Urban Mending Lab - Between Repair and Apocalypses, A project of the Chto Delat School of Emergencies.
February Program
12.02.202 – Artist Talk Katja Pilipenko, 19:00 Hajusom
The threat of nuclear war has once again entered everyday reality. This prompted Katja Pilipenko's research into bunkers in Hamburg: the city with the largest number of bunkers in Europe, around 1,200 of which were built, and about half still exist today.
After Germany officially abandoned its nationwide civil defense shelter program in 2007, these structures entered a transitional state, today re-emerging in public debate amid renewed discussions about civil protection. Her works Bunkerstadt (2022) and Not Everyone Will Be Taken to a Bunker (2024) investigate the promises of safety embedded in bunker architecture and their collapse under contemporary conditions. Working with photography, video and sound installations, Pilipenko examines how architectures of protection shape memory and present-day reality.
15.02.202 – Songs of Repair and Apocalypses (Seminar Nr.1) Facilitator: Maria Markina
13:00 – 16:00 Hajusom
Through collective singing, listening, and experimental songwriting, participants transform memories, languages, and lived experiences into shared music. The workshop creates an inclusive space to reclaim voice, build connection, and strengthen a sense of belonging through communal sound.
Maria Markina is an opera and chamber singer and recipient of the Dr. Wilhelm Oberdörffer Prize, specializing in contemporary music and voice performance. Her work connects voice, the social body, and mourning as a political practice. Alongside her artistic activity, she is founder and chair of Nordherz Hamburg e.V., supporting refugee women and their social participation.
14.02.202 – Body practice: Scar tissues (Seminar Nr.2) 12:00 – 16:00 Hajusom
Facilitator: Vera Shchelkina
Workshops on the body, the body–mind connection, movement, and performativity in relation to public space (and the history of bodily approaches to injury).
Vera Shchelkina is a choreographer, dance artist, and somatic movement educator working between performance, pedagogy, and research. A graduate of the Somatic Academy Berlin and HZT Berlin, she develops projects with diverse communities, exploring the body as a site of perception, resistance, and transformation.
26.02.202 – Collective visit to Fabcity and presentation of its founder Niels Boeing
Meeting 18:30 at Oberhafenkantine behind Deichtorhallen:
Googlemaps Link
Produced locally, connected globally: the vision of the Fab City imagines a city capable of making (almost) everything it consumes through circular economies, open production tools, and shared digital infrastructure. Hamburg joined this international network in 2019 alongside cities such as Barcelona, Boston, and Paris. Today, this vision expands beyond fabrication to include repair, reuse, and care as essential practices for sustaining urban life and reducing waste.
www.fabcity.hamburg/de/
28.02.202 - Mending and reweaving of clothes (Seminar Nr.1)
Facilitator: Evegenia Loginova
13:00 – 18:00 Hajusom
This workshop explores how discarded clothing and wearable objects can be redesigned into costumes for creative urban interventions. Through repair and reuse, participants extend the life of materials while expressing care for things, people, and shared environments. The resulting wearable statements become tools for storytelling, political expression, and transforming the city into an interactive, living space.
Evgenia Loginova-Hünemörder is a Hamburg-based artist working across performance, costume and set design, film, and collective projects. Educated in Kemerovo, St. Petersburg, Kiel, and Cologne, her practice connects art with social reflection on memory, migration, and transformation. Recent works include Songs of Hope and Despair (2025), Here + Now + Everyone (2025), and Klageritual (2021).
28.02.202 - Urban narratives (Seminar Nr.2)
Facilitator: Olga Egorova and Dmitry Vilensky
19:00 - 21:00 Hajusom
This combined workshop links attentive listening with critical reading of the city to explore how Hamburg's public spaces can become sites for performative interventions. Through sound walks, field recordings, mapping, and discussion, participants examine the acoustic, symbolic, and ecological layers of streets, monuments, and architecture. A central focus is inviting each participant to share their personal relationship to specific places in Hamburg, bringing individual memories, experiences, and viewpoints into a collective reflection. These shared perspectives help identify public spaces that can be reimagined as stages for artistic and civic action, reshaping how the city is experienced and narrated.
The Urban Mending Lab — a transdisciplinary artistic and educational initiative that explores the city as a terrain of wounds, tensions, and possibilities for repair and reweaving. The project consists of 4 workshops, culminating in two research-based exhibitions at Hajusom: Body Practice – Scar Tissues (Vera Shchelkina), Songs of Repair and Apocalypses (Maria Markina), Mending and Reweaving Clothes (Evgenia Loginova), Repair and Urban Storytelling (Tsaplya Olga Egorova and Dmitry Vilensky). The seminars will happen twice a month and combine 2 seminars together – next dates in February 14.02.2026 and 28.02.2026
Anmeldungen jederzeit möglich.
Entrance to the Bunker (not the roof entrance), Feldstraße 66, 2nd floor, 20359 Hamburg
(follow the signs inside the bunker)
Chto Delat (What Is to Be Done?) is an international collective founded in St. Petersburg in 2003 by artists, philosophers, critics, and writers. Chto Delat’s practice is grounded in collective, interdisciplinary, and non-academic research, developed in close collaboration with social movements, educational institutions, and art organizations, including long-term partnerships in Hamburg. Since its forced emigration in September 2022, Chto Delat has run the School of Emergencies, The urgency of the school was created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, uprising in Belarus and waves of political refugees from Russia, after growing fascisization of Russian politics. The school fellows together with mentors and invited teachers try to find a new artistic language which are capable of grasping the situation of more and more absurd world. More information: www.chtodelat.org
This project is supported by Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.




