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30/04/2014
Comments Off on PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL, MAY 1 – 4

PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL, MAY 1 – 4

The PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL
at CHB – Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
OPENS MAY 1 at 19:00
UNTIL MAY 4

DO NOT GO TO THE MOMENTUM GALLERY!
MOMENTUM will be closed on May 1st.
All PANDAMONIUM Preview Events on May 1 – 4 are located at the .CHB – Collegium Hungaricum on Dorotheenstrasse 12.

CHB Logo

There will be a performance at 20:00 by Berlin-based and Beijing-born artist, Jia

The PANDAMONIUM Preview continues until Sunday 4 May and will close
with a Symposium 16:00 – 19:00: China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai Meets Beijing

This will be followed by a repeat of Jia’s performance, Untitled at 19:00
and a screening on the media facade of the .CHB from 20:00

More info here

13/08/2022
Comments Off on ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues

ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues

 
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ART from ELSEWHERE:

Danube Dialogues

 

Selected Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection

 

19 August – 15 September 2022

 

Presented at the

Danube Dialogues Contemporary Art Festival

 

 

In the historic Karlovci Gymnasium, Sremski Karlovci, Serbia

for the European Capital of Culture 2022 Novi Sad

 

 
 

Featuring:

Marina Belikova // Claudia Chaseling // Nezaket Ekici // David Krippendorff // David Szauder // Mariana Vassileva // Vadim Zakharov

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

 
 

Presented in Parallel to:

Danube Dialogues – Off-Centre

Inna Artemova // Claudia Chaseling // Milovan Destil Marković

 

ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues presents a selection of video artworks by seven artists from the MOMENTUM Collection, Berlin, who come from the Danube regions of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. MOMENTUM’s program is presented for the European Capital of Culture 2022 Novi Sad, in the Danube Dialogues Festival in Sremski Karlovci, Serbia, and is shown in parallel to the exhibition “Danube Dialogues – Off-Centre”, featuring Milovan Destil Marković, Claudia Chaseling, and Inna Artemova – three of the artists from the MOMENTUM Collection.

ART from ELSEWHERE is a series of travelling exhibitions, taking a new site-specific form in each edition and location, showcasing works and artists from the MOMENTUM Collection, Berlin.

Today most of us live lives of perpetual motion from one piece of information to the next, from one opportunity to the next, and – until COVID-19 stopped us in our tracks – from one place to the next. Mobility – both geographical and social – not so long ago the privilege of the few, is now taken for granted as the entitlement of the majority. Artists are at the forefront of this peripatetic existence, travelling the world for inspiration, exhibitions, and artist residencies, experiencing new places and cultures through the critical lens of the outsider, and then reflecting back upon their own locales through the prism of their expanded world views.

ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues is a program of video artworks by artists based in Berlin, and as diverse as Berlin itself. Presenting artists from Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Turkey – they are all also Berliners. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin is a city of mobile people and moving images, where art and artists alike are predominantly from elsewhere. “ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues” is a video program about otherness; about communication and its opposite; about the ways in which we see the world and interact with it. Moving images move us, and artworks serve as windows onto the world. As we emerge after periods of isolation, and learn how to negotiate the new realities of a post-pandemic world, it becomes more important than ever to have such windows through which to gaze. In these uncertain times, they remind us that, for all our differences, we are all in this together. The works shown in this program focus on global issues, equally relevant to us all, no matter where we live or where we have come from. They reflect on the social and environmental repercussions of globalization and its impact on the transformation of cultural identities; they interrogate issues of identity, inequality, and poverty; they scrutinize the environmental traumas we inflict on our planet and its creatures; and they ponder the (un)quiet poetry, conflicts, and beauty of how we must live from day to day.


Learn more about the MOMENTUM Collection > >

 
 


 

FEATURING

(Click on the artist name to see the bio and the work description below)



 


 

 
 

Inna Artemova

 

Utopia V (2017), Oil on Canvas, 155 x 160 cm (on loan from the artist)

Artemova’s paintings, as well as her wall installations escaping the boundaries of the 2-dimensional, embody Artemova’s focus on architectures of utopia. Yet while the idea of utopia is the dream of a perfect society, these works evoke a sense of impending cataclysm, as yet quite far removed from an idealized state of perfection. Seeming to capture the aftermath of some volatile force, this exploded and explosive installation sends a suitably ambiguous message about the future and the present. The sense of velocity in Artemova’s works gives her floating structures a futuristic speed, propelling them – as the titles of her Utopia series suggests – into a more perfect future. Contriving to comingle a notion of existential threat with the sense of the sublime, these works can be seen as a portrait of our precarious times. Having witnessed first-hand the collapse of the Communist utopia in her native Soviet Union, Artemova’s utopias are fragile constructivist visions in a state of constant flux; exploding, imploding, teetering on the edge of a perilous balance, or perhaps already being rebuilt. Every collapse presents the hope of a new beginning; a renewed dream of an ideal future. Utopias are too often built on the ashes of their opposites.

 

Utopia H 2836 (2021), ink, marker, paper on cardboard, approx. 30 x 84 cm (on loan from the artist)

 

Inna Artemova (b. Moscow, USSR. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Born in Moscow, Inna Artemova studied architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). For her diploma project, she received the 2nd prize of the Russian Federation. In 1998 she moved to Berlin and started to focus on her work as an artist in the field of painting and drawing. Artemova’s practice remains heavily influenced by her professors at the MArchI in Moscow, the “Paper Architects“, a movement originating in the 1980s that developed futuristic architectural creations never intended to be realized. The visionary projects of the Paper Architects and her experience of the failure of the Communist utopia with the fall of the Soviet Union, has led Artemova to explore, through her constructivist painting style, the ideas of architectural utopias from the 1960s up to her own futuristic visions. In creating utopian landscapes and spaces, Artemova interrogates the future of living spaces and their impact upon human relationships. The concept of utopia stands for a space of possibility in human consciousness in which the crucial questions have to be answered again and again: Is there no alternative to the reality in which we live? What will we do in the future? Do we have to fail because of our ideal ideas? Artemova’s work is included in the major survey exhibition and publication “DISSONANCE. Platform Germany” (2022) edited by Mark Gisbourne & Christoph Tannert. Her work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, biennales, and collections.


 
 

Marina Belikova

 

BALAGAN!!! (2015), video animation with sound, 1 min. 47 sec. (courtesy of MOMENTUM Collection)

In Russia balagan is a popular exclamation that describes, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups. BALAGAN!!! is also a major international exhibition produced by MOMENTUM in 2015 of contemporary art from the former USSR and Eastern Bloc that reveals a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are celebrated and scathingly exposed. Balagan originally meant ‘fairground’. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked in them: puppeteers, clowns and jesters, who made fun of and satirised established order. And, from the beginning, artists have realised the potential of balagan as an effective framework for revealing the truth. Today, the revolutionary politics of laughter, as well as the cathartic release it promises, are engendered by a sense of outrage at cruelty, inhumanity and the abuse of human rights. But balagan is not only modern: ever since time began, chaos has been ever-present. The exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places is about how some artists choose to depict the chaos of our times critically, challenging its power through humour, parody and the power of art itself. For this exhibition, the curator David Elliott wrote his own unique description of BALAGAN, which Jonathan Barnbrook designed, and Marina Belikova visualized as an animated film. We reprise BALAGAN!!! for Birds & Bicycles, as it remains equally relevant to our world today, still afflicted by chaos and misrule, and now also a global pandemic to contend with. Perhaps the power of humour, parody, and art itself lies in its ability to lift us out of the darkness and, soaring above it, develop new perspectives and better hopes.

 

David Elliott (text) & Jonathan Barnbrook (graphics), BALAGAN!!! (2015)

 

Marina Belikova (b. 1989 in Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Berlin.)

Marina Belikova is a Berlin based media artist, working with photography, graphic design and 2D animation. She has a background in web and media design. In 2012-2013 she completed an M.A. in Communication Design at Kingston University, London and in 2016 she graduated from the Bauhaus University, Weimar with an M.A. in Media Art and Design, specializing in oil-on-glass animation techniques. Belikova animates her narratives through the traditional technique, where each frame is painted individually and subsequently captured with a camera as stop motion animation. She also works with photography and mixed media, exploring the topics of human memories and interaction between people and urban spaces. Her award-winning animations have been screened at numerous film festivals in more than 10 countries, and her photo series have received the Bauhaus Essentials Prize and have been shown in various international exhibitions.


 

 
 

Claudia Chaseling

 

On The Edge (2005), Egg Tempera & Oil on Canvas, 180 x 540 cm, (on loan from the artist)

Murphy the Mutant (2013), HD Video with Sound, 14 min. (courtesy of MOMENTUM Collection)

Splashes of bright colors in biomorphic forms. Shapes and hues redolent of crackling, explosive energy. Claudia Chaseling’s work confronts viewers with a psychotropic saturation of visual information interlaced with text and the URLs of source materials for her research. What seems initially to be pure abstraction, is in fact a complex visual analysis of the radioactive contamination caused by depleted uranium munitions.

