Ellen Kobe. True Stories / Narratives of Absence

In True Stories / Narratives of Absence , Ellen Kobe presents works on the ground floor of Schloss Biesdorf that transform historical events, political narratives and personal and collective memory into subtle, often unsettling visual and narrative spaces. Taking real events and their gaps as her starting point, Kobe explores how history manifests itself in absences, shifts and fragmented narratives. In three rooms on the ground floor, Ellen Kobe displays recent works that engage with historical images and events whilst simultaneously questioning how these continue to have an impact in the present. In doing so, her practice deliberately navigates the space between documentation and fiction, between actual events and invented history. Kobe creates situations in which the absent becomes visible and the supposedly true is called into question. In ABEND ÜBER POTSDAM (2022), Kobe recreates a performance set against the backdrop of Potsdam’s historic urban landscape, drawing on Lotte Laserstein’s 1930 painting of the same name. In it, the Jewish painter captured, shortly before her emigration, the atmosphere of a society on the eve of National Socialism. Almost a century later, the scene is re-enacted: The historical situation serves as a backdrop for the question of what kind of global transformation we are experiencing today, and which traces of past history continue to have an impact across generations. The performances READING / Putin in our street (2025) and PANEL DISCUSSION / Stauffenberg’s bag (2025) also work with the productive blurring of the lines between reality and fiction: Putin in our Street is a reading from a novel that does not exist. Kobe stages not only an excerpt from the text, but also the creation and reception of the supposed novel, thereby making the mechanisms of the literary world itself the subject of the work. The probable and the improbable lie in close proximity. In Stauffenberg’s Bag , a panel discussion is staged about a film that was never made. Film and history experts discuss non-existent film footage, thereby creating a visual reality in the audience’s minds. The thematic starting point is the resistance against National Socialism and the question of what an individual can do in difficult times. At the same time, Kobe questions the heroic images through which history is still told today, and transforms the format of the panel discussion itself into a performative situation. The installation AUFBAHRUNG (2025) brings to mind another historical site and its repressed history. At Villa Schloss Ludwigshöhe, which was used as a military hospital for war-wounded soldiers between 1914 and 1918, Kobe performs the ritual of laying out the deceased. Names spoken aloud bring the dead to mind for a moment; after a minute’s silence, the names of those who fell in the war in Ukraine are read out. With HÄTTE KLAPPEN KÖNNEN (2026), Kobe expands the interplay between documentary and fiction to include a personal, autofictional dimension. In a performative photo shoot, the artist is staged as a bride, whilst the audio track features a letter to a fictional lover from the war zone in Iran. Private imagination, geopolitical reality and the longing for a possible relationship overlap, creating a story whose truth lies precisely in its improbability. True Stories / Narratives of Absence does not view history as a closed narrative, but as something that constantly reforms itself: through images, rituals, memories, fictions and that which is missing. Ellen Kobe uses displacement as an artistic method and absence as a space for the imagination. Her works invite us not simply to believe the familiar images and narratives, but to perceive the interstices in which history changes, continues and is retold. Accompanying events Screening: 21 November 2026, 4.00 pm GUDEHUS / An autofictional film collage on the German-German upheaval Discussion: 5 November 2026, 6.00 pm IN WAR / LYING IN STATE / Ellen Kobe in conversation with director and writer Andres Veiel Performance: 16 January 2027, 4.00 pm BACH AND MOZART ARE ALWAYS THERE FOR ME / A performance at the grand piano Read more Toggle Multi-disciplinary Performance / Live Art