In Between And Never There
MAY 9- JUNE 22, 2025

Zheng Mahler: Nostalgia Machines
Curated by Bettina Freimann
as part of the Chinese Film Festival Hamburg 2025

Opening:
Thu. May 8, 2025 at 7 PM

Opening Hours:
May 9 - June 22, 2025, Fri.-Sun., 4-8 PM

Guided Tour:
Chinatown in St. Pauli with Dr. Lars Amenda
Thu. May 15, 2025 at 7 PM

Meeting point:
Millerntorwache

Finissage:
Sun. June 22, 2025 Noon-8 PM

Free Admission

Millerntorwache
Millerntorplatz 20, 20359 Hamburg

”Every night, I watch the past unfold in the present… My being is lifted high above the ground and sheltered from the destructive power of the machine. I dream and construct identity while perched on a rooftop, trying to recreate memories which never existed.” (Nostalgia Machines, Zheng Mahler, 2019)

In Between And Never There is an artistic activation of the historical Millerntorwache, exploring the representation of marginalized identities within majority based contexts —anchored in Hamburg’s multilayered urban fabric of St. Pauli. How can identity be (re)created in limbo—between a forgotten or erased history, a speculative future, and a fractured, polarized present?

The first edition presents Nostalgia Machines (2019), a video work by Hong Kong-based artist duo Zheng Mahler, which engages with themes of techno-orientalism, nostalgia, and speculative futures. Drawing on cyberpunk, retro-futurism, and 1990s anime aesthetics, Nostalgia Machines reimagines the metropolis of Hong Kong as a stage for examining geopolitical hierarchies. The work dramatizes the concept of the “anime machine” as a cultural technology—projecting imperial anxieties and aestheticizing crisis in the face of shifting power dynamics across (South)East Asia.

Hamburg’s connection to Hong Kong dates back to the mid-19th century when Chinese sailors from Guangdong and Zhejiang arrived via maritime trade routes from the Asian harbor city. Often assigned undesirable roles on ships—such as stokers or laundry workers—many found refuge in St. Pauli, forming Germany’s first Chinatown between Talstrasse and Schmuckstrasse. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had become a site of curiosity, drawing visitors to its restaurants, tea houses, and nightlife venues. Chinese dance halls offered a mediated, exoticized glimpse into the world of a perceived “Asian Other,” reflecting the same orientalist fascination with Hong Kong that underpins cyberpunk futurism: a hybrid of colonial fantasy and the fear of rising influence of global capitalism in East Asia.

However, the presence of these communities was often met with racial prejudice. In the 1930s, rising xenophobia and Nazi policies led to the systematic persecution of Hamburg’s Chinese residents. Accused of operating secret opium dens, the community faced increasing stigmatization and hostility, culminating in the brutal “Chinese Action” of 1944. During this raid, the Chinese community was dismantled, and many were deported to labor or concentration camps – often without documentation or restitution. Today, a memorial on St. Pauli’s Schmuckstrasse and a few Stolpersteine commemorate the history of Chinatown’s lively community. The window into the world of the ‘Asian Other’ was violently shut – yet some of the old connections quietly endured.

Nostalgia Machines transports the emotion of a lost history into a speculative future. Hong Kong, once again, becomes a symbolic projection of the “Asian Other”—a shimmering dystopian dreamscape reflecting Western anxieties about unfamiliar cultures and economic ascendance. The city’s neon-lit, high-tech skyline dazzles with futurist allure, yet beneath its surface hums a quiet isolation—a reflection of alienation in the cold, unyielding structures of glass and steel.

Presented in Hamburg’s historic Western city gate, the work’s glossy visuals confront the gravitas of the architecture, producing a sense of liminality and enigma. Located in close proximity of Hamburg’s former Chinatown, the Millerntorwache adds another layer of resonance—standing as both literal gateway and historical threshold, linking erased pasts with imagined futures. Here, nostalgia is not only a carrier of memory or identity, but a haunting mood: a representation of displacement, longing, and the unresolved in-between.

This liminal state becomes the conceptual anchor of the artistic activation, echoing the tensions experienced by minorities in majority based societies: trapped between imposed images of the Other and the alienation of existing in someone else’s homeland. The story of Hamburg’s Chinese diaspora—defined by fetishization, exclusion, and violent erasure—mirrors a broader struggle of many communities whose narratives remain absent from dominant narratives and histories.

Foreignness and liminality are not just external conditions but internal fractures: quiet ruptures, where one’s own history becomes elusive, and identity begins to blur. In Between And Never There evokes this liminal state—where identity emerges not from fixed positions, but from the unresolved space between memory, absence, and imagined futures.

The exhibition is curated by Bettina Freimann and official part of the Chinese Film Festival 2025. With the support of Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. and Claussen-Simon-Stiftung. With the great support of Frank Breker (Art Off, Oelfrueh).

ZHENG MAHLER:

Founded in 2009 by artist Royce Ng and anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks, Zheng Mahler is a Hong Kong-based duo creating digital media, objects, and performances. Their research-driven practice explores the intersections of nature, technology, and speculative encounters—such as a city’s memory erased by a nostalgia algorithm—while engaging with interspecies empathy and more-than-human experiences. They have exhibited and completed major commissions at KW Institute (Berlin), Helsinki Biennial (2023), Performa (New York), Para Site (Hong Kong), and the Shanghai Biennale (2021). Their work is in the collections of M+ (Hong Kong), IFA (Germany), Fosun Foundation (Shanghai), and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg).