Sign up for your spot in Esper Postmas walking lecture “Once In Many Lifetimes” as part of “AI (Ancestral Immediacies): Digital Twins and Data Doppelgänger” 🖥️🧬
“Once In Many Lifetimes” - Walking Lecture with Esper Postma
📅 Fri., 22.5.2026, 16:00
📅 Sat., 23.5.2026, 19:30
📍Meeting point: Sylvia Winter Foyer
🎟️ Free entry / Register via [email protected]
*In English
The city is full of symbols; buildings and monuments that remind us of who we are, what our history is and whom we should honour. Yet these objects are far less stable than they appear. In this guided walk, artist Esper Postma approaches Berlin’s landmarks as divided beings, each shadowed by a second self. Beginning at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and leading through Berlin’s political centre, the walk introduces the motif of the doppelgänger as a way of reading architecture.
The walking lecture reveals tensions between past and present, function and symbol, official narrative and suppressed histories. The Reichstag has lived multiple lives; the Brandenburg Gate is continually reoriented; Wilhelmstrasse is an entity composed of seemingly incompatible parts. Drawing on Romantic and Gothic literature, from E. T. A. Hoffmann to Mary Shelley, the walk treats architecture not as inert matter but as a site of repression, projection, and return.
🔗 More information: hkw.de
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Credits:
1-3. Courtesy of Esper Postma
Mark your calendars for “AI (Ancestral Immediacies): Digital Twins and Data Doppelgängers” and join us for two days of lectures, performances, conversations and installations on 22nd & 23rd May! 🖥️🧬
The pluridisciplinary program addresses the rapid expansion of virtual representations and synthetic replicas made possible by digital technologies, and explores the implications of this “duplication” of life.
A “digital twin” is a digital representation of a physical object, system, or process that is kept up to date with real-world data. In turn it can be used to simulate, monitor, or analyze its real-world counterpart. Unlike static archives, these simulations offer real-time access and flexibility—a promise that can all too easily turn into a form of control.
“AI (Ancestral Immediacies): Digital Twins and Data Doppelgängers” 🖥️🧬
📅 Fr., 22.5.2026
12:00–19:00 - Wùn Ná Kre, Installation by Zas Ieluhee
16:00 - Once In Many Lifetimes, Walking Lecture by Esper Postma
19:00 - Rethinking Digital Twin, Keynote by Randi Heinrichs
20:30 - NO-MEN 能面 Severance | Dead Data | Raw Skin, Performance by Yuko Kaseki, Mieko Suzuki and Bidou Yamaguchi
📅 Sa., 23.5.2026
12:00–19:00 – Wùn Ná Kre, Installation by Zas Ieluhee
15:00 - A Walk Through the Exhibition with Jakob Grüner and Zas Ieluhee
16:00 - Walking The Rope, Activation and Artist Conversation with Zas Ieluhee and Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss
17:30 - The Weather Has Been Cancelled, Lecture Performance by Jasmijn Visser
18:30 - When Pixels Wash Ashore, Keynote by Marina Otero Verzier
19:30 - Once in Many Lifetimes, Walking Lecture by Esper Postma
🔗 More information:
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Credits:
1. Yuko Kaseki I Credits: Ben Lenhart
2. Studio Yukiko/HKW
3. Esper Postma, Roundabout (2022) I Credits: Eike Walkenhorst
Some recent lives of Memory Games. I made these aerial photos at the square of Foro Italico, a sports complex in Rome built as Foro Mussolini in the 1930’s. When I first visited this fascist showpiece, I was surprised that it’s not treated as a monument at all, but is in active use by people for sports and leisure: soccer, yoga classes, school exercise. All the while people are doubling the fascist mosaics. Their bodies are intersecting with muscular athletes and soldiers, but at the same time they are wearing down the motifs, that are eroding under their feet.
With this work I want people to think about their own footprint in an ideology that we thought was behind us. Fascism is back not only in Italy, but all over Europe. Just as Mussolini’s regime back then, there is a striving for a white, Christian monoculture. Deporting people to Afghanistan while complaining about a shrinking local birth rate, is fascism. Investing in policing instead of in solidarity and care, is fascism. Glorifying past and present colonialisms, is fascism. The understanding is lost that there can be abundance for everyone: we are up against a fundamentally pessimistic ideology of fear, scarcity and violence.
1. Recent article in @nd.aktuell
2. Price ceremony of the @muenzenbergforum photography price.
3. Memory Games installed at the Münzenberg Forum, Berlin.
4. Excerpt from the film essay “Uncovering the Afterlife of the Italian Empire” by @charlesfburdett , curated by @signorina_virgola and Viviana Gravano
4. Small versions of Memory Games installed @kunstvereinmuenchen as part of Jahresgaben 2025.
5. Detail
My great grandfather, Richard Hellmann, was a German Jew who grew up in Würzburg. He was raised with the idea that assimilation was key. He fought in WWI on the German side, and lost his right eye in battle; that's why he had a glass eye. He received an iron cross for his courage. The fact that he was a decorated veteran would later give him a false sense of security.
After his studies he settled in Freiburg, where he opened a bookshop with costumers all over Europe; mostly university libraries. Heidegger undoubtedly visited his shop. Richard was married to a Catholic woman, Thea, and had two kids.
