Participating artists:Ion Grigorescu, Sanja Iveković, Zbigniew Libera, Martha Rosler, Aykan Safoğlu, Jo Spence & Terry Dennett, Gabriele Stötzer & Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt
Kuratiert durch Magdalena Stöger, Leon Hösl
Venue:D21 Kunstraum
Demmeringstraße 21
04177 Leipzig
he prologue exhibition to the 10th f/stop — Festival for Photography Leipzig at Kunstraum D21 primarily brings together historical artistic practices that use the camera as a means of subliminal resistance and utilise the photographic and filmic image to create communities. The works from the 1970s to the present day create (counter)publics and subvert representational norms. They form reference points for the f/stop festival course, which opens on 31 May 2024.
The exhibition title Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit (escape into the public sphere) refers to an artistic strategy, which both Gabriele Stötzer and the Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt used to counter the continuous decomposition (Zersetzung) of critical communities by the Stasi in the 1980s. Instead of limiting themselves to working in secret, exhibitions and events were advertised and organized in public, so that state repression was exposed just as much as the art itself. From a state perspective, the association of people of similar convictions was perceived as a threat—which confirmed the feeling that a community had more freedom of action than the sum of its individuals.
Following the group of artists and Gabriele Stötzer’s practice, “Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit—Festival Prologue” relates moments in which artistic actions use the camera to unfold an emancipatory potential and develop specific forms of publicity. Social inter-actions and forms of solidarity play just as important a part as the artistic result itself, even if they mostly take place outside the images. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, the exhibition focuses on a period in which photography and film were closely interwoven with actionist art, which attempted to locate the human (and collective) body in its social context, to break with body norms and to open up spaces for divergence. The exhibition focuses on political power structures and situations in which these become fragile.
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