Ariane Litmeyer was born in Jever in 1988 and graduated her studies in design and fine art at Hochschule für Künste Bremen. In 2021 she completed her master's degree with Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler.
Her works are conceptual and interdisciplinary. She works with diverse forms of media whereat the form follows the subject of a work and guides the artistic implementation. Political and social issues - such as the impact of constructed and established power structures on social contexts and subjects - are her main interests. They can be seen through all of her work.
Collective interactions are an essential part of her artistic work. Since 2016 Ariane Litmeyer is working together with the artist Anna-Lena Völker. The artist duo uses different materials and forms of media in their installations. They understand their practice as a focused exploration of contemporaneity. Thereby they draw on post-structural thinking in their analysis. This can also be seen in their artistic statement: “It is the interplay of weight and weightlessness, which we concern ourselves with—that out of every formed entity, a contradiction seems to develop, that the pattern of our actions reflects the pattern of a fly, which then reminds one of a wasp. In an apparent specious authenticity, which is ‘not the same’, ‘but quite’, we create waiting rooms and wait ourselves.”
Ariane Litmeyer is also part of the artist collective ELAF.
Since 2019 she is working together with Jan Charzinski on the history of the city Jever based on the biography of Fritz Levy.
Next to the dying of fish and raging wildfires the sudden appearance of forgotten artefacts is one of the most obvious consequences of the drought which is caused by climate change. Things that have been lying on the ground of rivers and lakes unseen for ages reappear.
In Texas for example 113-million-year-old dinosaur footprints resurfaced in a dry river bed due to the extreme weather conditions. Back then it was - according to today's knowledge - an asteroid and its devastating consequences that terminated the life of dinosaurs after unimaginable 150 million years. Also so-called „Hungersteine“ that had been hidden in river beds or on water grounds now reappear in many places. These stones have been lying there for hundreds of years to mark water levels. Often these stones were provided with an annual inscription or an inscription of warning:
"emergency". The low water engravings bear witness to history, admonishers, heralds of doom and are interpreted in many places as a bad omen. Both „Hungersteine“ and the footprints of the dinosaurs are evidence of historical catastrophes and are part of a meteorological chronicle. What do we use this knowledge for? We live in an illusion of continuity and reliability even if scientific forecasts and social developments teach us something different.
“Climate, Crisis, Archeology”
was the title of a conference of the German Archaeological Institute this year. This arrangement which still ignores the wars and social upheavals of our time shows that the "emergency" vanishes in this arrangement. Crisis is everyday occurrence. Due to distraction, powerlessness, repression and the habit of living in midst of emergency we hardly notice the creeping apocalypse because it does not affect us in our everyday life. Different to the narrative of four riders this downfall sneaks on us up over decades.
Art Residency #2
Ariane Litmeyer
21.11 -16.12.2022
Open Studio
15.12. from 7 pm
faza-ye’adi
gewöhnlicher Raum / ordinary space
[„new traces might surface“]
Faza-ye'adi is the title of Ariane Litmeyer's invitation to the open studio, meaning "ordinary space". She writes: "It seems, get used to everything, even perpetual emergency. Where does crisis begin, where does everyday life end, and is that negotiable?" She is concerned with the "emergence and apparent habituation of or to artifacts of the perpetual state of emergency." The "open studio" format offers an opportunity for exchange and a snapshot of an artistic process.
The Art of Emergency will be especially related to the current protests in Iran—and her project "new traces might surface" interpreted in this sense. When does emergency begin, when does resistance begin? An electric utility box in a street, the "Revolution Street", in Tehran today reveals the trace of a protest from 2017—it was the platform of a protester who waved her headscarf in the air on a stick. Today, a mounted roof made of sheet metal is supposed to make this place inaccessible to people as a precaution.
Other work by Ariane Litmeyer