SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Emil Walde @emil_walde Involuntary Landmark, 2025 The work Involuntary Landmark consists of old windows from Duisburg’s central station. Decoupled from the location, the glass panes are hung in the exhibition space. The glass has multiple meanings: The transparency for a view through it, the separation of inside and outside as protection and boundary, the reflection of light and also the reflection of its own image and, finally, its fragility. In the installation, they also symbolize a changing industrial landscape in NRW.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Paul Valentin @vaulpalentin Hendiadyoin, 2025 3D rendering, UV print on blockout, gauze, Aubinol Mindfields, 2025 00:06:00 (loop), 4K, 9:16, sound The work consists of two curtains and a monitor. The curtains come from the Baroque theater, so called „Gassen“ (alleys). Printed, pasted or painted curtains were used in theater performances to create a perspectival illusion of nature or architecture on the stage. In this work, the curtains represent part of a restored portico. In contrast to the theater, where the audience is fixed in their seats, here the visitors can vary their position in the hall and create the illusion or dissolve the illusion themselves. In the area where the props are traditionally hidden, there is a monitor. On it video loop plays, showing the rubble of a destroyed bunker facility painted with the symbols of a code. They speak of a deception; a set that has already been destroyed built for the purpose of justifying a war. But what is true and what is the authors of this code soon no longer know themselves. Some of them seem only interested in finding a piece of the truth that is not fragile. The scenes are animated in 3D (CGI).

