PRALINE #mag
7 Fata Morgana. In conversation with Kristin Wenzel
→ dt. Version
fig.: Oh Paradís, Kunstraum Praline, Leipzig 2014
In your 2016 work “Oh, Paradís” you faced the wooden fence next to the Praline art space with a fake MDF molding stone wall. The mockup of a palm tree towered over the building. And in the lightbox, the title “Oh, Paradís” evoked paradise in Catalan. In the garishly lit shop window laid a dog made of polyester. A recurring motif in your work seems to be memories, but also utopian approaches, dreams and failure, which you link to certain places and architectures. This might be rooted in your biography. You were born in Gotha (GDR) in 1983. How would you describe these connections?
On the one hand, I wanted to integrate the small building on Lützner Straße as an architectural element. How was it used? What used to be there? There are different levels of memory there. The serial shaped stone elements, developed by Karl-Heinz Adler and Friedrich Kracht, were used as architectural and artistic elements in public spaces in the former GDR. They are a familiar sight for many people here. Such a wall could well have stood next to the Praline.
During my presentation of the installation, two passers-by expressed surprise: “Huh? The wall here, it was always there, wasn’t it?!” My wall dummy probably recalled the memory of this familiar architecture, which is gradually disappearing.
Against the background of GDR biographies, concepts and images such as “paradise” and palm trees are linked to places of longing for me. I also wanted to create a charming contrast, a kind of mirage, when one passes the installation on the busy Lützner Straße. The dog, palm tree and Catalan language were personal references to an extended stay in Mallorca, where I lived for a while.
I am also always fascinated by street dogs in other countries, for me they symbolize a certain independence and autonomy. Also, you always meet such dogs in one place, they become an important part of the area.
The installation created a scenario that could be a personal memory, an incident, a dream or a vision of the future. Did you notice what effect the work had on the viewers passing by or driving by?
No, I have not been able to observe the reactions of the viewers so directly. That is also rather rare. Nevertheless, I find it important that art and discourse should take place in public space and that art is a possible form of democratic participation. The driving force in my work is the will to shape public space. This is a long process and there are often barriers in relation to contemporary art, depending on how much one has already engaged with it. So I see art in public space more as a first input.
Abb.: template #17, Andreea Peterfi, Bucharest 2018
Site-specific installations are your topic, you use showcases in public spaces for artistic installations and reinterpret unused architecture. In 2018 you founded the exhibition project “Template” with Vlad Brăteanu, Alice Gancevici & Remus Pușcariu (Romania). You declared various unused architectural structures in Bucarest as storefronts or facades, kiosks as temporary, scaled-down exhibition venues and thus reactivated them. Contemporary artists were invited to produce site-specific works. Did you want to stimulate a certain social discourse on urban space?
The city of Bucharest has a lot of free space if you know how to use it. There are vacant architectural structures, such as porches or the like from the 60s, 70s and 90s. We turned these spaces into art spaces that could be viewed around the clock. What was important to us was the ephemeral nature of it; we didn’t want to manifest a permanent art space in any place. The painfulness of something disappearing again, that is, the disappointment, the feeling of failure was always an important part of our project. With this, we also wanted to give space for new ideas of a future use – possibly also non-commercial. The question is: What is there in the public space at all? What is freely available? How can one actively participate in shaping?
The Bucharest-born artist Andreea Peterfi, for example, has artistically taken up an illegal structure on a sidewalk from the 1990s. This used to be an exchange office or a kiosk, it’s not that clear. But what’s interesting here is that the extension was built illegally on the sidewalk, which is often found in Bucharest. The artist photographed elements in the immediate environment such as mistakes or appropriations, for example, piles of construction debris in parking lots to secure parking spaces. She brought these elements printed on fabric into the architectural structure, mirroring the public space with its exciting guerrilla tactics.
Abb.: template #17, Andreea Peterfi, installation detail, Bucharest 2018
And these illegal strategies can certainly be a stimulus for the appropriation of public space. In your experience, what is the activation potential of taking up past structures and memories and connecting them with future perspectives among viewers on site? Do you know if it has also stimulated debates and reflections on appreciation, reuse, preservation, further use, etc.?
Such a space temporarily used as an exhibition area has already changed the feeling of walking by there. Many people have stopped, interrupted their daily routes to look at art. They asked us what we were doing here and we got into conversation about contemporary art. And the neighbors were often sad when we disappeared again. I think that for them, perhaps forgotten things were uncovered again and a reflection on a future use beyond commercial considerations was initiated.
![]()
Abb.: „1000 Melodien“, installation view, Friedrichroda 2022
Failure and how one deals with it is also the subject of your work “Thousand Melodies” from 2022 in Friedrichroda. One comes across the installation at an abandoned toboggan and bobsled run in the Thuringian Forest. On a shed is the illuminated inscription “Thousand Melodies”; from loudspeakers, sentences can be heard from a female speaker that sound like a collection of news headlines. Gradually it becomes clear that it is GDR radio news about the 10th Luge World Championships in Friedrichroda, with which various hopes were associated before the start – for guests, attention, tourism? According to the audio track, the world championship is finally cancelled due to the weather conditions...
I discovered this bobsleigh track while hiking, the upper 500 meters lie fallow. The lower part has been renovated and is now used as a summer bobsleigh track for training purposes. In 1966, the 10th World Luge Championship was to be held there. However, the winter was too warm, the ice melted, the World Championship was first postponed and finally had to be cancelled. Many sportsmen and sportswomen had already arrived. I took headlines from newspaper articles and put them in a dramaturgical order to tell the anticipation, anxiety, cancellation and conclusion of an event.
