Experiencing Germany

Alba D’Urbano, an Italian artist, has been living and working in Leipzig for 15 years. In our interview, she talks about the openness and great cultural potential of a city that has undergone dramatic changes – one in which the scars and upheavals of the past are still visible nonetheless.

“Leipzig’s the place for me! ‘Tis quite a little Paris; people there acquire a certain easy finish’d air.” These are the words Goethe has a student utter in his “Faust” poem. Can you share this enthusiasm?

Yes, I can, though I do think that the picture that Goethe paints of Leipzig is quite different to the city we see today. What makes Leipzig interesting today is its brokenness. The scars of history are still visible, in the city’s architecture, in its streets. And there is a special emptiness, offering space and freedom to pursue one’s own activities.

Until the nineteen twenties, Leipzig was a middle-class city that was very much characterized by trade and commerce. A large section of its population – including artists and others interested in culture – were Jewish in origin. Many of them were expelled or murdered during the Nazi dictatorship. The war and the economic conflict between East and West during the GDR era meant that many people left the city, and sadly this process continued even after 1989. However, one can sense a strong will to implant something new on the basis of the region’s former culture, and there is great potential here, particularly in the area of culture. This is what makes Leipzig special, even if the city still has to live off economic subsidies.

From Tivoli to Leipzig

You were born in Tivoli near Rome. Is Leipzig your adopted home?

The different stages of my life have always been determined by my work. I studied painting and philosophy in Rome. At the same time, I was very heavily involved in the political-artistic movement, particularly the feminist movement, which existed in the nineteen seventies. We experimented with performances and media. I decided to leave Italy because I wanted to get better training in the area of media art, which is why I took an MA degree in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste (now the Berlin University of the Arts). Years later, I moved from Frankfurt to Leipzig when I was offered a chair at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts.

External and internal perspectives

Tourism managers are proud that Leipzig was recommended as a tourist destination by the New York Times in 2010 and by the Guardian in 2011 – above all because of Bach, Schumann and Mendelssohn, the famous musicians who worked in the city. But also because of the Baumwollspinnerei (cotton spinning works) in Leipzig, a hip venue for contemporary art. Is that too narrow a view?

That is always a double-edged strategy. On the one hand, it can be a problem if the emphasis is placed on just one “unique feature” of a city. On the other hand, it is without doubt advantageous for the city and its inhabitants if they draw the attention of the media. If tourists come to Leipzig, they are bound to discover other things too ...

What would you recommend?

The Monument to the Battle of the Nations, because it is so horrific. It has an archaic beauty and expresses a nationalistic consciousness that bled dry the entire twentieth century. That truly is a monument, in both a positive and a negative sense. It is something particular that German culture produced at a certain period of time. Yes, it is like a temple, but a temple of horror.

What has changed since you have been living in Leipzig?

When I came here in 1993 to give my audition lecture, everything was still drab and grey. We found it difficult to find a café. The city’s Eastern past could still be felt very strongly. Nonetheless, I immediately had a sense of this being a place where I could live. The unbroken urban structure and homogeneous centre appeared Mediterranean to me at the time. Little by little, I grew into Leipzig, and the city has also grown and evolved to some extent with me: our relationship, so to speak, has become closer and closer. Lots of cafés and small shops opened up, there’s a weekly market in the centre where I can buy my fresh vegetables, and river channels were cleared. In the early days there were only a few cramped “Konsum” shops, as the supermarkets in the GDR were called. The whole attitude to life has simply changed, and the city is once again becoming more like the “little Paris” Goethe describes in “Faust”.

Has your view of the city changed too?

Not really. I feel that Leipzig and the eastern part of Germany as a whole are still very much disadvantaged and undervalued regions. Too little has been done for these cities since German reunification. Facades have been renovated, yet the economic resources are lacking to really kick start the old commerce and industry again.

Localizing big issues

You have encouraged your students to stage exhibitions at all kinds of different places around the city – like the exhibition “Das Böse ist ein Eichhörnchen” (i.e. Evil is a Squirrel) in the district court. What has been the outcome of this in terms of new experiences?

I believe that a university should not be an ivory tower, which is why I work on two levels: some projects concentrate on issues inherently related to art, while others place the focus on political and social themes. Because places are not only geographical locations but comprise a whole tapestry of relationships, I have tried over the years with my students to localize topical global issues on the smaller map of Leipzig. We have realized projects in institutions with which there are functional or architectural correlations – from the natural history museum to the opera, from the trade fair centre to the district and federal constitutional court.

A few years ago, a number of young painters – graduates of the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts – caused an international sensation by forming the “New Leipzig School”. What is your view of this hype?

I do not allow myself to be influenced by hypes. They are simply wave movements without any real substance. There are a number of artists within the New Leipzig School of whom I think very highly. I myself studied painting and love painting, even though I believe in diversity of media and run a class in intermedia. For me it is all about art, not the medium. There are wonderful artists in Leipzig, be they media artists, photographers or installation artists.