1999, Weimar, then the European Capital of Culture: a youth room with youth in it.
A house, a half-timbered house, bought and renovated by a single mother around the time of
reunification: three daughters, lots of neighbors, parties in the courtyard, squatted houses
and punk bands. Right next door the Roten Nelken rehearse, the euro is introduced as
book money and in August thousands of people stare at the solar eclipse with funny
cardboard glasses—
The 1990s are generally regarded as a soft era: there was only the slow Internet modem, the
word troll was still associated with soft plastic figures with colorful frizzy hair, and in Bravo
you read about the Y2K bug – the possible computer chaos due to the change from 1999 to
2000. People danced naively to Michael Jackson, watched Weinstein films, wanted all
furniture to be made of inflatable plastic, and apart from Kosovo, all the major wars were
over—
All seemed well with the world, and yet, directly across the street, the brutal architecture of a
Nazi building smacked you in the face: the Gauforum Weimar, where the NSDAP was once
supposed to reside to symbolize the prestige, power, and opacity of the Third Reich along
with the Gauleitung Thüringen. Is it a coincidence that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
buildings across the street were occupied to counteract this with a little anarchy in miniature?
Looking through the window at the cold neo-Renaissance building, one could read all the
reports about arson attacks and murders of people with a migration background, which
increasingly made it into the newspapers "without racist or xenophobic motives". The NSU
only became publicly known in 2011, but in 1999 it formed.
1999, by the way, was also the year Dieter Ehrlich Otze, lead singer of the best-known GDR
punk band Schleim-Keim, killed his father with an axe and then spent the rest of his life in a
psychiatric hospital—
How did it feel to grow up during that time, to look out those windows? Who did one want to
be? Generation Y, Gen Y, Y-ler or Millenials, always searching for the meaning of life,
between snake-games and digitalization?
In her first solo exhibition, in which Barbara Lüdde works with biographical orientation, the
artist shows fragmentary reproductions of her youth room – and thus perhaps one of her first
artistic works ever!
Yung Barbara Lüdde.
The exhibition space is wallpapered with full-size photo plots, interspersed with drawings
from various years, relics and symbols from her youth, some of which still appear today in
the works of the artist, who has always liked to deal with social codes and rituals.
How political is remembering? The reproduction of stories, the showing and archiving of past
perspectives?
It has been scientifically proven that in remembering, humans often alter memories, distort
them nostalgically, and in the process deviate further and further from the original. Memories
are subjective: mistakes can be softened, details added or omitted – psychologists also
describe this effect as false memory syndromes.
How political are youth rooms?
What structural circumstances do they exhibit, as unpretentiously as possible? It is the
center – the room where the amygdala was once formed.
As a young child, one does not paint what is actually seen: you abstract into subjective
expressionism, drawing parts you know are there, or people simply through objects.
Children of kindergarten age, in turn, then paint mainly houses, trees, flowers and people -
houses stand for security, trees and flowers for the living creature, people for social
relationships.
And in adolescence? We can read and write, and so song lyrics, quotes and graffiti can
become our symbols, our expressionism.
In her exhibition, Barbara Lüdde condenses TicTacToe CDs with huge plastic flowers,
posters, Diddl mice and heart pillows into a large collage of materials, KeinBockAufNazis
stickers next to smileys, peace and hemp leaf symbols become personal cave paintings that
transmit the desires, dreams and values of that time – an archaeology of our own origins.
Before 1999, the artist was allowed to do whatever she wanted with her room walls – Mama
Sigrun had officially permitted this and then watched with interest as a kind of walk-in poetry
album emerged from a mere room, the 3D documentation of a time. What today takes place
classically as a chat history on screens unfolds here on walls and door frames, littered with
messages and memories.
Of course, time has faded the paint on the walls – the photo reproductions of the room were
not taken until 2021 – and even smells are unfortunately difficult to reproduce, only roughly
imagined: Roommate Werner, in any case, a free-roaming rat, has not only immortalized
himself in nibbled exercise books [(°◡°)] and was also occasionally taken to readings by the
artist—
In the end, remembering is always about feeling: Perhaps today we would like to return to
that very feeling when we put a lava lamp in our apartment? Besides: Eine Wand ohne Edding ist wie Sex ohne Petting. (A wall without a sharpie is like sex without petting.)
End of youth, end of naivety, adolescent stuff?
Do we still hate boys today?
Time capsule.
Glitter and bright colors? Also a queer aesthetic.
Creating space for oneself, taking space.
So please
KNOCK PRIVATELY !!!
but then do come in.

