The dialogue between Anna Mirbach and Claudia Mann begins with sculpture as a space-producing practice and focuses on Anna Mirbach’s current project underground bodies, in which subterranean urban spaces become sites of infrastructural densification with physical framing. Based on their shared sculptural practice, Claudia Mann and Anna Mirbach discuss urban space as a structuring system that eludes public view.
Sculptural work always operates in relation to space and body, even—or especially—when this space is not immediately accessible. In underground bodies, this inaccessibility is not removed, but rather shifted to another medium: semi-abstract metal sculptures are installed in several locations beneath the city—in bridge shafts, sewers, and subway areas. The recordings of these hidden spaces return as projections in the public urban space – like a kind of protrusion of the underground.
Only through moving images is it possible to glimpse underground urban spaces, which coexist as autonomous, closed systems parallel to the visible city. Public screenings in the city of Düsseldorf create a shift: material settings that refer to a preconscious level of perception in which bodies and infrastructure are mutually dependent.
Anna Mirbach’s abstract bodies function as scales and projection surfaces. They map the underground public space not in a documentary manner, but through physical settings from which ephemeral images emerge. These are physically constructed and at the same time refer to a subconscious state of perception in which functional spaces and physical experience overlap.
The talk will discuss the individual elements of the work—concept, material, temporality, place, and process—in their interrelationships.
underground bodies was created as part of the stadt.raum.experimente (city.space.experiments) of the Düsseldorf Art Commission and can be seen until February 8, 2026.
The talk will take place on February 4, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. at the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf, Schulstraße 4, 40213 Düsseldorf.
Screening dates:
