Katharina Pehtke
Reproduktion / Reproduction
Artistic Research in Practise: Images and video, 2019–2024
The correlation of a place and its different ideals. Or: How it is to be teaching artistic self-fulfillment in the very same room that I was born in.
There is a maternity hospital next to the Art University in Hamburg, it is where my mother gave birth to me. Both buildings were from the same architect with a great vision from 100 years ago. (Male) artists were asked to place sculptures to illustrate the buildings’ functions. When the maternity hospital closed down (for neoliberal reason), artistic self-fulfillment moved in – in the form of seven different media schools. One of them being the institute that I work for: I am a professor in filmmaking at the University of Arts in Hamburg. The delivery room where I saw the light of day for the first time is now a modern cinema. On my way to work I pass by the ideal of a mother, engraved in stone: Day and night, sitting there bare naked, embracing her child selflessly. My own children being in daycare. Crying for their mother. Only their mother. I start investigating and the history of my family finally reveals beliefs and assumptions that kept women from doing what they really needed to be doing.
Katharina Pehtke
Reproduktion / Reproduction
Artistic Research in Practise: Images and video, 2019–2024
The correlation of a place and its different ideals. Or: How it is to be teaching artistic self-fulfillment in the very same room that I was born in.
There is a maternity hospital next to the Art University in Hamburg, it is where my mother gave birth to me. Both buildings were from the same architect with a great vision from 100 years ago. (Male) artists were asked to place sculptures to illustrate the buildings’ functions. When the maternity hospital closed down (for neoliberal reason), artistic self-fulfillment moved in – in the form of seven different media schools. One of them being the institute that I work for: I am a professor in filmmaking at the University of Arts in Hamburg. The delivery room where I saw the light of day for the first time is now a modern cinema. On my way to work I pass by the ideal of a mother, engraved in stone: Day and night, sitting there bare naked, embracing her child selflessly. My own children being in daycare. Crying for their mother. Only their mother. I start investigating and the history of my family finally reveals beliefs and assumptions that kept women from doing what they really needed to be doing.