Murphy the Mutant is Chaseling’s fist graphic novel of watercolors animated through video and read out loud by the artist. This seminal work marks the starting point of Chaseling’s enduring focus upon the nuclear chain leading to depleted uranium and its toxic aftermath, which forms the subject of her body of work over the past decade. By means of it’s deceptively naïve drawings, akin to a children’s book, the story of Murphy the Mutant transposes into a paradoxically sweet atomic allegory, the horrific aftermath of the way we wage war in the modern world – namely, the enduring environmental devastation of nuclear waste and munitions. Set in a fictional future, the story refers to what is happening in our world right now. Murphy the Mutant is an imaginary creature deformed by the all too harsh reality of the atomic waste used by armies throughout the world to fight their wars.

The irreversible radioactive pollution caused by depleted uranium weapons has been proven through international scientific research, much if which Chaseling cites within her work. This ammunition was first used by the USA in the Gulf war in 1991 and later in Afghanistan, Iraq, former Yugoslavia, Gaza and other countries. The use of these armaments leads to severe deformations, cancer, and death and continues to do so a long time after the wars are over; the radioactive particles have a half-life of 4.5 billion years. When ingested or inhaled these particles change DNA, and in this way remain to affect populations for generations. The USA, France, Israel and the UK are still using these weapons, and repeatedly voted against resolutions on behalf of the UN General Assembly that called for a moratorium and, ultimately, a ban of depleted uranium ammunition. Affected communities call its use a silent genocide.

Hadzici (2016), Aluminum, Egg Tempera & Oil on Canvas, 150 x 150 cm. (on loan from the artist)

 

Claudia Chaseling (b. 1973 in Munich, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Kangaroo Island, Australia)

Dr. Claudia Chaseling received a Masters degree in Visual Art, from the University of the Arts in Berlin (UdK), and in 2019 Chaseling completed her studio-based PhD in visual arts, with a focus on spatial painting, at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Her work has been exhibited in over sixty solo and group exhibitions, notably in the United States, Australia and Europe. She has been featured in the X-Border Biennial, Finland; the Lueleå Biennial, Sweden; and the Lorne Biennial, Australia. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Art Gallery Nadezda Petrovic, Cacak, Serbia; Wollongong Art Gallery, Australia; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; Krohne Art Collection, Eifel, Germany; Yuill Crowley Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Kunstverein Duisburg, Germany; Art-in-Buildings, New York City and Milwaukee, US; among others. Chaseling has taken part in international artist residency programs, including: Art Omi and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, USA; Texas A&M University, USA; and the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. The Verlag für zeitgenoessische Kunst und Theorie Berlin published her first extensive monograph in 2016. Her work is included in the major survey exhibition and publication “DISSONANCE. Platform Germany” (2022) edited by Mark Gisbourne & Christoph Tannert.


 

 
 

Nezaket Ekici

 
 

Kaffeeklatsch (2019), HD Video Performance with Sound, 6 min. 17 sec. (on loan from the artist)

In her video performance Kaffeeklatsch, Nezaket Ekici refers to the German afternoon ritual of ‘coffee and cake’, a time of meeting and togetherness for many German families. The history of coffee gossip is a long one. In Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the rise of the bourgeoisie, women began meeting for coffee gossip – “Kränzchen” – to exchange ideas among themselves, allowing them a taste of freedoms that up until then had been reserved for men in social circles. Nezaket Ekici addresses the tradition of the coffee klatsch from her perspective as a migrant and a fully integrated German, questioning her sense of belonging in German society. She asks herself what her own German tradition is – which leads to the general question of what actually is German tradition? In order to answer these questions, Ekici stages herself as three characters dressed in traditional German costumes from the Black Forest, the Spreewald, and Thuringia, representing the south, the north and the center of Germany. With the focus on the articulation, gestures, and facial expressions of the performer, Ekici drinks coffee with her doppelgangers in this playful video addressing the fine line between foreignness and belonging. Watching this work now – on the cusp of the third year of social distancing and intermittent lockdowns, when we have all spent far too much time in our own company – we come to see how very precious this simple freedom is, to gather together with one another.

 

Nezaket Ekici (b. 1970 in Kirsehir, Turkey. Lives and works in Berlin & Stuttgart, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey.)

Nezaket Ekici holds a degree in Fine Arts, an MA in Art Pedagogy, and an MFA degree, having studied Art History and Sculpture at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and Fine Arts Academy Munich (1994-2000). From 2001 to 2004 she studied Performance Art under Marina Abramović at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig. Ekici’s video, installations and performances are often process-based and ask viewers to derive their own emotional and intellectual interpretations. In her work, complex, often controversial topics are tackled with humor in highly aesthetic compostions. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, authorial bodies, art history, religion, culture and politics are central to Ekici’s works. By highlighting these themes in everyday life and placing them in a new context, she aims to interconnect every element to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk. Nezaket Ekici has presented more than 250 different performances in more than 170 cities in over 60 countries on 4 continents.

Selected international exhibitions since 2000 include: Museum Haus der Kunst in Munich; The Irish Museum of Modern art in Dublin; 25. May Museum Belgrade; PAC Milano; Venice Biennale; P.S.1 New York; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam; Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei/ Taiwan; Poznan Biennale; Curiciba Biennale; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Istanbul Modern; Marta Herford; Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai; Haus am Waldsee Berlin; KunstWerke Berlin; Oslo Museum; The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi; Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Total Museum Seoul, and many more. Ekici was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cultural Academy Tarabya, Istanbul (2013-14), was the recipient of the Rome Prize for an Artist Residency at the German Academy, Villa Massimo, Rome (in 2016-17); and participated in the Schlingensief Opera Village Residency in Burkina Faso, Africa (2021). She received the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Award (2018), and received the Berlin Culur Senate prize for her Artist Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York (2020).


 

 
 

David Krippendorff

 


David Krippendorff, Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015), HD Video with Sound, 14 min. 9 sec. (courtesy of MOMENTUM Collection)

Nothing Escapes My Eyes takes us on an intimate journey through identity and history. David Krippendorff’s time-warping tribute to a changing world presents a would-be Aida, to a moving soundtrack from the eponymous opera, shedding tears for a place and time which no longer exist.

Nothing Escapes My Eyes is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being, both subjected to the melancholy of conforming. The film was inspired by the famous opera Aida, to depict in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. The film refers to the following historical event related to this opera: Aida premiered in Cairo in 1871 at the Khedivial Opera House. One hundred years later the building was completely destroyed by fire and replaced by a multi-story parking garage. Nevertheless, to this day, the place is still named Opera Square: Meidan El Opera. The film combines this urban alteration with the painful transformation of a woman (actress Hiam Abbass) in the process of shedding one identity for another. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from Verdi’s opera Aida, whose lyrics express the difficulties of being loyal to one’s country and cultural identity. The personal and urban transformation tackles issues of identity, loss and disorientation as a result of historical colonialism and contemporary globalization.”

[David Krippendorff]

David Krippendoff (b. 1967 in Berlin, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin)

David Krippendorff is a US/German interdisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker. He grew up in Rome, Italy, and studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he graduated with a Masters degree in 1997, and was subsequently based in New York for some time. The son of a Holocaust survivor and the grandchild of practicing Nazis, cultural contradiction and dislocation shaped Krippendorff’s experience early on. His artistic practice inquires into this state of being a “permanent foreigner” and explores resulting questions of home, national and cultural identity, and belonging. Krippendorff’s works, films and videos have been shown internationally, including at: the New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem). He has participated in four Biennials (Prague, Poznan, Tel Aviv, and Belgrade), as well as in many international art and film festivals worldwide.


 

 
 

Milovan Destil Markovic

 

It Really Did Fill My Mouth (Morning) (2013), Pigments on Canvas, 186 x 250 cm (on loan from the artist)

Missionary Position (2009), Pigments on Canvas, 186 x 250 cm (on loan from the artist)

It Really Did Fill My Mouth (Evening) (2013), Pigments on Canvas, 186 x 250 cm (on loan from the artist)

 

Milovan Destil Marković’s series of Transfigurative Paintings are the result of intensive research and the attempt to develop and expand the idea of the portrait. In his ongoing series of Barcode Paintings, Marković uses barcodes to signify written words through colourful, bright stripes on his canvases. Every text can be translated into a barcode that is the product of a systematic process of codification, at the end of which only a rhythmic series of vertical lines remains. This abstraction allows for an international rationalized system of merchandise management, the organisation and distribution of commodities. In Marković’s work, there is a tension between the image as an abstract painting and the barcode as algorithmic script. The content of each image is revealed through the title of the painting.

