Ein Dorf 1950 – 2022. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler und Ludwig Schirmer

The exhibition “Ein Dorf 1950 – 2022. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler und Ludwig Schirmer” is a long-term project by three photographers and at the same time a documentation of family history illustrating aspects of time and change. The project has its origins in the village of Berka in Thuringia, but extends far beyond the boundaries of that village.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ludwig Schirmer, Ute Mahler's father, worked as a master miller in Berka. His great passion, however, was photography. Some years after the end of the Second World War he began to document everyday life, the celebrations and life in the village. In 1977, without being aware of father-in-law's photos, Werner Mahler decided to photograph his diploma thesis at the Leipziger Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Berka. In 1998, the magazine Stern asked him to update his work to show the changes since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fourth group of works, photographed by Ute Mahler in Berka in 2021/22, can be viewed as a familial successor to the three other photographic projects and at the same time stands as an independent perspective.

All four works depict one location over a period of 70 years. They explore questions about continuity and change, about home, childhood, about moving away and returning, about old and new, about the familiar and the unknown.

An exhibition in the framework of EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography

EMOP Berlin: what stands between us. Photography as a Medium for Chronicling

In these times of crisis-ridden developments, we allow ourselves to be drawn in emotionally and polarised by images and texts accompanying these events and crises. At the same time, people want to use their own voices – and images – to counter the growing social divide. But what actually, can we still learn and say with images, especially photographic ones? And isn't it the camera that stands between us? Incessantly recording the moment, it reinforces the respective certainties in countless channels and in their “bubbles”. Images deepen the divides, express dissent and often become a medium of polarisation themselves.

The festival exhibition breaks this cycle. Projects by some 20 artists present avenues for listening and learning from others and lending resonance to one’s counterpart through one’s own voice. In micro-stories, the works address such themes as the connection between social classification and educational opportunities, the ongoing experiences of exclusion of people with a migration background, experiences of the immediate post-reunification period or the radicalization of parts of society. But Russia's war against Ukraine and the increasingly crisis-ridden developments in the Middle East are also addressed – not with statements, but with questions.

With: Ilit Azoulay, Yevgenia Belorusets, Cana Bilir-Meier, Hannah Darabi & Benoît Grimbert, Fungi (aka Phuong Tran Minh), Bérangère Fromont, Beate Gütschow, Raisan Hameed, John Heartfield, Leon Kahane, Susanne Keichel, Simon Lehner, Boris Mikhailov, Pınar Öğrenci, Helga Paris, Einar Schleef, Maya Schweizer, Wenke Seemann, Christine Würmell, Tobias Zielony

The EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography is organised by Kulturprojekte Berlin.
Curated by Maren Lübbke-Tidow

Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson

With “Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson”, the Akademie der Künste explores the legacy of two extraordinary figures of the 20th century. The political and artistic endeavors of Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson (1895 – 1965) and Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) were an expression of a way of thinking that understood the world in relations and of an uncompromising resistance to all forms of oppression. An exhibition and a festival both present contributions by contemporary artists and musicians, as well as materials from the Paul Robeson Archives of the Akademie der Künste.

“Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. [...] The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” This urgent appeal was made by Paul Robeson on 24 June 1937, during a solidarity concert at the sold-out Royal Albert Hall in London, in support of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The African American singer, actor, trained lawyer, and activist reached a global audience through numerous films, theater and concert performances, political rallies, radio broadcasts, records, and newspapers. African American author, anthropologist, UN correspondent, artist manager, and activist Eslanda Robeson wrote about her travels to Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa and was actively involved in reconstituting the “world community” after World War II, focusing on internationalist women's organizations. Together, the couple linked the anti-racist struggle for civil and human rights in the United States with anti-fascist freedom movements in Europe, international labor movements, and anti-colonial liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in the spirit of socialist internationalism.

Paul Robeson’s concerts and engagements, alongside Eslanda Robeson’s research, allowed both to engage with the Black diaspora worldwide, seeing themselves both as part of this diaspora and as global citizens. Eslanda Robeson regarded her writing, and Paul Robeson his voice and keen ear (which likely enabled him to sing in over 20 languages), as “weapons” they strategically deployed. Their stage performances, films, recordings, publications (such as the newspaper Freedom, founded with W.E.B. Du Bois in 1950), as well as postal services and telephone lines, became vital media for their transnational activism and tireless, creative resistance – even against the anti-communist repression, surveillance, and intimidation by the U.S. government during the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1965, in the midst of the Cold War, the Paul Robeson Archives was founded at the former Academy of Arts of the GDR as the first systematic collection of material on the life and work of a Black American artist and on the work of a Black activist and intellectual. Today, the Paul Robeson Archives represent a productive interface of current post-socialist and post-colonial discourses. On the occasion of the archive's 60th anniversary, the project “Every Artist Must Take Sides” opens up a resonance space to relate the legacy of the Robesons and their struggles to the pressing questions of our present.

Head of project: Johanna M. Keller, Tomke Braun

Artistic Directors: Anujah Fernando, Lina Brion

Curatorial team: Tomke Braun, Lina Brion, Aidan Erasmus (The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape), Anujah Fernando, Julia Gerlach, Baruch Gottlieb, Johanna M. Keller, Katharina Schultens (Haus für Poesie)

Archival support: Peter Konopatsch

Project coordination: Anja-Christin Remmert, Denise Baumeister, Luise Langenhan

Artistic-technical direction: Roswitha Kötz

Exhibition assistance: Matthias Appelfelder

Contributions by Heiner Goebbels, George E. Lewis, Robert Machiri, Neo Muyanga, Shana L. Redmond, Kirsten Reese, Matana Roberts, and many more.

“Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson” is a project by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, in collaboration with Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, and Haus für Poesie, Berlin.

 

Open Call for Residencies for Artistic Research

On the occasion of the project, the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town, are organizing a joint residency program for artistic research at the Paul Robeson Archives in Berlin and the UWC Research Collections, including the UWC Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archive in Cape Town.

The program supports four artists in residence for their archival research and the production of new artistic works, which will be shown in the exhibition from November 2025 until January 2026. This Call for Proposals is aimed at artists and artistic researchers who work in the field of sound/sonic art or visual art and whose practice has a connection to the subjects of the respective archive.

More information and application forms

 

Funded by the German                 Funded by the Federal Government
Federal Cultural Foundation        Comissioner for Culture and the Media