By-Products of Love. An Exhibition with Works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and Werner Schroeter
Films, Performances, Talks and Discussions
18 May – 12 Aug 2018
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Tue – Sun 11 am – 7 pm, admission: EUR 9/6
Free admission for under 18s and Tuesdays from 3 pm
Exhibition opening: Thursday, 17 May 2018, 7 pm, admission free
Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and Werner Schroeter (1945-2010) represent a generation of outstandingly versatile artists who have been collaborating creatively with one another since their collective début in 1968, and who have devoted themselves to poetics of excess in their life and work. Elfi Mikesch, photographer, cinematographer and director, Rosa von Praunheim, filmmaker, painter, author and activist, and Werner Schroeter, film, theatre and opera director – they are all united by their militant engagement for divergent sexualities and their friendship as artists.
Drawing inspiration from Werner Schroeter’s film Poussières d’Amour (1996), the exhibition ‘By-products of Love’ is the first to present photographs, films, figurative art works, sound installations, and documents in a connected way, in the form of visitor-accessible spaces that set out the manifold aesthetic and biographical relationships between them. They construct a bridge that spans five decades, from the artists’ common roots in the West Berlin arts scene to the present day.
In their search for ‘other films, other images, and other forms of life’ (Mikesch), their gestures of emancipation draw on underground art, political activism and expressive pathos in equal measure. Mikesch, Praunheim and Schroeter have had a lasting influence on independent cinema: today, in these times of increasing intolerance and marginalisation, their subjects have lost none of their virulence.
The exhibition will be accompanied by films, performances, talks, and discussions with guests. It is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.