The titles of the three bar code paintings shown here are quotations from the infamous memoir “The Sexual Life of Catherine M.”, the autobiography of Catherine Millet (renowned French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press).

Marković’s works contain short text quotations from pornographic literature, politics and banking; representations of the world of power and oppression. His barcode paintings veil their content behind a normalised form; at once the language of commerce, and a kind of digital calligraphy. They can be understood either as an impish joke on the part of the artist, or as a critique of the opaque structures of markets that mask their global deficiencies and injustices. As a sly comment on the possibility of art as commodity, printed on the side of each painting is a barcode: the normal-sized, black and white version of the content of each barcode painting.

Milovan Destil Marković (b. in 1957 in Čačak, Serbia. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Milovan Destil Marković is a visual artist who studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts, Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983. Defining himself as a conceptual painter, Marković has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia and in the Americas. His work was featured at 42nd Venice Biennial (Aperto ’86), 4th Istanbul Biennial, 46th Venice Biennial, 6th Triennial India New Delhi, 56th 49th 24th October Salon Belgrade Biennale, 2018 Lorne Sculpture Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Kumamoto, MoMA PS1 New York, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken, The Artist’s Museum Lodz, National Museum Prague, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, MSURS Museum of Contemporary Art Banja Luka, Landesmuseum Graz, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, National Gallery Athens, Art Museum Foundation Military Museum Istanbul, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunstvoreningen Bergen, Kunstverein Jena, Galleri F15 Oslo, Nishido Contemporary Art Tokyo, Fei Contemporary Art Center Shanghai, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana and many others. Marković’s works are held by numerous public and private collections throughout the world, including: Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany; Museum of the City of Belgrade, Serbia; Istanbul Art Museum Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria; The Artists’ Museum, Lodz, Poland; amongst others.



 

 
 

David Szauder

 

David Szauder, Parallel Universes (2021), 4 Digital Animation Loops, with Original Sound

I. The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021, 1’20”

II. Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021, 1’14”

III. Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021, 1’09”

IV. Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021, 1’10”

In this series of work, Hungarian media artist David Szauder re-animates original Super 8 footage shot by his grandfather in the 1960-80’s. Superimposing his own somewhat surrealistic universe onto the historic footage, Szauder conveys the sense of a world perpetually going slightly mad. And perhaps it is. In the state of our world today, where nationalism, political tensions, and the closing of borders are on the rise, it would indeed be mad not to look back upon the lessons of history. The artist’s grandfather developed his passion as an amateur filmmaker with the purchase of his first 8mm camera in the 1960s. Through its lens, he recorded glimpses of the world he was allowed to see, travelling as much as he was permitted within the political constraints and physical borders of the Eastern Bloc. Upon his grandfather’s death, David Szauder inherited a time-machine – a collection of over 1000 rolls of film archiving the world as his grandfather saw it. This footage forms the basis for much of Szauder’s recent work, exploring memory in the light of personal and collective history.

The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021

For the past seven decades, the most distinctive feature of the Budapest skyline standing tall above Gellért Hill is the Liberation Monument, a Soviet-built metal statue looking eastward as a tribute to the Red Army’s triumph over Hungary’s Nazi occupiers during World War II. Because of this politically fraught past, several movements attempted to remove this feminine figure over the years, but it has persevered to become an iconic symbol of Hungary’s capital.

Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021

These guards protected the eternal flame in Berlin’s Neue Wache, the Memorial for the Victims of War and Tyranny on Unter den Linden, between 1969 and 1989. Yet in Szauder’s universe, they’ve changed their position and are now protecting the Tesla Model S. The world has found its new eternal flame, updated for our aspirational economy of luxury in a form impossible to imagine at the time the original footage was shot.

Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021

The Hungarian folk tradition of the Busó festival, shot in the 1960’s by the artist’s grandfather, remains largely unchanged to this day. Marking the end of the annual Carnival season, this procession of terrifying costumed monsters was immensely popular during the Communist regime, supported by the government as a safe non-political form of entertainment. Yet the enduring popularity of Busó today is derived from its appropriation by an opposing force. With a government leaning further and further to the right, the folklore and cultural traditions of Hungary are being today deployed to celebrate nationalist ideals and values.

Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021

The 1st of May was celebrated as a holiday for workers in every socialist country, with parades of labourers from factories and communes, pioneers and party members. Szauder comingles footage from various May Day celebrations in Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia with his whimsical animations in a game between visible and invisible – much like the political subtexts of these enforced displays of ideology.

Light Space Materia (2020), HD Video & Digital Animation with Original Sound, 8 min. 27 sec. (courtesy of MOMENTUM Collection)

 

David Szauder’s film Light Space Materia (2020) translates Bauhaus ideas on technology, new materials, and light into a digital context, upgrading an iconic work of the 1930’s into a 3D digital animation and algorithmically derived soundscape. Taking as his inspiration the kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (1930) by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder re-created his own large-scale rendition of this iconic work – Light Space Modulator (2020). Szauder subsequently used this installation as the basis upon which to make a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes. David Szauder recontextualizes into digital media the driving principal of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy’s aim to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how contemporary technology could change the formal expression of movement and capture the physicality of materials in a digital context. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. For this reason, this characteristic always formed an essential basic notion of Szauder’s work, and led him to use computer code when creating his animations. The code contributed to a better understanding of the compositional methods and movements and opened a new door for the perception of the 3-dimensional kinetic world. As the last step, a soundscape was derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of Szauder’s Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of the materiality of the image.

 


 

David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in numerous international projects as artist and curator. Projects in cooperation with MOMENTUM include: “MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).



 

 
 

Mariana Vassileva

 

Lighthouse (2009), HD Video with Sound, 4 min. 30 sec. (on loan from the artist)

Toro (2008), HD Video with Sound, 5 min. (on loan from the artist)

Marianna Vassileva’s video, Lighthouse, opens with a man driving out to the sea. Confronted by the immensity of the ocean and its implacable rhythms, he conducts nature’s symphony – the winds and the waves. While in Vassileva’s film, Toro, the same man once more confronts the sea. This time, he fights against the waves, challenging them much as a toreador waves his cape at a charging bull. This simple gesture is both as futile and as eloquent as Don Quixote tilting against windmills. Both films together paint a poetic allegory of mankind’s relation nature. Confronted by our helplessness in the face of the elements, we try to control them, to bend them to our will.

Mariana Vassileva (b. 1964 in Bulgaria. Lives and works in Berlin.)

Mariana Vassileva graduated from the Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2000, and has remained in Berlin since that time. Working across varied mediums such as video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, Vassileva’s practice is concerned with the poetry that lies beneath the quotidian and the routine. Based upon observation of daily life, her works respond to an element of playfulness inherent in artist and viewer alike. With the curious gaze of a voyeur or of an urban anthropologist, the artist observes people and their surroundings in order to capture a moment of poetic imagery. Watching, and the distance it implies, are both method and subject of a body of work reflecting on human concerns familiar to us all: communication, cultural displacement, relations with self and other, loneliness and the humor hidden within the rhythms of the day-to-day.

Mariana Vassileva is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, having shown in major institutions including: Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Canada); Tate Britain (UK); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Kunsthalle zu Kiel (Germany); Edition Block (Berlin, Germany); The Stenersen Museum (Oslo,Norway); Total Museum (Seoul, Korea); Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hong Kong).

Mariana Vassileva has participated in several international Biennials, including: the 1st Biennal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, (Argentina, 2007); the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty and the Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, (Australia, 2010); the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rewriting Worlds, (Russia, 2011); Biennale Vento Sul in Curitiba, (Brasil, 2012); the 56th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale, The Pleasure of Love, (Serbia, 2016).

Vassileva’s works are held in international public collections, including: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Rene Block Collection (Berlin, Germany); Koc Museum (Istanbul, Turkey); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel); La Caixa, Caja de Ahorros de El Monte y Fundacion el Monte (Spain); Lemaitre Collection (London-Paris); Kunsthalle Emden (Germany); Lidice Memorial.



 

 
 

Vadim Zakharov

 

Vadim Zakharov, BAFF BAFF! What Are The Politicians Talking About (2021), HD Video Performance with Sound, 4 min. 20 sec. (courtesy of MOMENTUM Collection)

Vadim Zakharov’s most recent video work presents an all too fitting commentary on our current state of affairs where politicians spout nonsense at one another while remaining unable to stop the atrocities of war. BAFF BAFF! What Are The Politicians Talking About invokes the talking heads we see on news programs every day, recounting an equally incomprehensible reality which would be surreal were it not so tragic.

