Works in Shifts: Ghosts

by KATHRIN EBMEIER with ALE BACHLECHNER, ALICIA GORNY, LAURA HANSEN, ANJA JUNGHANS, GRIT SCHUSTER, KAREN ZIMMERMANN and women of FRAUENINITIATIVE HENRICHSHÜTTE HATTINGEN
curated by EVA BUSCH, MADHUSREE DUTTA

As part of the exhibition Ghosts, Traces, Echoes: Works in Shifts, three research-based artistic projects will be displayed in the Academyspace, the exhibition space of the Akademie der Künste der Welt, in three parts and over a period of five months. The exhibition will thus become a dynamic collection of different layers and histories, similar to a palimpsest. When the next layer is added, the previous one will not disappear completely – new narratives will be added to it. In this way, different time periods and geographical contexts will overlap.

For Shift 1 Ghosts, the queer performance artist and activist Kathrin Ebmeier teams up with the historian Alicia Gorny and the artist Ale Bachlechner to explore the history of the Fraueninitiative Henrichshütte (Women’s Initiative Henrichshütte): in 1987, the group gathered in the town of Hattingen wearing ghost costumes to protest against the closure of the local steelworks. Women from different generations reflect on what unites them, what the legacy of the protest has been, and how we can learn from labor disputes of the past.