Listening Session: Hip-Hop as communication tool and cultural heritage

29.07.2023 / 20:00 / Poolbar

LISTENING SESSION:
HIP-HOP AS COMMUNICATION TOOL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE WITH TORCH
Saturday, July 29, 2023, 8 p.m.
Poolbar, Faulerstraße 1, 79098 Freiburg

Hip-hop is more than just a music genre—hip-hop is a means of political expression, lifestyle, and attitude. As an artistic and musical medium, it began to influence music production and culture in Germany in the 1980s. For the final LISTENING SESSION, accompanied by Torch we will travel to the beginnings of German hip-hop and talk about its social impact to this day.
Torch was the first to freestyle in German. Together with the music group Advanced Chemistry, he laid the foundations of hip-hop culture in Germany. This year, Heidelberg hip-hop was declared a UNESCO cultural heritage site.
Torch is a central networking figure within the German hip-hop scene and is active as a rapper, musician, and author. He will provide insights into how hip-hop works as a language and means of communication and what intentions and visions open up within it—and there will be more to hear in the DJ set that follows!

The LISTENING SESSIONS offer a framework for communally experiencing and reflecting on the relationship between the street and music. Invited artists and musicians bring selected pieces of music and share their knowledge about their genesis, composition, and cultural implications. Each event is dedicated to a different musical genre and temporal context—such as jazz, feminist punk, the beginnings of German hip-hop, or music in the context of Freiburg’s squatter scene.

Public Tour

29.07.2023 / 14:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

Public tour through the exhibition
Saturday, July 29, 2023, 2 p.m.
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstr. 21, 79098 Freiburg

Participation is free of charge.

Public Tour

22.07.2023 / 19:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

Public tour through the exhibition with curator Paula Kommoss and curatorial assistant Valentina Ehnimb as part of Freiburger Museumsnacht
Saturday, July 22, 2023, 7. pm.
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstr. 21, 79098 Freiburg

Other dates public tours:

Saturday, July 29, 2 p.m.

Participation is free of charge.

Street fest of the Biennale für Freiburg 2 x Kunstverein

21.07.2023 / 16:00 – 22:00 / Marienstraße

STREET FEST: BIENNALE FÜR FREIBURG 2 X KUNSTVEREIN FREIBURG
Date: July 21, 2023, 4–10 p.m.
Location: Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Together with Kunstverein Freiburg, the Biennale for Freiburg 2 invites you to a street fest. The street becomes a place of exchange and encounter, of expression and playful interaction. Anna Byskov and Hannah Kindler from the somebody*ies collective will activate the street as a stage and resonance chamber with their PERFORMANCE: THIS IS WHAT WE CAME FOR. Children and young people can create leaflets in Maximiliane Baumgartner’s FLUGBLATTWERKSTATT (LEAFLET WORKSHOP) and learn more about the work of Freiburg artist Eva Eisenlohr. There will be games, food, and drinks, and various Freiburg musicians will accompany the evening.

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER AS PART OF THE BIENNALE FÜR FREIBURG 2 STREET FEST
Friday, July 21, 2023, 4–6 p.m.
Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Taking the work of the Freiburg artist and art educator Eva Eisenlohr as a starting point, Baumgartner has developed an action space comprised of multi-part painterly interventions in Freiburg’s urban space, in which the boundaries between the production, presentation, and mediation of art dissolve and new positionings become possible.
The action vehicle VIELE VAMPIRE SIND VÖGEL (2019/2023) is one element of the action space and will become a collaborative stage for action. An enlarged reproduction of the woodcut FRIENDS (1956) by Eva Eisenlohr serves as a gateway onto a performative approach to, and examination of, her work. In the LEAFLET WORKSHOP, leaflets will be created in collaboration with children and young people in the Freiburg Stadtgarten.

PERFORMANCE BY SOMEBODY*IES: THIS IS WHAT WE CAME FOR
Anna Byskov, Hannah Kindler
Friday, July 21, 2023
4:30 p.m.: Klarastraße, meeting point: JC Café, Klarastraße 70, 79106 Freiburg
5 p.m.: Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

This performative intervention by somebody*ies activates the street as a stage, resonance chamber, and place of interaction. By appropriating different codes inherent within the street, Anna Byskov and Hannah Kindler center specific relations of gaze and speech. The acting body becomes the medium of communal reflection on the meaning of heroes in public space and the possibility of their collectivization.

The supervision of children and adolescents during the leaflet workshop as well as during the entire street fest is the responsibility of the accompanying person with legal guardianship or parental authority and is not assumed by the team of the leaflet workshop, the Biennale, or the Kunstverein.

Listening Session: Onetwothree: Feminist Punk

20.07.2023 / 19:00 / Slow Club Freiburg

LISTENING SESSION:
ONETWOTHREE: FEMINIST PUNK WITH SÉVÉRINE KPOTI
Thursday, July 20, 2023, 7 p.m.
Slow Club, Haslacher Straße 25, 79115 Freiburg

Zurich artist and musician Klaudia Schifferle has been tearing down borders in changing constellations since the 1980s. Her various projects, including the bands Kleenex/LiLiPUT and most recently ONETWOTHREE, connect the worlds of punk, art, and feminism across Switzerland and beyond. Together with Sévérine Kpoti—herself active in the punk scene and author of the book PUNK AS F*CK (2022, Ventilverlag)—we will play a variety of songs and talk about subcultures, social structures, and different approaches to punk. Afterward, at the Slow Club, there will be a concert with Breanna Barbara and the band Tulips.

The LISTENING SESSIONS offer a framework for communally experiencing and reflecting on the relationship between the street and music. Invited artists and musicians bring selected pieces of music and share their knowledge about their genesis, composition, and cultural implications. Each event is dedicated to a different musical genre and temporal context—such as jazz, feminist punk, the beginnings of German hip-hop, or music in the context of Freiburg’s squatter scene.

Leaflet Workshop by Maximiliane Baumgartner

14.07.2023 / 13:00 – 16:00 / Musikpavillon, Stadtgarten

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER
Date: Friday, July 14, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Location: to be announced

Based around the Freiburg artist and art educator Eva Eisenlohr (1891–1977), Maximiliane Baumgartner will develop an action space comprised of multi-part painterly interventions in Freiburg’s urban space, in which the production, presentation, and mediation of art dissolve and new positionings become possible.
The action vehicle VIELE VAMPIRE SIND VÖGEL (2019/2023) is one element of the action space and will become a collaborative stage for action. An enlarged reproduction of Eisenlohr’s print FRIENDS (1956) takes the form of a banner, mounted on the cart. It serves as direct illustrative material, as well as a gateway onto a performative approach to and examination of Eisenlohr’s work. In a LEAFLET WORKSHOP leaflets will be created in collaboration with children and young people.

The supervision of children and young people during the leaflet workshop is the responsibility of their parents or guardians and cannot be left to the leaflet workshop team.

