Performance Lecture │ Arena by Sebastian Wells at Olympic Museum 

5 June │  Friday 18:00 

Sebastian Wells’ ARENA I and ARENA II critique the Olympics as a global spectacle, challenging heroic sports imagery to expose the media, spatial, and social mechanisms that shape the event.

In ARENA I, Wells reframes the Games as a product legitimized by images, shifting focus from medal moments to peripheral zones, architecture, and mundane situations. Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Carrier Bag Theory,” he replaces singular heroic narratives with an open, ambivalent visual language where the image itself defines the action, revealing human imperfection beneath functional masks.

ARENA II extends this critique beyond the event itself. Between March and September 2024, Wells documented the transformation of Paris’s Place de la Concorde into an Olympic Park through 500 chronological black-and-white photographs. This archive captures the continuous flow of urban life—passersby, workers, tourists, the homeless, and athletes—framing the “Olympic moment” as merely a temporary interruption. By doing so, Wells questions the concept of Olympic participation, suggesting that mere presence transforms everyone into “Olympic Citizens.”

About the Artist: Sebastian Wells

Sebastian Wells (b. 1996, Königs Wusterhausen) is a Berlin-based photographer and editor and member of the Berlin-based OSTKREUZ photographer’s agency since 2019. His long-term documentary work examines the interplay between spaces, people, and systems of power.

Key projects include: ARENA I (2018-2024), a critical study of Olympic spectacle; Utopia (2018-2019), documenting refugee camp structures; La Rada di Augusta (2019-2020), life near a Sicilian oil refinery; Typ/Traube/Tross (2021-2023), exploring nationalist ideologies in Flanders; and A Garden of Roots (2023), investigating commercial genealogy and family history.

In 2022, Wells co-founded Solomiya together with Vsevolod Kazarin, Andrii Ushytskyi and Ivanna Kozachenko. Solomiya an English-language magazine and contemporary art collective offering a platform for experimental publishing, curating, and research. Founded in Kyiv in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Solomiya focuses on underrepresented discourses and subjective ideas, and connects cities and cultures across the globe.