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Thingstätten by Maria Vedder

Opening: 18.11.2022 
Exhibition:19.11 - 09.12.2022
Location: Markgrafenstraße 86, 10969 Berlin

Thingstätten

2019 until today, Work in Progress

Multi-channel installation

Projections and monitors, installation dimensions variable.

5 short films of Thingplaces in NRW were supported by Foundation Künstlerdorf Schöppingen,

Kultursekretariat NRW Gütersloh, project Stadtbesetzung/Erkundungen,

Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Beside the installation there is also a FILM, in which all previous recordings are summarized.

Planned are about 40 films from preserved Thing places in Germany.

Throughout Europe, votes for radical right-wing positions are increasing. After the immense catastrophe brought upon the world by the National Socialists in the last world war, this fascination is hard to comprehend. It is particularly frighteningly topical in war-torn Russia. To understand more, I would like to use the example of the National Socialist THINGSTÄTTEN to examine one aspect of the propaganda of the time, the places of seduction.

Throughout Germany in the 1930s, Thingstätten were erected, theater-like gathering places built by the Nazi regime to spread its ideology. With falsified historical recourse to ancient Germanic traditions, theatrical performances were to take place at them, so-called Thingpiele. These were supposed to allow the individual to experience an emotional absorption in the homeland and the national community. For this reason, impressive scenic sites were chosen as Thing sites: atmospheric places surrounded by forests, by bodies of water, embedded in hills or natural rocks, at ruins or other traces of local history.

In Germanic times, a Thing or Ding was the people's and court assembly. It dealt with legal matters and was always held in the open air. The Nazis abused the idea of Thing meeting places for staging the cult of the Führer.

From 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939, up to 400 Thing sites were planned or started. Approximately 60 open-air theaters were completed. Of the majority, one knows today the place, many are still used for concerts and theater performances.

This project is to document all former Thing sites in Germany. Here you can see Thingstätten in NRW in Herchen, Jülich, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Porta Westfalica and Wattenscheid.

The cinematic approach to these sites is done from the air. With a camera drone a trip is started vertically above the Thingplatz, you can see the whole environment, the camera slowly approaches, it turns around its own axis until the square fills the picture. The image spinning like a spiral creates a suction. It is a figurative expression of the seduction and agitation of the population by National Socialism.

Marc Aschenbrenner

Figur mit zwei Oberkörper. 

2021, Tyvek, ink, sewed. 

Video description

How the figure comes into the world.

The works of Marc Aschenbrenner (1971*) are characterized by figures, that pass through various stages. These figures are sewn body-shells. Head, hands feet legs torso and arms are painted as a pattern on a sheet of fabric (Tyvek)*. The pattern has been assembled by the artist over the years, and he continues to vary it. The surface is painted with details such as eyes or muscles to abstract surfaces. The materials used are ink, or lacquer pencil and lacquer spray but also oil pastels.

The artist refers to the resulting image as the first state of the figure. Some figures remain in this state. Then the resulting pattern picture is cut out and sewn together.

The sewn figures are staged by actresses or by the artist himself in performative videos. The videos are short and often show simple actions as in "Figure1" dancing her name in Morse code. Sometimes the action simply breaks off and the video ends. Then this character suddenly reappears in another storyline. But mostly they seem isolated and do not leave their cosmos. Marc Aschenbrenner's figures have changed and show extremes in their appearance. So there is the figure with double torso, or the figure with hand feet, or the figure with long arms. The artist says it is the mental state of the figure that determines its appearance. The artist calls the resulting video the second state of the figure. The third and final state is the figure itself as a shell arranged into a picture. The watercolors of Marc Aschenbrenner are from the series Schleim-Wesen,
and show visions from the intensive care unit.

*(Tyvek is used as sterile packaging or to make disposable coveralls).

Video of the figure in action.

Marlot Meyer, "Touch Ground. Sim-biocene"

Bio-Extended NFT

Available on Opensea

Installation: Touch Ground Sim-biocene, 2022.

The project Bio-Extended NFT is a continuation, a conclusion, of the installation Touchground Sim-biocene by Marlot Meyer. In the installation, a small ecosystem was created that grew wheatgrass in the end. The help of the visitors was necessary, who activated an irrigational system by their presence and movements alone and thus kept the eco-system alive. In the end, shapes were to be cut out of the grown wheatgrass, which were then offered as works of art. The fact that media art was used to create the wheatgrass shapes inspired us to develop this approach further.

Courtesy Art Claims Impulse

Using NFT (Digital File) to enhance the wheatgrass artwork and convert it to 3D for future reproduction. 

Courtesy of Art Claims Impulse

Bio-Extended NFT

With the purchase of a Bio-Extended NFT, the buyer receives a 3D scan of the original and also a wheatgrass artwork, created from the Touch Ground Sim-biocene installation. If the living artwork no longer exists, there is still the image and the digital 3D scan as an NFT, which could theoretically enable a reproduction from a bio-printer or similar.

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