Constanze Flamme “The Fragile Skin of the World”

… that it is always possible / to feel my skin / as the skin of the world and the world as / the interweaving / of all our breaths (Jean-Luc Nancy)

On Saturday, 30.03.24 at 12:30 after the weekly market, Otte1 celebrates its second exhibition opening of the year 2024.

Constanze Flamme gave the show the title “The fragile skin of the world” at the end of her scholarship stay. This title is based on the book “La peau fragile du monde” by Jean-Luc Nancy, which was published shortly before the author’s death in 2020. Like Nancy, Flamme sees the world as a place of participation and compassion. In this sense, working with the camera can be understood as a gesture of witnessing.

On display are photographs from the trilogy “Troubled Water”, which were taken in the Mississippi Delta and Cancer Alley between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The region along the Mississippi River is home to more than 150 petrochemical companies over a distance of approximately 140 kilometres. The inhabitants have proven to have greatly increased cancer rates. Portraits of activists, for example, also speak of a universal power that is inherent in people when they stand up for our environment.

“The Fragile Skin of the World” is also an attempt to express the invisible and our interconnectedness in a world in which the consequences of our actions are mutually dependent. As in the previous work on the consequences of the oil disaster following the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2011, the artist asks herself how we deal with our resources. She questions the state of our air, water and soil – also a permeable skin.

To draw a bow to Eckernförde, there are first approaches to an elusive topic in the Baltic Sea. Constanze Flamme has developed black and white films with Baltic Sea water so that the Baltic Sea water is inscribed in the material. Even if it is not visible, the result is already part of the image carrier and thus a document.

Constanze Flamme is a photographer and visual artist. She studied visual communication at the FH Potsdam and photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She has repeatedly received VG Bildkunst project funding for her work on the consequences of the oil spill in Louisiana. In 2019, she was an invited artist at the Bienal’19 in Porto. In the park of the Palácio de Cristal, she invited the public to take part in a joint ecological participatory action/sculpture. Her theme: planting trees as a response to regional necessities and a renewable [landscape] image as well as the question of sustainability after art events. In 2021 she was the island artist on Sylt.

Opening hours:

Sun 31.3. 12:00 – 15:00 h
Mon 1.4. – Thu 4.4. 12:00 – 14:00 h
Wed 12:00 – 13:00 h
Sat 12:30 – 14:00 h
and by appointment: +49 163 / 2009368

Finissage 27.04. 12:30 – 14:00 h

Admission is free.