13 April–1 June 2019
Opening: 12 April 2019

Exhibition
Event Series

Location(s):
station urbaner kulturen, Auerbacher Ring 41, 12619 Berlin

Lars Preisser filmed firewalls and redundant plots of land in Berlin in 2016/17. They have a special meaning for him, as a childhood memory and a significant feature of the rapidly changing city. He sees them as monuments and as nature reserves, very different to the tidy confines of urban green and parks.

The emptiness of wastelands creates an architecture where no rules seem to have been imposed and to which everyone has access. Until they are eventually rebuilt upon, wastelands enjoy an undefined existence and have no prescribed function.

The artist has affected the film sequences by shooting them on discarded 16mm material and by deliberately using defective equipment causing incidental light exposure. The footage reminds us of images of war and post-war, of upheaval and change, of the bygone times of a city in ruins. Whether in the East or the West, divided Berlin’s wastelands are noticeably similar. Passing concrete mixers remind us of the here and now and the transience of porous beauty.

Last autumn, Lars Preisser enlarged six stills from these films for the nGbK’s Art in the Underground competition and exhibited them as a sequence on billboards in Alexanderplatz Station. Now an installation of his original film material kicks off the 2019 programme in Hellersdorf, some of which will take place on a large wasteland this summer: on land which once housed a kindergarten and a school and which is now an informal cricket pitch.

Events:

Friday, 12 April 2019, 19:00
Exhibition opening and artist talk

Saturday, 11 Mai 2019, 18:00
Commented film screening »Die perforierte Stadt [The Perforated City]« (DE)
with Lars Preisser and Florian Wüst

The film curator Florian Wüst will talk with Lars Preisser about the medium of film in relation to aesthetics and the significance of urban wastelands. Using film excerpts, Berlin’s vacant lots, open land and ruins will be interpreted as the “spaces of possibility“ that shaped its image for so long and that turned the perforated city into a magical attraction.

Thursday, 16 Mai 2019, 19:00
Talk »Ein Bild von der Stadt« (DE)
with Ulrich Domröse, Curator of the Photography Collection of Berlinische Galerie