LEAFLET WORKSHOP
Friday, July 14, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Location to be announced

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER AS PART OF THE BIENNALE FÜR FREIBURG 2 STREET FEST
Friday, July 21, 2023, 4–6 p.m.
Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Pflaster:
Resistant Streets

13.07.2023 / 19:00 / Platz der Alten Synagoge

PFLASTER:
RESISTANT STREETS WITH DOROTHEE ANNETTE KREUZER
Thursday, July 13, 2023, 7 p.m.
Meeting place: Platz der Alten Synagoge, 79098 Freiburg

Participants are invited to accompany social worker Dorothee Annette Kreuzer and broaden their perspective as they move through the city, directing their gaze to places that are characterized by contradictions. The streets of a city mark its centers, delimit them, and guide people through them. As public spaces, they are equally contested sites of political disputes. This raises the question of who owns these spaces and how the city can be shaped and lived in.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own backpack and blanket.

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect together on the potentials of social movements: how, for example, does feminist representation manifest itself in public space? Furthermore, the conversations will critically reflect upon aspects of Freiburg’s colonial urban history and examine the current realities of life on the street. Using existing resources and expert knowledge from within the city, PFLASTER aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of urban space. Participation in the street talks is free of charge.

Leaflet Workshop by Maximiliane Baumgartner

09.07.2023 / 13:00 – 16:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER
Date: Sunday, July 9, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
NEW Location: Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstraße 21, 79098 Freiburg

Based around the Freiburg artist and art educator Eva Eisenlohr (1891–1977), Maximiliane Baumgartner will develop an action space comprised of multi-part painterly interventions in Freiburg’s urban space, in which the production, presentation, and mediation of art dissolve and new positionings become possible.
The action vehicle VIELE VAMPIRE SIND VÖGEL (2019/2023) is one element of the action space and will become a collaborative stage for action. An enlarged reproduction of Eisenlohr’s print FRIENDS (1956) takes the form of a banner, mounted on the cart. It serves as direct illustrative material, as well as a gateway onto a performative approach to and examination of Eisenlohr’s work. In a LEAFLET WORKSHOP leaflets will be created in collaboration with children and young people.

The supervision of children and young people during the leaflet workshop is the responsibility of their parents or guardians and cannot be left to the leaflet workshop team.

LEAFLET WORKSHOP
Sunday, July 9, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstraße 21, 79098 Freiburg

Friday, July 14, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
TO BE ANNOUNCED

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER AS PART OF THE BIENNALE FÜR FREIBURG 2 STREET FEST
Friday, July 21, 2023, 4–6 p.m.
Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Symposium

08.07.2023 / 10:00 – 17:00 / Kommunales Kino

SYMPOSIUM:
NERVOUS INFRASTRUCTURES, ACTS OF RESISTANCE
Date: July 8, 2023, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Location: Kommunales Kino, Urachstraße 40, 79102 Freiburg

With Alejandra Coz Rosenfeld, Paula Kommoss, Joe Namy, Dr. Kathrin Rottmann, Dr. des. José B. Segebre, Polina Stohnushko, and Prof. Dr. Stephan Trüby.

Infrastructures are more than just the foundations of our day-to-day lives; they set the parameters for how daily life takes place. Within them, a dispositif materializes that is determined by principles such as efficiency, development, and growth. Written and unwritten rules shape our perception, regulate our behavior, and guide our movements. As the central nervous system of a society, infrastructures unite the flows of traffic and information, the circulation of goods, people, and data.

Social life takes place within and upon them—but not without irregularities, fluctuations, and frictions. In this way, infrastructures like the street also provide the framework for individual and collective actions. A minimal intervention can have a maximal impact: Bodies join together, stop, make a statement, and interrupt the smooth functioning of normativity. Spontaneous or planned, a counter-public is formed that gives rise to a new space: A space for acts of resistance and solidarity.

At the NERVOUS INFRASTRUCTURES, ACTS OF RESISTANCE symposium, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites you to trace the different conditions and spaces of action within the street as infrastructure. The invited speakers will focus on different layers of meaning spanning architecture, sociology, activism, and artistic appropriation.

The symposium includes contributions in German and in English.

SCHEDULE

10 a.m.:
Welcome by Neriman Bayram (Artistic Director, Kommunales Kino)
Introduction by Paula Kommoss (Artistic Director, Biennale für Freiburg 2)

10:15 a.m.:
Alejandra Coz Rosenfeld in Conversation with Paula Kommoss: Marking the Street—Creating a Public. On the Interventions of Lotty Rosenfeld in Public Space

11 a.m.:
Prof. Dr. Stephan Trüby: Kurze Architekturgeschichte der modernen Straße

11:45 a.m.:
Polina Stohnushko: Spray Democracy: Voices of Resistance

12:30–1:30 p.m.:
Lunch Break

1:30 p.m.:
Dr. des. José B. Segebre and Paula Kommoss: What Are We Waiting For? A Conversation on Resistance and Interruption

2:15 p.m.:
Dr. Kathrin Rottmann: Pflaster und Asphalt. Wem gehört die Öffentlichkeit?

3 p.m.:
Joe Namy: All In Clashes, All In Distortion

4–5 p.m.:
Discussion

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Alejandra Coz Rosenfeld:
With her actions, the Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld (1943–2020) intervened directly on the street. She placed markings that interrupted the flow of traffic and at the same time created a new, public place. As a founding member of the CADA collective, Rosenfeld expanded the field of intervention with the slogan NO+. Supplemented by individual words and signs, it spread throughout the urban fabric on banners and in demonstrations. Thus, in the midst of the political repression of Pinochet’s military regime, a counter-public was formed.
Alejandra Coz Rosenfeld (b. 1972, CL) is a poet, writer, artist, and astrologer in constant training. She studied Letters and Aesthetics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Art at Palazzo Spinelli, Florence. She has published two collections of poems “Marea baja” (2017) and “La jabalina” (2019) as well as a novel “La lava” (2021). From 1994 to 2020, she worked as a production assistant for her mother, the visual artist Lotty Rosenfeld, and now holds the position of director at the Fundación Lotty Rosenfeld.

Prof. Dr. Stephan Trüby:
Based on his book “The History of the Corridor” (2018), architectural theorist Stephan Trüby will present a brief architectural history of the modern street. In part, this draws on urban planning discussions that took place around hundred years ago, in which modernists as Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion opposed the “donkey roads” of the traditional city. Today, in the context of discussions around mobility and climate protection, urbanism is faced with comparable fronts. But now the future seems to exist only in the variants of “a better past” and dystopia.
Stephan Trüby (b. 1970, DE) is professor at and director of the Institut Grundlagen moderner Architektur und Entwerfen (IGmA) at the University of Stuttgart and previously taught at the HfG Karlsruhe (2007–2009), the Zurich University of the Arts (2009–2014), Harvard University (2012–2014), and the TU Munich (2014–2018). His books include “Exit Architecture. Design between War and Peace” (2008), “The History of the Corridor” (2018), and “Right-Wing Spaces. Political Essays and Conversations” (2020).