“In the video performance, non-verbal words are read aloud, most of which have been found in the magazines “Mickey Mouse” (German editions) and also taken from the books “Tintin The Mysterious Star” and “Asterix & Obelix The Laurels of Caesar”. The words collected in the non-verbal vocabulary have no meaning, but only phonetically reflect certain events:
 someone has fainted (BLIEP!), a glass has broken (CRACK! CLIRR!), a helicopter has crashed into a cupola (KAROMMS!), a museum has collapsed (CRACK! THUNDER! CRIME!).

The Reader (Vadim Zakharov), wearing a white shirt and a tie, recites these words seriously and forcefully. The image of a politician is created, a public figure who professionally and convincingly is ready to say something on any occasion. At the same time, we see that these are just empty words – bubbles that float away as soon as they reach our ears. The film highlights the absurdity of what we see and hear every day on television and the internet.

At the same time, reading non-verbal words can be perceived as reading poetry…”

[Vadim Zakharov]

Vadim Zakharov (b. 1959 in Dushanbe, UdSSR (now Tajikistan). Lives and works in Berlin.)

Vadim Zakharov is an artist, editor, archivist of the Moscow Conceptual art scene, and collector. Since 1979 he has participated in exhibitions of unofficial art and collaborated with such artists as: V. Skersis, S. Anufriev, I. Chuikov, A. Monastyrski, Y. Leiderman. In 1982–1983 he participated in the AptArt Gallery, Moscow. Since 1992 till 2001 he has published the “Pastor” magazine and founded the Pastor Zond Edition. In 2006 he edited book “Moscow Conceptualism”. His retrospective was held at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2006. He represented Russia at the Venice Biennale in 2013 with the project “DANAE”. In 2016-2020 Zakharov organized the exhibition space “FREEHOME-Artist to Artist” in Berlin.

Selected honors and awards include: Griffelkunst-Preis, Hamburg (1995); Renta-Preis, Kunsthalle Nürnberg (1995); Soratnik Prize, Moscow (2006); Innovation Prize, Moscow (2006); Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund, American Academy in Rome (2007); Kandinsky Prize – Best Work of Year, Moscow (2009).

In addition to numerous solo and group exhibitions, Vadim Zakharov has participated in many biennales of contemporary art, including: the 49th Venice Biennale, “Plateau of Humankind”, (Director Harald Szeemann, Arsenale, 2001); 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, “Black Birds” installation (Museum of Byzantine Culture, 2007 ); 55th Venice Biennale, Vadim Zakharov, “Danaë”, Russian Pavilion (2013); 5th Moscow Biennale, Vadim Zakharov, “Dead Languages Dance. Fall collection”, (TSUM, 2013); “2014. Space Odyssey”, CAFAM BIENNALE, Beijing (2014); 3rd Biennale of Bahia, Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (2014); 14 Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, Russia (2021).

Vadim Zakharov’s works are held in many prestigious public collections, including: Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; TATE Modern, London, UK; Modern Art Museum, Frankfurt, DE; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main, DE; Kupferstienkabinet, Berlin, DE; Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Budapest; Saint Petersburg, RU; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers USA; Museum of Art at Duke University, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, HU; Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, DE; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, RU; Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, RU; Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, RU; Moscow Collections of the NCCA, Moscow, RU



 
 

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22/11/2021
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TAKING FLIGHT

Birds & Bicycles Berlin

 

ONLINE EXHIBITION ON



 

5 November 2021 – EXTENDED

This exhibition takes place amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of war closer to home than any of us could previously imagine. In light of the tragic return of war to Europe, and the many displaced people fleeing to safety, we extend TAKING FLIGHT to show solidarity with all those suffering from this senseless war: with our friends, families, and colleagues in Ukraine, and with the many in Russia who dream of peace.

 

Featuring Video Art from TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles Berlin:

AES+F // Shaarbek Amankul // Marina Belikova //
Zuzanna Janin // Dominik Lejman // Almagul Menlibayeva // Hajnal Nemeth // David Szauder

 

Curated by
Rachel Rits-Volloch & Emilio Rapanà

With David Elliott, Curatorial Advisor & Symposium Organizer

 


 

_______________________

 

Together Birds & Bicycles

Initiated by Georgy Nikich, Moscow

An International Partnership Between 12 Institutions in Russia, Poland, and Germany

Together Birds & Bicycles is a platform initiated in 2021 as a cooperation between a dozen partners in Russia, Poland, and Germany, designed to address ideas of freedom and open boarders – notions of which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is making a travesty. Because there are so many in Russia who never supported this, such a platform for freedom is needed now more than ever, if there is to be hope of a peaceful resolution.

 


 

Supported by a grant from the
German Federal Foreign Office
for the Expansion of Cooperation with Civil Society
in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia


In Partnership With:

ANO Center for Educational & Cultural Projects [Moscow, Russia] // Impact Hub [Moscow, Russia] // Exhibition & Discussion Center Khokhlovka Association, Ukraintsev Chamber [Moscow, Russia] // The Rails Cultural Center [Tver, Russia] // Vyhod Media Center [Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, Russia] // Miras Gallery [Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia] // The Renaissance Center for Polish Culture and Education [Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia] // The Russian-Polish Center for Dialogue and Accord Foundation [Moscow, Russia] // BWA Krosno [Krosno, Poland] // City Culture Institute [Gdansk, Poland] // Arsenal Municipal Gallery [Poznań, Poland] // MOMENTUM [Berlin, Germany]


 

Birds & Bicycles is conceived as a ‘factory of metaphors’, taking as its premise the ideas of freedom and the notion of borders, forever shifting and perpetually being crossed, where bicycles symbolise physical freedom, and birds metaphysical freedom; birds become the philosophy of freedom, and bicycles the technology of freedom. The overall manifestation of Birds & Bicycles is an international cooperation between 12 partners in Russia, Poland, and Germany, each hosting their own exhibitions and discussions focused around common values symbolized by the topics of freedom and crossing of borders. Based on social activism, historical reflections, and contemporary art, the project develops an expanding framework of participatory culture, with the contributions of each international partner brought together in a single online platform sharing the social, educational, and communicative results of the Birds & Bicycles initiative.

 

_______________________

 


 

GO TO the TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles Berlin Exhibition Page >>

 


 

In Berlin, MOMENTUM presents Birds & Bicycles with the exhibition and symposium TAKING FLIGHT. Extrapolating from the metaphor of birds and bicycles, we build our program around the analogy of flight. Referring to the duality of the term flight as both an airborne means of travel and an escape from crisis, the metaphor of flight is especially important in the historical and contemporary context of Berlin. From the aerial bombardment and destruction of Berlin in WWII resulting in reconstruction on-going to this day; to the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War, when for 15 months in 1948-49 American and British forces flew over Berlin more than 250,000 times to drop essential supplies to keep the population of West Berlin alive during the Soviet blockade; to the transformation of the Nazi-built Tempelhof Airport into Europe’s largest refugee camp in 2015 to house many thousands of migrants fleeing humanitarian crisis in their homelands to this day; to the Berlin Brandenburg Airport fiasco when, after a 10 year delay, seven missed opening dates, and over a billion euros over-budget, the German capital’s new airport finally opened in 2020 amidst pandemic travel restrictions. In a city itself long divided, located in the geographical center of a divided Europe, the history of air travel in Berlin is a history of crisis, indivisible from the basic humanitarian need for freedom. It is an account of flight in both its senses – as a form of travel and a means of escape across borders.

The factory of metaphors which is Birds & Bicycles Berlin, TAKING FLIGHTon IkonoTV, assembles the work of 8 artists from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, who are now Berliners. Representative of the significant cultural diaspora in Berlin from the former Eastern Bloc, the artists in this exhibition address the metaphor of flight as a symbol for freedom in various forms. While AES+F re-imagine the airport as a modern-day Purgatory, Almagul Menlibayeva gazes out at space as the next border we are racing to cross. And while David Szauder surrealistically re-animates his grandfather’s Super 8 footage from the Eastern Bloc of the 60’s-80’s, Shaarbek Amankul captures the historic moment of Lenin in flight, suspended between a past of failed ideologies, and an uncertain future. In a world of global humanitarian, ecological, and medical disaster, we may often feel as if we are in free-fall. Dominik Lejman’s skydivers undulating in the vastness of space come to resemble at one moment the geometric shapes of gothic church architecture, and in the next the biological forms of chromosomes; continually switching between the spiritual and the scientific origins of life. The Russian exclamation “balagan” – describing, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups – is deployed by Marina Belikova to present a critical challenge to the chaos and misrule of our times. Hajnal Németh’s operatic rendition of quotations from failed leaders presents a sadly timeless portrait of an age when the irresponsibility and ignorance of leaders grows undiminished. And Zuzanna Janin’s boxing ballet is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues.




