GERM 2011

The Grimm Brothers' celebrated collection of folktales, first published in the early 1800s, contain narratives which persist in obvious and less obvious ways. References like 'Cinderella stories', 'leaving a trail of breadcrumbs', and 'kissing frogs' are part of our cultural shorthand, but it's the latent content of the tales, their magic, excess and extremes, violence, beauty and poetic force, which has continually drawn the attention of artists, writers, and critics. Older forms and diverse variants of many of the most famous stories present us with fragments of psychic history and shed light on developments in sexual politics, gender norms and societal trends.