Polina Stohnushko:
Drawing upon analysis of socially and politically themed graffiti in Berlin, this talk will examine how graffiti can transform walls into platforms of communication, resistance, and solidarity. The discussion will delve into the emergence of the anti-solidarity graffiti campaign “DAS IST NICHT UNSER KRIEG” (English: “THIS IS NOT OUR WAR”) in Berlin—examining its impact on public opinion and group solidarity amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Polina Stohnushko (b. 1994, UA) is a graffiti researcher based in Berlin and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung PhD Scholar at the University of Passau. She was a DAAD scholarship holder at the University of Tübingen (2017–2019) and engages in politically and socially motivated urban interventions alongside her academic work. Stohnushko’s publications include “‘Das ist unser Krieg.’ Anti-Ukraine-Graffiti in Berlin” (2023) and “Dove of Peace – Pigeon of War” (2022).

Dr. des. José B. Segebre & Paula Kommoss:
Interruptions make us wait. For the most part, interruptions in our daily lives and waiting are perceived as delays. But don’t these negatively connoted experiences also conceal the possibility that everything will be different? From this perspective, interruptions and the resulting waiting experiences exhibit a resilience. With a focus on contemporary art and based on the curatorial concept of the Biennale for Freiburg 2, José B. Segebre and Paula Kommoss talk about the implicit and explicit parameters of waiting and interruption, as well as their potential for resistance as aesthetic experiences and artistic strategies.
José Segebre (b. 1987, MX/HN) works in Berlin as a writer and theorist. His doctoral dissertation on “The Time of Waiting” explores aesthetic experience and unfreedom in contemporary art, with a focus on critical, queer, feminist, and decolonial theories. Since 2019, he has co-curated the film series “Full Moon Screenings” with artist François Pisapia. He also writes fiction, exhibition, and catalog texts that have been published in the journals of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHA) and the College Art Association (CAA), among others.
Paula Kommoss (b. 1989, DE) is a curator and artistic director of the Biennale for Freiburg 2. Her research focuses on theories of the public sphere and the visualization of power dispositives. She has realized numerous exhibitions, founded the exhibition space ELVIRA in 2021, and published the “Städelschule Lectures 1 / 2” (2019 / 2021). As an art historian, she most recently compiled the biographies and exhibition listings as part of the publication “26 Artists. Works from the Zander Collection” (2023). Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the Städelschule and as a curatorial assistant at the German Pavilion of the 57th Biennale di Venezia as well as at the Fridericianum in Kassel.

Dr. Kathrin Rottmann:
Pavement and asphalt define urban space visually, functionally, politically, and socially; the use of these materials works so smoothly that it goes almost unnoticed on an everyday basis. The lecture is dedicated to exemplary artistic works that make these different codes of street surfaces visible.
Kathrin Rottmann is editor of “kritische berichte” and heads the research project “Industrial Modes of Production in the Art of the Global North in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Studies in Art and Factories” at the Institute of Art History at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Before that, she was a research assistant for the exhibition project “Sigmar Polke: Wir Kleinbürger” at the Hamburger Kunsthalle and a research assistant at MoMA for the retrospective “Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010.” She received her doctorate with a thesis on “Aesthetics from Below. Pavement and Asphalt in Modernist Visual Art” (Silke Schreiber Verlag, Munich 2016), which was awarded the Aby Warburg-grant award of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

Joe Namy:
Joe Namy (b. 1978, US) is an artist, composer, and educator often working collaboratively through the intersections of sound, video, performance, and sculpture. Their projects focus on the politics of music and organized sound, such as the pageantry and power of opera, the noise laws and gender dynamics of bass, the colors and tones of militarization, the migration patterns of instruments and songs, and the complexities of translation in all this—from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Joe Namy holds a monthly DJ residency called Rhythm x Rhythm on Radio Alhara, is a Sundance Institute/Time Studios/Kendeda Funds fellow, the artist in residence for the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, and a PhD researcher at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University.

Public Tour

07.07.2023 / 18:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

Public tour through the exhibition with Thomas Patier
The tour will be held in French

Friday, July 7, 2023, 6 p.m.
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstr. 21, 79098 Freiburg

Other dates public tours:

Saturday, July 22, 2023, 7 p.m.
Saturday, July 29, 2 p.m.

Participation is free of charge.

Listening Session: Percussive Attack

29.06.2023 / 20:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

LISTENING SESSION:
PERCUSSIVE ATTACK: WITH PAULA KOMMOSS X CUDELICE BRAZELTON IV
Thursday, June 29, 2023, 8 p.m.
Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstraße 21, 79098 Freiburg

In his installation APART-PLAYING (2022), on view during the Biennale at Kunstverein Freiburg, Cudelice Brazelton IV works with sound as a means of both immersion and disruption. Together with the artist we will dive into the soundscape of the work and investigate the background of the composition, which was written, played, and sampled by the Chicago jazz musician Angel Bat Dawid in collaboration with Brazelton IV. Dawid describes her work as a sonic response to deeply frightening events and social injustices, located in a moment of self-empowerment. Based on these experiences, we will also explore the term “DREAD,” its implications and the ways it touches lived reality.

The LISTENING SESSIONS offer a framework for communally experiencing and reflecting on the relationship between the street and music. Invited artists and musicians bring selected pieces of music and share their knowledge about their genesis, composition, and cultural implications. Each event is dedicated to a different musical genre and temporal context—such as jazz, feminist punk, the beginnings of German hip-hop, or music in the context of Freiburg’s squatter scene.

Workshop: somebody*ies

28.06.2023 / 14:00 – 18:00 / CRAC Alsace

WORKSHOP WITH SOMEBODY*IES
Anna Byskov, Hannah Kindler
Date: Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 2-6 p.m.
Location: CRAC Alsace, 18 Rue du Château, 68130 Altkirch, FR

As a prelude to their performance in Freiburg, somebody*ies (Anna Byskov and Hannah Kindler) have planned a practical workshop at CRAC Alsace in Altkirch. The biographies of three women from Stühlinger form the contentual framework of the workshop. They are a starting point for thinking about issues such as freedom of speech and protest, and about the role that individuals and groups can play in social movements. Participants from Altkirch, Freiburg, and the region are invited to take part in an exchange about forms of remembrance culture in public space, and also to produce capes that will be used as props in a performance in July.

PERFORMANCE: Friday, July 21, 2023
4:30 p.m.: Klarastraße, meeting point: JC Café, Klarastraße 70, 79106 Freiburg
5:00 p.m.: Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Within the WORKSHOPS, interested people can enter into a direct exchange with the artists of the Biennale für Freiburg 2. The workshops allow an intensive examination of the themes of the artistic works as well as direct participation in artistic research and production processes.

Public Tour

18.06.2023 / 14:00 / Kunstverein Freiburg

Public tour through the exhibition with curator Paula Kommoss
Sunday, June 18, 2 p.m.
Meeting point: Kunstverein Freiburg, Dreisamstr. 21, 79098 Freiburg

Other dates public tours:
Friday, July 7, 2023, 6 p.m. (in French)
Saturday, July 22, 2023, 7 p.m.
Saturday, July 29, 2 p.m.

