As of today, a new south façade of the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin welcomes all university members and people in Marzahn-Hellersdorf with bright pink letters. It was designed by the writer Maxi Obexer, who was awarded the Alice Salomon Poetry Prize 2023 by ASH Berlin.
The official inauguration of the new façade will take place on Thursday, July 17, 2025, at 4 p.m. in the presence of the artist.
Maxi Obexer wrote the poem "von den dächern" especially for the university.
all of you here, we
can be, threatened
affected, called, immediately
become others
alone, how to find each other
and not forget
that we are loverswhere is the outside when we seek it
who is the outside when we love it
Maxi Obexer says of her poem: "It was important to me to create a body of text in which there is no counterpart to another, in which linguistic demarcation, however subtle, is suspended, in which there is a 'we' without being taken over, or in which the threatened and the affected are not differentiated from the called per se."
Maxi Obexer's text has replaced Barbara Köhler's work. By decision of the university's Academic Senate, the south façade of ASH Berlin is regularly changed by a contribution from the circle of Poetry Prize winners. This gives different prizewinners and their works visibility inside and outside the university.
At the base of the façade are stainless steel plaques with poems by Barbara Köhler and Eugen Gomringer as well as explanatory comments by the writers. In this way, ASH Berlin pays tribute to the works of its predecessors and creates a contextualizing archive. Against the backdrop of austerity measures, the university has decided to renew the artistic façade design every ten years.
"We are delighted about the new design for the south façade by Maxi Obexer, the winner of the 2023 Poetry Prize. Obexer's design follows on from those by Eugen Gomringer and Barbara Köhler. Maxi Obexer's text conveys an engagement with the location and an awareness of the attitude of our university. Our south façade is and remains a place of art in public space and a place that presents the work of our award winners," says Prof. Dr. Bettina Völter, President of ASH Berlin.
Further information
Further information about Maxi Obexer and the process of redesigning the south façade can be found in our press release from 20.06.2024.
You can find out more about our current Alice Salomon Poetry Prize winner Yevgenia Belorusets here: https://www.ash-berlin.eu/hochschule/presse-und-newsroom/ash-news/ihre-kuenstlerischen-arbeiten-leisten-wichtigen-beitrag-zum-sozialen-handeln-in-der-gesellschaft/
Interview with Yevgenia Belorusets, in which she provides insight into her work and reflects on the possibilities of art: https://alice.ash-berlin.eu/hochschulleben/krieg-nimmt-der-sprache-ihre-kraft-und-zerstoert-die-kunst/