 

TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles on IkonoTV >>

Featuring:

(Click on the artist name to see the bio and the work description below)



 


 

 
 

AES+F

 

AES+F, Allegoria Sacra (2011-13), HD video

Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Allegoria Sacra’ (Sacred Allegory) hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. The subject of this painting is a mystery to art historians. The earliest figures of Christian and ancient mythology are gathered together on a balustrade by a sea or a wide river, surrounded by hills on which can be seen, in the distance, village huts and a palazzo. St. Sebastian, the Madonna, a centaur, small children playing by a tree in the center, a Saracen-Muslim, a man somewhat like the Apostle Paul with a sword in his hand, in the background a peasant with a mule, two beautiful ladies one of whom is St. Catherine, a naked old man reminiscent of Job – this is a far from complete list of the heroes who Bellini brought together in this picture. One interpretation of this painting is that it showed Purgatory, where the souls of the righteous, of virtuous pagans and of un-christened children await their fate – heaven or hell.

This painting has always intrigued AES+F. The mysterious image of the Allegoria Sacra is in keeping with their view of the modern world. They see Bellini’s heroes in those passengers who meet accidentally while awaiting their flights at international airports. The feelings of being cut off from one’s life and of the, as yet, unachieved aim of traveling from one world to another are familiar to the majority of those who fly, whether with large or small airlines. We become part of a special club of people who are united by the condition of a body and soul located between the abandoned and the not yet found. Together, i.e. simultaneously, we listen to the flight announcements, watch the flight board with its changing tableau of figures and cities, try to focus on the newspaper, on an SMS or the internet, or simply on the advertisements on the airport monitors. But everyone is wrapped up in themselves, and it is this which unites us. There is, perhaps, one more thing which somehow links us during this interval in time – we look at each other, having never seen one other before and being unlikely to do so again.

The airport is Purgatory. Only there does one understand that the knowledge of one’s ‘tomorrow’ is a total illusion. We imagine the airport as a space where reality transforms itself – it gets covered with snow, which alters the interior and then melts, the runway turns in to the river Styx as in Bellini’s painting, airplanes become ancient, mystic craft. The light-boxes in Duty Free live a life of their own, showing pictures of heaven. In Allegoria Sacra, we wish to retain Bellini’s metaphorical heroes using the image of modern-day people from various countries and cultures. At the same time we believe that the airport space can include such mythological personalities as the centaur, who we imagine in his literal embodiment. Or the Indian elephant god Ganesha, with the features of a coffee machine. Even the various aircraft may take on the image of ancient gods like the eastern dragon.

The allegorical heroes of the painting can be seen in those awaiting their flights. The Saracen turns into a group of transit passengers from Darfur or Peshawar. Sebastian is a young traveler from the exotic countries of the south, naked to the waist and barefoot, having not yet changed his shorts for jeans. Job is represented as an elderly patient being transported on a hi-tech stretcher and covered with tubes, indicators and monitors, who becomes younger before our very eyes and turns into a magical mutant-baby. A policeman of Biblical appearance carries a sword alongside the more traditional equipment, like Paul. The stewardesses, angels from a new heaven, appear on fantastic flying machines like the cabin crew in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and start to serve passengers.

The film follows in part the reality of airport life. As well as experiencing the usual crowds of passengers we witness the location and destruction of an unidentified piece of luggage, a fight between migrants, the emergency services helping a patient. Alongside everyday reality we see a whole range of mystical transformations of this world, from a jungle with exotic tribes to an underwater kingdom, then to a snow field which melts to form the river Styx, flowing to the horizon in to an endless sea in the direction which the passengers will eventually fly, their planes becoming mystical craft.

[Artist Statement]

Seen in light of the recent pandemic lockdowns and restrictions on travel we have all faced, the metaphor of the airport recast as Purgatory takes on a depth of meaning relevant to all of us for whom freedom of travel and mobility has until now been a given.

 


 

AES+F (Artist Group founded in 1987. Live and work in Berlin, Germany; Moscow, Russia; New York, USA.)

First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky, the collective became AES+F when Vladimir Fridkes joined in 1995. AES+F work at the intersection of traditional media, photography, video and digital technologies. They define their practice as a kind of “social psychoanalysis” through which they reveal and explore the values, vices and conflicts of contemporary global culture. In 2015, AES+F premiered Inverso Mundus at the 56th Biennale di Venezia, and later showed it at the Kochi-Muziris Biennial and a number of other museums and festivals around the world. AES+F achieved worldwide acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007, and since then have participated in many signature biennials around the world, including: Adelaide, Gwangju, Havana, Helsinki, Istanbul, Kiev, Kochi-Muziris, Lille, Lyon, Melbourne, Moscow, St. Moritz, Sydney, Taipei, Vancouver, and others. Festivals devoted to new media include: ARS Electronica (Linz), Mediacity Seoul and Video Zone (Tel Aviv). AES+F had over 100 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, including: ZKM (Karlsruhe), HAM (Helsinki), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Tate Britain (London), MAXXI and MACRO Future (Rome), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires), and many others.



 

 
 

Shaarbek Amankul

 

 

Shaarbek Amankul, Lenin Stands – Lenin Fell Down (2003), video, 1’30″

With the advent of Communism in Kyrgyzstan, pre-Soviet ways of life were transformed as nomads became fighters for an international revolution, farmers became citizens, and Muslims became atheists. In the central square of Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, Lenin’s sculpture proudly stood from 1982 to 2003. In an almost comic case of cultural confusion, even after gaining their independence, masses of former communists came to pray beneath this statue; the worship of Communist ideology giving way to the mass prayers of Ramadan. Lenin towered above this square until 2003, when he was brought down from the facade of the Historical Museum (the Museum of Revolution until 1992), and moved to its backyard. This procedure, though oddly ceremonial, was not advertised by local authorities. This work captures a rare historic moment – Lenin in flight, suspended between a past of failed ideologies, and an uncertain future. The ceremony of the changing of the guard – so appropriate to this notable event – is ironically incidental to it, taking place every day at this location, and clearly oblivious to Lenin’s historic flight.

Shaarbek Amankul (b. 1959 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Lives and works in Bishkek.)

Shaarbek Amankul is a curator and interdisciplinary artist working with a variety of media: ceramics, sculpture, installation, performance, video and photography, in addition to conceptual research projects. Amankul holds art and history degrees from Frunze Art College, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (1980) and Kyrgyz National University (1989), respectively. Amankul founded the international artist group Art Connection (2001-2006), the first art initiative in Kyrgyzstan focused on environmental issues. Amankul’s conceptual and curatorial work also includes the extensive art platform B’Art Contemporary, which he founded in 2007 to instigate a critical arts dialogue between the communities of Central Asia and the global art world.

B’Art Contemporary, amongst the very first contemporary art initiatives in Kyrgyzstan, is an artistic research platform which considers art as an essential facilitator of critical dialogue on environmental, social, economic and cultural issues faced by the societies of Central Asia. To continue his mobile art practice and artistic research, in 2011 Shaarbek Amankul founded the Nomadic Art Camp, an series of nomadic art projects in Kyrgyzstan, using the practice of the traditional way of life of nomads as a source of inspiration for contemporary art practices. The project, continuing to this day, focuses on the relationship between art and the political, economic and social processes at the intersection of issues of globalization, migration and bio-cultural diversity.


 

 
 

Marina Belikova

 

Marina Belikova, BALAGAN!!! (2015), video animation, 1’47”

In Russia balagan is a popular exclamation that describes, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups. BALAGAN!!! is also a major international exhibition produced by MOMENTUM in 2015 of contemporary art from the former USSR and Eastern Bloc that reveals a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are celebrated and scathingly exposed. Balagan originally meant ‘fairground’. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked in them: puppeteers, clowns and jesters, who made fun of and satirised established order. And, from the beginning, artists have realised the potential of balagan as an effective framework for revealing the truth. Today, the revolutionary politics of laughter, as well as the cathartic release it promises, are engendered by a sense of outrage at cruelty, inhumanity and the abuse of human rights. But balagan is not only modern: ever since time began, chaos has been ever-present. The exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places is about how some artists choose to depict the chaos of our times critically, challenging its power through humour, parody and the power of art itself. For this exhibition, the curator David Elliott wrote his own unique description of BALAGAN, which Jonathan Barnbrook designed, and Marina Belikova visualized as an animated film. We reprise BALAGAN!!! for Birds & Bicycles, as it remains equally relevant to our world today, still afflicted by chaos and misrule, and now also a global pandemic to contend with. Perhaps the power of humour, parody, and art itself lies in its ability to lift us out of the darkness and, soaring above it, develop new perspectives and better hopes.

 


 

Marina Belikova (b. in Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Berlin.)