Participation is free of charge.

Listening Session: Schneller Wohnen/Live Faster: The Music of the Squatters in Freiburg

17.06.2023 / 16:00 / Musikpavillon, Stadtgarten

LISTENING SESSION

SCHNELLER WOHNEN/LIVE FASTER: THE MUSIC OF THE SQUATTERS IN FREIBURG WITH GUDRUN LESER X GUESTS
Saturday, June 17, 2023, 4 p.m.
Musikpavillon, Stadtgarten, 79098 Freiburg

Schwarzwaldhof—that was the name of the area of a former button factory in the Wiehre neighborhood, which was occupied for three quarters of a year between 1980 and 1981: In that short time, squatters created a non-commercial center in the space, with a theater, bar, communal kitchen, and living quarters. In the process, many concerts were staged and numerous bands formed, such as Soldiers of Fortune and many more. Bookseller Gudrun Leser was part of the scene—with her, we will listen in on the songs that were written back then and ask what happens when political idealism comes to face economic aspirations and social realities.

The LISTENING SESSIONS offer a framework for communally experiencing and reflecting on the relationship between the street and music. Invited artists and musicians bring selected pieces of music and share their knowledge about their genesis, composition, and cultural implications. Each event is dedicated to a different musical genre and temporal context—such as jazz, feminist punk, the beginnings of German hip-hop, or music in the context of Freiburg’s squatter scene.

Leaflet Workshop by Maximiliane Baumgartner

17.06.2023 / 13:00 – 16:00 / Musikpavillon, Stadtgarten

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Location: Musikpavillon in the Stadtgarten, Mozartstraße side, 79104 Freiburg

Based around the Freiburg artist and art educator Eva Eisenlohr (1891–1977), Maximiliane Baumgartner will develop an action space comprised of multi-part painterly interventions in Freiburg’s urban space, in which the production, presentation, and mediation of art dissolve and new positionings become possible.
The action vehicle VIELE VAMPIRE SIND VÖGEL (2019/2023) is one element of the action space and will become a collaborative stage for action. An enlarged reproduction of Eisenlohr’s print FRIENDS (1956) takes the form of a banner, mounted on the cart. It serves as direct illustrative material, as well as a gateway onto a performative approach to and examination of Eisenlohr’s work. In a LEAFLET WORKSHOP leaflets will be created in collaboration with children and young people.

The supervision of children and young people during the leaflet workshop is the responsibility of their parents or guardians and cannot be left to the leaflet workshop team.

LEAFLET WORKSHOP
Friday, June 16, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Saturday, June 17, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Musikpavillon in the Stadtgarten, Mozartstraße side, 79104 Freiburg

LEAFLET WORKSHOP
Sunday, July 9, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Friday, July 14, 2023, 1–4 p.m.
Behind the Musikpavillon in the Stadtgarten, Mozartstraße side, 79104 Freiburg

LEAFLET WORKSHOP BY MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER AS PART OF THE BIENNALE FÜR FREIBURG 2 STREET FEST
Friday, July 21, 2023, 4–6 p.m.
Marienstraße, 79098 Freiburg

Pflaster: Utopias at Flückiger See

17.06.2023 / 12:00 / Seepark

PFLASTER: STREET TALKS IN AND ABOUT FREIBURG

UTOPIAS AT FLÜCKIGER SEE WITH WERNER HERTLEIF X HARTMANN LITSCHEL
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2023, 12 p.m.
Meeting point: Bürgerhaus, Seepark, 79110 Freiburg

Explore the history of the origin and transformation of the Seepark with Werner Hertleif and artist and architect Hartmann Litschel. Between 1947 and 1949, the rubble of a destroyed Freiburg was dumped into the former lake, southeast of the current location, by means of a specially built railroad connection, the “Trümmerexpress” (Rubble Express). The new and current site was used for recreational activities in addition to gravel and sand mining by the Flückiger company. It also became the site of the art competition “Park, Art and Utopia” in 1986. Beginning with the numerous architectures and works of art that were created at that time and still populate the Seepark today, we will place their stories and utopias in relation to the present day.

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect on the potentials of social movements. Using actors, experts, and knowledge from within the city, the PFLASTER series aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility, and (in)accessibility of urban space.

Eröffnung

16.06.2023 / 19:00 / Seepark

OPENING: FRIDAY, June 16, 2023

The exhibition venues of the Biennale für Freiburg 2 are open from 12–6 p.m. on the opening day.

1–4 p.m.: LEAFLET WORKSHOP by Maximiliane Baumgartner, Musikpavillon in the Stadtgarten

7 p.m.: OPENING CELEBRATION, Seebühne in the Seepark
Welcome by Felicia Maier (Head of the Cultural Office, City of Freiburg) and Julia Galandi-Pascual (2nd Chairwoman of the Board, Perspektiven für Kunst in Freiburg e.V.)
Introduction by Paula Kommoss (Curator and Artistic Director, Biennale for Freiburg 2)
followed by a PERFORMANCE by lo.me

10 p.m.: Party at the BAR am Funkeneck with DJ TAX and DJ LATHE

PERFORMANCE BY LO.ME: ULTRA
Seebühne at the Seepark (opening)
Seepark Freiburg, north-eastern shore (performance)

Between two stage-like structures on the northeastern shore of Freiburg’s Seepark, a choreography of relations of gaze, action, and identification unfolds. In its ambivalent handling of the viewer’s attention, lo.me blurs the boundaries between beginning and end, between object and subject of observation, between docility and mastery. Formal elements such as duration, blurriness, reduction, and repetition meet spontaneity and unpredictability—with the aim of challenging and potentially shifting supposedly stable power relations and expectations.

The performance is realized in cooperation with Perrrformat (Luca Büchler, Paula Thomaka, Martina Morger, and Carolina Misztela).

Film Program:
The Street As a Metaphor for Life

11.05.2023 / 20:00 / GHS Biologie

BFF 2 X AKA-FILMCLUB PRESENT: PANAH PANAHI
Thursday, May 11, 2023, 8 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Biology large lecture hall, Institute for Biology II/III, Schänzlestraße 1, 79104 Freiburg

JADDE KHAKI – HIT THE ROAD
Director: Panah Panahi, 2021, 93 min., Farsi with English subtitles

In a rented car, a family of four travels through a rugged landscape in northern Iran. Where they are headed remains unclear. The aimlessness of the road trip is reflected in the film’s imagery: the roads blend into the landscape more and more until they seem to dissolve into each other completely. Panah Panahi contrasts the noticeably growing tension with moments of situational comedy. This finally snaps with full force. Accompanied by the pop songs of Shahram Shabpareh, past and present collide.

