In video works, lectures, performances and workshops, Marlene Denningmann deals with the entanglement of pop phenomena and social change, focusing on the everlasting tension between tradition and utopia.
Marlene Denningmann works with documentary, performative and fictional elements of the medium film. She studied film and time based media at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and is currently based in Berlin.
Her work has been awarded with numerous scholarships and grants, including from Kunstfonds Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Berlin Senate's Funding Program for Film/Video. It has been exhibited internationally at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg; Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; and Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, among others, and has been screened at festivals such as the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Max Ophüls Prize, Saarbrücken, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
The video installation “Do you have a fave?” (2024), presented at project space Neun Kelche, recently marked Denningmann's first solo show in Berlin.
UNSERE NATUR
HD Video / 30:00 min / 2025
01:03 min excerpt
A bush dances through the empty corridors of a school, pupils gather in a circle of chairs. The school bell rings and under the guidance of two educators, the group begins to move. Expressions shift from unimpressed to amused as teenagers swap seats, using their movements to answer icebreaker questions. With the help of this game, we slowly ease into the topic of today’s workshop: sex education. Later, divided into two groups, it is the students who ask the questions, anonymously on small slips of paper. At their core, many of them revolve around the same thought: What is normal? As the conversations become more personal, it soon becomes clear that sex education is more than just facts from a biology books. Our nature is always in motion and the bush shakes their leaves.