Reading & Talk, Moderation: Anne-Dore Krohn

In German language

Two places, two seasons, two persons in two parts of one event. The dry and the wet element, light and dark, inside and outside, animate, inanimate, revived and undead form the dichotomies and isotopies of these poems, through which the animals pass as well as the stars – for everything takes place simultaneously in heaven and on earth. Literal and prophetic speech, accompanied by music, a juxtaposition of summer and winter. With her third book of poetry, Judith Zander proves again that she is a master of the short form.

Thoughts after staying in Wiepersdorf

Reading & Talk, Moderation: Wolfgang de Bruyn

In German language

Reading & Talk, Moderation: Wladimir Velminski

Repeatedly, Russian writer Victor Erofeev criticized Putin and the Russian regime and took position in his novels and essays. Currently, he and his family have found shelter in Germany and spent a few months in Schloss Wiepersdorf in the spring of 2022. Here, Erofeev worked on a sequel to his autobiographical novel "Good Stalin" (2021 in a new German version published by Matthes & Seitz): In "The Great Gopnik" he parallels his own life with Putin's – the one a free-thinking writer, the other a gopnik.

Book presentation with the authors Mark Gisbourne & Christoph Tannert

In English/German language

Post-reunification Germany has emerged as an important forum for international painting. The generation of artists born in the 1970s and 1980s eschew alignment with collective tendencies and resist clearly definable influences. Meanwhile, their art has registered the cultural and sociological dislocations and divergences since the fall of the Iron Curtain with seismographic precision.

The editors of Dissonance – Platform Germany present eighty-one of the most significant painters living and working in Germany in the past two decades. They have the courage of strong opinions, turn the spotlight on unsuspected treasures, and tease out the unexpected value in aesthetically thrilling achievements of programmatic pluralism. A vital survey of one of the most exciting chapters in the more recent history of art in Germany.

Maryam Aghaalikhani was born in 1983 in Tehran, Iran. In 2010, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in sculpture from Tehran University of Art. In 2018, she studied Plastic Conception/Ceramics at the University of Art and Design Linz in Austria with Prof. Ingrid Smolle as an exchange student. In 2019, she completed her master's degree in Ceramic Arts at the Institute for Ceramic and Glass Arts at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences with Prof. Markus Karstieß. Since 2017 she lives and works in Höhr-Grenzhausen as an self-employed artist. In 2020 and 2021 she was a mentee of Cornelia Rößler in the Project " Mentoring für Bildende Künstlerinnen” (Mentoring for female visual artists) of the Kulturbüro Rheinland-Pfalz. Some of her group exhibitions were shown in b-05 Montabaur, Künstlerhaus Metternich Koblenz, Westerwald Keramikmuseum Höhr-Grenzhausen, Kunstverein Bad Dürkheim e.V., Stiftskirche Kaiserslautern, as well as in Tehran and Linz.

In her painting Maryam Aghaalikhani concentrates on the theme of money and chooses the Iranian currency as a pictorial motif. She tells in her work about power and value. Depending on times, borders and politics, their meaning changes. People and inflation become erosion material and she transfers this loss of value into faded and washed out canvases.

Zmicier Vishniou, born in 1973, is a writer, poet, performance artist, literary critic and program director of the literary magazine Teksty and co-founder of the artists' movement Bum Bam Lit. Since 2007, he has run the independent Minsk publishing house Halijafy together with Michas Bashura. Martina Jakobson's German translation of the novel "Das Brennesselhaus" (luxbooks) was published in 2014. A residency at Berlin's Künstlerhaus Tacheles inspired him to write this debut. In 2018, his novel "If you look closely, Mars is blue" was published, which is still waiting to be translated into German. In 2006, he was a guest author at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.

David Polzin was born in Hennigsdorf in Brandenburg and grew up in neighboring Velten. During his six-year studies, he studied art for one year in Israel at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. At the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin (KHB) he completed a diploma with Prof. Eran Schaerf (2008) and a master student degree (2009).

After graduation, he had his first solo exhibition in Berlin (Galerie Anselm Dreher) and his first international solo exhibition in Brussels (Galerie Waldburger Wouters) in 2010.