Introductory lecture by Neriman Bayram, Kommunales Kino

Neriman Bayram studied sociology and Islamic studies. She is the artistic director/managing director of the Kommunales Kino and the Galerie im Alten Wiehrebahnhof in Freiburg, as well as curator for international film and for interdisciplinary projects (exhibitions, literature, performance, video art, music, and photography). Bayram realized numerous events and projects on cultural-political, transcultural and socially relevant topics and held jury memberships for transcultural and interdisciplinary projects. For 15 years, she has been part of the cultural committee of the municipal council in Freiburg. She is a founding member of the BIPoC Künstler*innen network in Baden-Württemberg. For many years, Bayram has been involved with Iranian films and works by Iranian artists in Iran and in exile. She received invitations to the “Fadjr International Film Festival” in Tehran and to the Children and Youth Film Festival in Isfahan.

The collaboration between the Biennale für Freiburg 2 and the aka-Filmclub forms the cinematic prologue to the Biennale exhibition taking place in summer 2023. Across five dates, the curated series comprises screenings of selected films surrounding the thematic focus of the Biennale, accompanied by introductory lectures. The films will be shown in chronological order, providing insight into the history of cinematic explorations of the street as motif, backdrop, and metaphor from the 1950s to the present day.

Film Program:
Berlin. Aspects

04.05.2023 / 20:00 / GHS Biologie

BFF 2 X AKA-FILMCLUB PRESENT: SHELLY SILVER UND MARTEN PERSIEL
Thursday, May 4, 2023, 8 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Biology large lecture hall, Institute for Biology II/III, Schänzlestraße 1, 79104 Freiburg

FORMER EAST / FORMER WEST
Director: Shelly Silver, 1994, 62 min., German

Shortly after the fall of the Wall, artist Shelly Silver takes to the streets of Berlin to ask passers-by from East and West for their personal opinions on the pressing issues of the time. What is their sense of ‘home,’ for example, what do they think about the antagonism between socialism and capitalism, or the welcome money that the FRG pays to former GDR citizens entering the country? Silver creates a portrait of a city in transition: supposedly insurmountable prejudices, resurgent right-wing populist tendencies, and a spreading fatigue with democracy come to the surface—despite or precisely because of the need for mutual reconciliation.

THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA
Director: Marten Persiel, 2012, 96 min., German

In the 80s, neighborhood kids Denis, Dirk, and Nico conquer the streets of Magdeburg-Olvenstedt on homemade skateboards. As teenagers in Berlin, they are in with the skater scene, using the concrete plazas and architecture of the GDR as their playground. When GDR officials sense success on this new phenomenon, some of the clique are sent to Euroskate ’88. After the fall of the Wall, the group lose touch with each other, until a tragic death brings them back together in 2011. The fictional documentary is comprised of Super-8 film sequences, interviews, and archive material, as well as animations.

Introductory lecture by Dr. Sabine Rollberg, former professor, Academy of Media Arts Cologne (until 2019); former editorial director WDR/Arte (until 2018)

The first film of the evening is FROMER EAST / FORMER WEST by New York artist Shelly Silver. Two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she interviews hundreds of passers-by on Berlin’s streets about their identity: what does it mean for them to be German at this moment of great historical change? In doing so, she uses her gaze as a tourist from abroad as a burning glass on the newly forming society. The second film, Marten Persiel’s THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA, was announced as a documentary at the Berlinale 2012, triggering heated discussions. The director broke almost all the rules of documentary work: the film mixes fact and fiction, contains historical and posed shots without identifying them as such. Persiel, who made commercials and mockumentaries before this film, sidesteps the debate about authenticity in documentary. Rather, he says, he is concerned with capturing a certain sense of life, a zeitgeist—in the words of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who wrote in 1925: “For me, it doesn’t matter what means a film uses, whether it is an actor’s film, with staged images, or a documentary. Good films are about truth, not reality.”

Sabine Rollberg studied and received her doctorate in history, German studies, and political science in Freiburg and Bonn. Among many other activities and mandates, she was an editor in public television. She supervised the development and realization of documentaries at WDR and ARTE. Many of the productions she supervised were awarded prizes. From 2008 to 2019 Sabine Rollberg taught as professor for television formats and documentary film at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne. In 2014 she was appointed to the University Council and the Freiburg University College by the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. She lives in Freiburg.

The collaboration between the Biennale für Freiburg 2 and the aka-Filmclub forms the cinematic prologue to the Biennale exhibition taking place in summer 2023. Across five dates, the curated series comprises screenings of selected films surrounding the thematic focus of the Biennale, accompanied by introductory lectures. The films will be shown in chronological order, providing insight into the history of cinematic explorations of the street as motif, backdrop, and metaphor from the 1950s to the present day.

Workshop:
somebody*ies

29.04.2023 / 14:00 / DELPHI_space/außenstelle

WORKSHOP WITH SOMEBODY*IES
Anna Byskov, Christina Krys Huber, Hannah Kindler, Stella Meris, Nika Timashkova
Saturday, April 29, 2023, 2 p.m.
Location: DELPHI_space/außenstelle, Unterlinden 10, 79098 Freiburg

In their workshop, somebody*ies give an insight into their working methods and research. The artists will share different aspects of their work – from performance, painting, and textile objects to zine, posters, and historical research. Starting indoors we will gradually move to the outdoor space: the first part of the workshop will take place in DELPHI_space/außenstelle, the second part in Klarastraße, which the collective will activate with different artistic and performative interventions during the Biennale exhibition.

Film Program:
Youth / Transgressions

27.04.2023 / 20:00 / GHS Biologie

BFF 2 X AKA-FILMCLUB PRESENT: HÉCTOR BABENCO
Thursday, April 27, 2023, 8 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Biology large lecture hall, Institute for Biology II/III, Schänzlestraße 1, 79104 Freiburg

PIXOTE: A LEI DO MAIS FRACO – ASPHALT SHARKS
Director: Héctor Babenco, 1980, 128 min., Portuguese with English subtitles
Pixote, a ten-year-old boy, is picked up by the police on the streets of São Paulo and taken to a juvenile detention center where violence and corruption are the order of the day. The institution’s criminal and sadistic guards abuse the children from the streets using torture and humiliation tactics. Two runaways are murdered by police officers, who turn the blame on Lilica, a 17-year-old trans woman. Together with Lilica, Pixote and friends manage to escape. Back on the streets, they fight a constant battle for survival.

Introductury lecture by Hella Wiedmer-Newman, PhD Candidate at eikones – Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel

From “Oliver Twist” to “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” to films of the 2000s like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “City of God,” depictions of children forced to live on the streets have been employed in culture for centuries as a measure of our society, holding up a mirror to it. Whether bearing implications of a moral nature or criticism of our social systems, the ‘street kid’ plays an important role in both literature and film. The film PIXOTE: A LEI DO MAIS FRACO by the Argentine-Brazilian director Héctor Babenco was released in 1980. It shows the Latin American debt crisis and military dictatorships of the early 1980s—spanning strict austerity measures, labor strikes, and an untouchable upper class—in alternating oppressive shades of gray and vivid color. Through the character of ten-year-old Pixote and the people he encounters, the country’s corruption and existential hardship, as well as its cultural and artistic diversity, are ingeniously made visible. The film raises a number of questions about social injustice, religion, gender, race, labor, and the public and private institutions that structure our lives. Viewed from a contemporary global perspective, we must ask whether the solution to precarity might lie in revising the function of the street itself and re-evaluating its public spheres.

