Exhibition Leipzig: (Not) My City – Scopes and Boundaries in Urban Space

Logo copyright: Simone Fass, Julia Rademacker and Sylvia Drevin

As part of the Intercultural Weeks, the interactive window exhibition “(Not) My City: Scopes and Boundaries in Urban Space” was ceremoniously opened on 2 October with a street party at Pöge Haus, a cultural centre in Leipzig. The findings were visualised for the exhibition by the visual translator Simone Fass. In addition to music and a listening station, there were also hands-on-activities such as screen printing. Also, a group from Interaction e. V. Leipzig showed a performative action with people with and without migration experiences. It addressed the question of what role human dignity and value play in arriving and belonging in a (new) society and in public space.

The exhibition, developed within the HERA project “Refugee Youth in Public Space” engages with the question how refugees find their way in urban society. It traces how young people with a refugee background experience urban space, how they make it their own and rethink the idea of urban space in the process. The exhibition lays bare how the European asylum system affects and interrupts – sometimes violently – the everyday life of young people with a refugee background, but at the same time illustrates how people with a refugee background negotiate restrictions and demarcations.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde Leipzig, der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and Pöge-Haus. The opening party took place in cooperation with Mühlstrasse14 e.V., Interaction Leipzig, e.V. and Internationale Frauen e.V. More information can be found here (in German).