back
DFA-Conference 2025 in Mannheim
03-04.05.2025
Mannheim
Florian-Waldeck-Saal des Museum Zeughaus, C5, 68159 Mannheim
We cordially invite you to the summer conference in Mannheim! DFA members and invited guests will present their photographic work for discussion. Selected lectures will be streamed LIVE on Facebook.
Florian Waldeck Hall of the Museum Zeughaus, C5, 68159 Mannheim
10:00 Welcome: Ingo Taubhorn, President of the DFA
10:20 – 11:10 Karen Irmer
11:10 – 12:00 Thomas Bergner
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 13:50 Wolfram Janzer
13:50 – 14:40 Markus Kaesler
14:40 – 15:10 Coffee break
15:10 – 16:00 Michael Jochum
16:00 – 16:50 Andrea Sunder-Plaßmann
16:50 – 17:10 Coffee break
17:10 – 18:00 Wolfgang Zurborn
19:00 Opening „Radikal“ with 29 artists of the DFA as part of the festival OFF/FOTO 2025 in Mannheim, 24.4. – 25.5.2025
Atelierhaus Altes Güteramt, Güterhallenstraße 18A:
Ute Behrend, Thomas Brenner, Kai Brüninghaus, Kurt Buchwald, Ralf Cohen, Marina D’Oro, Amin El Dib, Anja Engelke, Frank Göldner, Wolfgang Gscheidle, Lois Hechenblaikner, Wolfram Janzer, Katrin Jaquet, Gudrun Kemsa, Knut Wolfgang Maron, Achim Mohné, Robert Harding Pittman, Nina Röder, Eva Schmeckenbecher, Michael Schnabel, Claus Stolz, Ingo Taubhorn, Marc Volk, Wolfgang Zurborn
Galerie Maquis Mami Wata, Bürgermeister-Fuchs-Straße 6:
Bernd Arnold, Esther Hagenmaier, Karen Irmer, Elke Seeger, Hermann Stamm
11.00 General Meeting of the DFA
—
In her talk, Karen Irmer will introduce us to the video work "Silent Piece." This recording lasts four minutes and thirty-three seconds, exactly the same length as John Cage's iconic piece "4 Minutes 33," in which not a single note is played. It depicts a motionless, almost frozen, gloomy stretch of shore. Only upon careful observation can a barely perceptible change in the scenery be detected in the reflection of the water. Bright, three-dimensional forms emerge as if from nowhere. These are created by sunlight falling selectively onto the shore. The beam of light not only generates new forms but is also the only indicator of the passage of time. The artist also provides an insight into the publication "State of Change," recently published by Kerber Verlag, and the photographic series of the same name. The book provides an overview of her artistic work to date. In her photographs and film installations, both poetic and analytical, Irmer reflects on the relationship between illusion and reality, but also between artwork and viewer.
Karen Irmer, born in 1974, is a German artist working in the media of photography and video. Her works have been shown at venues including the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Haus der Kunst Munich, and the VII Tashkent Biennale of Contemporary Art. Irmer taught at the Braunschweig Academy of Fine Arts from 2015 to 2017. Her works are represented in international collections, including the Spallart Collection. Karen Irmer's visual strategies aim to disrupt the routines of recognition and counter them with a perceptual stance sensitive to ambiguity. By dissolving the boundaries between film and photography, she creates subtle irritations that encourage reflection on the relationship between perception and reality.
In my artistic practice, I explore the night—not only as a motif, but also as a state of perception. I'm interested in how everyday objects, landscapes, and surfaces lose their usual form and function under the conditions of subdued light. I also explore the permeability of photography as a medium that overlaps with other artistic disciplines when viewing the images.
The camera is always the technical starting point, but its use goes beyond mere depiction. Through the way I photograph my subjects, I explore the boundaries between the visible and the invisible. As a result, some of my photographs break away from their original identity and enter into a visual dialogue with film, painting, or drawing. This exploration of media boundaries is an essential part of my concept and opens up new narrative paths within the motifs. My works stand alone as individual images, but can be formed into open sequences. In wall installations and publications, varying constellations emerge that are never definitively established.
Thomas Bergner, born in Plauen in 1985, lives and works in Nuremberg and Leipzig. After training as a photographer, he studied visual communication from 2010 to 2011, followed by fine art from 2011 to 2016 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. He completed his studies there as a master student of Prof. Heike Baranowsky. From 2016 to 2023, he taught at the photographers' workshop at the same institution. Scholarships have taken him to the Summer Academy in Salzburg and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, among others.
What interests me:
Reduction to the essentials...
Images that will still be valuable to me the day after tomorrow...