Hella Wiedmer-Newman is a PhD candidate at the eikones Graduate School at the University of Basel. Her dissertation relates to art, memory, and politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She recently published an essay in ArtMargins and her work is forthcoming in an anthology from Palgrave Macmillan. She also writes art and exhibition reviews in English and German for Reading Rämistrasse and Spike Art Magazine.

The collaboration between the Biennale für Freiburg 2 and the aka-Filmclub forms the cinematic prologue to the Biennale exhibition taking place in summer 2023. Across five dates, the curated series comprises screenings of selected films surrounding the thematic focus of the Biennale, accompanied by introductory lectures. The films will be shown in chronological order, providing insight into the history of cinematic explorations of the street as motif, backdrop, and metaphor from the 1950s to the present day.

Film Program:
Whose Public?

20.04.2023 / 20:00 / GHS Biologie

BFF 2 X AKA-FILMCLUB PRESENT: CAROLE ROUSSOPOULOS UND CHANTAL AKERMAN
Thursday, April 20, 2023, 8 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Biology large lecture hall, Institute for Biology II/III, Schänzlestraße 1, 79104 Freiburg

LES PROSTITUÉES DE LYON PARLENT
Director: Carole Roussopoulos, 1975, 46 min., French with English subtitles

On June 2, 1975, nearly 200 sex workers occupied the Saint-Nizier Church in Lyon for eight days to draw attention to their precarious working and living conditions, which were characterized by (police) violence, exploitation, and social exclusion. In LES PROSTITUÉES DE LYON PARLENT, Carole Roussopoulos contributes towards the self-determined audibility and visibility of sex workers, broadcasting the interviews in real time on monitors and confronting people passing on the street. June 2, 1975 is still commemorated today as “International Whore Day,” recalling the sex workers’ continually relevant demands.

NEWS FROM HOME
Director: Chantal Akerman, 1977, 85 min., French with English subtitles

Shots of streets both lively and lifeless condense into a snapshot of New York City; some lie empty, in others, people push and shove along densely crowded sidewalks. From subways and cars, the film follows the never-ending tunnels and streets until the city becomes a picture postcard of itself viewed from a boat. The shots are accompanied by Chantal Akerman’s voice reading letters that the director received from her mother during her stay in New York between 1971 and 1973. Thus, in NEWS FROM HOME, Akerman interweaves image and voice as well as autobiographical and documentary elements into a cinematic dialogue.

Introductory lecture by Dr. Eva Kuhn, Art and Film scholar, Leuphana University Lüneburg

The introductory lecture places the two films in conversation with the activist video collective Les Muses Insoumises (Defiant Muses) and examines their juxtaposition under the prescient guiding principle of the second-wave feminist movement: “The Private is Political.” In what ways can this maxim be understood, and what does it have to do with the street? What about the mother, the daughter, the prostitute, the filmmaker, the feminist collective? By thematizing the interface between visibility and invisibility in different ways, the two films become media reflections on the relationship between private and public space, personal interiors and exteriors, between film poetics/art and politics.

Eva Kuhn is an art and film scholar working with (queer) feminist and postcolonial perspectives at the intersections of art and cinema. She has been a visiting professor at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and currently teaches and researches at Leuphana University at Leuphana University Lüneburg. From January 2024, she will hold the Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Humboldt University Berlin.

The collaboration between the Biennale für Freiburg 2 and the aka-Filmclub forms the cinematic prologue to the Biennale exhibition taking place in summer 2023. Across five dates, the curated series comprises screenings of selected films surrounding the thematic focus of the Biennale, accompanied by introductory lectures. The films will be shown in chronological order, providing insight into the history of cinematic explorations of the street as motif, backdrop, and metaphor from the 1950s to the present day.

Workshop:
James Gregory Atkinson

13.04.2023 / 19:00 / CRAC Alsace

WORKSHOP WITH JAMES GREGORY ATKINSON
Thursday, April 13, 2023, 7 p.m.
Location: CRAC Alsace, 18 Rue du Château, 68130 Altkirch (France)

In his research-based exhibition projects, artist James Gregory Atkinson combines autobiographical with political history and responds to the extreme gaps in records of Afro-German life in Germany’s official archives. In doing so, Atkinson draws on transnational queer and Black narratives, modifying them and bringing them into dialogue with the present. In this way, he creates alternative ways of confronting the past.

During his residency at CRAC Alsace in April 2023, Atkinson will research “Schwarze Schmach” propaganda in local archives, libraries, and various locations along the Rhine. The focus of his research is on French colonial troops deployed along the Rhine and at Franco-German borders points during the First and Second World Wars. Tracing the footsteps of these troops, Atkinson charts their legacies and impact on (Afro)Franco-German life in the region.

In his workshop, Atkinson uses his interdisciplinary approach to bring these stories into dialogue with contemporary conditions.

Pflaster:
Dietenbach

30.03.2023 / 18:00 / Dietenbach

PFLASTER: STREET TALKS IN AND ABOUT FREIBURG

DIETENBACH WITH WOLFGANG BORGARDS (INDEPENDENT ARCHITECT BDA)
Thursday, March 30, 2023, 6 p.m.
Meeting point: corner of Carl-von-Ossietzky-Strasse / Mundenhofer Strasse, 79111 Freiburg.

On our fourth PFLASTER we discovered the grounds of Dietenbach together with architect Wolfgang Borgards, where a new district will emerge in the coming years. We looked at the plans of the K9 architects and Borgards gave insights into the design and functional elements which are important for the development of a future city.
The streets will be in line with the existing ones from Rieselfeld and are orientated towards fixpoints in the surrounding nature. Furthermore, the future streets are mainly dedicated to pedestrians, so the neighborhood is experienced through walking and biking.

We learned more about the processes and decisions going into the development of a city. Before the architecture planning started, there were several initiatives by the public of Freiburg. In 2019 the referendum voted for the realization of the project – yet it remains controversial. Some of Freiburgs citizens are protesting the removal of a part of the Dietenbach forest in order to build a tram line. Representants of the protests and the city were present at the street talk and contributed to the discussion.
A dialogue group of Freiburg citizens discussed from 2019 to 2021 the ecological and social cohabitation of the space and the question: “Who builds Dietenbach for whom?” Development goals and rules were set in preparation of the city’s marketing concept. The city goal is to sell by concept not by price.

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect together on the potentials of social movements: how, for example, does feminist representation manifest itself in public space? Furthermore, the conversations will critically reflect upon aspects of Freiburg’s colonial urban history and examine the current realities of life on the street. Using existing resources and expert knowledge from within the city, PFLASTER aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of urban space. Participation in the street talks is free of charge.

