On Friday, 5 May 2017, TU Dresden is inaugurating a new art project in Altana Gallery. The artists’ collective New Scenario (Paul Barsch and Tilman Hornig) and TU Dresden Academic Heritage have created an innovative project combining art and scholarship in a new way and incorporating a range of media.

In Hope, Paul Barsch and Tilman Hornig took on the campus as artistic medium, depicting their vision of a possible zombie apocalypse in 17 university spaces captured in 360 degree panoramic photographs.

The online exhibition at newsenario.net presents works by international artists displayed in the staged spaces. 

For its concept of “Hope” establishing new ways of showing and exhibiting art in the media age, the project has earned the sponsorship award “Catalogues for Young Artists” by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Stiftung.

In performative acts involving up to 200 participants, lecture halls, dining halls, library spaces, corridors, copy rooms, laboratories and a high voltage hall were narratively staged for the panoramas, which always positioned the viewer at the centre of the action.  The main image, taken in an historic lecture hall in the Zeuner building is reminiscent in its epic dimensions of the paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, but also evokes the staged photographs of the artist Jeff Wall or the video installation work of Aernout Mik.

Why a zombie campus? Various disciplines and chairs at TUD deal with the figure of the zombie, such as the working group “Looking further. Dresden’s contributions to interdisciplinary media research.” Questions regarding disruptions and catastrophes persist in pop culture and scholarship and even arouse new interest.

Survival handbooks, Hollywood blockbusters and series like The Walking Dead seize on this ambivalent fascination with apocalyptic or dystopic fantasies of ruptures in our social order, which in this age of conspiracy theories and alternative facts is more persistent than ever.

In addition to the project “Hope” a press briefing will take place on Friday, 5 May 2017 (11am) in Altana Gallery, Görges building, TU Dresden, where the online exhibition “Hope” will be launched.

Participants of the press briefing are:
Gwendolin Kremer, Curatorial Director, Altana Gallery, TU Dresden
Prof. Dr. Anja Besand, Chair of Didactics of Political Education at the Institute of Political Science, TU Dresden
Dr. Tanja Prokić, research assistant, Institute of Media Science and Modern German Literature, TU Dresden
The artists Paul Barsch and Tilman Hornig of New Scenario will also be in attendance.

The opening and release of the website “hope” is taking place on Friday, 5 May 2017, (7pm), in the historical lecture hall of the Zeuner building (First Floor, Lecture Hall 222) - followed by reception in Altana Gallery.

An accompanying catalogue with contributions from Mark Arenhövel and Anja Besand, Andreas Handschuh, Gwendolin Kremer and Tanja Prokić will be published by the Verlag für moderne Kunst; Design: Max Stocklosa, Berlin.

In cooperation with the Chair of Media Science and Modern German Literature, Institute of German Studies of TU Dresden, working group “Looking further. Dresden contributions to the interdisciplinary media research” of the network of social, literary and cultural scientists at TU Dresden, and the Centre for Integration Studies at TU Dresden.

The exhibition and the catalogue are supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and the Halbach Foundations, in the framework of the sponsorship award “Catalogues for Young Artists”.

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“Hope” by New Scenario (Paul Barsch and Tilman Hornig) and the Academic Heritage of TU Dresden
Altana Gallery in the Görges building, TU Dresden, Helmholtzstraße 9, 01069 Dresden
8 May – 30 June 2017

Online part feat. Joachim Coucke, Connor Crawford, Mariechen Danz, Hilary Galbreaith, Monia Ben Hamouda, Jason Hirata, Daniel Keller, Max Kowalewski, Kareem Lotfy, Annie Pearlman, Nicolas Pelzer, Jon Rafman, Gregor Różański, Bailey Scieszka (newscenario.net)

Media Inquiries:
Gwendolin Kremer, M.A.
Curatorial Director Altana Gallery
Kustodie // collections – art inventory – exhibitions
Technische Universität Dresden
01062 Dresden
Tel.: +49 351 463-36405 // -34199;
Fax: +49 351 463-37742
Email: gwendolin.kremer@tu-dresden.de