7 February 2018

By-Products of Love. An Exhibition with Works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and Werner Schroeter
The Akademie der Künste is dedicating an exhibition to the artistic friendship between Mikesch, von Praunheim, and Schroeter at Pariser Platz

Opening 17th May 2018, 7 pm; on display 18th May – 12th August 2018

For the first time the exhibition "By-Products of Love. An Exhibition with Works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and Werner Schroeter" introduces and spatially brings together, the works of the photographer, cinematographer, and director Elfi Mikesch, the filmmaker, painter, author, and activist Rosa von Praunheim, and the director of film, theatre, and opera productions, Werner Schroeter (1945 – 2010). They have significantly shaped the pictorial canon of the artistic underground since the 1960s up to the present day. The title of the exhibition refers to Schroeter's film Poussières d'Amour (1996), which discusses the creation and transience of art.

"The poet; the political one; and the aesthete", as Praunheim puts it, are united by their socialisation in the post-war period of West Germany, as well as their pro-active advocacy of diverging sexualities, and their refusal of conventions as both a life principle and artistic position at the same time: all three cross borders. Already in the 1960s, they took up questions of gender, body politics, and otherness, which have not lost their topicality and currency to this day. The exhibition is the first to contiguously present their photographs, films, pictorial works, sound installations, and documents in the form of walkable spaces, providing a panorama of the diverse aesthetic and biographical references among each other. Their common roots in the West Berlin art scene become visible and their artistic friendship becomes a motif linking the different rooms of the exhibition with the biographies of the artists, spanning five decades up to the present.

The extensive programme accompanying the exhibition contains film screenings, performances, talk shows, and discussions with international guests, documenting, amongst others, Elfi Mikesch's new projects outside her cinematic oeuvre, Werner Schroeter's work in France, and the appeal on a younger generation of filmmakers ("Rosa's children").

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

By-Products of Love. An Exhibition with Works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and Werner Schroeter
Films, performances, talk shows, and discussions 18th May – 12th August 2018
Exhibition opening Thursday, 17th May 2018, 7 pm, free admission With Jeanine Meerapfel, Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim, and others Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin

Further information on the exhibition and press material will be available shortly at www.adk.de/de/presse/pressematerial.htm

Press contact on behalf of the Akademie der Künste: rische & co pr, Claudia Rische, Tel +49 (0)30 679 282 69, mail@rische-pr.de