Ingo Niermann and Erik Niedling
Walder (2023) / Eigner (2024)
Trailer
Walder, courtesy of the artists and EXILE, Vienna
Today, Germany is divided between a populist return to nationalism and a neoliberal elite instrumentalizing the memory of the Holocaust. Ingo Niermann and Erik Niedling’s video diptych explores ways of evading both pressures.
In the first film, Walder, a white male German subject seeks to free himself from all collectivism and reinvent himself as his own master. His voice paraphrases 19th-century idealism and its anarchic spirit, at the same time mixing it with contemporary alt-right libertarianism and self-healing practices of the left.
In the second film, Eigner, commissioned by steirischer herbst, the same protagonist grapples directly with Germany’s Nazi past, visiting the grounds of the Buchenwald Memorial. Instead of evading the camp’s presence, he tenderly embraces its extremes of perpetratorship and victimhood.
Ingo Niermann (1969, Bielefeld, FRG) is a writer known for his speculative novels and non-fiction as well as his forays into contemporary art. His meticulous and playful utopias—such as those of an Army of Love or a Monadic Age—defy established certainties across all ideological camps. Together with the artist Erik Niedling, Niermann runs the Documentation Center Thuringia. He lives in Basel.
Erik Niedling (1973, Erfurt, GDR) is a conceptual artist known for his rigorous works. His films, photographs, paintings, and installations are shown internationally in museums, galleries, and at biennials. Together with the writer Ingo Niermann, Niedling runs the Documentation Center Thuringia. He lives in Erfurt.
Walder (2023)
4K video, stereo sound, 7:26 min.
Courtesy of EXILE, Vienna
Eigner (2024)
4K video, stereo sound, 7:31 min.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24
Coproduced by steirischer herbst ’24 and Documentation Center Thuringia
With the kind support of the Swiss Embassy in Austria