MIXED COMPANY ››› mixed places hamburg city

About

Which public spaces are available and to whom, and what boundaries are set on their use? How are heterotopias – i.e. places with their own rules – created in this process and how do these places reflect community relationships?

MIXED COMPANY ››› mixed places focuses on social empathy – the ability to place oneself in another person’s shoes, adopt his or her perspective, and to explicitly recognize the foreignness of others. Artists with and without disabilities have taken over temporary locations in Hamburg and are working on a wide variety of artistic productions. No information is given about personal backgrounds so that the focus lies solely on artistic merit. As community-driven, participatory urban development has a strong influence on current and future issues, the selection of the exhibition spaces is another way in which the project is making a statement.

Topics such as the impact of art, how art-related institutions see themselves, and interaction between art and the community will also be addressed in posters, films and book editions. MIXED COMPANY ››› mixed places can be understood as an appeal to the “optimistic, open-to-happiness […] loving ego” and an attempt to illustrate – through a range of different artistic positions – what community means today, what constitutes community, and where boundaries lie. It is more than a mere revaluation of the term, whose mention today tends to conjure up associations with appeals for donations. It is far more about observing, without sentimentalism, the current state of our community in order to develop ideas about how future communities will be shaped.

In cooperation with the association Mehr als zu viel e.V., the Galerie der Villa of Elbe-Werkstätten GmbH presents selected guest and resident artists’ interpretations of the subject across five different locations in the center of Hamburg. Links are created between different places and people, assumptions are questioned, perspectives are shifted, heterotopias are depicted, and different societal roles are explored.

Stefanie Becker, Thomas Beisgen, Maksim Boksgorn, Adelaida Cue Bär,Rüdiger Frauenhoffer, Sven Freundt, Hanne Götsch, Anna Lena Grau,Konstanze Habermann, Daniel Hopp, Tim Jendrzejewski, Manuela Koch, Jan Köchermann, Rupprecht Matthies, Silke Marohn, Karl-Heinz Maukel, Ruth May,Oliver Ross, Simon Schede, Anja Scheffler-Rehse, Ulrike Schönau, Paul Kai Schröder, Harald Stoffers, Olaf Wegner, Michael Witte, Peter Wulf