In the summer of 2020, the industrial port of the Baltic Sea town of Sassnitz (on the island of Rügen) became the focus of global politics: three Republican US senators threatened "devastating sanctions if ships for the Russian-German North Stream 2 pipeline project were to continue to be equipped there". The place was caught between the fronts of great powers, because a base of this major project worth billions is located here. In Johne's view, however, the fronts run not only between Germany, Russia and the USA, but also within the EU (especially between Germany and Poland), they run between energy companies and environmentalists, between a (rather Russia-critical) West German public and a (rather pro-Russian) East German one.
His project involves artistic fieldwork in Sassnitz, the aim of which is to capture the reverberations of big politics in a small town.
The field research and thus also his VIST project have now been completed and the result of his work are a collage and a film. The collage "Sassnitz - Navel of the World" shows the Conversations Johne had in Sassnitz as "cries for help", which can be "discovered" bit by bit in his work. It becomes visible how torn the urban society is - also independent of Nord Stream.
In the film "Vom Verschwinden / On Vanishing" Johne focuses on the landscape of his homeland, the Stubnitz and its chalk cliffs. Johne 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.
#VISIT2021
Website Sven Johne
