Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit
f/stop – Festival for Photography
31.05.-16.06.2024
Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit (literally: “escape into the public sphere”) refers to a controlled outward movement as a possible strategy of artistic, political, and activist work. The German household expression is often used when talking about informants who seek protection through publication, bringing their incriminating material to a broad public which can act as a safe space. Visibility is used as a control mechanism which calls on the public opinion for support for critical actions. In the GDR, “Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit” meant demonstrating steadfastness and unity, as opposed to subliminal disruptive government strategies.
Taking this expression as a starting point, the f/stop festival looks into the relationship of visibility and oppositionality and asks how activist practices can be visualized without limiting their agency. The festival assembles historical and contemporary practices at the intersection of individual care and societal agency and investigates the political dimension of image production against the backdrop of current debates and global crises. Particular attention is paid to archival approaches and how they take on responsibility for the past.
The 10th edition of f/stop—Festival für Fotografie Leipzig will expand into the city center and into the public space and be presented in various different exhibition spaces. Displays in the public space will transform the city center of Leipzig into a space for negotiation of societal topics. Different site-specific and mobile formats will bring the exhibition to the public space.The festival itself will thus “escape into the public sphere” in an attempt to challenge the city, its fragmented publics and its institutions through photographic and cinematographic practice and confront them with today’s pressing issues.
The gallery of the Academy of Fine Art sees itself as a membrane between the interior and exterior of the institution. The gallery's aim is to supplement and extend both the teaching contents and practices of the various departments as well as making a contribution to current inquiries in the arts, thereby establishing connections between internal and external discussions and - being situated in the centre of the academy - offering a social and discursive place for carrying out such debates. In the framework of the academy's specific capabilities, the gallery affords students, lecturers, invited artists, curators and theoreticians an experimental and reflective form of exhibition practice that can incorporate, beyond the presentations themselves, the active involvement with the exhibition and the reworking and reformulating discursive material.