A transmedia documentary based on three years of research on the Murg river, this work takes its shape in a manner inspired by the river itself. Images and sounds flow from one piece to another, forming a documentary that is alive rather than set in time and bound to a single frame. “Becoming River” has many parts, four of which are exhibited here. Two 2-channel video installations (FLUSSORAKEL and STAU/FALL) share the same surfaces and run in a continuous loop. FLUSSKINO is a selection of documentaries, fictions and performances filmed along the river. HYDROSPHÄRE is a sculpture of video monitors that give an insight into the flow of the Murg. SCHWEMMLAND is a sound installation based on live data sent from a probe on the Murg.

By flowing through different media and projects, documenting the river for its nature, people and various identities, the piece becomes an investigation of a body over time, and the diversity by which one may be described.

Dana Melaver

At the DEFA Studios, Manfred Seifert learned a very special animation technique from Bruno J. Böttge and Jörg Herrmann: silhouette animation. Henceforth, short films about a wide variety of subjects emerged from Seifert’s workshop, including this film about safety at work and how it is communicated by managers. Over the top, but to the point.

Meike Weimann

In this silhouette film, Manfred Seifert demonstrates the disastrous consequences of thoughtless waste disposal – true to the motto: You reap what you sow. Sometimes recycling can be a one-way street when people act as depicted in the film. As topical today as it was in the early 1980s.

Meike Weimann

Who has not seen them – films about various training opportunities and degree programmes produced by the official career guidance service? It was rare in this context, however, to come across such high-quality productions as this information film about the rare craft of leather goods making. Nothing here recalls the dusty images of ordinary career promotion films: perfect lighting and professional 35mm stock, an enthusiastic staff, qualified training, pleasant workplaces and enjoyment of work rather suggest a made-for-cinema commercial.

Meike Weimann

Nearly every day in Isla Tibaguin, Philippines, the streets turn into rivers. Environmental disasters can take many forms, and this immersive documentary follows a slow-motion climate crisis that is daily and constant. In Isla Tibaguin, the water rises everywhere and it takes hours to subside, leaving residents wading in water. Cooking, cleaning, trying to study, all in water. The film follows Riri and Angie as they navigate life with and within floodwater, emphasising the significance of community in the face of climate instability and uncertainty.

The use of the immersive medium allows audiences to face this particular climate disaster first-hand, and to feel the anxiety which ensues. Within the virtual reality headset, viewers experience a mediated feeling of being within floodwater, in a manner which two-dimensional media cannot replicate. By employing the intimacy of VR, the film makes a slow and more invisible catastrophe feel like the emergency that it actually is.

Dana Melaver

Baker and amateur filmmaker Manfred Seifert set out with his own camera to realise his ideas. His satirical film about Leipzig in the early 1980s became a cult reportage about the city, its buildings and the people you can meet there.

Meike Weimann

As though on automatic, passersby walk the same path; one day indistinguishable from the other. Until a surprise encounter ruptures this everyday. There is a secret world in the central train station, one eerily similar to our own, but just off enough to destabilise reality. In this unassuming monolith there is a gateway to another world, or rather a story that takes place overlaid unto a glitch of reality. Viewers will encounter their own bodies disrupted, and peak into a strange encounter. And then, in the end, it will loop and start again.

In a unique approach to immersion, the piece not only toys with our own feeling of body and the shape of reality, but as well with the body and shape of virtual reality. By extending virtual immersion into the shape of a reflecting sculpture (rather than a headset), the work opens the door to portals of many shapes and sizes. Keep an eye out for the not-so-familiar and slide into the unexpected.

Dana Melaver

The only permanence in life is the absolute promise of decay. Decomposition is just change, and everything in this world, digital images included, are not exempt from demise. Yet it is their mortality that makes pictures all the more precious, and this work aims to highlight the beauty therein. Deterioration is inevitable, and in this work its pace lies in the hands of visitors.

Using photographs from the public domain, the work also calls into question the digital archive. Is the archive a space of permanence or is it merely a state of slow decay? The images are ones of public significance but of no sentimental value to the audience. Therefore the act of decaying images has no personal bearing. This relationship might change, though, once visitors upload their own photographs and become witnesses to their decomposition...

Dana Melaver

A dark room is so much more than it first seems. With patience and curiosity, it will come to life. In between four walls is a Cuban household, filled with objects passed down over generations that hold memories of the hands that kept them. As one walks through the room and interacts with its objects, the space begins to come alive. Visitors will take their own time and make their own way through the quiet evidence of a lived-in space, uncovering hidden moments waiting to be found.

Over the course of the piece, a clock runs a day in fast forward, and the room shape-shifts from the 1980s to 1990s and onwards, slowly, steadily, almost unnoticed. Time moves differently here. It is a piece that lives in the in-between, in the narrow space that treads the line of physical and virtual and in the cracks that separate days, years and decades. And it is precisely this in-betweenness that cultivates portals and the possibility of walking through a door and into a past waiting to be touched.

Dana Melaver

“Are we still in normal life or is this emergency life?” asks Tom, one of the protagonists. A flood separates a life in two – one before and one after. In this work we encounter people affected by the 2022 floods in eastern Australia, as they recall the moments in which everything changed. Described through miniature rooms, the piece recreates lost objects and spaces, rooms formed of memories. Beautifully and consciously crafted, the piece invokes a creative approach that radiates care, for participating collaborators, for audiences, and in the making process.

The project, centered on a virtual reality experience and including augmented reality components as well as workshops, was created in collaboration with people affected by the flooding. As the project continues to grow, it becomes a living archive of restoration, reviving lost objects. Like ducklings reappearing after a flood, life – albeit changed – does go on.

Dana Melaver

An unembellished look at the inner workings of a fur-processing facility that neither advertises it nor suggests a safe workplace. The Zwenkau film studio, which had already lost the “FDJ” suffix in 1989, unsparingly captures the conditions that the employees of the VEB Edelpelz Leipzig-Schkeuditz were exposed to. These images need no commentary but are accompanied with haunting music.
Disclaimer: This documentary film contains neither images of fur farms nor of the slaughter, skinning or killing of animals.

Meike Weimann

A disturbing documentation of forced displacement in the West Bank, centered on first-person accounts of Palestinians under constant pressure by Israeli forces and settlers. The film is made of both 360° footage as well as vernacular images captured by locals and activists over a period of three years. While a documentation of violence, the film also shows humanity in the face of inhumanity, led by people whose homes were destroyed and whose communities continue to be impacted. It documents violence but also poetry, compassion and resilience. The project also critically considers the viewer's perspective – it invites the audience to experience the topic first-hand, whilst at the same time making conscious decisions of what to show and what not to show in immersive view.

The piece is accompanied by images taken in the West Bank by the photo collective Activestills, of which the two directors are members. There are also volunteers on site to offer emotional support and conversation.

Dana Melaver