AfkV Höchst - Amt für künstlerische Vermessung

Ausstellung von Johanna Dembinski

Johanna Dembinski's survey – Map of Unexplained and Inexplicable Events in the Höchst Survey Area. A collection of riddles, questions and myths between the district and the industrial park.

Together with people from Höchst, Johanna Dembinski is developing a map of site-specific riddles, doubts and questions in the district. While maps usually depict what we know or believe we have found out, this project turns its attention to the uncertain.

What does a map look like that records not facts, but gaps and questions? Which strategies can we use to map what we do not know?

For the survey, Johanna invites people from Höchst to contribute their stories and perspectives. She interviews neighbours and organises workshops that work with methods of critical cartography. She translates people's observations into a Map of Unexplained and Inexplicable Events in the Höchst Survey Area.

The Office for Artistic Surveying in Höchst

During her four-week residency, Johanna Dembinski explores the relationship between industry and the district. The residency is part of the project AfkV in Höchst – Office for Artistic Surveying (AfkV in Höchst). The office is a project of the Frankfurt association Raum für kulturelle Fragen e.V. in collaboration with the Darmstadt architecture practice social.form. It takes place as part of WDC 2026.

The project hosts two artist residencies to artistically investigate the relationships, myths, stories and places between industry and the district, and to explore them together with the people who live there. The starting point and workspace for the surveys is the B25 cultural space at Brüningstraße 25, 65929 Frankfurt-Höchst.

Dates

• Opening: November 12 – further information to follow
• Closing: November 15 – further information to follow

Johanna Dembinski is an interdisciplinary artist and art educator with a focus on ceramics. Her work starts from an engagement with the unexplained and the incomprehensible, with myths, conjecture and superstition. Through interviews and participatory processes, she explores how we deal with uncertainty, collects marginal notes on the supernatural and fantastical explanations for phenomena beyond our understanding. Johanna examines imagination as a coping strategy, a resilience factor and a space of possibility for questioning present conditions and initiating transformation. She translates what people tell her into ceramic cartographies, speculative instruction manuals and diagrams, and designs fictional movements and nested encyclopaedias. Johanna studied Fine Arts at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Athens School of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Leipzig.