17:00–18:00
Guided tour through the exhibition

18:00–20:00
Talk: Across Generations

Leon Kahane and Clemens von Wedemeyer talk about their artistic work on their own family history between the Wehrmacht, terror and resistance. Moderation: Jochen Becker (AG station urbaner kulturen)

With the series of works Gedenken unserer durch die Tat!, which is on view at station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf as part of the Kyiv Perennial, Leon Kahane, born in East Berlin in 1985, traces the overlapping and effects of political repression of historical facts. The poster fragments in the series come from the private archive of his grandfather Max Kahane and are now in the possession of the German Historical Museum. Max Kahane, who fought against National Socialism in the International Brigades and later in the Résistance, reported on the Nuremberg trials as a journalist for the Soviet News Bureau and on the Eichmann trial as a correspondent for Neues Deuschland.

In his latest work Bakhmut 2023, Clemens von Wedemeyer shows a view of the city of Bakhmut, which is now destroyed by the Russian war of aggression, between three eras. The artist was able to draw on 16 mm amateur film footage taken by his grandfather, Wehrmacht officer Harald Freiherr von Vietinghoff-Riesch, in the winter of 1941/42 in Artemovsk, as Bakhmut was known during the Soviet era. The German armies were waging a war of extermination in Ukraine. Thanks to an invitation from Mykola Ridnyi and Dana Brezhinieva, the artist also filmed the still undestroyed Bakhmut in October 2021. While working on the video back in Berlin, the frontline city was under Russian bombardment, as montaged mobile phone videos show.