TURN! videoinstallation

please watch full screen and in HD quality by clicking on the Youtube icon and watching it on Youtube.



Large parts of the two videos from the installation of TURN! can now be viewed online. The video installation is shown in a space where the two projections are seperated, so one cannot easily see both projections at the same time. The videos show the two extreme perspectives on the performance TURN! that took place in June 2011 in the Zentralstadion Leipzig in Germany.

TURN! explores what a contemporary synchronised collective could be. With state-socialist and communist traditions in the background and individualism as the current norm, this collective is not an unambiguous body. What are moments that connections, communities and collaborations come into being? And what are the moments that the collective can be used as a spectacular image for commercial or propagandistic purposes? The border between utopian ideas of collectivity and totalitarian spectacles is very thin. There are complex power relations at play even in the most emancipated and democratic groups of people. Exactly this tension is what the installation of TURN! tries to explore.

TURN! solo in A und V gallerie

In July 2012 the video-installation of TURN! was shown in the A und V gallery in Leipzig, not far from the Zentralstadion Leipzig, where in June 2011 the performance of TURN! took place with a group of around 150 people.
The TURN! publication was presented at the opening of this show as well. This book consists of a collective writing by 50 of the participants, describing a part of their experience in the stadium during the performance. It was a pleasure to have many of the authors present, along with many more of the participants. In the light of the performance that took place just over a year earlier and in the context of Leipzig's history, many interesting enthusiastic and critical conversations occured.

TURN! Publication now in store

The TURN! Publication that came out this summer is now not only for sale in Leipzig at MZIN and in the bookshop of the Museum der bildenden Künste, but also at Printed Matter Inc. in New York City after visiting the New York Art Bookfair with CASCO. The basement of this amazing bookshop was seriously flooded during the hurricane, so lets hope all books and the shop recover well.
Soon TURN! is hopefully also to be found in Amsterdam and Berlin stores, so keep checking for more news.

all DAI publications at the New York Art Book Fair 2012 in MoMa PS1.

TURN! Publication

The publication TURN! is a document of a performance. It is a collective writing that describes a mass-choreography, which took place as an artistic experiment on June 2nd 2011. Hundred and fifty participants danced on the field of the central stadium in Leipzig, Germany. This stadium used to be the arena for socialist mass gymnastics during the GDR. Today it’s a commercial football stadium.

For this publication, all participants and collaborators of the performance were asked to describe a part of their experience from the ‘I’ perspective. Fifty of them responded. Their writings form one big subjective body of memories, associations and relations that the performance evoked.

Archived instructions and images of GDR mass-gymnastics are interwoven with this collective description of the mass-choreography that took place in 2011. The publication shows a mass that cannot escape history, but that is at the same time thrown into contemporary reality and can’t go back, whether the individuals in the mass would like to or not.

In the middle of the book, the initiator of the performance and publication, artist Anna Hoetjes, speaks to the artist and writer Mattin about the difficulties she encountered when working on the film of this performance. The performance was an artistic experiment, an attempt to explore the strength of collective action, as well as the power structures that lie behind any display of synchronized body movement. There was no audience present during the performance, but there were a lot of cameras. What happened when the experiment became an art film? What power shifts occur when you turn a collective action into an image that is edited by one person?

This publication is made by: Melanie Albrecht, Normen Alt, Elsa Artmann, Nora Benecke, Jette Blümler, Casco, Binna Choi, Katja van Driel, de Dutch Art Institute, Benjamin Franz, Lara Frei, Lilli Gärtner, Anja Goslar, Maria Grzeszkiewicz, Kristina Sylvia Günther, Viktoria Günther, Joanna Grzybek, Stefanie Hampel, Nastasia Hase, Sabine Hattenkerl, Sylvie Hausfeldt, Yolande van der Heide, Heike Hennig, Anna Hoetjes, Konstanze Hünich, Frederieke Isensee, Antholy Isles, Sylvia Kadur, Daniel Kane, Gabriela Kobus, Claudia Köppe, Nico Krause, Burkhart Kunst, Franziska Lukas, Tilman Meckel, Martina Metzig, Mattin, Róisín Ní Leathlóbhair, Christof Nüssli, Aurelia Bernadette Ofori, Inka Perl, Annegret Peuker, Gereon Rahnfeld, Friedrich Rauschdorf, Juliane Richter, Juliane Rieder, Nicolette Schiffner, Yvonne Schmidt, Maria Schubert, Silvana Schumann, Lina Schwab, Petra Paula Schwab, Erik Steiger, Babett Tauber, Marie Thöne, Katrin Tranitz, Eva Vinke, Michael Wehren, Werkplaats Typografie, Maeshelle West-Davies, Eva Wulsten, Julia Zupfer

