Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo (excerpt), 2021, HD video, 26′48″, color, sound, copyright and courtesy of the artists


Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo, 2021, videostill, HD video, 26′48″, color, sound, copyright and courtesy of the artists


Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo, 2021, videostill, HD video, 26′48″, color, sound, copyright and courtesy of the artists


Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo, 2021, videostill, HD video, 26′48″, color, sound, copyright and courtesy of the artists


Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß, Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo, 2021, videostill, HD video, 26′48″, color, sound, copyright and courtesy of the artists

L187 is pleased to present the online and in-presence screening of Unleash the Beast – Chapter 2: Hagenbecks Zoo (2021) by Catherina Cramer and Giulietta Ockenfuß. The video will be screened online from 6 December, 4 p.m. (CET) until 19 December 2021, 4 p.m. (CET) at L187.de

There is a opportunity to see chapters one and two at the cinema screening on 10 December at 3 p.m. at

Mal Seh'n Kino e.V.
Adlerflychtstr. 6
60318 Frankfurt am Main (Nordend)
Reservations: +49 69 5970845 (between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m.)

Free admission
Please note that the 2G rule (vaccinated or recovered) applies to the visit.

Unleash the Beast is both a documentary television program and a fictional film. By combining both formats, the work upturns established, patriarchal narratives, questioning how history is written. The second part of the multi-part video series deals with questions of origin and identity. Based on real and fictional interviews as well as the use of found footage, Part II follows a water monkey's search for her own biography. The protagonist reveals that she was captured against her will by the founders of the famous Hagenbeck Zoo, shipped to Hamburg and performed there in a vaudeville show. In response to her own experience, she founds a protest movement that campaigns for the rights of wild animals. In a partly humorous way, an improvised dialogue is thus created in combination with text fragments from Franz Kafka's Report for an Academy, which critically questions the Hagenbeck company's entanglements in the 19th century wildlife trade.

The first chapter of the three-part series tells the story of a female aquatic ape whose life trajectory imagines an evolutionary history with feminist connotations. The footage was shot during a four-month stay in Mexico. The film is comprised of obviously scripted, performative interviews and conversations, as well as footage documenting the two artists' research trip. Unleash the Beast is the first collaboration between Catherina Cramer and Giulietta Ockenfuß.

The artists would like to thank their interview partner Luis Ramírez as a reprsentative of Lomas del Quio, as well as the mask artists Gilberto Linares and Byrol Jimenez. The work has been realized with the kind support of Hessische Kulturstiftung, Kunststiftung NRW (“Junge Szene”), Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf e.V., Julia Stoschek Collection.

An edition will be published to accompany the screening.

Online screening
06 December, 4:00 p.m. (CET) – 19 December, 4:00 p.m. (CET)
www.L187.de

Cinema screening
10 December, 3:00 p.m. (CET)
Mal Seh'n Kino e.V.

Giulietta Ockenfuß (*1986, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. She studied Fine Arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the classes of Prof. Tal R and Prof. Rita McBride and graduated as Meisterschülerin in 2010. Ockenfuß is a painter but her work also includes collaborative projects and performances. Since 2013 she has been part of the rap crew Die Römischen Votzen and since 2019 she has been working on film projects together with Catherina Cramer. Giulietta Ockenfuß participated in exhibitions including: Creating a "we", Basis Showroom, (Frankfurt, DE); Losing my virginity, Galerie Robert Grunenberg, (Berlin, DE); Bad News, (Wiesbaden Biennale, DE); Good to talk, Berghain Kantine, (Berlin, DE). She has also received several scholarships including the Arbeitsstipendium Hessische Kulturstiftung (2020), the Reisestipendium Hessischen Kulturstiftung (2019), the Arbeitsstipendium „Junge Szene“ Kulturstiftung NRW mit Catherinia Cramer (2019), and the Nam June Paik Förderpreis NRW (2012).

Catherina Cramer (*1988, Wesel, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf and Berlin. She studied Fine Arts at the Kunstakademie Münster and Düsseldorf and received her Meisterschülerin letter in 2019 from Dominique Gonzalez Foerster. Besides filmmaking, her art is multimedia, it includes performance, sculpture and environments. Since 2019 she has been working on film projects together with Giulietta Ockenfuß. Cramer participates in international exhibitions such as the V-Art Center (Shanghai, China) and the Stroboskop Artspace (New York, USA). In Germany, the Museum Folkwang (Essen, DE), the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, DE) and the Kunsthalle Münster (Münster, DE) have already shown her work, as well as the Kunsthaus NRW Kornelimünster (Aachen, DE), the Kunstmuseum Solingen (Solingen, DE), the Kasseler Dokfest of the Kunstverein Kassel (Kassel, DE), the Dortmunder U. (Dortmund, DE) and the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf, DE).

Download invitation postcard (PDF)