Chemnitz and Manchester have been twinned for 40 years. To mark the anniversary, the Begehungen art festival initiated an artist-in-residence programme in both cities together with Proforma, a platform for visual art, performance and curation in Greater Manchester.
The Begehungen festival is a project in the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 programme and already shows how European exchange can be brought to life.
Visual artist Sara M. T. Richter-Höhlich and photographer Johannes Richter travelled from Chemnitz to Manchester for a fortnight at the end of October 2023. The works created during the residency are now on display there.
During the ten days of the residency, Sara M. T.Richter-Höhlich and Darren Nixon from Manchester developed an expansive installation consisting of textiles, objects, drawings, self-recorded videos and their own sound collage. The German-British artist tandem scouted places together and recorded them digitally. They metaphorically juxtapose experienced sensory stimuli from the past and present in four different film sequences. The installation is currently on display at the Longsight Art Space gallery.
Johannes Richter is at home in the genre of street photography. He roamed the city of Manchester for ten days, looking for moments that matched his theme of "working/not working". His camera was always at the ready, as there were often only a few moments to capture the situation he had discovered. His series of pictures taken in Manchester can be seen at the Soup Manchester cultural centre.
Begehungen is one of the projects for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 programme and Kulturhauptstadt GmbH is supporting the development process of the project.