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Kai Werner Schmidt @kaiwernerschmidt Halle 09, 2025 Installation, slide projector, 40 slides The work examines the dialectic between physical exhibition and its visual representation. Kai Werner Schmidt takes his photographs of Halle 09 and with the help of AI, he creates an exhibition with these installations and sculptures. He explores the possibilities and boundaries between human creativity and machine image generation. The AI is not just a tool, but a collaborative partner in a creative collaborative partner in a creative, experimental dialog. In a rhythmic presentation of 40 motifs using a slide projector, analog tradition merges with digital innovation. It raises the question of authenticity in the digital age, what is real and what is deepfake. In „The Reconfigured Eye“, a standard work on this subject, the architect and media theorist William John Mitchell noted in 1992 that digitization has led to a „de-realization of the photographic world“.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Lia Sáile @liasaile (Re)tracing fragile futures, 2025 Videoinstallation, Loop, Stereo A white, oversized patch of color lies like a forgotten island in the industrial hall. Near and distant stories literally describe the floor, palpating, moving, lines traverse the surfaces and form hybrids of word and image. Violets wait trembling in the wind, points of light cause the surface to ripple. Past, present and future run across the island’s surface in handwritten and graphic form. A process of questioning and storytelling unfolds again and again. The recipients are confronted with meditative images and lines that question them about their fears and longings.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Moritz Riesenbeck @sudo_moritzriesenbeck used user (lean), 2025 Bellows (approx. 1800), 2-position / 3-way solenoid valves and control, double-acting pneumatic cylinders and accessories, CNC engraving Two 200 year old bellows, now placed in a hall of a former steel construction site which slowly raise and lower. Equipped with a pneumatic cylinder, as is standard today, they „breathe“ in and out again. These tools from the past once stood for progress and development in iron and steel production and brought more efficient production processes. The Industrialization brought economic growth on the one hand. On the other hand it led to environmental and air pollution, uncontrolled consumption of resources and social upheavals, social inequalities, urbanization and the exploitation of workers who had to work in dangerous conditions. Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) was one of the artists during this period who, in his works and his etchings, he doesn’t negate the world of ghosts like many of his contemporaries. He shows the abysses of stupidity and brutality of religious and secular power. His depiction of witches torturing small children. One of them is held by the hands and feet and abused as a bellows. The etching is engraved on a bellows and is faintly visible.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Fabio Perino @fabio.perino Lifetime Value, 2025 Wood, bread, foam, synthetic resin, gold leaf projector, video loop The following quote „panem et circenses“ is from the Roman poet Juvenal (Decimus lunius luvenalis, 59-130). It characterized how easily the „people“ can be satisfied and manipulated by political or economic rulers. The verb „obey“ is written in wooden letters on bread and in the middle an overweight girl in shining gold. In his work, Fabio Perino confronts the viewer with the question of to what extent and whether a system, legal, social or philosophical, has the right to define or even manipulate a being. People tend to follow authorities and ideologies without reflecting and sometimes thinking about what corresponds to their own convictions, what they believe in and why they believe it, and to act in this awareness.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Gustavo Gomes @gustavogomes_art Tintinnabulum, 2025 Performance, 30 min Tintinnabulum is a performance by Gustavo Gomes that explores the porous boundaries between masculinity and vulnerability through movement, spoken word, and sound. Inspired by the ancient Roman amulet — a bronze erect penis with bells believed to ward off evil — Gomes reclaims this symbol to question softness in a world that demands male hardness. The piece imagines a love story between a stoic soldier and a foreign visitor, tracing their evolving connection through trust, tension, and surrender. Bells attached to a drifting speaker and the performer’s body create a sonic landscape of attraction and friction, enveloping the space in a sensorial, shifting environment. Blending narrative, history, and personal research across Germany, France, Armenia, Georgia, and Brazil, Tintinnabulum is part of Gomes’ ongoing docu-fiction practice. It transforms the stage into a space where sound, sensuality, and the politics of masculinity converge, inviting a reflection on intimacy, vulnerability, and societal expectations. At its heart, the project is a study of embodied expression, where being soft, exposed, and fully present becomes an act of resistance and hope.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Keta Gavasheli @catgavasheli Untitled, 2025 Vinyl letters, plexiglas, 2 m x 6.30 m The window becomes a sheet of paper, a screen, a threshold. The word fragments of a performance, a memory, a return float across this surface, barely visible, like breath breathed against the glass. The text does not want to be read. To linger here is to agree with it, not to fully comprehend it, and perhaps that is the closest one can come to understanding it. The words are taken from the final lines of a performance text, a personal reflection on memory, disorientation and the impossibility of a complete return. Scattered letters and sentences fade like half-remembered thoughts. The “O” suggests both an open mouth and an emptiness. As in concrete poetry, the meaning here lies not only in the words, but also in their rhythm. The window holds them like a fragile membrane between presence and absence, between seeing and not seeing.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Andria Dolidze @andria_dolidze 2 2 2 2 Materials: Collected banners, acrylic, oil, metal rings. Size - 530x300cm 2 2 2 2 is composed of street banners collected in Düsseldorf, stripped of content with layers of acrylic. Folded and rolled into a sculptural arrangement, the work reflects both the interior and exterior of the exhibition space, a former metal factory.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to Cristiana Cott Negoescu @cristiana_cott Nominal Value, 2025 Installation set: 9 voting booths – tables and privacy walls - inspired by the ones in the latest Romanian election. Positioned in a 3by 3 grid. Dimensions: 80Lx80wcm , 180hcm ( with approximation) 1 singled out table, no privacy walls 1 voting ballot 1 cotton candy machine 1 pile of sugar boxes 1 surveillance camera Thanks to the performer: Tini Aliman • Ari Behnke Llanos • Rabe Chatha • Bene Rox • Emma Rüther • Eunbi Oh • Gabriela Tudor and Salmo Albatal This performative installation addresses the complex socio-political issue of voter deception, trust, and the exploitation of faith during electoral campaigns. It critically engages with the way political parties, through promises of material rewards like sugar, oil, and other resources, manipulate citizens for their votes—yet, after the ballots are cast, voters are left disappointed, disillusioned, and betrayed by unfulfilled promises. The installation, titled Nominal Value, is a multifaceted reflection on the devaluation of political faith and the erosion of trust in the democratic process. Through the interplay of performance art, installation design, and symbolic actions, the work speaks of the contemporary political climate where electoral promises become hollow gestures, reducing citizens to mere consumers in the transactional process of voting.

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Thanks to @x.breidenbach The Space between, 2025 Paper, dust from Hall 09, beeswax, olive oil, bone black and feathers The work “The Space between (Wing Study)” explores the tension between ascent and collapse as an ephemeral construction made of transient material. Inspired by the story of Icarus, the work does not attempt to recreate the flight, but rather to reveal its anatomy: the impulse, the fragility, the inevitable sinking after the flight altitude has not been maintained. The form is also reminiscent of a wing or an aerofoil. It exists in a state of suspension on the edge of decay. The work is not an “image of flight”, but a “study of faith” - a fragile theory of sustainable materials and temporary connections. The materials refer to the mythological sources and at the same time build a bridge to the present day.

EMPTY SPACES – SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN Zum vierten Mal schafft @emptyspaces.e.v neue Räume für junge Kunst. Diesmal wird eine leerstehende Halle auf dem Areal Böhler zur Bühne für elf künstlerische Positionen – im Dialog mit Geschichte, Architektur und Zukunftsfragen. Kunst wird hier nicht nur gezeigt, sondern als Werkzeug für Veränderung verstanden. Noch bis Freitag, 09.05. könnt ihr die Ausstellung in Gebäude 09 besuchen. Der Eintritt ist frei! #arealböhler #emptyspaces #ausstellung #somethingtobelievein #kunst #industrie #art