Calendar

Lutz Dammbeck
Das Meisterspiel, 1998
Deutschland
106 Min.
Buch und Regie: Lutz Dammbeck
German Language

On Thursday, February 5, at 7 pm, in cooperation with Filmclub 813, Lutz Dammbeck’s Das Meisterspiel will be shown. The artist will be present. Following the film, Valérie Knoll (director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein) and Lutz Dammbeck will hold a short discussion.

In 1994, 27 paintings by Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer were painted over with black paint by unknown vandals at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. On one painting, the perpetrators wrote the words UND DA BESCHLOSS ER AKTIONIST ZU SEIN (And so he decided to be an actionist), a paraphrase of a quote by Adolf Hitler. At the same time, a series of bomb attacks shook Austria, leaving people injured and dead. A group calling itself the “Bavarian Liberation Army” (BBA) claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying it sees Austria’s German identity under threat. The attacks are staged as a fictional historical role-playing game that reenacts the liberation of Vienna from the Turkish armies. So are the attacks coming from the right? Is there a connection between the attack on the Vienna Academy and the BBA bombs, as Arnulf Rainer and his circle initially suspect? Or is it all just a hallucination and a confused dream, provoked by Vienna, the “laboratory for the end of the world”?

Lutz Dammbeck (*1948 in Leipzig) initially worked as a painter and graphic artist before focusing on the production of animated and experimental films and media collages in the late 1970s. He later also produced essay and documentary films as well as installations and participated in numerous international exhibitions.

Admission is granted upon donation to Filmclub 813. Registration is not required.

Opening of the solo exhibition Defection by Monika Baer (27.2–3.5.2026), 6–9 pm

Further information will follow shortly.

Guided tour of Defection with the artist Monika Baer. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Defection. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Defection with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Defection. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Defection with Valérie Knoll, director of Kölnischer Kunstverein and curator of the exhibition. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

We cordially invite you to a conversation between artists Monika Baer and Amy Sillman on Saturday, 2 May at 7 pm at Kölnischer Kunstverein. Admission is free, registration is not required.