Final show and book launch at the Dutch art Institute

Saturday 7th of July 2012
for more information click here.

TURN! in the Service Garage Amsterdam

An exhibition in the Service Garage Amsterdam       -       9th of June until the 8th of July 2012

with works by:
Arik Visser
Anna Hoetjes
Bernd Trasberger
Cedric Van Turtelboom
Christof Zwiener
Helmut Dick
John Körmeling

Dutch Art Institute at RAW Material Company Dakar

This collaborative performance 'Routine' took place in the public space just outside the Raw Material Company - centre for art, knowledge and society - in the Sicap area in Dakar, Senegal. 

The participants of this performance previously worked together as a group for one year during one intensive day per month as part of the project Practice Theatre at the Dutch art Institute in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Based on our working process and the way we dealt with exchange, feedback and collaboration during this period, we started to develop a performance during a concentrated work period at the Ecole des Sables, a contemporary African dance centre near Dakar. Our encounters in the city of Dakar, our reactions to group processes and questions of our own positions within contemporary society were explored and reflected in our actions on the street.

The project considered, occupied and enacted aspects of theatre and its operations – to consider the positions from which we speak, how we act, and what, through different frames, speaking and action might be. We worked on developing a model of ‘theatre’ as the group has come to understand it through our work together and developed a series of ‘performances’ through which this model might be demonstrated. (Tanja Baudoin from 'If I can't dance I don't want to part of your revolution')

With: Mercedes Azpilicueta, Rosie Heinrich, Anna Hoetjes, Eden Mitsenmacher, Lara Morais, Ane Ostrem, Eric Philippoz, Vanja Smiljanic, Marija Sujica, Witta Tjan, Sander Uitdehaag and Mariana Zamarbide


This performance was part of 'Work in Progress' a presentation of several projects that were part of the program at the MFA at the Dutch Art Institute.

TURN! Leipzig on the 2nd of June 2011

TURN! was an event that took place on June the 2nd 2011 on the field of the main sports-stadium in Leipzig, Germany. 150 people came together to perform a mass-choreography. This event was filmed. There was no audience present in the Stadium.

The choreography that was created in collaboration with the choreographer Heike Hennig and composer Marnix Ike critically reflects the German Gymnastics- and Sport-events in the GDR and other events that took place on the ground on which the stadium in Leipzig is build. It refers to contemporary mass culture, to sports, demonstrations, pop, and contemporary western structures. We tried to find a way re-define the structures in the past and the present.

I initiated and organized TURN! in order to research the possibility in today's western society to come together physically and to create one thing together. How can this be done without force, without exclusion, without a propagandistic or commercial purpose? How can people (re-)claim a space that has been appropriated by political regimes in the past, and by commercial powers in the present? How can this be visualized?

TURN! Flashmobs

To create more awareness about the fact that TURN! was going to take place in the stadium of Leipzig, and to communicate that anyone could participate in the mass-choreography that was going to take place on the field of this big stadium, we organized many Flashmobs in public and non-public spaces in Leipzig. Look at this video of the first Flashmob day in Leipzig. For more Flashmob video's you can check out the TURN! Youtube account HERE.

TURN! the preparations

TURN! started as my project, but became many people's project. Whether it's art, sport, dance, film, a flashmob, social, psychological, idealistic, or crazy, you can decide for yourself.

It is an experiment about movement, collectivity, history, individuality, joy, physicality and freedom.

It's not made to promote any political system or any commercial company or product, it's made to experience.

I am so proud this is happening, and it is with great GREAT pleasure, that I present

the WEBSITE to you: www.turn-leipzig.org

You might feel intimidated by all the German language. Don't be, just look at the pictures :)