Installation as part of the ‘12th Festival of Politics in Outdoor Theatre’
18–25 October
Participating artists: Video editing: Siska | Voices: Ewa Wasilewska, Johanna Hoth | Graphics: Stefania Smolkina | Performative activation by HGB students: Robin Becker, Tobias Fabek, Andolie Marguerite, Anna Volodina, Supervision: Anna Zett | Research group INTIMATE BORDER(S)
The hgb gallery is showing the installation “Graniczanka“ on the everyday life and knowledge of border residents on the southern German-Polish Neisse border. On 18 and 24 October, the installation will be activated by students from the performative arts class through participatory activities.
Areas where the borders of two nations meet are usually regarded as the peripheries of the respective states. The zone where two nation states meet creates a third space in which the border region itself is experienced and used in different ways. Graniczanka can be translated from Polish as ‘border dweller’ and is interested in the connections that everyday life can bring to border dwellers. The installation in the hgb gallery shows the formal and informal architecture of the German/Polish Neisse border in the context of the reintroduction of border controls on both sides in the summer of 2025.
In addition, the installation invites visitors to share in the knowledge of the border residents. Four counselling stations provide information about bilingual educational institutions, body-related services, ecological care work and counselling on abortion. How does everyday practice undermine political reality? Where does the political appear in everyday life? The concept of intimate borders examines how re-bording processes within the Schengen area, (right-wing) extremist political movements and attacks on reproductive rights influence personal everyday practices of love, ecological care and body-related services.
The installation “Graniczanka“ is based on the initial research findings of the interdisciplinary research group ‘INTIMATE BORDER(S)’, which has been conducting research on the German/Polish Neisse border since autumn 2024. Social scientists are working together with artists in an interdisciplinary setting. Qualitative research methods are combined with artistic practices.
INTIMATE BORDER(S) research group: Ewa Einhorn (artist/University of Gothenburg), Constanze Fischbeck (artist & scenographer/Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design), Elisabeth Militz (geographer/University of Innsbruck), Carolin Schurr (geographer/University of Bern), Karolina Sobel (artist/Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design / HGB Leipzig), Mirko Winkel (artist & curator, mLAB, University of Bern)
A cooperation of the hgb gallery, the Performative Arts Class of the HGB and the 12th Festival Politics in Independent Theatre
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.