Mein Schatz

My Precious - J. R. R. Tolkien's "Ring of Power" forged in Mount Doom could be a smartphone today. Like the ring, every smartphone is made of exquisite ores and rocks. Around the globe, however, in the culturally overformed modern living environments, a certain obliviousness to the material foundations of comfortable life seems to have spread, because these are usually plucked from the depths of the earth in hard labour elsewhere. Mansfeld, an important mining region from the Middle Ages until 1990, was a place of such hard work until relatively recently. Now the region is looking for new values: What is your treasure?

The Werkleitz Festival 2023 Mein Schatz/My Precious, located in the Mansfelder Land, asks for new and old, material and ideal values in a socio-geographical situation that seems to be specific and at the same time emblematic of a crisis of extractivist economics that can be observed worldwide. The festival will be held on the grounds of the former Dominican convent in Wiederstedt, whose ensemble of buildings also includes the Research Centre for Early Romanticism and the Novalis Museum Schloss Oberwiederstedt.

The artists invited to the festival exhibition are Agnieszka Polska, Ana Alenso, Barbara Marcel, Egill Saebjörnsson, Felicitas Fäßler, Juliane Henrich, Karsten Bott, Mabe Bethônico, Stephanie Kiwitt and Viktor Brim. Their works situates extractivist value creation in an international context. The film programme, curated by Florian Wüst, presents the artistic debate on mining and its consequences beyond the Mansfelder Land.

In collective processes, thematic excursions through Mansfeld and mapping of the region are developed by Lars Fischer and Lena Reisner. Hikes, exhibition tours and workshops accompany the festival weekends.