Artistic Practice

Im Verhältnis (In Relation)

An exhibition by Linnéa Meiners with Christof Zwiener
Curated by Helen-Sophie Mayr
Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation
Straße der Pariser Kommune 8A
10243 Berlin
21.06.2024 – 11.04.2024

A red light spreads through the tiled interior of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, extending as far as the outside. In between, a bluish, glazed glow shimmers. Grit runs, time slips, flowers wilt.

The exhibition In Relation (ger.: Im Verhältnis) by Linnéa Meiners and Christof Zwiener features two installations. They are based on specific objects from the oundation’s direct geographical and thematic sphere: Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium, which she maintained during her imprisonment in Wrocław despite the high walls that surrounded her, as well as a block-shaped bottle repurposed as a glass brick, which was found on the nearby construction site of the old Postbahnhof at Ostbahnhof.

Which relations unfold between these two objects? With great care and precision, Meiners and Zwiener explore and create the apparent infinity in between their two points of departure. In doing so, they devote themselves to questions about the capitalistic valorization of time and labor, the increasing distance between humans and the vegetation surrounding them, the alleged limitlessness of natural resources and the erosion of collective memory through (dis)visibility. 

Curator & Texts: Helen-Sophie Mayr, Artistic assistance: Kim Stolfik, Graphic design: Janika Naja Wetzig, Translation easy language: Helen-Sophie Mayr, English translation: Kim Stolfik, Linnéa Meiners, Helen-Sophie Mayr, Production: Media Service, Peter Hoffmann. A project of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung’s working group for exhibitions.

Photos by Eunice Maurice

Chronic Fiction – Time, Product, Value
Film, 14 minutes, 2024
For a preview link send an email to info [insert-at-here] linneameiners.net.
I’m always delighted to hear from interested viewers.

Director: Linnéa Meiners, Text: Linnéa Meiners, Speaker: Samantha Bohatsch, Production: Filmgruppe Schneider-Meiners, Camera & Sound: Linnéa Meiners, Anna-Maria Schneider, Editing: Linnéa Meiners, Animation and mathematical calculations: Max Upravitelev, Music: Fernando Wawerek & Linnéa Meiners

Chronic Fiction
Installation, steel, glass blocks, acrylic glass, 2024

Looking through the Foundation’s large windows, the gaze meets a yellow construction fence to the south-east, behind which stretches the site of the former Postbahnhof. Currently, it is being redeveloped into a new complex of office spaces advertised with a “new sense of work”. A decaying tunnel bridge runs across the courtyard. Back in the days, it held the conveyor belt for moving the parcels to the trains. Light blue glass bottles, which have been converted into light-transmitting bricks, sit in the bridge’s narrow inlets. Meiners noticed them when she and Zwiener examined the flora surrounding the Foundation. Upon closer look, the glass bricks’ aesthetics – adorned with a complex geometric pattern – sparked a multitude of questions. For her research, Meiners set out on the trail of quartz sand, from which glass bricks are being poured. It is a versatile resource that is used not only for glass production, but for a wide range of applicationsas well: The silicium it contains is used to make microchips; it is used in the production of solar panels and rotor blades and, based on their internal vibrations, quartz crystals are used to measure time precisely and are therefore often integrated into watches.

Within her video installation Chronic Fiction , Meiners distills the results of her research into a series of associative interconnections. From the perspective of a quartz grain, she narrates stories of ostensibly infinite resources, of material as well as social transformation processes, of capitalistic value accumulation, of monsters, redistribution, solidarity – and of time. Through the story, time becomes a multidimensional and bodily perceptible component whose experience, contrary to its rigid metrics, is shaped by individual and social circumstances. Gently, Meiners shifts her narratives on top of each other until they interlock in place of their common denominators, giving the impression of being tangible in their entirety for a brief moment, only to shatter into many individual fragments in the next. Meanwhile, the metaphor of the quartz sand constantly intertwines the various dimensions: It is a resource, a symbol of transformation and a carrier of time.
The installation Chronic Fiction illustrates how closely resources, work, time and social change are related. Contrary to its ability to measure linear time, the quartz grain in Meiner’s story empowers a non-linear understanding of time and thus symbolizes visions of new economic structures and alternate concepts of community.

Text by Helen-Sophie Mayr
Photos by Eunice Maurice

Research and Installation by Christof Zwiener and Linnéa Meiners
Part of Im Verhältnis (In Relation) at Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation
An exhibition by Linnéa Meiners and Christof Zwiener
21.06.2024 – 11.04.2024

Complementing the turquoise shimmer of the glass bricks, the red light illuminating the installation Red Shift within Microcosm expands across the Foundation’s lobby. Two lamps cast light on a collection of pressed, hence, dead plants; A combination coming across as a cynical commentary on the relationship between humans and the vegetation surrounding them. The energy the lamps radiate is in vain; the plants’ life is long gone and the artificial light will not reanimate them. The only effect the red lights have is to fade the plants’ colors, thereby erasing many of their decisive characteristics.

