EXPO 24-26.06 2022 / #48hneukoelln #48hnk2022

Hungerwinter/Romantique – Walking through a forest during a pandemic

Expo as part of the Main theme ‘Kafayı yemek / Ich esse meinen Kopf’ during 48H Neuköln 2022 – 24.06-26.06 @CBS-Weinkunstscheune from 24.6 until 26.6.2022

Almost every week during these Covid years, I have made a long hike through Berlin and Brandenburg – and every time I brought a camera.

During my walks I not only cleared my head so I could stop myself from eating my head off – but I also tried to step away from all the head-eating as a result of our changed reality as became clear in the past decade: we are not in control of nature – not the nature around us and not our human nature – and we never have been.

Even before Covid I was regularly pondering about two facts that were burned in my head:

  1. In Europe we used to have at least 10 large famines every century. And Famines and disease often go hand in hand.
  2. Part of the battlefield of WWI is still not accessible to humans or fit to be used as farmland over a 100 years later.

In the western world we want to forget that. We think science will save us and our flourishing economy will make us better people, living in eternal peace and unity. But Trump, global warming and Covid (EDIT: and now the current war, the looming food crisis) have proven that we are not as in control of our destiny as we would like.

For me this was a reason to try and find inspiration in the art of times when we saw nature for what it really is: on the one side it gives us life, on the other it is our mortal enemy. The strange thing is that in the paintings of the past, nature is seen as a place of beauty and a world filled with power. That is what I focused on.

During 48 Hours NK, I want to show a series of large black and white photos printed on surfaces painted with silver or gold. I want to present that as a panorama built from multiple prints in ornamental frames (A0 or larger) on 3 or 2 walls, maybe also photos on floor/ceiling depending on the space. This should not only show nature, but also should be seen as a moment of contemplation of our role in that nature. Because without it we are going to blow our top off (platzt den Hutrand) or people start bashing each other’s heads in – or we have to bow our heads and accept our fate.