Layers of Skin
A 5-channel Video Installation
With Layers of Skin, the Spanish-German choreographer and multidisciplinary artist Ana Lessing Menjibar opens the archive that served as the foundation for her performance ‘Third Skin’ (2023), making tangible a profound political, artistic and personal research into the (post-)fascist contexts of Germany and Spain. Departing from the artist's family biography, the multimedia archive emerges as a transversal and hybrid fabric of memories. Memories of experiences of war and fascism, collective and individual wounds, and the experiences of political resistance. Memories in the form of interviews, publicly accessible video material and images, as well as music and literature from private collections — an archive that also addresses the political role of art and culture.
The voices belong to activists, artists and political comrades, many of them from the political milieu of Ana Lessing Menjibar's parents: people who fought and continue to fight against the fascist and capitalist systems of violence in Germany and Spain and for a social revolution. They speak of their experiences under Franco's fascist dictatorship in Spain, remembering the violence, the dead, the countless missing. They describe how deeply the political system was and still is woven into society, culture and institutions. And they remember the resistance – the struggle for freedom and justice and the necessity of rememberance, which, in the face of an amnesty, becomes a radical political practice itself. The voices also tell of post-war Germany, of the wounds of a traumatised society, of the silence surrounding the crimes of the Nazi regime and its profound consequences – of a society they sought to change. They bear witness to the 1960s and 1970s, to organising, to repression and to the ongoing anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and feminist struggle.
These memories are carried by the rhythms of flamenco – the art form that Ana Lessing Menjibar grew up with. Its sounds and movements bear witness to the resistance of marginalized and persecuted communities, such as the Gitanos, carrying the pain of many generations – an art form that has, however, also been instrumentalised, while at the same time always remaining a tool of liberation. Flamenco connects the different contexts, allows the memories to exist in a multidirectional, generative relationship and reveals the past, present and future in their complex fabric.
Layers of Skin is an invitation to listen, to remain open, and to connect. An archive marked by absences and gaps, emerging anew in each moment—fleeting, sharing memories to keep them alive.
06.03.2025 - 09.03.2025 at Radialsystem‘s Kubus Berlin
Installation Opening 06.03.2025 20:30 h
Artistic concept and installation: Ana Lessing Menjibar
Research and interviews: Ana Lessing Menjibar and Isabel Gatzke
Dramaturgy and production: Friederike Kötter
Sound Design: Freya Bowers
Mantón Sculpture: Gesine Försterling
Special Support: Sofie Luckhardt
With the special support by: Alrun Lessing, Amelia Martinez-Lobo, Barbara Greiner, Barbara Lubich, Barbara Mai, Caroline Förster, Christel Eckart, Daniel Cordova, Emilio Silva, Felizitas Stilleke, Francisco Corrales Cordero, Heiner Jächter, Hannes Uhlemann, Helmut Gatzke, Isabel López Gualda, Iván Periáñez-Bolaño, Jacopo Lanteri, Juan Cruz, María José Ríos Ramos, Manuel Gerena, Marianne Havran, Matthias Mohr, Miguel Guerrero, Oimel Mai, Pablo Mayoral, Philipp Schaus, Pilar Grande León, Pilar Corrales Grande, Rosa Fiel, Salvador Menjibar, Sigune Benisch, Silvio Lang, Stefanie Köhler, Uwe Damm, Walli Gatzke.
Radialsystem and Tanzfabrik Berlin BÜHNE, tanzhaus nrw, Goethe Institut Madrid, Zentralwerk, Teatro Canal, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Madrid, Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo Madrid.
‘Layers of Skin’ at Radialsystem is made possible by the support of Radialsystem and Tanzfabrik Berlin and funded by the Tanzpraxis grant from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The preceding research project ‘GROWING Third Skin’ was supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR.
Photos by Ana Lessing Menjibar & Flo Herzing
