Klasse Rosefeldt, the class for time-based media, explores the notion of “Heimat” (home/homeland/habitat) across various contexts. Between personal connection and

critical analysis, the exhibition shows various viewpoints that represent a spectrum of

approaches. Beyond land, what else could Heimat be? A feeling, a language, a person,

a song... Within the student body, a multitude of backgrounds and feelings of belonging

are represented. In different places, or when viewpoint or scope change, Heimat carries

different connotations. And Heimat is problematized differently. Sometimes

deconstruction seems inevitable. Sometimes, it might feel like something calling to be

preserved or newly established.

Jean Genet wrote of a boiler: steam fogs the windowpane, then slowly disperses.

The glass turns clear again, the landscape appears all at once, and the room seems to

stretch toward an infinite distance. The place we come from can carry us in either

direction. It can fog the window, subtracting us from the smooth running of wherever we

now are. Or it can open us again toward landscapes and memories that are,

perhaps, without end.

We live in a world of deepening borders and separations. In German, the word Heimat

names intimacy, calm, a familiar life — and it stitches land, blood and belonging

together, producing those who are left outside. You would never say it in your own

kitchen; it appears only at a distance. Perhaps, seeing a cinema sign shrunk small, you

find it can no longer stand for the country behind it. Perhaps, returning home, you need

your father to help you recognize what was once familiar. We loosen Heimat from its

hardened, closed meanings, letting it form again between works from different places,

languages and histories. Sometimes we let the fog lift: in the current we are caught in,

certain things must be seen again. Sometimes we stoke the boiler ourselves: ambiguity

is waiting in the layered memories.

How far are you from the place where you were born?

How many times have you told its story?

As you move through these stories, histories, songs, games, objects, rumors,

summonings, promises and dreams, they will also move through you. Perhaps what

appears when the glass clears is not the landscape we once left, but a landscape that

has not yet come to be.

The exhibition spans across two rooms: A.01.18 and A.01.23