27/06/2024 – 30/06/2024,

Paul Spengemann: spin jump crawl climb dream bite hunt

, Sporthalle Berg Fidel

Paul Spengemann creates creatures and has them tell stories. For his new work he has created a character that is moving into the Berg Fidel sports hall during the FLURSTÜCKE festival. While, normally, basketball or volleyball Bundesliga matches take place there, attracting thousands of visitors with a lot of action and commotion, it is now an eight-legged creature that invites them to visit the huge hall during the off-season. The sports hall and its specific environment become a projection surface for Spengemann’s laser show, for which he translates animations into simple line constellations, creating a rather distinctive visual world—a reverie which at the same time relates to the perturbed world as it exists here and now.

As if it had just arrived from another world, this creature seems confused. The space so large, itself so small—it gets tangled up in thought. A sense of loneliness and forlornness coincide with a large public arena. What in the world is going on in this place where people are always facing each other, competing against each other, following their very own set of rules? And there is so much space to spin nets. But what exactly do those nets imply that already exist here, those appearing from time to time only to disappear again? Is there someone to be afraid of?

Paul Spengemann (born 1987) studied film and fine art at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 2016/17 he was awarded the Bundespreis für Kunststudierende, the Art Cologne Award for New Positions and in 2018 the Columbus Förderpreis der Deutschen Kunstvereine. His work focuses on the examination of different image-making processes, especially in the field of moving images. He meticulously studies not only their technical possibilities, but also how they can trace the world or create visual realities. He often uses the virtual in his work as a tool for visibility and participation, in the sense that a laser show is projected onto a building in a public space, a animated shadow of a dragon settles in an abandoned store, or a video call from a trouser pocket seems to reach the museum by chance. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and film festivals around the world, including: LOOP Barcelona, São Paul International Film Festival, Goethe-Institut Mexico City, Wiener Art Foundation, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Hamburger Kunsthalle and 66th Berlinale Berlin. In 2024 Spengemann is on of the fellows at Casa Baldi by the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo.

Curator: Merle Radtke

An event in the context of the International Festival for Dance, Theatre, Performance and Film FLURSTÜCKE 2024.