In an age of overlapping ecological, political, and social crises, the question of care and responsibility takes on enormous significance. Who cares for whom, and under what conditions? How can we think of care beyond normative role models, structural isolation, and exploitation? In light of the climate crisis, wars, growing social inequality, and the profound experiences during the pandemic, one thing is clear: without radically rethinking care work, a more just future cannot be achieved. The group screening brings together three video works that deal with practices of care. Starting from the private sphere, the works develop perspectives on care beyond the neoliberal burden of personal responsibility and examine how solidarity can be conceived and lived.
Two of the works address parenthood as a biographical and socio-political space of experience. A third video is dedicated to intergenerational support in LGBTQI+ communities. All three works radically question the ideal of the heteronormative nuclear family as a universal model of care. A further focus is on non-human organisms. They exemplify vulnerable and at the same time resistant forms of solidarity-based coexistence – beyond the conception of nature as a “resource.” Visually, the works employ experimental cinematic strategies: from AI-generated imagery that envisions childhood in dystopian future scenarios to the chemical manipulation of film material as a deliberate counterpoint to control, measurability, and the supposedly objective language of scientific image production.
Susann Maria Hempel
The works of Susann Maria Hempel and Stéphanie Lagarde both take their personal experiences of becoming parents during the pandemic as their starting point. Hempel’s video “Hope Road” (2025, 12 min.) reflects her creative crisis in the face of the disastrous state of the world: in this situation, the existence of a small child seems to demand something other than the production of art.In her partly hand-animated short film, the artist finds her way out of this dilemma by adopting a child’s perspective – one that is consistently empathetic. She deals with the worldviews of indigenous communities in the Amazon region, who conceive of humanity beyond anthropocentric models. The connection to the earth is understood as a comforting element.
Rob Crosse
“Wood for the Trees” (2023, 13 min.) is a film by Rob Crosse that deals with forms of care, coexistence, and aging. At its core is the question of how intergenerational exchange and communal ways of life can be supported and valued. The film connects two seemingly different worlds: a queer multi-generational housing project in Berlin – the Lebensort Vielfalt am Südkreuz, run by Schwulenberatung Berlin – and a research team collecting data on the history of trees in a primary forest. Interviews with future residents of the housing project and scientists from a dendrochronological laboratory provide insights into alternative models of coexistence grounded in diversity and shared responsibility.
Stephanie Lagarde
In “Extra Life (and Decay)” (2025, 21 min.), Stéphanie Lagarde establishes a polyphonic narrator: filmmaker, parent, forest, insect, mushroom, educator. They declare that they will no longer let themselves be exploited by the world of work and emphasise the central role of collectives in resisting authority structures and policies of isolation. The film draws connections between the invention of the “nuclear family” and the establishment of the “average tree” in forestry. Both appear as attempts to force life into controllable, standardised, profitable units. Lagarde celebrates practices of solidarity like hospitality as a survival strategy and applies them to the very making of the film through collective working methods and performances. She sees it as an ode to the multitude, the illegible, the immeasurable.
IBB Video Space
Since 2011 the IBB Video Space has been screening artists who work with time-based media. The programme features not only established names in contemporary video art but also up-and-coming artists rarely seen in museums to date. For these, the Berlinische Galerie seeks to facilitate an institutional début. Each screening brings a new encounter with work that raises questions about the medium and about social or political issues. Importance is attached to including marginalised perspectives and to shedding light on the impact of power structures.