A quote from the painter John Dwyer McLaughlin that's important to me:
"Reducing forms to a state that evokes a sense of recognition in the viewer."
40 Years of the GDL/DFA
Wolfram Janzer, born in 1945 in Singen Hohentwiel, received his architecture degree from the University of Stuttgart in 1972. He has had his own architectural and photography practice since 1978. From 1982 to 1985, he worked with Horst Bredekamp on "Vicino Orsini and the Sacred Grove of Bomarzo." Appointed to the GDL/DFA in 1985, and since 1990 he has been the founder of wolframjanzerarchitekturbilder. He has taught at various universities, including the Institute for Art History at the University of Stuttgart until 2015. He has held numerous photography exhibitions throughout Europe.
www.wolfram-janzer.de
Instagram.com/wolframjanzer
Markus Kaesler views his work as a direct consequence of questions and facts, rather than as a mere depiction of reality.
For him, his work resembles a kind of laboratory experiment in which he, as the visual artist, sets the parameters and enters into a dialogue with the material. He is interested in the expressive possibilities of specific light-sensitive materials and seeks to utilize their properties to his own advantage – in image creation, message, and presentation.
He is convinced that all these levels are inextricably intertwined. He understands the creative process of a work as an inherently important part of the visual message and thus of the final work. His work is closely linked to conceptual approaches based on the structuring foundation of facts and figures.
These external factors form a framework within which he, as the visual artist, can act with maximum freedom.
Markus Kaesler, born in 1977, conceptually explores lens-free photography techniques and the cameraless expression of light-sensitive materials. He completed a photography apprenticeship in Heidelberg and is a member of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) and the Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK). Winner of the Jobo Large Format Prize in 2018 and the Vintage Grand Prix at the Vintage Photo Festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in 2023.
The Gemischter Satz is a winemaking term used primarily in Austria and refers to a wine made from different grapes from the same vineyard.
In a figurative sense, it refers to my photographs, which all originate from a single source but come from completely different contexts and were composed together (different motifs, from different themes and projects). In classical music, a movement is a self-contained part of a multi-part musical work, such as a suite or a symphony. A movement is a term that has various meanings and is used in different contexts. In sports (e.g., tennis), a movement is a leap, a coffee grounds. With this ambiguity, this title repeatedly alludes to other contexts and levels, as do my photographs.
The photo essay is accompanied by a separate literary text by Anna Weidenholzer.
Michael Jochum, Munich, born in Vienna, self-taught photographer since 1980, freelance since 1989, member of the German Art Association (DFA) and the BBK (BBK). Represented in, among others, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the German Art Association (DFA) collection, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, and private collections.
Various national and international work grants and studio grants; Gersthofen Art Prize 2006.
Exhibitions in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, among others; artist books; publications in national and international photography and art magazines.
Andrea Sunder-Plassmann works at the interface of photography, film/video, and installation, experimenting transdisciplinarily with various artistic and photographic techniques. Her works emerge from a dialogue between cognitive and intuitive impulses. She explores light and time as sculptural elements and questions the haptics of tangible and intangible reality. The challenge of creating a haptic experience with the immaterial medium of light is central to her work.
The deprivation of physical experience and the lack of self-efficacy are central themes of our time. The performative plays a key role in her work, inviting viewers to identify with it or experience the work immersively. Her many years of teaching and curatorial work have shaped her understanding of creativity and broaden her artistic practice.
Andrea Sunder-Plassmann lives and works in Berlin and Havana, Cuba.
She studied Fine Arts and Art Education at the UDK Berlin, specializing in experimental photography, moving images, and temporary installations.
Her work has been shown in Europe, Switzerland, the USA, Australia, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Korea, and China. Since 2001, she has taught in Norway, Germany, and Cuba, with guest lectureships in China, Canada, Colombia, Brazil, the USA, and Australia. She is also involved as a co-curator in various projects, most recently the 15th Havana Biennial.
www.sunder-plassmann.de
info@sunder-plassmann.de
Upon my admission to the DFA in 1997, I was immediately informed that I would be co-curating the exhibition at the next annual conference. I immediately understood the role assigned to me, and I gratefully accepted it. From 1998 to the present, I have been involved in the organization of over 40 DFA exhibitions and have curated many of them myself.
My goal was to present a wide variety of artistic positions, from documentary, journalistic, subjective, generative, staged, conceptual, and even experimental photography. At the German Photographic Academy, all of these approaches to the medium are represented with outstanding works, and all styles should be visible in the exhibition program.
In my talk, I would like to present examples of ideas, concepts, exhibits, installation photographs, and publications from some of the exhibitions in which I placed works by DFA members in a dialogic context.
