FOOTWORK

Dear Övül and Joanna,

 

This is my contribution for your wonderful exhibition project:

 

This is part of my further involvement with Socialist Art of the GDR, a society I never belonged to, but which I carry within me through my family history.

 

Max Lingner was an artist and antifascist resistance fighter against the National Socialist regime. When, after the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, the new young, socialist republic was formed in the eastern part of the country, he went to the Weissensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and became a professor for Painting of Contemporary Affairs. One of his most famous works is Building the new republic, a huge mural on porcelain tiles at the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Detlev Rohwedder House on Leipziger Straße.

 

As an artist, Lingner got caught up in the debate on formality and ultimately sadly broke up. His mural, that was to become the “archetype” of the GDR, also speaks of this.

 

I take a section of it and hang it on the balcony in Max Lingner Strasse. I am also revising it: I changed the cut-out and added some gender- and identity-politics-related attributes in order to ask for other images of inclusivity or even communality.

 

The work is an attempt to draw attention to the communality in action, in movement, and at the same time it asks about concrete embeddings. The interruption we all find ourselves in is for me a challenge to think about how artistic potential fits into social movements, supports them, or even helps to initiate them, while I have a great deal of respect for Lingner's resolute anti-fascist stance as an artist and art academy teacher.

 

Attached you’ll find an image of the work I will mount tonight. Also the link to see the original reproduction.

 

Warmly,

 

Ulf