In 1936, the Nazis forbade him to practice his profession and closed his business. Although Richard’s brothers emigrated to Argentina, he decided to stay in Europe and moved his family and his mother to Luxemburg, where he could continue his book trade. Here he was not safe from anti-Semitism and paranoia; he was even accused by neighbours of being a communist spy.
When the Germans invaded Luxemburg, Richard separated from his wife in order to save his family, and passed his business to her. Meanwhile he desperately tried to emigrate to the US with his mother, but it proved too late. His mother was forced to live in a “Jüdisches Altersheim” (awaiting deportation) where she went on hunger strike and soon died. Richard was arrested and deported to Theresienstadt, where he lived for two years and still sent countless letters to his family. In september 1944 he was finally deported to Auschwitz where he was murdered, probably on arrival.
The Holocaust still has its ongoing, terrible consequences. Living in Germany, it is frightening to see how a dark past obscures its understanding of the present. Hence its unconditional support of Israel, its recent censorship of activism, the arts and academia, and the brutal crackdown on public protests in solidarity with Palestine. What we learn from the Holocaust is not only that we should defend Jewish life, but that we should stand with the oppressed. To quote the protests: Nie wieder, das gilt auch für Palästina.
Thanks to my uncle, Rob Ruys, for his research and for telling this story at schools and institutions.
Hot off the press! Doppelgänger by Esper Postma
The city is full of symbols; buildings and monuments that confidently remind us who we are, what our history is and whom we should honour. But these objects are not as stable as they seem. Esper Postma breathes life into the dormant side of their identity, the qualities they would rather keep from view. His works show that every building, monument and artefact has a doppelgänger; an inner alter ego that is vying for attention.
The book consists of two volumes bound together, identical in structure and design. The first volume documents Postma’s exhibitions, while the second presents research images. When read side by side, each spread becomes a doppelgänger in its own right.
With essays by Philipp Oswalt, Jasmijn Visser (@combustingspontaneously ), Esper Postma
Published by: @japsambooks
Design: @mainstudio
Printing & binding: @orogpm
Lithography: @alex.feenstra
Made possible with the support of @mondriaanfonds , Stichting Jaap Harten Fonds
📸@the_bookphotographer
The book launch of @esperpostma 's Doppelgänger was an evening of reflection on monuments, architecture and embodiment. Monuments have inner alter egos, cities create their own myths, and statues can rise from the dead.
With lecture performances by @combustingspontaneously , @esperpostma and a screening by @sebastiandiazmorales .
Doppelgänger is designed by @mainstudio and published by @japsambooks . With contributions by Philipp Oswalt and Jasmijn Visser.
It was such a pleasure to finally launch this book after a long, doubly laborious, process! Thank you all for coming!
📸 by Maurits Koster
Join us for the launch of my book this Friday @kunstinstituutmelly in Rotterdam!
The city is full of symbols; buildings and monuments that confidently remind us who we are, what our history is and whom we should honour. But these objects are not as stable as they seem. Esper Postma breathes life into the dormant side of their identity, the qualities they would rather keep from view. His works show that every building, monument and artefact has a doppelgänger; an inner alter ego that is vying for attention.
Join us for a night of performative lectures and presentations by Jasmijn Visser, Sebastian Diaz Morales, and Esper Postma, at the occasion of Postma’s first comprehensive publication: Doppelgänger, designed by mainstudio/ Edwin van Gelder.
Program:
Esper Postma, Doppelgänger — The Double Lives of Monuments
Jasmijn Visser, The city as a cultural model
Sebastián Diaz Morales, Smashing Monuments
@combustingspontaneously@sebastiandiazmorales@mainstudio@japsambooks@kunstinstituutmelly
One of my early works, but ever-so relevant to me: "Expressions of Guilt in Animal Behaviour". It depicts a cross-section removed from a fictional museum of natural history and the flora surrounding the building. I collaborated with an architecture historian and a specialised bricklayer to replicate the 17th-century architecture that is typical of Dutch museums. The cross-section itself is a life sized construction that positions the viewer in between the exhibition on the ground floor and the storage in the basement.
Expressions of Guilt in Animal Behaviour, 2011, installation, 260 x 245 x 250 cm
#gerritrietveldacademie
Pillar faces and the incredibly rare Imervard crucifix in Braunschweig. The 11th century crucifix is influenced by the Byzantine tradition of a "triumphant Christ": stoic, not suffering and with eyes open. Instead of naked he's wearing a long Tyrian purple robe, like a monarch.
#voltosanto #holyface
The group exhibition circles, squares, corners, moments, for, 48, hours runs this weekend @kindlberlin as part of @48stundennk . @canberk.akcal curated this highly original exhibition, which juxtaposes my work Roundabout with a stripper performance by @berlin_s_collective amongst many other things.
"Roundabout" (2022) consists of a street sign for the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, extended to accommodate all its historical names. Wilhelmstrasse, a main street that served as the center of the German government until 1945, has undergone name changes according to prevailing political circumstances. It was successively called Husarenstrasse (1731), Wilhelmstrasse (1740), Otto-Grotewohl-Strasse (1964), Toleranzstrasse (1991, although never implemented), and again Wilhelmstrasse (1993).
Thanks to @ane.crn for her great work on the exhibition architecture and to @un.zip_ for his patient help with logistics and setting up.
In the current issue of @metropolism_mag , a conversation with Laurens Otto about my practice. Thank you @laurensotto for this beautiful article, of which the title translates 'The Psyche of Public Statues/Images'