The PFLASTER series is spart of the prologue of the Biennale für Freiburg 2, taking place from February to May 2023. The prologue events, including a film program, street talks, performative interventions, and workshops set impulses for the exhibition, which will be on view at various locations in Freiburg from June 16 to July 30, 2023.

Pflaster:
Postcolonial Urban History

22.03.2023 / 18:00 / Hörsaal Anatomie Universität Freiburg

PFLASTER: STREET TALKS IN AND ABOUT FREIBURG

POSTCOLONIAL URBAN HISTORY WITH HEIKO WEGMANN (FREIBURG-POSTKOLONIAL)
Wednesday, 22. March 2023, 6 p.m.
Meeting point: Anatomy Lecture Hall, University of Freiburg, Albertstraße 17, 79104 Freiburg

How closely Freiburg’s inner city is interwoven with the history of colonialism is a question that Heiko Wegmann, the founder of freiburg-postkolonial, will reflect in this street talk. Today, these complicated relations are only visible in a few places. However, for many locations and monuments, their entanglement with colonial history can be traced back through photographic evidence, daily newspapers, and other contemporary historical documents.

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect together on the potentials of social movements: how, for example, does feminist representation manifest itself in public space? Furthermore, the conversations will critically reflect upon aspects of Freiburg’s colonial urban history and examine the current realities of life on the street. Using existing resources and expert knowledge from within the city, PFLASTER aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of urban space. Participation in the street talks is free of charge.

The PFLASTER series is spart of the prologue of the Biennale für Freiburg 2, taking place from February to May 2023. The prologue events, including a film program, street talks, performative interventions, and workshops set impulses for the exhibition, which will be on view at various locations in Freiburg from June 16 to July 30, 2023.

Pflaster:
Feminist History in the Stühlinger

16.03.2023 / 18:00 / Forgotten Coat Memorial

PFLASTER: STREET TALKS IN AND ABOUT FREIBURG

FEMINIST HISTORY IN THE STÜHLINGER WITH BIRGIT HEIDTKE (FEMINISTISCHE GESCHICHTSWERKSTATT) X HANNAH KINDLER (SOMEBODY*IES)
Thursday, March 16, 2023, 6 p.m.
Meeting point: Forgotten Coat Memorial, Wiwilí-Brücke / Konrad-Adenauer-Platz, bridge entrance city side, 79098 Freiburg

Stühlinger and the places that comprise it can reveal a lot from a queer-feminist perspective. Birgit Heidtke (freelance historian and part of the Feministische Geschichtswerkstatt Freiburg) and Hannah Kindler (artist and member of artist collectives somebody*ies and M.A.R.S Maternal Artistic Research Studio) track down these rarely told stories and little-known places in their research processes.

On the street, sites of feminist memory can be found everywhere in the city. In Stühlinger, these sites primarily recall work done by women from all walks of life. In times of war and peace, they worked in the factories and on the railroads. They were out and about in the district as waitresses, postwomen, servants, artists. They lived in Freiburg or the surrounding valleys, some had migrated from further away. Some of them were abducted and disenfranchised forced laborers.

The walk stops at the Löwenkeller restaurant, demolished in 1990. For many generations of the workers’ movements, it was a popular meeting place. For Jewish citizens of Freiburg, it became a place of duress in 1940, before their deportation to Gurs.
At the former Löwenkeller, the street talk delves into the hub of facilities for children and families and leads on to the culturally diverse businesses of the present day. Stühlinger memorials in the form of street names, commemorative plaques, and memorial stones will be examined on the go.

Let’s do feminist history—on the streets and beneath them: with a warm bar at the end.

Text by Birgit Heidtke and Hannah Kindler

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect together on the potentials of social movements: how, for example, does feminist representation manifest itself in public space? Furthermore, the conversations will critically reflect upon aspects of Freiburg’s colonial urban history and examine the current realities of life on the street. Using existing resources and expert knowledge from within the city, PFLASTER aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of urban space. Participation in the street talks is free of charge.

The PFLASTER series is spart of the prologue of the Biennale für Freiburg 2, taking place from February to May 2023. The prologue events, including a film program, street talks, performative interventions, and workshops set impulses for the exhibition, which will be on view at various locations in Freiburg from June 16 to July 30, 2023.

Pflaster:
From Schwarzwaldhof to Im Grün

02.03.2023 / 18:00 / Schwarzwaldstraße 18

PFLASTER: STREET TALKS IN AND ABOUT FREIBURG

FROM SCHWARZWALDHOF TO IM GRÜN WITH MICHAEL KOLTAN (ARCHIV SOZIALE BEWEGUNGEN)
Thursday, March 2, 2023, 6 p.m.
Meeting point: Forecourt, Schwarzwaldstraße 18, 79102 Freiburg

Housing shortages, rent speculation, perhaps urban development: these are the connotations brought to mind by talk of the squatter movement. These are certainly important aspects that run through the movement’s history, as seen in Freiburg itself. However, at its height, in the first half of the 1980s, the movement was about something completely different: public spaces, non-commercial public spaces, more precisely. The squats were used to create opportunities for people to meet and—crucially—creatively shape the spaces and their use. Cafés, practice rooms, concert spaces, and theatre stages came to be, where people could try things out and give free rein to their creativity. From the Dreisameck to the Schwarzwaldhof to the AZ (Autonomous Center), a colorful, diverse subculture unfolded between dilettantism and genius, which was exciting, incalculable, sometimes irritating, but never boring.

The PFLASTER on March 2 was dedicated to precisely this aspect of the squatters’ movement. What forms of public life and participation were created? What was their subversive potential? And how was it once again constrained?

Michael Koltan from the Archiv Soziale Bewegungen (Archive of Social Movements) talked about what emerged at that time, how it developed further and what remains of it today, stopping at locations important to the movement. Fittingly, the street talk began where the entrance to the Schwarzwaldhof used to be: at the forecourt in front of Schwarzwaldstraße 18. A two-kilometer trail will follow, featuring locations both well-known and little-known, as well as numerous stories and anecdotes. In all, it took about 2 hours to reach the tour’s destination: the Autonomous Center in the Im Grün neighborhood.

In the PFLASTER series, the Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites experts from different fields to examine the circumstances and stories of specific urban contexts during guided walks. While walking through Freiburg, the street talks open up a space to reflect together on the potentials of social movements: how, for example, does feminist representation manifest itself in public space? Furthermore, the conversations will critically reflect upon aspects of Freiburg’s colonial urban history and examine the current realities of life on the street. Using existing resources and expert knowledge from within the city, PFLASTER aims to sharpen the focus on the historical and contemporary layers of meaning, (in)visibility and (in)accessibility of urban space. Participation in the street talks is free of charge.

The PFLASTER series is spart of the prologue of the Biennale für Freiburg 2, taking place from February to May 2023. The prologue events, including a film program, street talks, performative interventions, and workshops set impulses for the exhibition, which will be on view at various locations in Freiburg from June 16 to July 30, 2023.

