- Visual Art
- Photography
- Public Art
500 Meters
Vanessa Schmid
3 July 2026 19:00–22:30
4 July 2026 15:00–21:00
5 July 2026 14:00–19:00
500 Meters is part of the artistic project line Cartography of an Existence. A photographic installation, complemented by textual fragments, examines bodies in a state of structural invisibility before diagnosis, before language, and before social legibility.
It begins with the experience of invisible disability. Prior to diagnosis, there is neither social legibility nor structural representation.
The works take the form of analogue self-portraits shot on 35mm film. Blurs, failures and material overlays are not aesthetic effects but correspondences of a body whose control was never fully guaranteed. The photographs do not document; they make experience visible.
The title 500 Meters marks a boundary that is rarely visible in everyday life. It refers to physical ranges that are not immediately recognizable to others and to the distance between lived experience and social legibility. For the festival, this distance is translated into a spatial movement through the church interior. Visitors pass through three zones: invisibility, precarious participation, and a diagnosis that enables legibility while simultaneously producing new forms of exclusion.
Choosing a church as the exhibition space is deliberate. The building contains architectural barriers and, for example, is not accessible to many wheelchair users. This situation is not concealed but forms part of the work itself. It points to a fundamental tension within cultural spaces: accessibility does not mean the same thing for all disabled bodies and rarely emerges on its own, but rather through social decisions, responsibility, and resources.
In this way, the installation also makes visible that barriers arise not only through architecture but through social structures and expectations.
An open discussion format accompanies the exhibition, bringing together artistic, social and institutional perspectives on access to art and culture. The conversation will take place in German.
It begins with the experience of invisible disability. Prior to diagnosis, there is neither social legibility nor structural representation.
The works take the form of analogue self-portraits shot on 35mm film. Blurs, failures and material overlays are not aesthetic effects but correspondences of a body whose control was never fully guaranteed. The photographs do not document; they make experience visible.
The title 500 Meters marks a boundary that is rarely visible in everyday life. It refers to physical ranges that are not immediately recognizable to others and to the distance between lived experience and social legibility. For the festival, this distance is translated into a spatial movement through the church interior. Visitors pass through three zones: invisibility, precarious participation, and a diagnosis that enables legibility while simultaneously producing new forms of exclusion.
Choosing a church as the exhibition space is deliberate. The building contains architectural barriers and, for example, is not accessible to many wheelchair users. This situation is not concealed but forms part of the work itself. It points to a fundamental tension within cultural spaces: accessibility does not mean the same thing for all disabled bodies and rarely emerges on its own, but rather through social decisions, responsibility, and resources.
In this way, the installation also makes visible that barriers arise not only through architecture but through social structures and expectations.
An open discussion format accompanies the exhibition, bringing together artistic, social and institutional perspectives on access to art and culture. The conversation will take place in German.
Biography
Vanessa Schmid
Vanessa Schmid (1995) lives and works in Berlin. She is an artist with a hybrid practice at the intersection of image and text. Through analogue self-portraits, photographic installations and text-based formats, she examines the body as a site of experience and knowledge and its social legibility.
Her photographs are often created using expired 35mm film and deliberately introduced unpredictability. Blurs, failures and material overlays become formal means to render states of invisibility, illness and nonlinearity visible.
These works are part of the ongoing artistic project line Cartography of an Existence.
Her photographs are often created using expired 35mm film and deliberately introduced unpredictability. Blurs, failures and material overlays become formal means to render states of invisibility, illness and nonlinearity visible.
These works are part of the ongoing artistic project line Cartography of an Existence.
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