POINTS OF (NO) RETURN / Masterclass by Ma-El Weiher
Date: 24 May
Time: 10:00
Venue: Salaam Art Temple
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What marks do we leave behind on cities, on nature, on each other? In this two-day masterclass, artist Ma-El Weiher invites participants to explore the traces of human presence within urban environments, focusing on the fragile dialogue between natural processes and human-made structures. By examining overlooked, decaying, or transient objects in public space, participants will reflect on how the smallest details can tell complex stories of time, loss, resistance, and change.
Through a combination of conceptual city walks, artistic fieldwork, and group discussion, this workshop fosters critical engagement with environmental and social themes. Participants are encouraged to use mediums such as drawing, photography, video, or sound to develop personal responses to the festival’s central question: How can art act as a catalyst for ecological and social transformation? “points of (no) return” becomes not only an inquiry into artistic method but a reflection on the irreversible changes shaping our world today.
Ma-El Weiher
Ma-El Weiher (born 1999) studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence and works primarily with printmaking and painting. The exploration of public spaces and their intimate, vulnerable aspects is the central theme of her work. Ma-El has received several awards and participated in solo and group exhibitions held in Florence, Istanbul, Freiburg, Baden-Baden, Klagenfurt, Stuttgart and Vienna.
How can art act as a catalyst for ecological and social transformation? What traces do we leave behind in cities, nature and on each other? Where are ’Points of (No) Return’?
During this two-day, participatory and process-oriented masterclass ’Points of (No) Return’, artist Ma-El Weiher invited participants to explore the traces of human presence within urban environments. As a common starting point, the participants were given broadly defined prompts, which they were initially to find independently in a conceptual city walk. The search quickly led to a partially abandoned house in the immediate vicinity of the Salaam Art temple, in which one part is inhabited, and another is collapsing.
The group decided to work with the medium of linocut, a technique that according to the topic of points of (no) return hardly allows decisions to be reversed. A single linoleum plate was split into 12 squares that each became a small print related to the individual prompts. Three prints were produced from each stamp: one for the participants to take or distribute, one for Salaam and one for the house that was the starting point of the reflection. The aim is to establish a direct link between the two houses, the participants, and the reflections developed in the group.