Pochen Biennale for Multimedia Art

Germany looks forward to celebrating the 30th anniversary of national reunification in 2020. To mark the upcoming commemorative, the Pochen multimedia biennial art festival will highlight historical turning points in history. Over the course of eleven days, the festival will present a total of 50 international artistic positions at numerous venues in Chemnitz, including the Wirkbau Chemnitz, the municipal art collections, the State Archaeological Museum, the Industriemuseum and public sites around the city, which explore the thematic complex of change – transformation – upheaval in audio-visual, performative and scenic presentations.

The main event of the Pochen Biennale 2020 will be an exhibition at the Wirkbau Chemnitz which examines the societal legacy of the Treuhandanstalt. The Treuhand Agency was set up in 1990 to privatise the East German economy. In so doing, it radically changed the conditions of ownership and production in the former GDR. Even today public debate about this chapter of (East) German history remains extremely polarised. Works by national and international multimedia artists will present new views on this subject and generate awareness of the European dimension of historical systemic change and the watershed moments of the early 1990s. The artistic contributions will be curated in collaboration with a network of European partner festivals including Cynetart in Dresden, the Sonica Festival in Modena und the Athens Digital Art Festival. Presentations, discussions, readings and film screenings will accompany the exhibition programme. In cooperation with the Berlin Museum für Werte, the project includes a civic exhibition of items and personal stories about the (post) reunification phase and interviews with contemporary witnesses.

Artistic director: Benjamin Gruner
Curator: Olaf Bender & Sabine Maria Schmidt

Partner festivals: Athens Digital Art Festival, NODE Festival, WRO Biennale, Sonica Festival, Cynetart Biennale

Artists: Andreas Siekmann, Benedikt Braun, Catharina Szonn, Daniel Pflumm, Fantastic Little Splash, FUSE, Karolina Freino, Nonument Group, VTOL, Via Lewandowsky and others