peter steudtner
b. 1971, Berlin, Germany; lives in Berlin, Germany
peter steudtner is a freelance documentary filmmaker, photographer and human rights trainer, working with human rights activists on Holistic Security. His documentary work focuses on land-grabbing in southern Africa. In 2017 steudtner was detained as one of the group which came to be known as the Istanbul 10 while training with human rights defenders in Turkey. His current artistic and training work focuses on a productive coping with this experience.
CONTRIBUTIONS
involuntary assemblies and other taboos – fragments of an animated documentary about political detention, 2019
Video installation on multiple screens
Co-produced by Bergen Assembly 2019
Surveillance cameras record the everyday lives of political prisoners nearly 24/7. But although they are constantly documented, they remain invisible. involuntary assemblies and other taboos reinstates these invisibilities, narrating the story of four months in detention. The animated documentary was inspired by peter steudtner’s experience as a prisoner in the high security Silivri prison in Turkey, where he was incarcerated in 2017 as a result of charges related to human rights work. This experience is in dialogue with other stories of political detainees under fascist and militarist regimes in Chile, Germany, Greece and Sudan, which are woven into the fabric of the documentary. The importance of well-being for resilience and care for resistance is reflected throughout.
Magdalena Freudenschuss / peter steudtner
re:assembling solidarity, 2019
Installation with coloured ropes and imprinted text messages
Co-produced by Bergen Assembly 2019
re:assembling solidarity is a work concerning the artists’ experiences of solidarity during steudtner’s imprisonment as a human rights defender (one of the Istanbul 10). The ‘hammock of solidarity’ consists of strings of textiles imprinted with messages of solidarity that he received in 2017, during his imprisonment in the high security prison of Silivri in Turkey. The printed strings were handwoven into a hammock that now invites visitors to stop and rest. The other side of the installation shows the continuation of the strings as a number of ropes of different texture and design. Some of these are woven into the hammock while others lay loose, or are knotted. On the one hand, steudtner was carried and held by solidarity; on the other hand, solidarity was the result of hard, emotional work by the family and other supporters who organized crisis management and solidarity ‘on the outside’. The diverse textures of the ropes correspond to the complex and varied affective states experienced by family in crisis and solidarity work outside of the prison.
Magdalena Freudenschuss / peter steudtner
preparing4prison, 2019
www.preparing4prison.org
(In collaboration with Magdalena Freudenschuss)
preparing4prison (p4p) collects experiences, stories and best practices of the involuntary assemblies of people imprisoned due to their activism. It brings these together with the insights and perspectives of their supporters, their families and their lawyers. Virtually assembled at www.preparing4prison.org, p4p offers an easily accessible crisis response kit that does not prescribe a certain way of coping with this particular kind of crisis, but allows for inspiration and guidance as much as for rejection of the proposed strategies.
The work gathers a multiplicity of voices that speak from different positions, in different contexts. Starting from their own experience around the case of the Istanbul 10, Freudenschuss and steudtner collected experiences, stories and tips from human rights defenders who were subjected to arrest and imprisonment. They invited affected family members and lawyers to share their insights, feeding their lived knowledge of bodies, affects, relations and tactics back to the community of human rights defenders. In this way, preparing4prison manifests the involuntary assembly of prisoners and their close environment, and constitutes a voluntary assembly of allies.
The online resource is made available for appropriation, adaptation and repurposing, for example in workshops that take place during the Bergen Assembly. Freudenschuss and steudtner open the space to local activists, as well as to participating artists, inviting them to add to the assembled stories and experiences. Users of p4p might individually or collectively reassemble the content for their own purpose.
POSTCARD: Care is resistance
RELATED PLATFORMS
Exhibition