Location:

station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Auerbacher Ring 41, 12619 Berlin (Entrance: Kastanienboulevard, next to Lebenshilfe e.V.)

Artists:

Nooshin Shafiee, Heike Gallmeier, Siavash Amini

nGbK work group station urbaner kulturen:

Juan Camilo Alfonso, Jochen Becker, Eva Hertzsch, Margarete Kiss, Constanze Musterer, Adam Page, Katharina Ziemke

The exhibition brings together works depicting places whose purpose remains uncertain: enigmatic, designed, and yet strangely shapeless. Where are we? Somewhere in a city? Somewhere at a border?

Photographer Nooshin Shafiee, sound artist Siavash Amini (both from Iran), and Berlin-based installation artist Heike Gallmeier are united by their ongoing exploration and documentation of a particular terrain through which they move with camera, notebook, or microphone. Shafiee and Amini have been crisscrossing Tehran for years, capturing the essence of this chaotic metropolis in images and sound. Gallmeier, on the other hand, follows the predetermined route of Germany’s border, seeking to grasp the character of this symbolically charged void without being guided by predefined concepts or clichés.

The exhibition brings what initially appears as an unfamiliar world to the station urbaner kulturen in Hellersdorf. Here, on the border between the city and the surrounding area, where new and old meet, we reflect with the artists on concepts like “nonplace,” “order,” and “disorder”—thinking about stability in change, about open and closed spaces, and about freedom and boundaries. How do places shape us? And how do we shape them in return?

PROGRAM

Opening
Sat, 22.11.25, 6.30 pm

Exhibition opening with an introduction by the curator

Photo workshop
with Nooshin Shafiee
Sat, 29.11.25, 4.00–7.00 pm

The starting point of this workshop is a photographic walk where participants will explore a part of Hellersdorf together. As we move through the area and take photographs, Nooshin Safiee will guide us in discovering interesting angles, compositions, and subjects. After the walk, everyone’s images will be reviewed and discussed in an open, supportive conversation. Participants can also bring their existing portfolios to look at and talk through them as a group.

Hinter den Fenstern der Wohnkomplexe
Sat, 6.12.25, 6.00 pm

A discussion with Kito Nedo about the exhibition „Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in Plattenbau“ (DAS MINSK Potsdam) and a screening of the short film „Hinter den Fenstern“ (Behind the Windows, 1983) by Petra Tschörtner

How do places shape us? And how do we shape them in return?

The exhibition „Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in Plattenbau“ at MINSK, Potsdam, currently presents approximately 50 works exploring perspectives on a building and living model whose influence continues to this day. Originally, prefabricated buildings were the cornerstone of East German social policy; roughly a quarter of the East German population lived in these apartment blocks. After the fall of the GDR, the Plattenbau became the scene of painful transformations. As modern-day ruins, the buildings awaited demolition, renovation, or conversion.

The „Wohnkomplex“ also encompasses the lived experiences of those who live and have lived in them. „Hinter den Fenstern“ (Behind the Windows), a documentary graduation film by director Petra Tschörtner (1958–2012) from the Babelsberg Film and Television Academy of the GDR, looks behind the facades of the Plattenbau. It follows three married couples, all around 30 years old, living in a high-rise building in Potsdam. They talk about their community, their desires for emancipation, and their conflicts, with spoken and nonverbal communication often diverging.

The film received two awards at the 1984 West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen. The recently completed digitization and restoration was supported by the Film Heritage Funding Program and was generously provided for this event by the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.

„Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in Plattenbau,“ DAS MINSK Potsdam, September 6, 2025 – February 8, 2026, curated by Kito Nedo. Nedo works as a freelance writer, editor, and journalist specializing in visual arts and cultural policy and lives in Basel and Berlin.
Petra Tschörtner: „Behind the Windows,“ 43 min., East German Television 1983, screenplay: Petra Tschörtner, Fritz Martin Barber, cinematography: Peter Ziesche.


Artist talk
with Heike Gallmeier
Sat, 13.12.25, 4.00 pm

Heike Gallmeier talks to Berlin curator Alexia Timmermans about the travel project “Outlines”. In a van converted into a mobile living studio, Heike Gallmeier travelled along Germany’s external borders through Czechia, Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Austria in 2020/21. The starting point of the journey was the small Bavarian town of Hohenberg, where the artist grew up just a few steps from the then still closed border with the former Czechoslovakia. The exhibition “unterwegs” (on our way)” shows the results of this journey: photos of temporary installations, a photographic travelogue, and interviews on the theme of “borders” with people the artist met along the border.

Heike Gallmeier (born 1972, Berlin) studied painting (Academy of Fine Arts Mainz) and sculpture (Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin). She was a scholarship holder at the German Study Centre in Venice and received funding from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Kunststiftung NRW, among others. She has been a professor of painting at Pforzheim University since 2021. Her works have been exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, the Ca Rezzonico Museum in Venice and the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne, among others.

Alexia Timmermans (born 1990, Antwerp) is a curator and communications manager based in Berlin. She has worked at Studio Julius von Bismarck, neugerriemschneider, Kewenig, the Boros Collection, and most recently at Berlin Art Week. She has been pursuing her curatorial practice since 2016 and, since 2023, has been managing Substrat—Artist Management and Communications, an agency providing project-based support for artists. She studied art business (Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London), European studies (HU/FU Berlin) and German/Spanish (University of Antwerp and Complutense Madrid).

Curatorial tour
with Katharina Ziemke
Sat, 10.1.26, 4.00 pm