The work will be opened on Saturday, 24 May at 2 pm in the garage courtyard at Theaterstraße 70. Visitors will come across a sensational discovery in an abandoned garage: a so-called ‘Fischelant’ (Saxon for ‘clever, on the ball, smart’). The golden secret of this enigmatic machine can be revealed by October 2025 to those who gain access to it. 
Cosima Terrasse has worked primarily as part of the artist collective Laokoon on new forms of hybrid storytelling. With Laokoon, she produced the documentary film ‘The Cleaners’ (2018), the data experiment ‘Made to Measure’ (2021, Pact Zollverein) and the performance ‘Wie Du mich findest’ (2022) for the Münchner Kammerspiele. 

Press event: Sat, 24 May, 13:00 / Chemnitz, garage courtyard Theaterstraße 70 

#3000Garages is one of the main projects in the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 programme. Curator Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka and her team have developed an extensive participation format and have invited various artists since 2023 to get to know Chemnitz garage users and involve them in a variety of ways. 

For example, the artist Klaus Pobitzer from South Tyrol called on garage users to send him photos of their garages. He created digital drawings from hundreds of images of otherwise inaccessible garages, processed them with AI and put them together to create the video installation Interior Landscapes, which will be shown from 24 May (opening 20:00) to 15 June in the garage courtyard in Ahornstraße. The contents of the garages are mixed with motifs that have been present in Pobitzer's work for years: Aliens, pop stars, politicians, celebrities, etc. His works are shown internationally in public spaces and museums.  

Press event: Sat, 24 May, 12:00 / Chemnitz, garage courtyard Ahornstraße (in front of house no. 29) 

In order to trace the original French meaning of the word garage, ‘to bring something to safety’, director, musician and performance artist Tanja Krone has spent the past few months asking countless garage owners (and many other Chemnitz residents) how they find their inner security in uncertain times. This has resulted in the music theatre Songs of (In)Security, which will be premiered at the Garage Festival from 6 to 8 June. Tanja Krone often stays close to reality in her performances and uses the poetry of the documentary as a textual basis. For her real-life series MIT ECHTEN REDEN and the concert performance MIT ECHTEN SINGEN, she has already returned to Chemnitz once to search for connections between the present and the past in the stories of former classmates, teachers and friends from back then. 

The venue for the #3000Garages-Festival is a meadow at Garagenhof Harthweg. Garage culture will be celebrated there for three days, with musical theatre by Tanja Krone, a garage talk show with author Lukas Rietzschel (‘Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen’), concerts, workshops, a 30-kilo mustard bet, a literary garage and much more. 

The approximately 30,000 garages in Chemnitz, most of which were built by their users during the GDR era as a joint effort or by themselves, are the starting point for the Capital of Culture project #3000Garages. They were and still are not only parking spaces, but also places of retreat and creative laboratories. In 2025, this project brings to light the people who are connected to these places. Their stories are condensed and transformed and can be experienced in the form of artistic works, recordings, documents and artefacts. Even if the garage doors remain closed to the Capital of Culture visitors, the artistic works created with the garage owners tell of the cultural significance of these places, which are so typical of Eastern European cities.  

The resulting works are collected and documented in the ever-growing #3000Garages Exhibition, which can be seen until 29 November 2025 in the Garagen-Campus, a former tram depot renovated for Chemnitz 2025. This exhibition is the result of three years of participatory work by the team around curator Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka and is currently showing, among other things, the large photo exhibition Members’ Assembly, for which the Berlin photographer Maria Sturm portrayed 164 garage users, as well as teasers and fragments of works that can be seen decentrally in Chemnitz.  

Last year, artist and architect Martin Maleschka collected found objects from garages to present them on loan in the installation Spare Parts Storage (Sächsisches Fahrzeugmuseum, until the end of November 2025). Students from Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle have developed design elements for a Garage Trail in Chemnitz and Finnish artist Kati Hyyppä regularly organises textile workshops together with Sabine Hochmuth from Chemnitz to felt a carpet from a View from Above. In August, experts in art and science open the Chemnitz Garage School and concerts and other small events regularly take place in various garage courtyards during the summer months. 

 Upcoming dates

Sat, 24 May / 13:00 Press event / 14:00-18:00 Opening / Chemnitz, garage courtyard Theaterstraße 70 
Cosima Terrasse: Fischelant 
Multi-part interactive art installation on creativity and community spirit in the garage courtyard 
Exhibition period: 25.05. and 30.05. - 3.10.2025 Thu, Fri and Sat 14:00-19:00 
The interactive visit to the Fischelant is limited during the opening at 2 pm for capacity reasons. Please note that the visit to the Fischelant takes 50 minutes and therefore requires an appointment booking. Booking details will follow shortly. 

Sat, 24 May / Press event 12:00 / Opening 20:00-22:00 / Chemnitz, garage courtyard Ahornstraße (in front of house no. 29) 
Klaus Pobitzer: Innenlandschaften
Video installation about garage interiors and the world
Exhibition period: 25.05. - 15.06.2025, Fri and Sat, 20:00 - 00:00  

Fri-Sun, 6 to 8 June / Chemnitz, Garagenhof Harthweg 7-9, central meadow 
#3000Garages Festival
The big party of garage culture(s) 

Festival Programme
Fri, 6 June, 19:30 / Premiere: Chemnitz, Garagenhof Harthweg 
Tanja Krone: Songs of (In)Security
music theatre 
further performances: Sat, 7 June, 19:30 / Sun, 8 June, 18:00 

Sun, 24 to Sun, 31 August / Chemnitz, Garagenhöfe, Garagen-Campus, Kulturbahnhof 
Chemnitz School of Garage
Cross-generational concepts for sustainable social change 

_____Ongoing activities

until 29 November 2025 / Sat-Thu, 12:00-18:00 / Chemnitz, Garage Campus, Zwickauer Str. 164
#3000Garages – The Exhibition
The East Garage phenomenon at a glance 

until 31 December 2025 / Chemnitz, various locations in the Chemnitz garage landscape 
#3000Garages Trail
A walk through Chemnitz 

until 29 November 2025 / Chemnitz, Museum for Saxon Vehicles 
Spare Parts Storage
Installation by Martin Maleschka and Chemnitz garage users

-------

EcocNews is an independent, non-profit, online newspaper. We cover the world of European and National Capitals of Culture.
Join us on this journey and support us with a voluntary donation here.