Presentation and artist talk with Susanne Keichel, Kristin Loschert and Sabine Reinfeld

Kristin Loschert’s photo series "Gymnasium" was realised at the Askanisches Gymnasium in Berlin-Tempelhof in 2013. In an approach similar to Susanne Keichel’s in her series SCHOOL, Loschert focused on people, buildings and equipment to give viewers a sense of the specific school habitat. While Susanne Keichel created her work as part of the school community--which provides a direct, unembellished look on areas that are usually hidden, such as room cleaning--, Kristin Loschert, as an uninvolved observer, focused on room details and interactions among students. Her pictures are characterized by a particular calm and intimacy. The photo projects of Susanne Keichel and Kristin Loschert were also realized in contrasting schools, or school types. The discussion will examine how these different conditions are reflected in their respective views of students and the school system, and whether--or how--the visual experience could activate viewers and bring about (system) transformation.

Sabine Reinfeld is a visual artist specializing in performance and video. In her work, she analyzes role models and shows situational, ephemeral actions that deal with questions of personal and media staging of identity. As an artistic activist she established, together with Ulf Aminde, the "Zeitstipendien" (today: “research scholarships”) for Berlin artists, and campaigned for their political implementation. On the board of the bbk berlin, she advocated for socially acceptable, anti-discriminatory and gender-equal working conditions for artists. Since 2010, she has repeatedly realized workshops with students in which they could learn media competence in a playful, performative way. Since this year, she has been working as an art teacher at a Berlin secondary school, which, as a so-called hotspot school, foregrounds the urgency of teaching art in the classroom. 

Chair: Anna Voswinckel

Immediately before the talk, Kristin Loschert's photo series "Gymnasium" and excerpts from Sabine Reinfeld's video works will be shown.