Marina Belikova is a Berlin based media artist, working with photography, graphic design and 2D animation. She has a background in web and media design. In 2012-2013 she did an M.A. in Communication Design in Kingston University London and in 2016 she graduated from Bauhaus University Weimar with an M.A. in Media Art and Design, making “The astronaut’s journal” as her master thesis. Belikova tells narratives through the old school oil on glass animation technique, where each frame is painted individually and then captured with a camera as stop motion animation. She also works with photography and mixed media, exploring the topics of human memories and interaction between people and urban spaces. Her animation have been screened at multiple film festivals in more than 10 countries and her photo series have received the Bauhaus Essentials Prize and have been shown various exhibitions.

David Elliott (text) & Jonathan Barnbrook (graphics), BALAGAN!!! (2015), print on paper

 
 


 

 
 

Zuzanna Janin

 

Zuzanna Janin, Pas de Deux (2001), video, 5’

With a title appropriated from ballet, Zuzanna Janin’s Pas De Deux (2001) is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues. Shot in a jerking close-up of two pairs of legs in constant motion on a blank white background, we are drawn into what could be a dance as readily as a fight. It is a dialogue between two bodies, a give and take of power and physical space. It is also a different perspective on one of Janin’s best-known works, the video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), where the slight, fragile-looking artist takes on a professional heavyweight boxer. To create this work, Janin spent 6 months training with him in the ring. The boxing match in The Fight is real and harrowing to watch in its intensity. In this work, the camera weaves in and out, dodging and feinting with the fighter’s blows, as close-up and personal as the physical act of combat.

Yet for Janin, this combat between two mismatched opponents is also a dance, a language allowing two bodies to communicate. The direct perspective of the camera in The Fight draws us into the brutality of this uneven combat. But changing the perspective and dropping the camera to ground level suddenly reveals the ambiguity lurking beneath the violence. For Pas De Deux, Janin’s fight performance is shot with the intimacy of a camera moving with the two bodies as they follow the same motions as The Fight, but without seeing the blows. The violent mismatch is transfigured into a match, a term which in sports signifies a contest between opposing competitors, whilst in normal usage it means a harmonious pair.

Zuzanna Janin (b. 1961 in Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw and London.)

Zuzanna Janin is a visual artist and former teen actor, having in her youth starred in the Polish TV serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron). Having turned her talents to visual art, Janin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw (1980-87), and in 2016 completed her PhD at the University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland. Throughout her diverse practice of sculpture, video, photography installation, and performative actions, Zuzanna Janin deals with the subject of space, time and memory, as well as the problem of exclusion and absence. The main theme of her work is a conceptual approach to the visualization of processes, changes, comparisons, continuity, what’s “in between.” Janin transforms fragments of private memory, comingling her own experience with collective memory and images of universal history, contemporary social and political problems. Zuzanna Janin is also he co-founder of the independent art space lokal_30 in Warsaw (2005-2012).

Zuzanna Janin has taken part in a number of international Biennals, including the Sydney Biennial (1992), Istanbul Biennial (1992), Soonsbeek (1993), Liverpool Biennial (1996), Łódź Biennale (2010), 54th Venice Biennale (2011) (in the official program of Romania). She had a solo shows, screenings and performances at: Foksal Gallery Warsaw, Kunsthalle Wien, MAM Rio de Janeiro, Salzburger Kunstverein, National Museum Cracow and Warsaw. Group exhibition include: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal School of Art, Edinburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Jeu de Pomme Paris; Japanese Palace, Dresden; Kunstmuseum Bern; Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin; TOP Museum Tokyo; Foundation Miro, Barcelona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunsthalle, Bern; Hoffmann Collection, Berlin; TT The THING, NY.

Since 2019, Zuzanna Janin is a lecturer in Postgraduate Study of Contemporary Art at the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. Janin was Guest Professor in a number of universities, incuding: Academy of Fine Art Cracow (Poland) , ASAB Academia del Arte, Bogota (Colombia), Sapir College of Art in Sderot , (Israel), Haifa University (Israel), Academy of Fine Art Bratislava (Slovakia) , Bezalel Jerusalem (Israel), Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (Poland) , Academy of Fine Art Warsaw and King’s College London (UK) and took part in conferences, meetings and talks in many other art institutions.


 

 
 

Dominik Lejman

 

Dominik Lejman, 60 Sec. Cathedral (2011), Projected Video Mural, 24’30” [Courtesy of Persons Projects]

60 Sec. Cathedral is a video-fresco showing a specially trained group of skydivers recreating the vaulted ceiling of Durham Cathedral as they fall to earth. The title of the work is derived from the 60 seconds of free-fall in which they must complete their task. Projected in the artist’s signature style of negative image, these small white figures undulating in the vastness of black space come to resemble at one moment the geometric shapes of gothic church architecture, and in the next the biological forms of chromosomes; continually switching in this way between the spiritual and the scientific origins of life. 60 Sec. Cathedral reveals shapes representing Christian values, philosophy and ethics and also bioethical science, bringing into question notions of good and evil and the biological and molecular formations they might take. In a world of global humanitarian, ecological, and medical disaster, we may often feel as if we are in free-fall. Whether it’s a higher spiritual force, or the natural laws of science which will save us, we all need some source of hope to look up to.

60 Sec. Cathedral is accompanied by a making-of video chronicling the immense preparation and training which resulted in the production of this work.

‘Jump’ Production: Dariusz “Dafi”, Jarosław “Widget” Szot, Artur “Bravos” Ceran (cameramen).

Sky Divers: Marcin Szot, Jacek Łącki, Krzysztof Kiebała, Markiz Białecki, Grzegorz Szusta, Kinga Komorowska, Jarosław Szot, Dominika Godlewska, Robert Wolski, Amelia Bobowska, Maciej Machowicz, Dariusz Banaszkiewicz, Robert Przytuła, Sebastian Matejek, Maciej Węgrzecki, Witold Kielerz, Maciej Król, Artur Karwowski, Grzegorz Leonow, Anna Dzido, Agnieszka Szczerbakow, Marcin Laszuk, Agata Chmielak, Izabela Pilarczyk, Laura Stachowska, Dariusz Filipowski, Artur Ceran, Marek Nowakowski.

Dominik Lejman (b. 1969 in Gdnask, Poland. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Poznan, Poland.)

Dominik Lejman graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts at The School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 1993, and in 1993-95 studied at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1996, Lejman completed a further research degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He has lead the painting workshop at the University of the Arts in Poznań since 2005. Dominik Lejman is the winner of the 2018 Berlin Art Prize awarded by the Akademie der Künste, and is the recipient of many other awards, including: Polityka’s Passport Award in 2001, The Kosciuszko Foundation, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Location 1 in New York, and The Polish Ministry of Culture. Dominik Lejman’s works have been exhibited broadly in many international biennales, museums, and galleries.

Dominik Lejman’s practice is one of painting with time. Since the 1990’s he has been exploring the boundaries of painting by combining videos with paintings. His video projections onto architecture become murals, while in his paintings he projects videos onto prepared canvases such that the video lives in the painting, seamlessly intermingling the still and moving image. In his work, Lejman pays particular attention to architecture and spaces as well as to the question of how they influence or even determine people’s patterns of movement. The structures that the artist uncovers in the process and presents in his installations are extremely fragile, often last only for several moments, cause the limits of space to blur, and in part directly involve the viewer.



 

 
 

Almagul Menlibayeva

 

Almagul Menlibayeva, Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia (2020), Single-channel version of 10-channel Video Installation, with Sound, 38’22”

Almagul Menlibayeva, Astana. Departure (2016/20), 4K Video, with Sound, 21’30”

Originally made for the 2nd Lahore Biennial “Between Sun and Moon”, the remarkable 10-channel video installation Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia was shown at the PIA Planetarium of Lahore as an immersive experience with an original soundtrack by German Popov in quadrophonic sound. Shown here in a single-channel format, this work is a reflection upon the life of the historically revered ruler of Samarkand in the Timurid Empire, Sultan Mirzo Ulugh Beg (1394-1449). A famed astronomer, mathematician, musician, poet, and educator, Ulugh Beg’s legacy includes a 15th-century observatory, where much of the work was filmed. Shot on location in Samarkand, in what is today Uzbekistan, this multilayered film tells the story of a man far ahead of his time. In a palimpsest comingling expert interviews with documentary materials, recreations of historical episodes, found footage, digital animation, and an electronic soundtrack referencing the complex musical theory developed by Ulugh Beg, this film paints the portrait of a visionary leader who came to a tragic end. In so doing, this complex work interweaves past and present, myth and reality, in an elegy for the cultural and environmental despoliation currently taking place throughout Central Asia. Showing the dangers of violence bred by fear and ignorance, of knowledge snuffed out by political and religious dogmas, this film also addresses the origins of the space race, of the satellite technologies which enable our contemporary ways of life. What was for Ulugh Beg the exploration of a distant border, physically and ideologically unreachable in his time, is now anew the next frontier for exploration. Much like an astronomer herself, Almagul Menlibayeva gazes out at space as the next border we have already begun to cross. In the same year as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic race to bring the first commercial passengers to outer space, Menlibayeva’s works present a timely warning against mankind’s despoliation of space and the consequent pollution of our planet.

