Film Program accompanying the exhibition “The Ceramics Workshop of Wilfriede Maaẞ”
Curated by Claus Löser
Film still (detail): Cornelia Schleime, Das Nierenbett, DDR 1983
Friday, August 28, 2026, 6-10 PM
As part of the exhibition "The Ceramics Workshop of Wilfriede Maaß," author, curator, and film historian Claus Löser selected four short films from the first half of the 1980s that emerged within the milieu of GDR subculture and correspond, directly or indirectly, with the workshop.
Strukturen und Film - Strukturen I (Christine Schlegel, GDR 1985, 11 min)
Das Nierenbett (Cornelia Schleime, GDR 1983, 12 min)
here comes the sun (Helge Leiberg, GDR 1982, 18 min)
Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos, und haben die Sprache in der Fremde verloren (Gino Hahnemann, GDR 1984, 19 min)
Showtime: Total running time: 60 minutes
Location: Open-Air-Cinema / Amphitheater
The painters Christine Schlegel (b. 1950 in Crossen/Saxony) and Cornelia Schleime (b. 1953 in East Berlin) were among the artists Wilfriede Maaß invited to paint ceramics at her studio and have them fired there. Both had previously studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where they met, and were active simultaneously in overlapping circles of friends within a cultural scene that operated independently of the state. Schlegel”s time- and material-intensive collage “Strukturen und Film – Strukturen I” was created in 1985 in collaboration with Lothar Fiedler and Hans-Joachim Noack of the Dresdner Musikbrigade, as well as with the legendary dancer Fine Kwiatkowski. Schleime”s “Das Nierenbett” (1983) centers on fragmentary, ritual-like actions performed by masked figures; she herself called the work a “card index for images.” The Dresden-based painter and musician Helge Leiberg was also active in East Berlin, where he too used the ceramics workshop to produce painted ceramics. His Super-8 experiment “Here Comes the Sun”—which at times recalls the work of avant-garde filmmaker Len Lye, entirely unknown in the GDR—was partly filmed in 1982 near Schönfließer Straße 21 in East Berlin. With his enigmatic work “Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos, und haben die Sprache in der Fremde verloren”—a nod to Friedrich Hölderlin—Gino Hahnemann entered the workshop in 1985 and explored it with his camera, venturing all the way into the kiln.