»Leaving Europe«
Jana Müller, Felicitas Hoppe and Alexej Meschtschanow
curated by Stephan Klee
Opening Thu 28 Mar 7 – 10 pm
29 Mar – 10 May 2019
Mon - Thu 9 am - 6 pm
Fri 9 am - 2:30 pm
Book Release
On occasion of the exhition-opening the art book
"THE MAKING OF PRAWDA", Distanz Verlag
will be released.
Haus am Lützowplatz and frontviews at IG Metall exhibition space
IG Metall Ausstellungsraum
Alte Jakobstraße 149
10969 Berlin
Reading and Finissage Thu 9 May 7 pm
Felicitas Hoppe reads from her Novel
"Prawda: Eine Amerikanische Reise"
with the support of IG Metall and Haus am Lützowplatz
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In the year 1935, at the beginning of the Great Terror in the USSR and in the midst of the Great Depression in the US, the writers Ilja Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow travelled in a silver Ford through the vastness of America. They were guided by the brave, immigrant Engineer Solomon Trone from the East Coast to the West Coast and back to the East Coast, all commissioned by the Soviet State Organ PRAWDA. What almost looked like a classical road-trip was in fact a tour with a secret mission and higher purpose. The two Russians concluded their humorous and partially bizarre experiences in the land of the class enemy in their famous travel-diary-novel “Little Golden America” with photographs and texts.
Exactly 80 years later the artists Jana Müller, Alexej Meschtschanow and the author Felicitas Hoppe follow the near exact route of the literary duo, supported by the skilful guidance of professor Ulrike Rainer, also an immigrant. From 2015 until 2018 a renewed, literal, but this time also artistic, survey of the Great Brother America has been developed. The work is produced from impressions collected during their travels as a complete multimedia-based project, encompassing text, image, object, sound, installation and an online archive. In doing so everything is based in personal experience and the formal language of the travellers. This project is the “Grand Tour – Leaving Europe”. In addition two books are released about the new road- trip: Felicitas Hoppe’s novel “PRAWDA. Eine amerikanische Reise”, published by Fischer Verlag and the art book “THE MAKING OF PRAWDA“ by Felicitas Hoppe, Jana Müller, Alexej Meschtschanow and Ulrike Rainer published by Distanz Verlag. The final, whole work “Grand Tour – Leaving Europe” as well as the newly released books are on view from the end of March until mid April 2019 at the exhibition space of IG Metall in Berlin.
Stephan Klee
The online archive of the road-trip: http://www.3668ilfpetrow.com
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related links
IG Metall
Haus am Lützowplatz