What is ‘Heimat’? In German, a term with no plural. Is it a place, a country, a feeling, a thought? Martin Luther sees ‘the firmament as the home of Christians’. Franz Xaver Kroetz’s definition of the term is decidedly earthly, when he conjectures that ‘home is where one hangs oneself!’ Joachim Riedel describes ‘Heimat’ as a ‘sigh of longing, which is specific to the German language and that not does occur with such an implicit range of meanings in any other culture’.
In colloquial German, ‘Heimat’ is generally analogous with the notion of ‘feeling at home’. Etymologically, the term describes a ‘place where one settles down’, i.e. a kind of ‘ancestral seat’, a place where one would like to live forever. Yet the term also initially implied a certain mobility that it has forfeited over the centuries. For ‘base camp’ can and indeed sometimes must be moved and set up in a different place.
Especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, the word ‘Heimat’ was employed as an equivalent of concepts of origin, birth and descent, in turn legitimising racial segregation and persecution. And even today it is still readily applied as a political instrument. Particularly in the context of ongoing debates about immigration, the opposing notions of having a place of origin or not having one are played off against each other, the latter being perceived as an implicit threat to a laboriously constructed collective (national) identity. Society constantly produces images of ‘home’: movies, television programmes, literature and music generate and retell a feeling of home that often has a folkloristic tinge to it.
In connection with growing mobility, constantly progressing globalisation and virtual reality, the question arises to what extent ‘home’ can still be defined in unambiguous geographical terms, i.e. whether the positive aspects of specific social entities related to it should be redefined. Put positively, the notion of ‘home’ may also promote a sense of community that is not limited to a single geographical location. Yet only if the term is conceived of more fluidly, embracing various ‘homes’ as it were, may it serve to boost societal, and particularly social prospects, and to help avoid overemphasizing notions of integration and segregation.
‘HEIMATEN’ examines the multiple implications and social character of ‘home’. The exhibiting artists’ varying responses to the concept are critical throughout: as a set of clichés lending itself perfectly to the making of films (Reinigungsgesellschaft, Songül Boyraz-Höll, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jun Yang); as a myth of descent (Tobias Z, Ruby Sircar, Shirana Shabazi, Jun Yang); as a cluster of cultural projections (Anny and Sibel Öztürk, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ruby Sircar, Jun Yang). The artists were all raised in different cultural contexts; their understanding of ‘Heimat’ is basically composite.