We live in a time of overheating – of debates, cities, servers, and bodies alike. Temperatures are rising, so is fear, confusion, a number of climate migrants and deepening inequalities in access to resources. Cities are often described in thermal terms: hot asphalt, burning infrastructures, urban heat islands. Lene Markusen proposes to look at the city as a body struggling to regulate its temperature, through the life and work of a late Hamburg artist Barbara Haeger, as well as her own experience as an artist undergoing menopause.  

One of Haeger’s key works, Weiblicher Engel (Female Angel), 1960/1972 – a burnt, fragile figure – is located at the St. Nikolai Memorial. The sculpture is shaped by Haeger’s memory of witnessing the burning of Berlin, and the lasting impact of fire on both body and psyche. Markusen brings together further female city sculptures by Haeger from across Hamburg, assembling them into a network of interdependency and relation. Themes that appear distant become deeply entangled: climate change, global warming, the social taboo surrounding menopause, and the inner, psychic experiences of intensity and visibility with the digital overload of the data and the servers. 

Through a language of honesty, feminism, and intergenerational responsibility, the work opens up the possibility of imagining – and inhabiting – another cycle of warmth: one that gestures toward less overheated cities, and more balanced, equitable societies. 


Lene Markusen, born in Thisted in 1973, lives and works in Hamburg.


The film is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg and the Royal Danish Embassy Berlin. 
The installation ist supported by the Royal Danish Embassy Berlin. 


Film Credits

Duration: 12 min.
Performed by: Lucrezia Palandri
Director of Photography: Giulia Lenzi
Soundtrack: Martina Raponi/noiserr
Written and directed by: Lene Markusen