10.6.2025, Tuesday 19:00 Uhr
Fantasies of the People. Our Rededication

Venue:
Raum 229, Hörsaal der HFBK Hamburg

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When the writer Lu Märten in 1921 pronounced the “Fantasies of the people”, she added that “historically there were never any others”. To Märten, fantasy was a communal faculty, a shared imagination, that had found itself reduced, trivialized into folkic belief and aestheticized into literary genre throughout the 19th century. Fantasies (of the people) came to be painted as primitive or delusional, and it wouldn’t be long until they were nationally colored in this role. Fantasy’s young contender, imagination, proposed as an individual and individuating capacity, had itself only gained traction a good hundred years earlier against fantasy’s “immeasurable field of horrors” (Jean Paul): in the Romantic moment, in the Romantic subject, for which Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings became (unfairly) emblematic

In our own times this rift between fantasy and imagination has been coming into ever more sharp relief. In recent years artists working from the fantasies of their people have (re)fueled necessary discussions on contemporary art’s provincialisms, and cultural theorists demanding radical imagination have stretched this faculty’s reach far beyond the national confinements of its modern scope.

Today’s art appears to be full of genuinely fantastic imagination. The Romantic division between fantasy and imagination now lays bare the original assumptions it once concealed, displaying its historical partisans and their intellectual assets and the Romantic order of the senses finds itself in a state of conspicuous destitution. I have no vested interest to pursue its unrelenting critique, art history’s repetition in the negative once more. Instead what I want to propose is a work of rededication. The rededication of us, Romantic subjects, to some Fantasies of the People.

Kerstin Stakemeier is an educator and writer teaching at the Academy of Arts in Nürnberg and Maumaus ISP Lisbon. With Anselm Franke she curated Illiberal Arts (Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, ‘21) and Illiberal Lifes (Ludwigforum Aachen '23), with Bill Dietz she authored Universal Receptivity (‘21), with Marina Vishmidt Reproducing Autonomy (‘16). Her monograph Entgrenzter Formalismus. Verfahren einer antimodernen Ästhetik (‘17) came out with bbooks. Stakemeier has a.o. published in Artforum, October, Art Monthly, Texte zur Kunst, Kunst und Politik and recently in Mousse Magazine, Berliner Review and Cura. She works with Devin Fore on the “Fantasies of the People. Historically there were never any others”, a conference at Princeton University (03/’25) to be published as a book (’26) and to be continued.

Cemile Sahin, ROAD RUNNER, 2025, installation view at Esther Schipper, Berlin; photo: © Andrea Rossetti, Courtesy of Cemile Sahin and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul

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View into the auditorium of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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Opening of the Graduate Show 2025; photo: Sinje Hasheider

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Pablo Torres Gómez, Earths's Ears, 2025; photo: Pablo Torres Gómez

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Maria Ignatenko, false movements, 2024, work in progress; Filmstill

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Estefania Morales, I Drive, God Guides ( yo manejo, Dios me guía), Detail; photo: Tim Albrecht

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The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

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Open Call: Redesign Democracy - Reimagine Voting; graphic design: Konrad Renner

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Park Ficiton, Palmen Feliz Nedra, 2003; photo: Margit Czenki/Park Fiction

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Blick in die von Nadine Droste kuratierte Ausstellung von Master-Studierenden im ICAT der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2024 (im Vordergrund die Arbeit von Paula Hoffmann und Laura Mahnke); photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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Many people stand in front of a wall with portrait photographs

Work by Atu Gelovani at the opening of the Annual Exhibition 2025 at HFBK Hamburg; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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A sculpture of a small elephant that functions as a climbing frame in a park in Hamburg

Der Elefant im (öffentlichen) Raum Hamburg

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Exhibition view on the occasion of Hiscox Art Prize 2024; photo: Tim Albrecht

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The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

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"The New Woman - How Female Artists and Designers shaped the Image of Modernism", graphic by Liudmila Savelyeva, Karla Krey, Amira Mostafa (Klasse Digitale Grafik)

The New Woman

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Detail: Installation by Mark Morris; photo: Tim Albrecht

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Julia Scher, Territorium, 2024, installationview at ICAT of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Tim Albrecht

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Sharon Poliakine, Untitled, 2023, oil on canvas, detail

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Work by Franziska Koepsel at Annual Exhibition 2024; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Annual Exhibition 2024 at the HFBK Hamburg