Performative Intervention:
Maximiliane Baumgartner x Otto Hofmann

25.02.2023 / 14:00 / Former Studio of Eva Eisenlohr

PERFORMATIVE INTERVENTION:
WITH THE WHEELBARROW: MAXIMILIANE BAUMGARTNER X OTTO HOFMANN
Saturday, February 25, 2023, 2 p.m.
Meeting point: Former studio of Eva Eisenlohr, Elsässer Straße 17, 79110 Freiburg

1957: From her studio, artist Eva Eisenlohr sets off eastward. Eisenlohr walks on for 2.8 kilometers, just over half an hour. In her hands, a wheelbarrow loaded with her sculpture—a memorial stone for Joseph von Auffenberg. For his 100th birthday, Eisenlohr wants to install a monument to the poet and playwright at the site of his grave. The artist’s mission was one she assigned herself. Nothing and no one could stop her. Her sculpture stands there to this day.

In her performative intervention WITH THE WHEELBARROW, artist Maximiliane Baumgartner, joined by Paula Kommoss, commemorates the work of Eva Eisenlohr (1891–1977) by activating the path from the Freiburg artist’s studio to the Old Cemetery. A closer look at Eisenlohr’s works in various public places provided insights into her working methods. A focus is placed on artistic work in the contradictory space between commission and self-commissioning as a self-empowering gesture, which also informs Maximiliane Baumgartner’s practice. Otto Hofmann, whose research has provided a foundational insight into Eisenlohr’s work, expanded on the intervention with a reading.

In her work, Maximiliane Baumgartner (born 1986, Lindenberg) engages broadly with the fields of painting and site-specificity in outdoor spaces, realized within free pedagogical action-settings, installation paintings, and publication projects. The negotiation of social and public space and accesses to it are important concerns for Baumgartner. Across varying collaborations and action spaces, she conceived and directed Fahrender Raum from 2015 to 2019. The project encouraged art mediation and artistic action in the urban context of Munich. She will equally employ her concept of action spaces for the Biennale für Freiburg 2: Taking Freiburg artist and art educator Eva Eisenlohr as a starting point, Baumgartner will develop an action space consisting of multi-part, painterly interventions in Freiburg’s urban space, in which the boundaries between the production, presentation, and mediation of art dissolve and new perspectives become possible.

The PERFORMATIVE INTERVENTION series is part of the prologue of the Biennale für Freiburg 2, which will take place from February to May 2023. The events comprise a film program, street talks, and workshops, intended to set impulses for the exhibition, which will be on view at various locations in Freiburg from June 16 to July 30, 2023.

Feature Film:
La Strada

02.02.2023 / 20:00 / GHS Biologie

BFF 2 X AKA-FILMCLUB PRESENT: FEDERICO FELLINI
Thursday, February 2, 2023, 8 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Biology large lecture hall, Institute for Biology II/III, Schänzlestraße 1, 79104 Freiburg

LA STRADA
Director: Federico Fellini, 1954, 108 min., Italian with German subtitles

The Biennale für Freiburg 2 film program opens with Federico Fellini’s LA STRADA (1954). In this classic, the street provides the characters’ lived environment. Moreover, it becomes the story’s central setting as well as a symbol of the path to finding one’s self. The film follows strongman Zampano on his journey through Italy. He seeks an assistant for his performances and buys a poor widow’s daughter, Gelsomina. Zampano’s brutal ways come to face Gelsomina’s Chaplinesque innocence. Together, the mismatched duo endure the reality of a life on Italy’s country roads. While briefly guest-performing with a circus, the pair meet the acrobat Matto. In Fellini’s characteristic style, this encounter leads to a rupture in the delicate balance between the characters, who are forced once again to fend for themselves.

Introduction by Paula Kommoss, Artistic Director of the Biennale für Freiburg 2

The collaboration between the Biennale für Freiburg 2 and the aka-Filmclub forms the cinematic prologue to the Biennale exhibition taking place in summer 2023. Across five dates, the curated series comprises screenings of selected films surrounding the thematic focus of the Biennale, accompanied by introductory lectures. The films will be shown in chronological order, providing insight into the history of cinematic explorations of the street as motif, backdrop, and metaphor from the 1950s to the present day.

The Night

26.01.2023 / 19:00 / Bertoldsbrunnen / DELPHI_space/gvbk

THE NIGHT: KICK-OFF AND BFF 2-FRIENDS EVENT
Thursday, January 26, 2023, 7 p.m.
Meeting point: Bertoldsbrunnen, 79098 Freiburg
From 7:30 p.m. at DELPHI_space/gvbk, Bismarckallee 20, 79098 Freiburg

The Biennale für Freiburg 2 invites you to an informal kick-off and BFF 2-Friends event, co-hosted by DELPHI_space/gvbk. you’re. All BFF participants, supporters, and the public are invited to get together and set the mood for the upcoming Biennial. The event will begin with a walk from Bertoldsbrunnen to DELPHI_space/gvbk, followed by a screening of films that give an insight into the themes and perspectives of the Biennale: the aka-Filmclub production DEMONSTRATION AM BERTOLDSBRUNNEN (1968), Ulrike Ottinger’s COUNTDOWN (1990) and Tsai Ming-liang’s THE NIGHT (2021).

DEMONSTRATION AM BERTOLDSBRUNNEN
Production: aka-Filmclub, 1968, 3 min., silent
Freiburg has a rich history of negotiating societal designs and utopias, which often resulted in an occupation of the street by means of resistant bodies and practices. In February 1968, for example, in response to a drastic increase in public transport fares, Freiburg students occupied the central transportation interchange at Bertoldsbrunnen with the slogan “Gleich wird’s grün” (“It’s turning green”). They sat on the ground—a radical and punishable action at the time, which was met with the first use of a water cannon in Baden-Württemberg.

COUNTDOWN
Director: Ulrike Ottinger, 1990, 188 min., German
The film COUNTDOWN documents the chronological sequence of the last ten days leading up to the Economic and Monetary Union on July 1, 1990, which initiated the first stage of German reunification. Starting from Potsdam, the film approaches Berlin, capturing important places and sections of streets, such as the former Berlin Wall and “death strips,” being repurposed already by cyclists and pedestrians. Construction sites can be seen everywhere—Berlin is in upheaval. The markets tell the same story, spreading across different parts of the city over the course of the day. People of different backgrounds gesticulate and communicate with each other at the stalls. Homeless people wander through the city in search of a place to stay or a little money. Day by day, the money traders at Bahnhof Zoo become increasingly nervous. The lines at the ATMs grow longer and longer.

LIANG YE BU NENG LIU (THE NIGHT)
Director: Tsai Ming-liang, 2021, 19 min., Taiwanese with English subtitles
The title of the film is inspired by an old Chinese lullaby from the 1940s (in English “The beautiful night is slipping away”). Towards the end of 2019, Tsai Ming-liang was invited to Hong Kong to share and perform a selection of popular songs. As the director describes, it was a turbulent time, when the landscape of the city’s day to day life was changing unexpectedly. In THE NIGHT, he roams the nighttime streets of Hong Kong, documenting their rhythm and atmosphere.