Maximiliane Schmid, 2022

1999, Weimar, then the European Capital of Culture: a youth room with youth in it.
A house, a half-timbered house, bought and renovated by a single mother around the time of
reunification: three daughters, lots of neighbors, parties in the courtyard, squatted houses
and punk bands. Right next door the Roten Nelken rehearse, the euro is introduced as
book money and in August thousands of people stare at the solar eclipse with funny
cardboard glasses—
The 1990s are generally regarded as a soft era: there was only the slow Internet modem, the
word troll was still associated with soft plastic figures with colorful frizzy hair, and in Bravo
you read about the Y2K bug – the possible computer chaos due to the change from 1999 to
2000. People danced naively to Michael Jackson, watched Weinstein films, wanted all
furniture to be made of inflatable plastic, and apart from Kosovo, all the major wars were
over—
All seemed well with the world, and yet, directly across the street, the brutal architecture of a
Nazi building smacked you in the face: the Gauforum Weimar, where the NSDAP was once
supposed to reside to symbolize the prestige, power, and opacity of the Third Reich along
with the Gauleitung Thüringen. Is it a coincidence that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
buildings across the street were occupied to counteract this with a little anarchy in miniature?
Looking through the window at the cold neo-Renaissance building, one could read all the
reports about arson attacks and murders of people with a migration background, which
increasingly made it into the newspapers "without racist or xenophobic motives". The NSU
only became publicly known in 2011, but in 1999 it formed.
1999, by the way, was also the year Dieter Ehrlich Otze, lead singer of the best-known GDR
punk band Schleim-Keim, killed his father with an axe and then spent the rest of his life in a
psychiatric hospital—
How did it feel to grow up during that time, to look out those windows? Who did one want to
be? Generation Y, Gen Y, Y-ler or Millenials, always searching for the meaning of life,
between snake-games and digitalization?
In her first solo exhibition, in which Barbara Lüdde works with biographical orientation, the
artist shows fragmentary reproductions of her youth room – and thus perhaps one of her first
artistic works ever!
Yung Barbara Lüdde.
The exhibition space is wallpapered with full-size photo plots, interspersed with drawings
from various years, relics and symbols from her youth, some of which still appear today in
the works of the artist, who has always liked to deal with social codes and rituals.
How political is remembering? The reproduction of stories, the showing and archiving of past
perspectives?
It has been scientifically proven that in remembering, humans often alter memories, distort
them nostalgically, and in the process deviate further and further from the original. Memories
are subjective: mistakes can be softened, details added or omitted – psychologists also
describe this effect as false memory syndromes.
How political are youth rooms?
What structural circumstances do they exhibit, as unpretentiously as possible? It is the
center – the room where the amygdala was once formed.
As a young child, one does not paint what is actually seen: you abstract into subjective
expressionism, drawing parts you know are there, or people simply through objects.
Children of kindergarten age, in turn, then paint mainly houses, trees, flowers and people -
houses stand for security, trees and flowers for the living creature, people for social
relationships.
And in adolescence? We can read and write, and so song lyrics, quotes and graffiti can
become our symbols, our expressionism.
In her exhibition, Barbara Lüdde condenses TicTacToe CDs with huge plastic flowers,
posters, Diddl mice and heart pillows into a large collage of materials, KeinBockAufNazis
stickers next to smileys, peace and hemp leaf symbols become personal cave paintings that
transmit the desires, dreams and values of that time – an archaeology of our own origins.
Before 1999, the artist was allowed to do whatever she wanted with her room walls – Mama
Sigrun had officially permitted this and then watched with interest as a kind of walk-in poetry
album emerged from a mere room, the 3D documentation of a time. What today takes place
classically as a chat history on screens unfolds here on walls and door frames, littered with
messages and memories.
Of course, time has faded the paint on the walls – the photo reproductions of the room were
not taken until 2021 – and even smells are unfortunately difficult to reproduce, only roughly
imagined: Roommate Werner, in any case, a free-roaming rat, has not only immortalized
himself in nibbled exercise books [(°◡°)] and was also occasionally taken to readings by the
artist—
In the end, remembering is always about feeling: Perhaps today we would like to return to
that very feeling when we put a lava lamp in our apartment? Besides: Eine Wand ohne Edding ist wie Sex ohne Petting. (A wall without a sharpie is like sex without petting.)
End of youth, end of naivety, adolescent stuff?
Do we still hate boys today?
Time capsule.
Glitter and bright colors? Also a queer aesthetic.
Creating space for oneself, taking space.
So please
KNOCK PRIVATELY !!!
but then do come in.

Maximiliane Schmid, 2022