Photo exhibition, installed with video, mixed media & book
Book release at the opening, November 6, 6pm
Who still knows traveling people who practice the art of the circus in a centuries-old family tradition? This way of life has become rarer, especially in times when borders and walls have taken on new, deadly significance—particularly for people on the move. The photo exhibition shows pictures taken by Claudia Reiche in the 1980s of artist families and fellow travelers of the ‘Circus Royal’, which toured in and around Hamburg at the time and also made guest appearances at the adjacent Heiligengeistfeld. Descendants are still traveling in the circus and show business today – these situations are also captured with the camera.
A fundamental question that runs through the entire exhibition in literary form in a manifesto is how deviant lifestyles are perceived. Today, ‘circus’ stands less for flying humans and the dream of a liberated life. Instead, ‘stones fly’ at the ‘circus’, which has become popular as a symbol of the unfathomable other, even of a feared or celebrated evil. Clown costumes are popular as horror masks, politicians are mocked or elected as incompetent clowns. In other words, ‘circus’ is everywhere and circus is disappearing more and more. So where is the circus ring?
Guest at the Millerntorwache: Claudia Reiche: O | CIRCUS
The Millerntorwache is a branch of the Museum of Hamburg History, run by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S.
Claudia Reiche is an artist, media scholar, and curator. She deals with questions of mediality, psychoanalysis, film, and visual cultures, as well as the epistemological, aesthetic, and political implications of digital technologies. She has been teaching in the theoretical and artistic fields for many years and publishes her work. She also creates web projects, film and photography works, and exhibitions, and is active in feminist and queer projects.
