FLEISCHMANN is a collaboration between Sven Marquardt, Esther Perbandt and Nicholas Mockridge. The three artists first got together to cooperate in this constellation in 2016. The focus of the project: film and theater legend Volker Spengler. The life and work of the exceptional artist who died in February 2020 provides the narrative point of departure for a series of photographic works in three cycles.

Volker Spengler's powerful legacy to Germany's cultural landscape is not limited to his timeless impersonation of the transsexual Elvira Weishaupt in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "In a Year with 13 Moons." In an era before liberally informed gender terms, this work was a milestone and turned him into an LGBTQIA+ icon. His life was marked by great artistic accomplishments and a propensity for ecstatic extremes. As a 14-year-old he set out to travel the oceans as a sailor, moved to Berlin with his longtime partner Bob Dorsay, conquered theater stages, and spent his waning years in solitude.

Marquardt, Perbandt and Mockridge formed an ensemble consisting of the actors Alexander Scheer and Jasna Fritzi Bauer, figures of the Berlin nightlife, upcoming young actors, Perbandt herself, as well as fashion and art icon Countess Vera von Lehndorff aka Veruschka.

The three-part cycle draws on Christian imagery, baroque painting, as well as film and theater history. Caravaggio's "The Seven Works of Mercy" and his technique of the tableau vivant served as inspiration for creating the mise-en-scènes.

Photographer Sven Marquardt relied on techniques of image composition to emulate the textures of oil paintings. Director and interdisciplinary artist Nicholas Mockridge took time to study Spengler's oeuvre in depth and developed settings from the most important dramatic themes in the actor's career. The roles of Elvira Weishaupt, Hermann Göring and Baal are reinterpreted in FLEISCHMANN. Esther Perbandt created a total of 15 costumes specifically for the series. She combined historical elements with her own avant-guard aesthetics, and reinterpreted sailor suits, Nazi uniforms or Japanese kimonos.

Together they produced a contemporary Berlin interpretation of classic passion plays, described by the journalist and publicist MAX DAX as follows:

"FLEISCHMANN is the perpetuation of an irretrievable moment, remembered as Volker Spengler's last sigh in Berlin at the beginning of the 21st century."

Special thanks to Jan Engel ✝.

FLEISCHMANN Nicholas Mockridge — Esther Perbandt — Sven Marquardt

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