Between 1994 and 1999, Berlin stood at a threshold, still marked by the traces of division yet already vibrating with a new kind of energy. It was a city that had not yet decided what it wanted to become, a space of contradictions and experiments, raw and unfinished. In ANFANG / BEGINNING, Christian Stemmler revisits this uncertain yet fertile moment through his own photographs, a collection that functions less as documentation and more as a lived memory of transformation. His images trace a city and a generation in motion: nights that blur into mornings, fleeting friendships, and rooms filled with both exhaustion and desire.

What began as a private act, taking photographs without purpose or audience, has turned almost three decades later into a visual testimony of an era that feels distant and yet strangely familiar. Stemmler’s images were made instinctively, without a sense of belonging to a photographic discourse. They emerged from daily life: improvised portraits on wrinkled bedsheets, snapshots in smoky clubs, fragments of faces and gestures captured on public transport or in shared flats. In their unpolished immediacy, they reveal a city that was still learning to breathe again, open, unpredictable, and porous.

Viewed today, these photographs are more than remnants of youth; they are fragments of a collective state of mind. They show Berlin before it was redefined by capital and global attention, when chaos and creativity existed side by side and possibility seemed endless. Stemmler’s return to these negatives—scanning, revisiting, remembering—becomes a quiet act of excavation. It is less about looking back than about reconnecting with a time, a feeling, and the reasons one begins to create in the first place.

ANFANG / BEGINNING unfolds as both remembrance and renewal. It reflects the vitality of a city that has always been a projection surface for ideas of freedom, and it marks the reawakening of an artist who once set the camera aside. The images resist nostalgia; instead, they evoke a form of sincerity that feels rare today, a closeness to life that is neither curated nor composed. Stemmler’s Berlin was rough, direct, and unguarded. His photographs preserve that atmosphere, allowing it to linger: the noise of a night that never really ended, and the quiet that always followed.

The second edition of ANFANG / BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994–99 will be launched on November 6, 2025, at Voo Store, Oranienstraße 24, Berlin — an opportunity to experience Stemmler’s work in direct conversation with the spirit of its time and to immerse oneself in the atmosphere of a Berlin that no longer exists.

As Rick steps out to begin the signing, the energy in the room shifts. His community is already lined up, a long queue of devotees clutching the same white book, Temple of Love with Michèle Lamy gazing the cover. Michèle herself moves through the crowd with her usual magnetic grace. Some fans manage to steal a quick selfie with her, others share a few whispered words as she signs their copies too. 

The exhibition also highlights the ways Lewis uses space and architecture as part of her work. Light, shadow, and sound are not just backdrops but active elements that shape the performance and the viewer’s experience. Visitors move through the rooms noticing how bodies interact with the environment, how gestures leave traces, and how moments of stillness can feel full of meaning. In this way, the exhibition becomes more than a presentation of works. It is a place to feel, to reflect, and to sense the layers of history and emotion that unfold in real time.

In the atrium, her new piece Wayward Chant unfolds. Figures appear and vanish. Shadows stretch across the walls while sounds hum and voices echo through the space. Movements repeat, shift, and sometimes almost disappear, leaving traces that linger in the mind. Visitors encounter fleeting gestures, subtle interactions, and unexpected moments of stillness. On 28 and 29 November the piece will be presented as a full evening performance, offering an intensified experience where light, sound, and movement converge.

Other works in the exhibition trace memory, resistance, and survival in different forms. Some are quiet and reflective, inviting close attention. Others are intense, almost confronting, combining film, installation, and live performance to show how history flows into the present. Dancers repeat, pause, and return, making the exhibition a living rehearsal as much as a display. Scattered throughout the rooms, books selected by Lewis and her collaborators offer another layer of engagement, giving visitors time to think, explore, and connect with the ideas behind the work.

Throughout the exhibition the body becomes a space for reflection and dialogue. Visitors notice how movement, gesture, and voice carry traces of personal and collective histories. Sometimes these moments are quiet, subtle, and almost easy to miss. Other times they are intense, demanding attention and holding the weight of experience. The spaces between performers and audience, between sound and image, create openings for thought and feeling, where the eye and the ear can linger. A glance, a pause, a whispered phrase, or the echo of a gesture can build into a profound sense of connection. Visitors move through the rooms at their own pace, encountering moments that feel familiar and others that surprise or unsettle. The exhibition does not offer simple answers or easy resolutions. Instead it invites viewers to slow down, to notice the small and fleeting, and to remain attentive to histories, emotions, and experiences that might otherwise pass unseen. In this way the exhibition becomes a living conversation, unfolding between art, space, and the people who inhabit it, a space where reflection and engagement can continue long after one leaves.

 

Curated by Nora Swantje Almes with Alexandra Philippovskaya, I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR… is not just about seeing. It is about listening. Feeling. Bearing witness.

 

Ligia Lewis: I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…
16.10.202518.1.2026
Location: Gropius Bau, Berlin
Address: Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin
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