St Vitus’ dance © Gabriele Stötzer
Annual theme – curated by Lea Lünenborg
A radically different cinema unfolds in the Super 8 films of Erfurt artist Gabriele Stötzer: collective, physical, anarchic. The films were made underground, away from state production structures. In their formal freedom, Stötzer’s works mark a feminist and queer alternative to the official cultural apparatus.
Gabriele Stötzer has been exploring themes such as justice, self-determination and gender for over five decades. Her own body often plays a central role – not as an object, but as a scene of resistance and feminist self-assertion.
Gabriele Stötzer’s artistic practice is inextricably linked to her social and political commitment: In 1976, she was imprisoned in the GDR on charges of “slandering the state” because of a petition, whereupon she joined the literary-artistic underground and later co-founded the Erfurt women artists’ group. Many of her works formulate radical counter-proposals to state repression and standardisation by subverting boundaries and opening up space for vulnerability and longing.
(Source: Berliner Festspiele)
