "in the unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”, then it would be different avoidances of an unbearable, which had a culture-forming effect.
To understand life as an exercise in death is an idea that connects the works in this group exhibition. To take one's own death or the death of others as a concrete question and an artistic-political attempt at a new determination of place is what the works on 'across' are dedicated to in different approaches and detours.
The positions
Doro Carl List of Deaths [2023]
Photo and sound installation
In the format of oversized photo strips like from a passport photo machine, pictures of ocean waves hang from the ceiling. A reading from the 'UNITED - List of Refugee Deaths' from January 2022 to February 2023 can be heard over headphones. This list documents the data of more than 52,760 people who died while fleeing to Europe between 1993 and mid-2023. The listed deaths provide access to the causes of death of individual people and thus a more personal reference to statistical data of the deceased. In cooperation with UNITED for Intercultural Action—European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees. Campaign Fatal Policies of Fortress Europe https://unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu/
The photo and sound installation List of Deaths is part of Doro Carl's video work and installation: Transit Exil Immigration.
DoroCarl
Doro Carl lives and works as a filmmaker and artist in Hamburg.
She studied visual communication at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Her work is in artistic documentary film, video and sound installation with presentations in Germany and abroad.
Christine Fausel Untitled (The angel book for Leni) [2022]
Art book, video
The booklet, drawn, painted, and collaged with colorful papers and poems, held closed by a gold elastic band, has no title, is inscribed "for Leni," the daughter of Ameli Herzogin von Oldenburg, a friend in life and art who died a few years ago.The "angels" of the booklet appear in the poems and text excerpts of Else Lasker Schüler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean Paul and Klabund and in the form of a question, handwritten. Quite like "TOD" as the title of a sheet, written in large letters by a 97-year-old.With a video by Claudia Reiche.
Bilder: Christine Fausel (Video Claudia Reiche)
ChristineFausel
Christine Fausel, born in 1925, began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1945. Her encounter with fellow student Ameli Herzogin von Oldenburg developed into a lifelong artist friendship. She worked as a painter and graphic artist, for a time managed a company for men's clothing and worked as an art teacher.Starting with landscape painting, she continued to reduce realism to expressionism, gestural and lyrical abstraction.Currently, human figures become dimly visible.
The 2020 art book ADIEU is dedicated to a deceased friend and his photographic memory (edition 35 + AP) Farewell is the theme of this book—designed with photographs. Farewell = death."Adieu" is a greeting to a time that has not passed, to a deceased who is not dead and a love that has not disappeared.It is a book of images as they are born in photography and desire. Sites of a possible meeting at an impossible place. You are invited.Large-format photographs continue the procedure of the book in new compositions in the exhibition space.
Bilder: Chris Lambertsen
ChrisLambertsen
1954 born on the island of Föhr. 1973 – 1976 Photographer training at Atelier Rheinländer Hamburg. 1976 – 1982 Studies at the University of Fine Arts | Visual Communication. In addition to commercial work for agencies and publishers - various projects for| with | in the LGBTIQ context.
Christiane Lüdtke my mother—11 touches [2003]
11 drawings
In 2003 my mother was in a coma for weeks in an intensive care unit.The hospital was 250 km away from where I lived at that time. In great anxiety I often left by car at 5.00 in the morning to visit my mother.Conversations with her were not possible.So every time I visited her I made a drawing of her:To endure the sight of the changed body, to occupy myself, to be close to my mother.Working with the drawing pencil was like a caress and an acknowledgement: 'this is how it is now'.
The doctors turned off the life support machines in my presence. I accompanied my mother to the threshold; she died on July 16, 2003. Drawings with ink pen on wipe/fleece, June 6 - July 16, 2003.
Bild: Christiane Lüdtke
ChristianeLüdtke
Christiane Lüdtke is a sculptor and curator of participatory art projects.She realizes abstract works in wood or iron up to four meters high as well as small figurative works in clay.The starting point of her works is not only what is seen, but complex project ideas with regard to content. Drawing is an independent component of her art.She gives seminars at the Gärtnerhaus art school at the Woods Art Institute near Hamburg.
Death also involves deciding which traces, documents, notes, information are to be kept, passed on, made illegible or destroyed.My mother owned a paper shredder and in the years leading up to her death, she commiserated with me several times that I needed to sort her papers after all. By putting her machine into action, I was literally carrying on her last will and testament. A strangely enraptured decision-making process... What would she have wanted? And what would I want? How to decide what should be preserved and what should not? The machine, as long as it chops up the documents put into it, makes noise that seems to drown out and shout out my pain at the same time.
Bilder: Helene von Oldenburg
HelenevonOldenburg
Helene von Oldenburg lives and works in Rastede and Hamburg and is active as an artist and curator. Dr. agr., studied free art at the HfbK Hamburg. Her works - installations, performances, lectures - focus on border areas between art and science and differ from each other by different concepts, procedures, and in the media used.
Claudia Reiche home… [2023]
Photo and video installation
The installation confronts three different visual subjects: military data visualization, of targets and hits, such as in an observer camera of an air defense system. Infrared photos of the parental home in a state of evacuation. Non-visible flashes shooting into darknesses, groping in childish un/forgotten groping in childhood’s un/forgotten reserves. The backs of old family photos as they rested with other remnants in tied up boxes: Intense glances of long-dead relatives who experienced wars and did not survive, hidden. The sound continues to work with what is concealed. There are the sounds of distant gunfire of world wars, as offered today as "12 hours of relaxing sound", complemented by the bright sound of falling rain.
Bilder: Claudia Reiche
ClaudiaReiche
Dr. phil, is a media theorist, artist and curator. She works on cultures of the digital and their epistemological, aesthetic and political effects and is involved in projects such as thealit Frauen.Kultur.Labor. Bremen https://www.thealit.de. She has been teaching in the field of media theory and art for many years, currently at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Numerous works on mediality in fields of psychoanalysis, film, image cultures.
