21.02.2018 - Mischa Leinkauf, moderated by Maike Mia Höhne
In their new, space-filling video installation, 4. Halbzeit, Wermke /Leinkauf investigate the central role played by organised football fans in recent social movements from the Occupy actions to Maidan Square in Kiev. Invited for the Berlinale 2015 with their short film Symbolic Threats, the artist duo plays fluidly between the worlds of film, performance and art exhibition. Like many artists with a strong brand, they are now often expected to reproduce their signature: an unruly post-grafitti and street art aesthetic that thematises notions of freedom and stages subversive and risky interventions in public space. In conversation with Berlinale Shorts curator Maike Mia Höhne, Talents alumnus Mischa Leinkauf discusses why artists need to keep reinventing themselves and how the duo develops and finances each new piece with the help of museums, galleries – and lots of perseverance.
A filmmaker and curator, Maike Mia Höhne has been the curator and head of Berlinale Shorts since 2007. She works as a curator and jury member for several institutions and festivals around the world and is involved in film funding on a regional and national level. She also teaches film at the University of Applied Sciences Europe in Hamburg. As of March 2019, she will take over as artistic director of the Hamburg International Short Film Festival.