Now the Deutsche Bahn is also taking part in the Biennale for contemporary photography and is presenting the first pictures at the Mannheim station: huge photo collages by Anna Ehrenfeld from her series "Tools for Conviviality", i.e.: tools for socializing, by which she means the instruments with which one can move through the social networks and maintain virtual contact with the whole world.

On the boards, young creative people from Dakar are overwhelmed by all these devices, and one should think more of an attack than a life-help, but the pictures are even shriller than advertising posters at train stations, and their message is liquefied in the decorative.

However, this does not apply to the works in the other exhibitions of the Biennale, which is why the Entré sets the wrong track.

At the end of a course with hundreds of images, huge video installations and the constant bombardment of snippets of conversation, noises and music, the visitor has a lot buzzing around and through his head.

Hardly anywhere else will it be as gaudy and cheeky as this.

On the contrary.

Out of my sight

Under the title “From where I stand”, the Dutch guest curator Iris Sikking is presenting works by almost forty photographers and filmmakers from four continents in six museums and exhibition halls in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

The works move at the intersection of documentation, reportage and art.

Some things are staged downright brittle.

And although many of the artists describe themselves as activists, take a concrete stand on political and social issues and see photography as their weapon, the messages are never abbreviated in a striking way, but rather are spread out so carefully that often only an accompanying text makes it clear what exactly it is about .

Disturbing facts about world politics are more likely to be remembered than individual motifs.

With one exception:

To a certain extent, this recording bundles the program of the Biennale, which is dedicated to the complicated and often invisible interlocking of people, nature and technology.

The presentations explore the influence of algorithms on the image we form of the world, or the influence of mass-produced images on the desire to supposedly optimize one's own body, as well as questions about the property rights of indigenous peoples in Ecuador and Nepal or the social changes in the face of gender debates, migratory flows, climate change and the destruction of entire natural areas, including the resulting conflicts that, despite deadly conflicts, are being carried out below the radar of world public opinion.

Between exploration and protest

Iris Sikking has chosen the four focal points "Protesting Bodies", "Body Optimization", "Exploring Nature" and "Cultivating the Earth" and has placed one subject at the center of each of the six exhibitions.

But in the end, the individual stations are so interwoven within a complicated network that the question of visions and demands for a future world is paramount;

in short: How do we want to live?

Naturally, the artists do not provide any answers.

Instead, they open up perspectives, point to weak points and questionable points, even undertake investigative research that sometimes proves to be life-threatening, for example when a photographer sets out to look for the tree that she uses to compensate for a flight in global carbon emissions trading has paid.

It is not only their findings that require the visitor to accept a certain amount of pessimism.

There is only one installation that leaves you literally elated: “Universal Tongue” by Dutch artist Anouk Kruithof.

She has had film snippets of dances collected from all over the world and has produced eight hour-long endless loops from almost 9000 clips, which show people dancing in cities and villages, at festivals and on the streets with rapid cuts and rapid tempo on huge screens.

And everyone seems to be united in the rattle of electronic music - in a light-heartedness to four-four time.

Biennale for current photography

in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

The website www.biennnalefotografie.de and a brochure provide information about the extensive accompanying programme.

A catalog for the exhibitions costs 16 euros.