Schwellenraum

›Schwellenraum‹ (threshold space) is a compound of Schwelle (threshold) and Raum (space). A threshold marks the transition from one space to another. The term implies the ambivalence between opening and closing, together with the expectation of what is to come. In housing in particular, threshold spaces mediate between public and private space: they protect privacy on the one hand and prepare for spatial events on the other.

In the exhibition I show slides taken in a vacant prefabricated housing block in Leipzig (type WBS 70, built in 1986). The photographs of the abandoned standardised flats (two rooms / 54 m², three rooms / 68 m²) open up access to the space between public and private. Presented in ten light boxes, the 6 × 7 cm slides create a protected space which the viewer must, as it were, step into in order to enter the photographs themselves. Traces left behind in these serial rooms tell of use and temporary inhabitation, yet leave questions about their present state unanswered. Three large-format black-and-white prints show views from the windows of some of the flats onto car parks and backyards. The captured moment reveals little about when the picture was taken, how the place is used today or how it might develop in the future. Here, too, photography is the vehicle of a threshold space.