LEINKAUF, HENKE & WERMKE - SYMBOLIC THREATS

Poetry or threat? An act of surrender, or perhaps art? These were the questions that puzzled New York in the summer of 2014. How can one incident be interpreted in so many ways? Through press reports, Symbolic Threats (2025, 15 mins) highlights the public’s extreme disparity of interpretation. Inspired by the heated debate over the two White American Flags that suddenly appeared on the towers of New York City’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge, the film asks what kind of societal scope art has today. What happens when threatened freedom reinstates art with an element of danger? Who or what defines it as a threat? Are we safe in the city? What comes next?

Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke, and Matthias Wermke grew up in Berlin in the 1990s, learning to value and utilize the city’s possibilities. A shared enthusiasm for repurposing urban spaces brought them together early on. Today, they still focus on the same questions and locations in their work, whether as filmmakers, curators, cultural scientists, or fine artists. They create images and mindscapes, tell stories, and dissect events, always hoping to make the unseen visible and to explore a place’s fixed meanings and potential uses.