One of the trackside cottages I wanted to recapture. I renovated it, painted it, replaced the broken shutters and put electricity there. You pass there by chance while hiking and hear the audio installation from the trail. The work is basically left to itself. The illuminated sign “Thousand Melodies” on the little house refers to the memory of local witnesses that in the year of the planned World Cup many residents of the village suddenly installed illuminated signs on their houses and stores. It would have looked “like in Las Vegas”.
The title refers to a program of Radio DDR, where one could wish for his favorite melody. The desired songs were then to be played on the occasion of the World Cup, which, however, was finally cancelled.
For me, the work tells a story of hope that a special meaningful event could generate an identification with the place, pride, national attention: luge as unique selling point. From the point of view of the radio reporting, the failure at the end was not an own failure, but caused by external circumstances – an interesting perspective on the failure of the socialist state?
I have hardly found anything about dealing with failure and disappointment in the newspaper articles from that time. However, I think it is very important to pick up people in their disappointment. A festivity could have been held, with the 100,000 bratwursts mentioned in one article. Failure as a topic often doesn’t go down well at all. I grew up near the site and can say from my own biographical experience that, both on a collective and individual level, talking about failure is difficult and is not infrequently perceived as stigmatizing and devaluing one’s own biography.
Therefore, there were also very different reactions to my installation, from enthusiastic mails of hikers passing by by chance or interested comments of the participants of an opening bus tour to rejecting attitudes and the discomfort of being reminded of a failed project.
![]()
Abb.: „1000 Melodien“, fallow part of the bobsleigh run, Friedrichroda 2022
For me, your work also highlights potentials that a region today labeled as stale had and perhaps can have again. It might remind those who know the place – and others too – of a special history of a region, which is currently marked by emigration and shrinking. Maybe this gives the place and the biographies attention and thus appreciation.
Thank you for the interview!
A series of talks by Ex_Praline and Verlag Trottoir Noir, 2023
Yvonne Anders in conversation with Kristin Wenzel,
Editors: Yvonne Anders and Marcel Raabe
Such a space temporarily used as an exhibition area has already changed the feeling of walking by there. Many people have stopped, interrupted their daily routes to look at art. They asked us what we were doing here and we got into conversation about contemporary art. And the neighbors were often sad when we disappeared again. I think that for them, perhaps forgotten things were uncovered again and a reflection on a future use beyond commercial considerations was initiated.
Abb.: „1000 Melodien“, installation view, Friedrichroda 2022
Failure and how one deals with it is also the subject of your work “Thousand Melodies” from 2022 in Friedrichroda. One comes across the installation at an abandoned toboggan and bobsled run in the Thuringian Forest. On a shed is the illuminated inscription “Thousand Melodies”; from loudspeakers, sentences can be heard from a female speaker that sound like a collection of news headlines. Gradually it becomes clear that it is GDR radio news about the 10th Luge World Championships in Friedrichroda, with which various hopes were associated before the start – for guests, attention, tourism? According to the audio track, the world championship is finally cancelled due to the weather conditions...
I discovered this bobsleigh track while hiking, the upper 500 meters lie fallow. The lower part has been renovated and is now used as a summer bobsleigh track for training purposes. In 1966, the 10th World Luge Championship was to be held there. However, the winter was too warm, the ice melted, the World Championship was first postponed and finally had to be cancelled. Many sportsmen and sportswomen had already arrived. I took headlines from newspaper articles and put them in a dramaturgical order to tell the anticipation, anxiety, cancellation and conclusion of an event.
One of the trackside cottages I wanted to recapture. I renovated it, painted it, replaced the broken shutters and put electricity there. You pass there by chance while hiking and hear the audio installation from the trail. The work is basically left to itself. The illuminated sign “Thousand Melodies” on the little house refers to the memory of local witnesses that in the year of the planned World Cup many residents of the village suddenly installed illuminated signs on their houses and stores. It would have looked “like in Las Vegas”.
The title refers to a program of Radio DDR, where one could wish for his favorite melody. The desired songs were then to be played on the occasion of the World Cup, which, however, was finally cancelled.
For me, the work tells a story of hope that a special meaningful event could generate an identification with the place, pride, national attention: luge as unique selling point. From the point of view of the radio reporting, the failure at the end was not an own failure, but caused by external circumstances – an interesting perspective on the failure of the socialist state?
I have hardly found anything about dealing with failure and disappointment in the newspaper articles from that time. However, I think it is very important to pick up people in their disappointment. A festivity could have been held, with the 100,000 bratwursts mentioned in one article. Failure as a topic often doesn’t go down well at all. I grew up near the site and can say from my own biographical experience that, both on a collective and individual level, talking about failure is difficult and is not infrequently perceived as stigmatizing and devaluing one’s own biography.
Therefore, there were also very different reactions to my installation, from enthusiastic mails of hikers passing by by chance or interested comments of the participants of an opening bus tour to rejecting attitudes and the discomfort of being reminded of a failed project.
Abb.: „1000 Melodien“, fallow part of the bobsleigh run, Friedrichroda 2022
For me, your work also highlights potentials that a region today labeled as stale had and perhaps can have again. It might remind those who know the place – and others too – of a special history of a region, which is currently marked by emigration and shrinking. Maybe this gives the place and the biographies attention and thus appreciation.
Thank you for the interview!
A series of talks by Ex_Praline and Verlag Trottoir Noir, 2023
Yvonne Anders in conversation with Kristin Wenzel,
Editors: Yvonne Anders and Marcel Raabe