Threatened place of longing! The Stubnitz and its chalk coast bordering Sassnitz is not only a place of longing for German Romanticism, but is also closely related to the family history of the artist Sven Johne. For our VISIT Scholarship Holder, the landscape reflects above all the tragedies of the 20th century. It stands for memories of war, flight, violence. In his film "Vom Verschwinden / On Vanishing" he asks about the social, but above all personal consequences when sea levels rise and coasts collapse into the sea, when "climate change" thus becomes individually perceptible.
The film is part of his fourth solo exhibition at the Nagel Draxler Gallery. The digital collage „Nabel der Welt“ based on the artist's field research in his home town of Sassnitz, which he undertook against the backdrop of the controversial debates surrounding the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline laid from there. Following the threat by three Republican U.S. senators of "devastating sanctions should ships continue to be fitted out there for the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline project," the Baltic Sea town was suddenly caught between the fronts of great powers in the summer of 2020 - fronts which, according to Johne, run not only between the U.S., Russia and Germany, but also within the EU (especially between Germany and Poland), between energy companies and environmentalists, between a (more pro-Russian) East Germany and a (more anti-Russian) West Germany. The conversations Johne had in Sassnitz became the basis for the voices gathered in the work.
The exhibition "Navel of the World" runs from May 21 to August 20, 2022 at the Nagel Draxler Gallery. more information
