Babenhausen + Die leere Mitte + Normalität 1-X

Babenhausen
Hito Steyerl, Germany 1997, 4 min. German with English subtitles

Die leere Mitte
Hito Steyerl, Germany 1998, 62 min. German with English subtitles

Normalität 1-X
Hito Steyerl, Germany 1999-2001, 37 min. German with English subtitles

This trilogy of Hito Steyerl's early work can be read in many different ways. It is not only a document of contemporary history and an artistic and activist positioning, but also an outstanding film essay. Created between 1990-1998, the impressive long-term study “The Empty Center” examines the invisible connections between anti-Semitism, colonialism and racism in Berlin's cultural and urban spaces. One example is the history of the "Haus Vaterland" located at today's Potsdamer Platz. At the same time, these films also focus on migrant protest movements and Asian-diasporic voices resisting colonial continuity and racist violence.

Hito Steyerl is professor of experimental film and video at the Berlin University of the Arts. She is a media artist, filmmaker, cultural critic and theorist. Her internationally renowned media-, technology- and culture-critical works have been awarded numerous prizes. The exhibition "I Will Survive. Films and Installations" (catalog published by Spector Books) is the largest retrospective of her entire oeuvre to date and was first shown at the K21 of the Düsseldorf Ständehaus in 2020, then at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2021.

Dr. Gülşah Stapel studied urban and regional planning at the TU Berlin with a focus on historic preservation. Her research expertise lies in the study of identity and heritage construction in public space and Berlin urban history. Since 2020, she has worked as an outreach curator for the Berlin Wall Foundation. She has just published her book „Recht auf Erbe in der Migrationsgesellschaft“ (Urbanophil 2023), a study on places of rememberance of Berliners with a family background from Turkey.