to/after/beyond the border

texts and pictures on the loss of an utopia
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-930654-83-3
Verlag: Black Ink

Buch, Englisch, 44 Seiten, Format (B × H): 125 mm x 205 mm, Gewicht: 60 g

The feeling of driving through a barrier ... Painting and border soundtrack from a past, when border facilities seemed to vanish bit by bit. An associative visit of 22 border checkpoints. Accomplished while the borders to all neighbor countries of Germany were open, after the Schengen Agreement, passable without passport controls. Are they getting controlled and reactivated again now? The art project »Nach der Grenze« – which is German for »to/after/beyond the border« – is like a mirror to former optimistic hopes for a freer world and questions history.

At the border you don't stay. You pass it. To open borders and to close them elsewhere.

The painter Silke Markefka and the writer/artist Nikolai Vogel have collaborated on art projects and exhibitions for years alongside their individual activities. In their project »to/after/beyond the border« they visited Germany's border crossings to its nine neighbouring countries. Silke Markefka transformed her impressions into paintings of medium and large size. Her border paintings are less about realistic representation, but more about a landscape of memory, the repainting and uncovering of layers of time. With the means of paintig this happens in a intuitive way that opens many references for its viewers and uncovers their own experiences. Nikolai Vogel captured the accustic border settings with analogue recording devices and described the impressions from the border in an associative text. The tape machines, reel to reel tape recorders, portable desktop cassette recorders and dictation machines or voice recorders that were used are also coming from an vanishing era – in this way they are brought back to consciousness. Their use at the border reminds one of eavesdropping and surveillance.

Cars are coming from the front and from the back, the border is a place for automobiles.

The project includes the art forms of painting, photography, literature, field recording and performance. This publication serves both as a reader and an artist's book for their long-term project. It features excerpts from Nikolai Vogel's »border texts« and offers a glimps of Silke Markefkas's »border paintings«. The colors in it, the voice and the corresponding »border sound« can only truly be experienced in exhibitions. Like in 2024 at Spandau Citadel in Berlin at the »Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst (ZAK)« in the show »Vom Teilen | About Sharing | O Dzieleniu – Kunst an der (polnisch-deutschen) Grenze« – which means »Art at the (Polish-German border)« – and in 2025 at Muffatwerk Munich where »Nach der Grenze« was presented in a huge overall view. And in 2026 in the Schengen Museum aboard the ship »Prinzessin Marie-Astrid Europa«, the historic site, where the Schengen Agreement was signed!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vogel, Nikolai

Weitere Mitwirkende

Markefka, Silke

Über Autor(innen)

Vogel, Nikolai
Nikolai Vogel, * 1971 in Munich, lives in Munich as an author and artist. Studied German Literature, Philosophy and Computer Sciences at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In art and literature he works in a very special associative way and emphasizes the fragmentary nature of reality which also enables its openess. Cultural Sponsorship Award of the County Landsberg am Lech 1997. Participation in the 12th Open Mike 2004 and the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Award 2005. Scholarship Text-Factory in the Literary Colloquium Berlin 2005. Bavarian State Sponsorship Award in the Category Literature 2007. Project Scholarship for Fine Arts of the State Capital Munich 2008. Winner at the competition »Let's perform« public art of the State Capital Munich Department of Cultural Affairs 2012. Publications (German) among others: »Spam Diamond« (Novel), Haymon, Innsbruck and Vienna 2012. »Große ungeordnete Aufzählung (Detail)« Parasitenpresse, Cologne 2009, SuKuLTuR, Berlin 2014. His poem »Fragmente zu einem Langgedicht«, with 2520 lines in total, was published by gutleut Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2019. In a quarantine-like period in 2020 he read his not yet publishe novel »Angst, Saurier« and released the videos on YouTube within 40 days. The long poem »Vielzweckbuch« came out with the edition offenes feld 2021 and at Black Ink the poetry volumes »Anthropoem«, 2021; »Eine Sprache, die sagt, dass sie außer mir ist«, 2023; »Das Notizbuch mit den Affen«, 2024; and the long poem »Hier und ohne uns« in three parts of altogether 3333 lines, 2026. Furthermore together with Kilian Fitzpatrick he makes technoid electropop forming the music duo »Schlachtbach«.

Markefka, Silke
Silke Markefka, * 1974 in Mühldorf am Inn, lives in Munich. Studied painting at the Akademy of Fine Arts, Munich, class of Professor, Günther Förg. Master Class 2006. Villa Romana-Award 2007. Diploma 2008. Project Scholarship for Fine Arts of the State Capital Munich 2008. Artist-in-Residence851, Munich 2009. Debutant Sponshorship BBK Munich, 2010. Bavarian State Sponsorship Award in the Category Fine Arts, 2013. Silke Markefka's painting gets closer to its themes layer by layer. She brings memory and recollections into focus as a projection screen of self-expression and intimacy. For example in her series »Archive«, »Chandelier«, »Childs«, »Tourists«, »Of curtains« and »Seascapes« which deals with the fading shine of promising moments and the futility of all attempts to capture time. With disappearing light and only alleged transparencies she creates balancing acts that add up neither in realistic representaion nor in abstract concept. Whereby she makes something visible, repeats it. Memory is only made up of the contrast of concreteness and abstraction, it is generated not recalled. Thereby associations are evoked that have to to with absence and irretrievability as an expression of a non-redeemable desire.