8. Mai – The Past. The Present. The Future.
Written on 8. May 2025
8. Mai 2025
ᵉⁿThe unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 marks – depending on your perspective – a day of liberation, a day of victory or a day of defeat. Exactly 80 years after the end of the Second World War, my lecture performance Orcs from the East at the HGB Offenbach revolves around the question of how this date is instrumentalized today in terms of historical politics and staged artistically. Media such as science fiction, literature, painting and sculpture are used to lend meaning to historical events, provide opportunitues for identification and design futures. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for example, functions as a point of reference for organizing complex social change or interpreting the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. James Bond, public art in Russia, the NSU investigation committee and the paintings in Selenskyi’s bedroom merge into a network of memory pipelines that connect the past, the present and the future. Access gives the WLAN password in the Stalin Museum in Georgia.
Art is liberation. Art is defeat. Art is unconditional surrender.
Henrike Naumann
Orcs from the East – Lecture Performance
8. May 20205 18.00
HFG Offenbach
Isenburger Schloss, linke Kapelle
Keynote of the conference
Seeds of Regression: on the Relation of Liberalism and Fascism
May 8 – May 9, 2025
INFOS
Henrike Naumann
Ossification – Lecture Performance
VIDEO ONLINE NOW
ᵉⁿAt the opening of the exhibition Made in Germany? at the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Harvard Art Museums), I spoke in depth about my work on view, Ostalgie, and took the audience on a journey through German history and the political present, while providing an overview of my practice over the past 12 years, relating East Germany to contemporary US politics. The title is a reference to sociologist Steffen Mau’s latest book, Unequally United. The work Ostalgie is the starting point for a tour of East German complexes and complexities, and an invitation to join the archaeological dig for prehistoric bones among the ruins of socialism. I am delighted that Ostalgie is now a permanent part of the Busch-Reisinger Museum collection.
Henrike Naumann
Hard Style – Portrait
Portrait in SPIEGEL Nr. 41 / 05.10.2024 by Ulrike Knöfel
PDF
Henrike Naumann
Eurotique – Installation (2018)
12. Februar – 05. October 2025
The Impermanent – Four Takes on the Collection
MoMA Warsaw
The first presentation of this scale of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Curated by Sebastian Cichocki, Tomasz Fudala, Magda Lipska, Szymon Maliborski, Łukasz Ronduda and Natalia Sielewicz.
INFOS
Henrike Naumann
Lectures online
I – What comes after Postmodernism?
Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, 2023
II – Foreign Agent
Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum, Georgia, 2024
III – Breathe
Screening and Conversation with Vasyl Cherepanyn, Berlin, 2024
IV – Ossification
Harvard Art Museums, Boston, USA, 2024
V – Orcs from the East
HFG Offenbach, 2025
Henrike Naumann
CONCEPTS
ᵉⁿFor Henrike Naumann, a new work always begins with a concept paper. These CONCEPTS, which develop from project ideas and her in-depth research, serve as a critical and discursive basis for her work before they become sculptures, installations and artistic interventions. Conceived by Naumann as an artist’s book, the folder made of mirror-polished stainless steel sheet brings together almost 100 concepts in her own words, with around 400 images, ranging from the beginnings of her practice to the most recent installations. With many unrealized or never published project papers, CONCEPTS also developed into a rare record and documentation of her critical thinking, writing and working practice.
Supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn an the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
www.bierke.de
ᵉⁿHenrike Naumann is a fellow at the Berlin Artistic Research Program 2024/25. Artistic Research commissioned by the Berlin Artistic Research Program.
INFOS
Photos
Telegram, Time Magazine, Harvard, Björn Geldhof, Sven Döring, Bundeskunsthalle.