In the organizer's words:

Photographer Marion Wenzel talks to Franciska Zólyom about her work.

In 1988, Leipzig-based photographer Marion Wenzel joined the VEB semiconductor factory in Frankfurt (Oder). Production of microchips and transistors was discontinued the following year. But they were still being manufactured for the GDR, the Soviet Union and countries such as Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. It is mainly women who work on the machines. The sensitive semiconductor technology is manufactured in so-called "clean rooms". No dirt particles are allowed to enter. The female workers enter them through an airlock. Beforehand, they slip into special suits and pull hoods over their heads. Wenzel, who as an artist primarily photographs the changes to the landscape around Leipzig caused by lignite mining, comes to the plant as part of a "plein air" together with other artists. She takes some pictures in medium format and with direct flash light to create proximity, capture details and describe the work situation with the highly sensitive technology. Even before she can expand the series, the work is history.

The conversation takes place as part of the exhibition Robotron. Code and Utopia.

Marion Wenzel studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig under Prof. Evelyn Richter. Inspired by her professor, she began photographing the open-cast mines in the south of Leipzig in the early 1980s. Over the course of several decades, she created an archive that makes visible the man-made changes to the landscape and the associated environmental destruction. From 2005 to 2025, Wenzel worked as a collection photographer for the University of Leipzig, for which she documented the university's history in numerous photographs, such as the removal of the Karl Marx relief, the demolition of the socialist campus buildings and the construction of the Paulinum.

Price information:

Admission is included in the exhibition ticket.