Since then, he has exhibited internationally, including Japan, Russia, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA. Since his first institutional solo exhibition at the MMK in Frankfurt a.M. (2013), the focus of his work has been on the German-German unification of the GDR and the FRG and the Wende era. In his works he creates design hybrids, with a focus on seating furniture and utility graphics, consisting of East and West German elements.

multimedia composition, 2022, 25 min

ROTONDA is a multimedia composition consisting of the sounds of squeaking doors. These doors were played and recorded by hundreds of people from all over the world.

two-channel video, 2018, 6:18 min

Performers: Olga Mylnikova, Artour Zakirov and Sarah Duffy
Camera: Alexander Macworth-Praed
Sound and Editing: Sarah Duffy

Following on from the live performance Descent: Part One – which took place at Chateau Bosmelet, Normandy in 2018 – the second part of this body of work zooms in and out of a series of Tableaux Vivants depicting the abduction of Greek Goddess Persephone by God of The Underworld Hades. Persephone was allowed to return to The Upper World for half of the year during which the earth would thrive, but on her return to Hades, her mother Demeter's grief would destroy all in its wake. In Ancient Greece this myth became an explanation for the changing seasons and the cycle of life and death in general. A secretive cult of Demeter and Persephone emerged, performing yearly initiation rites in their honour called The Eleusinian Mysteries, eventually becoming the most sacred of all religious rites in Ancient Greece. Little is known about what these mysteries entailed due to the vows of secrecy taken by cult members, but it is theorised that each year, during the rites, an enactment of Persephone's abduction and Demeter's subsequent quest to rescue her would be performed in a large underground chamber called The Telesterion; the participants further descending into the narrow space between the world of the living and the dead.

video, 2020, 5:01 min

Composition for car quartett and vibrating speakers in public space. (total length 25')
Performance: August, 29th 2020, Berlin-Neukölln.
Performing: Burkhard Beins, Chris Heenan, Mazen Kerbaj, Antje Vowinckel
Video: Christina Voigt

video, 2021, 2:41 min

Interactive concert performance in the field of tension of digital transformation – a piece for soprano, piano, electronic music, light and audience

The concert performance LICHT, which was performed for the first time in August 2021, took the audience on a multi-sensory journey: Audience members performed as actors in an immersive setting where light and sound took over the direction and created unique experiential spaces for each person. "Classical" song, George Crumb and Henry Purcell met electronic composition by computer musician Marion Wörle. The audience was "tracked" in space via tracking technology, giving each individual person their own light space to play with. The project dealt with the question of the dissolution and demarcation of the individual in the mirror of modern digital technologies.

The cultural and historical tour "Kosmos Wiepersdorf" holds information and stories about the grounds, the buildings and the various residents of Schloss Wiepersdorf at ten stations.

At each of the stops you will find a sign with a QR code. If you scan these codes with your smartphone, you can hear stories of three to six minutes that introduce you to the object or topic in question. Everything you listen to on the tour can also be followed or read on your smartphone, tablet, or the website of the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation. Additionally, each of the stops offers the opportunity to find out more in-depth knowledge about what you have heard or read with the help of expert information.

To Kosmos Wiepersdorf >

Food trucks, BBQ, coffee & cake

Schloss Wiepersdorf during the period of National Socialism and the post-war period.

Lecture in German language

Schloss Wiepersdorf has undergone various transformations over decades of its post-war history in a strongly changing political landscape. Innovative concepts were adapted to the times in each case, and the house, park and grounds were extensively restored throughout the GDR – especially in the post-reunification period up to the present day. In the process, the top priority and core of new considerations was to preserve Schloss Wiepersdorf as a home for artists.

Schloss Wiepersdorf underwent the most directional, difficult and lasting change in the immediate post-war years of World War II, when it was transformed from a family residence into a "house for creative artists," as it was initially called.

How and with whose support the painter Bettina Encke von Arnim, a great-granddaughter of the German Romantic couple, succeeded in setting the very first course for this development will be discussed in detail in this article.

A very special treasure in this detailed research was a guest book secured by the family. It is available in richly illustrated and digitized form in the museum area of the house and can be leafed through for a very personal impression.