2024 | Cottbus

Our IKG meeting took place from 26 to 29 September 2024 under the motto Deep Work in Cottbus.

A large banner hangs across the entrance to the Dieselkraftwerk, the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art in Cottbus: DEMOCRACY

We immediately felt at home here. We had a wall and various plinths in the beautiful entrance hall of the Dieselkraftwerk to present our artworks. What was unusual this year was that, for the first time, we didn’t have all the participating artists hang the artworks themselves. Due to time constraints, as both the annual meeting and a subsequent symposium and exhibition opening took place on the same day, Alba D’Urbano and a team agreed to hang the works we had brought from the suitcase directly after the meeting. The result was outstanding and we were able to experience an art-intensive evening in the Dieselkraftwerk, which the director Ulrike Kremeier ceremoniously opened. The main theme of the opening speech was democracy and its values. This was followed by two text performances and many individual discussions about our works.

Our annual meeting took place in the auditorium of the diesel power plant. Käthe Kruse opened the meeting with a declaration of love for our democracy and, together with Angela Lubic, reported on their work in their first year together as President and Managing Director. An Seebach presented initial ideas for our anniversary meeting in Cologne in 2026.

After a short break, the symposium began in the early afternoon: The economic and social situation of visual artists in Europe – a cross-border exchange of experiences.

In his lecture, Mikołaj Iwański shed light on the fundamental background to the social struggle of the artists in Poland since 2012, while Peter Johansson explained how art was part of social reconstruction in Sweden from the 1950s to the 1970s, how the artists are actively campaigning for an improvement in conditions today and what has been achieved as a result. Uwe Jonas shed light on the complexity of the social and economic challenges facing the artists in Germany. Veit Stratmann took a historical look back at the emergence of financial and social security for the artists in France. In her contribution, Doris Weinberger introduced the work content and (inter)national ramifications of women artists’ organisations.

The symposium was received with great enthusiasm.

On Friday, on the way to Cottbus, some IKG members had already visited Susanne Tunn’s studio in Wittmannsdorf. They were very enthusiastic about it.

Saturday began with an informative and impressive architectural tour of the university library, which was designed by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Afterwards, there was free time to visit the Pückler Park, tour the city or visit the exhibitions in the diesel power station. The next item on the programme in the afternoon was the studio of Cottbus artist Christine Geizler, who offered insights into her artistic work and gave a guided tour of her rooms. The evening bus trip to the F60 visitor mine, where we took part in the so-called ‘late shift tour’, was truly spectacular. The light installation ‘Lichterfeld F60’ is a work by the Berlin artist H. P. Kuhn, which we experienced up close. Due to the darkness, we could only guess at the breathtaking and dizzying height of the walk on the world’s largest overburden conveyor bridge. With a length of 502 metres, it is also known as the horizontal Eiffel Tower. The excursion was a real highlight.

To conclude our conference, we visited the Cottbus State Theatre on Sunday morning. The Art Nouveau building by Bernhard Sehring is his most mature architectural achievement, interweaving architecture, arts and crafts, painting and sculpture.

We would like to thank everyone involved and especially the Dieselkraftwerk for the generous use of their premises.