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photo: Tim Albrecht

(Ex)Changes of / in Art

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photo: Miriam Schmidt / HFBK

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A disguised man with sunglasses holds a star-shaped sign for the camera. It says "Suckle". The picture is taken in black and white.

photo: Honey-Suckle Company

Let`s work together

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Jahresausstellung 2023, Arbeit von Toni Mosebach / Nora Strömer; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image, Grafik: Leon Lothschütz

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As the final part of the artistic research project, the festival and symposium invite you to screenings, performances, talks, and discussions that explore the potential of the moving images and the (human and non-human) body to overturn our habitual course and change the dominant order of things.

Solo exhibition by Konstantin Grcic

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Amna Elhassan, Tea Lady, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

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"Every artist is a human being". This statement by Martin Kippenberger, which is as true as it is existentialist (in an ironic rephrasing of the well-known Beuys quote), gets to the heart of the matter in many ways. On the one hand, it reminds us not to look away, to be (artistically) active and to raise our voices. At the same time, it is an exhortation to help those who are in need. And that is a lot of people at the moment, among them many artists. That is why it is important for art institutions to discuss not only art, but also politics.

Merlin Reichert, Die Alltäglichkeit des Untergangs, Installation in der Galerie der HFBK; photo: Tim Albrecht

Graduate Show 2022: We’ve Only Just Begun

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Grafik: Nele Willert, Dennise Salinas

June is full of art and theory

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Renée Green. ED/HF, 2017. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Free Agent Media, Bortolami Gallery, New York, and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich.

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2022

The Finkenwerder Art Prize, initiated in 1999 by the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V., has undergone a realignment: As a new partner, the HFBK Hamburg is expanding the prize to include the aspect of promoting young artists and, starting in 2022, will host the exhibition of the award winners in the HFBK Gallery. This year's Finkenwerder Art Prize will be awarded to the US artist Renée Green. HFBK graduate Frieda Toranzo Jaeger receives the Finkenwerder Art Prize for recent graduates.

Amanda F. Koch-Nielsen, Motherslugger; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

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New studio in the row of houses at Lerchenfeld, in the background the building of Fritz Schumacher; photo: Tim Albrecht

Raum für die Kunst

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Martha Szymkowiak / Emilia Bongilaj, Installation “Mmh”; photo: Tim Albrecht

Annual Exhibition 2022 at the HFBK

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Annette Wehrmann, photography from the series Blumensprengungen, 1991-95; photo: Ort des Gegen e.V., VG-Bild Kunst Bonn

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23 Fragen des Institutional Questionaire, grafisch umgesetzt von Ran Altamirano auf den Türgläsern der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2021; photo: Charlotte Spiegelfeld

Diversity

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ASA Open Studio 2019, Karolinenstraße 2a, Haus 5; photo: Matthew Muir

Live und in Farbe: die ASA Open Studios im Juni 2021

Since 2010, the HFBK has organised the international exchange programme Art School Alliance. It enables HFBK students to spend a semester abroad at renowned partner universities and, vice versa, invites international art students to the HFBK. At the end of their stay in Hamburg, the students exhibit their work in the Open Studios in Karolinenstraße, which are now open again to the art-interested public.

Studiengruppe Prof. Dr. Anja Steidinger, Was animiert uns?, 2021, Mediathek der HFBK Hamburg, Filmstill

Unlearning: Wartenau Assemblies

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Ausstellungsansicht "Schule der Folgenlosigkeit. Übungen für ein anderes Leben" im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; photo: Maximilian Schwarzmann

School of No Consequences

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Annual Exhibition 2021 at the HFBK

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Katja Pilipenko

Semestereröffnung und Hiscox-Preisverleihung 2020

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Exhibition Transparencies with works by Elena Crijnen, Annika Faescke, Svenja Frank, Francis Kussatz, Anne Meerpohl, Elisa Nessler, Julia Nordholz, Florentine Pahl, Cristina Rüesch, Janka Schubert, Wiebke Schwarzhans, Rosa Thiemer, Lea van Hall. Organized by Prof. Verena Issel and Fabian Hesse; photo: Screenshot

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Alltagsrealität oder Klischee?; photo: Tim Albrecht

HFBK Graduate Survey

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Ausstellung Social Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Teilansicht; photo: MKG Hamburg

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