Runterkommen | BEFORE/AFTER

The Dutch artist duo, Matt Plezier and Setareh Noorani, are presenting two site-specific installations at the Glaskasten Gallery. The exhibition explores the distinction between beginning and end and examines rhythm, repetition, and time. Its starting point is Chemnitz as a city of transformations and the resulting spaces of freedom: the clubs, techno, and hip-hop collectives that emerged in abandoned factories in the 1990s. SMET builds on this through their own experience in self-organized subcultures—as well as the connection to Rotterdam documented in the 1993 HAKKE zine.

BEFORE layers observations from her first visit to Chemnitz on top of one another. Found objects, photos, stickers, graphics, and prints interpret the city through its rhythms, frictions, and empty spaces.

AFTER invites visitors to read, listen, and relax. In the orange light, time becomes ambiguous: sunrise or sunset? Do we share the same “after” if we had similar dreams?

The exhibition is part of the series “Runterkommen”—the Decompression Room, the Cooldown Space, the After-Hour following Chemnitz 2025—which, through exhibitions by international O-Spaces, collectively addresses the post-event blues as a productive transition between euphoria, legacy, and lethargy.

LEAVE YOUR MARK: August 21–22

As part of the opening ofBEFORE/AFTERat Galerie Glaskasten, we invite everyone to have their own sticker printed on-site—SMET will bring a label printer; you bring a picture.

Stickers help us understand the city by reflecting its rhythms and the fragmented layers of public life. Add another layer and leave your mark!

Practical Information:

• Thermal printing: black and white only (no grayscale)
• Sticker size: 10 x 15 cm
• Accepted file formats: JPEG, TIFF, PDF
• 20 stickers per person (we’ll keep 5 for our archive)