Inspired by Luxemburg’s herbarium, the artists Meiners and Zwiener investigated the flora in the Foundation’s immediate surroundings, pressed and preserved their findings, even traveled to Wrocław, where Luxemburg maintained and expanded her plant archive during her imprisonment despite the thick walls that surrounded her.While strolling through the streets of Wrocław, Meiners and Zwiener spied through a basement window noticing an artificial-looking nursery for seedlings. The scenario resonated with the two artists and they translated it into their own installation combining the red-colored plant lamps with the preserved findings of their on-site research in Berlin. The lamps’ red light refers to the cosmological phenomenon of red shift. It occurs, for example, when galaxies move away from the earth due to the expansion of the universe. Their light then appears red.

Within the installation, the red shift turns into a metaphor of both emotional as well as time-related distance. The invisibilization of plant characteristics by means of red light hints at societal mechanisms of blurred historiography. Luxemburg’s herbarium, an expression of her resistance and resilience, has only recently been discovered by the general public as a significant part of her oeuvre. But how much of Luxemburg’s biography and her political agenda has remained hidden, marginalized or deliberately made invisible over the years? And which societal conceptions are reflected in this selective memory?

Meiners and Zwiener’s interpretation of Luxemburg’s herbarium combines current understandings of nature with the historical character of Rosa Luxemburg. The red light functions as a twofold metaphor – it symbolizes distance through invisibility. Red Shift within Microcosm addresses the growing alienation of humans from the plant world and the detachment from Luxemburg’s values and ideals. It invites to reflect on the visible and even more so on what meanwhile stays hidden in the shadows and it calls for reshaping our relationship to flora, history and memory.

Text by Helen-Sophie Mayr
Photos by Eunice Maurice

Autos anzünden. Die subversive Strategie des Fake

Setting cars on fire. Subversive strategy of the fake
Political satire: Workshop and film
BRIMBORIA Collective

The workshop Autos anzünden. Die subversive Strategie des Fake took place in Leipzig in 2019. With a group of young adults BRIMBORIA Collective researched the topics of militancy and the imbalanced media coverage on left-wing and right-wing radical action. The violence against human beings from the far right rises – the National-Socialist Underground killing people, tons of munition missing at the Bundeswehr and #noAfD on the course of scrutinising democracy. Nevertheless the radical left faces an unmatched level of repression which is by no means justified. The horseshoe theory which tries to equate the motivation behind left-wing activism with nazi activities, became obsolete a long time ago. Studies show, that while left activist mainly aim to interrupt infrastructure and destroy objects, neo nazis are targeting people.

In the workshop we looked at the logic behind media reports, talked about repression of progressive leftist groups and how media covers the complex issue of violence. During the workshop, held in Leipzig in Saxony, it soon was revealed, that the participants wanted to focus on their fear of organized para-military neo-nazi-structures.

The group founded the fictive left radical underground group Kommando Notwehr (command self-defence) and together a satirical video was produced. The participants visualised a worst case scenario – What to do, if we’re forced to defend ourselves?

Flug nach Athen

Flight to Athens
Political satire: Workshop and film
6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI, curated by Stefanie Hessler, Poka-Yio & Kostis Stafylakis
With the kind support of Goethe-Institut Athen

“Apfelfront: Satirical Organization / Anti-fascist / Satirizes right extremist parties / Subdivided into numerous sub-groups / Former and existing right extremist organizational structures style 

After an increase of neo-Nazi rallies, the Front Deutscher Äpfel (the Front of German Apples) was founded in 2004 as an organization intended to satirize and combat fascism by mimicking the public image, aesthetics, and discourse of right-wing extremist parties in ways causing an unsettling, puzzling effect. In the early years, the Front targeted the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD).” Together with participants from Athens, the Apfelfront developed and produced a film. Flight to Athens criticises the German position with regard to the financial crisis and the European austerity policies. The satirical film – invoking the memories of the Nazi invasion of Athens in ’41 – brings back the issue of the anti-fascist struggle and satires today’s right-wing extremist parties.

“The 6th Athens Biennale flirts with the term, the attitude, the (im)possibility of ANTI. It asks: How does opposition play out today? And what kinds of identities does it forge? At present, an oppositional stance, an attitude of ANTI—an “antitude”—seems to encompass wide arenas of social life including cultural expressions, identity politics, art labor, media and scripted protagonist impersonations on Netflix as well as “weird advertising”, videogames and music video productions. In other words, attitudes of resistance, non-conformity and marginality are rapidly becoming canonized and commodified. ANTI is adored and detested as pre-eminent role model. The imagery of the cunning villain, the proactive manipulator, the taboo perpetrator, is one of today’s most fascinating characters in institutional and counter-establishment politics, tactical resistance and pop culture.

ANTI is your next door neighbor. ANTI is your social media activism. ANTI is your cute cat video on loop.“

Excerpt from the curatorial statement

Ongoing project since 2019

photo series

Illustrations for KlebStoff Magazine 10, International Neighborhood Verlag Dresden, 2017

Artistic research, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, 2017
Print funded by interflugs, Free Class of UdK Berlin, 2017