Both of Menlibayeva’s works shown in this exhibition critically explore the current social, economic and political transformation in post-Soviet central Asia and Soviet modernity. The artist confronts the viewer with architectural sites and ruins of oppression, with haunted, surrealistic figures. Menlibayeva’s video Astana. Departure deals with the Russian-run Cosmodrome Baikanur in Kazakhstan, which is the largest producer of space debris. The artist addresses the uncontrolled pollution of the world’s hemisphere and the contamination of the ground by 11,000 tonnes of space metal with particularly toxic UDMH that is still used. She calls that scrap recovery as the “Used Futures”, which became a part of the local economy causing mass deaths of birds and wildlife. It is a repetitive scenery of the concept of the future being abused as a product and commodity for ideological, political systems and for economical and religious purposes. Furthermore, the work combines footage from Kazakhstan’s Tokamak thermonuclear testing device with critical animations of the construction of the city Astana, recently renamed to Nur-Sultan. Becoming Kazakhstan’s capital in 2007, the city was built in a short period on a desert steppe and developed quickly into one of the most modernized cities in Central Asia. Menlibayeva comments, this turbo capitalist growth created a disbalance between the futuristic city and its inhabitants. Discussing former secret military nuclear testing territories such as “Kurchatov” and its traumatic impact on the landscape and the uninformed citizens in her previous works, this video is dedicated to high tech latest- generation of nuclear reactors echoing the region’s collective trauma from the past. The work reflects on the interconnectivity of architecture, science and politics revealing the complex intersection of a totalitarian system in the past and its on-going legacy in the present.

 


 

Almagul Menlibayeva (b. 1969 in Almaty, Kazakh SSR. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Almaty, Kazakhstan.)

Almagul Menlibayeva is a video artist, photographer, and curator, holding an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Almaty. Working primarily in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation, Menlibayeva’s practice addresses such critical issues of post-Soviet modernity as: the social, economic, and political transformations in Central Asia; de-colonial re-imaginings of gender; environmental degradation; and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies. In conjunction with her solo exhibition ‘Transformation’ at the Grand Palais in Paris (France, 2016-17), she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2017. Among other notable awards, she was the Winner of the Main Prize of the International Film Festival Kino Der Kunst (2013) in Munich, Germany, and shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong (2020). Menlibayeva participated in numerous international biennales, including: the Asia Pacific Triennale, Brisbane, Australia (2020, 2012); Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020); Channels Festival, Biennial of Video Art, Melbourne, Australia (2019); Cairo Biennial, Egypt (2019); Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea (2018); Daegu Photo Biennale (2016); Venice Biennale, Italy (2005, 2007, 2009, 2015); Moscow Biennale, Russia (2011, 2015); Kiev Biennial, Ukraine (2013); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006, 2012); Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2010); Mediterranean Biennale, Israel (2010); and many others. Selected recent solo exhibitions include: De. Groen Fine Art Collection, Arnhem, Netherlands (2019); Videoart at Midnight #98: Almagul Menlibayeva, Berlin (2018); Transformation, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2016-2017); Union of Fire and Water, 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2014); An Ode for the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013); Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, Palma De Mallorca, Spain (2012); LATT: Europe at large #6, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium (2010); among others, along with numerous international group exhibitions.

Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia (2020)
Single-channel version of 10-channel Video Installation with Sound, 38’22”

 

Astana Departure (2016/20), 4K Video, with Sound, 21’30”



 

 
 

Hajnal Nemeth

 

Hajnal Németh, The Loser [version 1] (2012), Operatic Video Performance, 35”58

Video Stills: Camera, István Imreh

Two confessions are sung, performed by four soloists and completed with self-introductions by the choir. The lyrics of the songs are comprised of confessional monologues of fallen leaders, shortened and rhythmical rewrites of their self-analytical confessions. A politician and a banker give their testimonies: the direction of their fascinations differs, but the initial enthusiasm, the feeling of devotion, the experience of struggle and power, the ignorance of responsibility, the faith in ideologies and its gradual loss, the degeneration and downfall are all similar factors. It is not the confrontation of different ideologies, but their self-contradictions and the contrast of individual and collective responsibility that are put to the test on the stage.

This work from 2012 has in the intervening years proven itself all too prescient. The ignorance and irresponsibility of politicians and industry leaders has grown undiminished. In the western world alone, between Brexit, the recent US elections, the muscle-flexing of Russia, the rise of the far-right throughout Europe, and on the cusp of the upcoming German elections, we are witnessing a perpetually unfolding drama far surpassing any opera. As a form of art wherein the human voice takes flight to elevate our consciousness, opera has, nevertheless, traditionally addressed even the most base moral and political issues of its day. The first performance of The Loser took place on an open stage, shot in the vacated conference room of Collegium Hungaricum Berlin – the Hungarian Cultural Institute, itself an institution subject to the political winds of its home country. Via the large windows of the hall, the panorama of Berlin was the real set of the live and lifelike piece – a panorama which, at that time, was occupied by the construction site of the highly contested architectural reanimation of Germany’s colonial past; the building of the Humboldt Forum despite the countless voices raised against it.

Hajnal Németh (b. 1972 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

In her artistic practice Hajnal Németh creates musical performances, spatial installations, films and photographs. Her artistic activity is based on performative works of different durations, which are mainly musical interpretations of written texts, drawing on the broad spectrum of musical tendencies (pop, rock, jazz or opera) and the tools and devices of other performative fields. Focused on the process as much as the end product, Németh often includes rehearsals, the artifacts of performances and audience participation in her work. Her projects are mostly based on textbooks containing her own writings or modified quotations such as lyrics, poems or prose fragments, reflect on the gesture of quotation. By rewriting the quoted text and developing a quasi-corrected version, she endows the text with an entirely new meaning.

Németh runs a course at Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Intermedia Department in Budapest since 2010, having graduated from there in 2000. Hajnal Németh represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale 2011. Her work was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award in 2010. Other notable awards incude: Munkácsy Award (Hungary, 2011); AICA Award (Hungary, 2011); Deutsche Akademie Rom, Villa Serpentara Award (2013); Leopold Bloom Art Award (Hungary, 2017). Németh has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at prestigious art institutions in Europe, America and Asia, including MUMOK, Vienna; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; The Kitchen, New York; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Art Museum, Singapore; Ludwig-Museum, Budapest; TENT, Rotterdam; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kunsthalle, Budapest; Kunsthalle Emden; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Comunidad de Madrid; 2nd Berlin Biennale, KW Berlin; Casino Luxembourg; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne; Picasso Museum, Barcelona; Palais de Tokyo, Paris.



 

 
 

David Szauder

 

David Szauder, Parallel Universes (2021), 4 Digital Animation Loops, with Original Sound

I. The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021, 1’20”

II. Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021, 1’14”

III. Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021, 1’09”

IV. Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021, 1’10”

In this series of work, Hungarian media artist David Szauder re-animates original Super 8 footage shot by his grandfather in the 1960-80’s. Superimposing his own somewhat surrealistic universe onto the historic footage, Szauder conveys the sense of a world perpetually going slightly mad. And perhaps it is. In the state of our world today, where nationalism, political tensions, and the closing of borders are on the rise, it would indeed be mad not to look back upon the lessons of history. The artist’s grandfather developed his passion as an amateur filmmaker with the purchase of his first 8mm camera in the 1960s. Through its lens, he recorded glimpses of the world he was allowed to see, travelling as much as he was permitted within the political constraints and physical borders of the Eastern Bloc. Upon his grandfather’s death, David Szauder inherited a time-machine – a collection of over 1000 rolls of film archiving the world as his grandfather saw it. This footage forms the basis for much of Szauder’s recent work, exploring memory in the light of personal and collective history.

The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021

For the past seven decades, the most distinctive feature of the Budapest skyline standing tall above Gellért Hill is the Liberation Monument, a Soviet-built metal statue looking eastward as a tribute to the Red Army’s triumph over Hungary’s Nazi occupiers during World War II. Because of this politically fraught past, several movements attempted to remove this feminine figure over the years, but it has persevered to become an iconic symbol of Hungary’s capital.

Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021

These guards protected the eternal flame in Berlin’s Neue Wache, the Memorial for the Victims of War and Tyranny on Unter den Linden, between 1969 and 1989. Yet in Szauder’s universe, they’ve changed their position and are now protecting the Tesla Model S. The world has found its new eternal flame, updated for our aspirational economy of luxury in a form impossible to imagine at the time the original footage was shot.

Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021

The Hungarian folk tradition of the Busó festival, shot in the 1960’s by the artist’s grandfather, remains largely unchanged to this day. Marking the end of the annual Carnival season, this procession of terrifying costumed monsters was immensely popular during the Communist regime, supported by the government as a safe non-political form of entertainment. Yet the enduring popularity of Busó today is derived from its appropriation by an opposing force. With a government leaning further and further to the right, the folklore and cultural traditions of Hungary are being today deployed to celebrate nationalist ideals and values.

Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021

The 1st of May was celebrated as a holiday for workers in every socialist country, with parades of labourers from factories and communes, pioneers and party members. Szauder comingles footage from various May Day celebrations in Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia with his whimsical animations in a game between visible and invisible – much like the political subtexts of these enforced displays of ideology.

 


 

David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in numerous international projects as artist and curator. Projects in cooperation with MOMENTUM include: “MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).

IThe Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021, 1’20”

 

Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021, 1’14”

 

Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021, 1’09”

 

Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021, 1’10”



 


 

WITH THANKS TO:



 

19/08/2021
Comments Off on Birds & Bicycles Berlin

Birds & Bicycles Berlin

 
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From Berlin Art Week through the 32nd Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, MOMENTUM Presents:

 
 

TAKING FLIGHT

Birds & Bicycles Berlin

 



 


 

OPENING:
3 September @ 5 – 10pm

 

EXHIBITION:
4 September – 14 November 2021

WED – SUN @ 1 – 7pm

3G rules apply: proof of vaccination, recovery, or negative test required

 

@ MOMENTUM

Kunstquartier Bethanien

Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin, Germany

 

Featuring:

AES+F // Shaarbek Amankul // Inna Artemova // Marina Belikova //
Zuzanna Janin // Alexei Kostroma // Dominik Lejman // Almagul Menlibayeva //
Hajnal Nemeth // David Szauder // Mariana Vassileva // Vadim Zakharov

Curated by
Rachel Rits-Volloch & Emilio Rapanà

 
 

 

SYMPOSIUM:

9 November 2021 – the 32nd Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

11:00 – 13:30 & 18:30 – 23:00

At Zionskirche, Zionskirchplatz, Berlin Mitte

Curated by
David Elliott & Constanze Kleiner

 


 

_______________________

 

ONLINE EXHIBITION ON


 

Video Art from TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles Berlin

5 November – EXTENDED

Featuring:

AES+F // Shaarbek Amankul // Marina Belikova //
Zuzanna Janin // Dominik Lejman // Almagul Menlibayeva // Hajnal Nemeth // David Szauder

 

CLICK HERE to view TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles on IkonoTV >>

 


 
 

 

Together Birds & Bicycles

Initiated by Georgy Nikich & Anastasia Kamienska

An International Partnership Between 12 Institutions in Russia, Poland, and Germany

Together Birds & Bicycles is a platform initiated in 2021 as a cooperation between a dozen partners in Russia, Poland, and Germany, designed to address ideas of freedom and open boarders. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 makes a travesty of these notions. Because there are so many in Russia who never supported this war, such a platform for freedom is needed now more than ever, if there is to be hope of a peaceful resolution.

 


 

Supported by a grant from the
German Federal Foreign Office
for the Expansion of Cooperation with Civil Society
in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia


In Partnership With:

ANO Center for Educational & Cultural Projects [Moscow, Russia] // Impact Hub [Moscow, Russia] // Exhibition & Discussion Center Khokhlovka Association, Ukraintsev Chamber [Moscow, Russia] // The Rails Cultural Center [Tver, Russia] // Vyhod Media Center [Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, Russia] // Miras Gallery [Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia] // The Renaissance Center for Polish Culture and Education [Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia] // The Russian-Polish Center for Dialogue and Accord Foundation [Moscow, Russia] // BWA Krosno [Krosno, Poland] //  City Culture Institute [Gdansk, Poland] // Arsenal Municipal Gallery [Poznań, Poland] // MOMENTUM [Berlin, Germany]


 

Birds & Bicycles is conceived as a ‘factory of metaphors’, taking as its premise the ideas of freedom and the notion of borders, forever shifting and perpetually being crossed, where bicycles symbolise physical freedom, and birds metaphysical freedom; birds become the philosophy of freedom, and bicycles the technology of freedom. The overall manifestation of Birds & Bicycles is an international cooperation between 12 partners in Russia, Poland, and Germany, each hosting their own exhibitions and discussions focused around common values symbolized by the topics of freedom and crossing of borders. Based on social activism, historical reflections, and contemporary art, the project develops an expanding framework of participatory culture, with the contributions of each international partner brought together in a single online platform sharing the social, educational, and communicative results of the Birds & Bicycles initiative.

In Berlin, MOMENTUM presents Birds & Bicycles with the exhibition and symposium TAKING FLIGHT. Extrapolating from the metaphor of birds and bicycles, we build our program around the analogy of flight. Referring to the duality of the term flight as both an airborne means of travel and an escape from crisis, the metaphor of flight is especially important in the historical and contemporary context of Berlin. From the aerial bombardment and destruction of Berlin in WWII resulting in reconstruction on-going to this day; to the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War, when for 15 months in 1948-49 American and British forces flew over Berlin more than 250,000 times to drop essential supplies to keep the population of West Berlin alive during the Soviet blockade; to the transformation of the Nazi-built Tempelhof Airport into Europe’s largest refugee camp in 2015 to house many thousands of migrants fleeing humanitarian crisis in their homelands to this day; to the Berlin Brandenburg Airport fiasco when, after a 10 year delay, seven missed opening dates, and over a billion euros over-budget, the German capital’s new airport finally opened in 2020 amidst pandemic travel restrictions. In a city itself long divided, located in the geographical center of a divided Europe, the history of air travel in Berlin is a history of crisis, indivisible from the basic humanitarian need for freedom. It is an account of flight in both its senses – as a form of travel and a means of escape across borders.

For the factory of metaphors which is Birds & Bicycles Berlin, TAKING FLIGHT assembles the work of 12 artists from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, who are now Berliners. Representative of the significant cultural diaspora in Berlin from the former Eastern Bloc, the artists in this exhibition address the metaphor of flight as a symbol for freedom in various forms. While AES+F re-imagine the airport as a modern-day Purgatory, Almagul Menlibayeva gazes out at space as the next border we are racing to cross. Vadim Zakharov, too, looks out to the heavens to send a signal to the sun as the only way to travel beyond the borders closed to him. While David Szauder surrealistically re-animates his grandfather’s Super 8 footage from the Eastern Bloc of the 60’s-80’s, Shaarbek Amankul captures the historic moment of Lenin in flight, suspended between a past of failed ideologies, and an uncertain future. In a world of global humanitarian, ecological, and medical disaster, we may often feel as if we are in free-fall. Dominik Lejman’s skydivers undulating in the vastness of space come to resemble at one moment the geometric shapes of gothic church architecture, and in the next the biological forms of chromosomes; continually switching between the spiritual and the scientific origins of life. The birth – or persistent possibility – of a dictator is presented as Vadim Zakharov’s reminder that history is always on the verge of repeating itself. Hajnal Németh’s operatic rendition of quotations from failed leaders presents a sadly timeless portrait of an age when the irresponsibility and ignorance of leaders grows undiminished. Mariana Vassileva’s iconic microphone envisions the explosive power of the word through a subtly subverted symbol of power. While Inna Artemova’s exploded utopia is perhaps a reminder that any dream of a perfect society is by necessity build upon the ashes of its opposite. In his ongoing examinations of the unity of meanings in society and nature alike, Alexei Kostroma seems to be searching for a formula within nature to solve the many woes we inflict upon it. Zuzanna Janin’s boxing ballet is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues. And the Russian exclamation balagan – describing, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups – is deployed by Marina Belikova to present a critical challenge to the chaos and misrule of our times.




 

Featuring:

(Click on the artist name to see the bio and the work description below)



 


 

 
 

AES+F

 

AES+F, Allegoria Sacra (2011-13), HD video

Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Allegoria Sacra’ (Sacred Allegory) hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. The subject of this painting is a mystery to art historians. The earliest figures of Christian and ancient mythology are gathered together on a balustrade by a sea or a wide river, surrounded by hills on which can be seen, in the distance, village huts and a palazzo. St. Sebastian, the Madonna, a centaur, small children playing by a tree in the center, a Saracen-Muslim, a man somewhat like the Apostle Paul with a sword in his hand, in the background a peasant with a mule, two beautiful ladies one of whom is St. Catherine, a naked old man reminiscent of Job – this is a far from complete list of the heroes who Bellini brought together in this picture. One interpretation of this painting is that it showed Purgatory, where the souls of the righteous, of virtuous pagans and of un-christened children await their fate – heaven or hell.

This painting has always intrigued AES+F. The mysterious image of the Allegoria Sacra is in keeping with their view of the modern world. They see Bellini’s heroes in those passengers who meet accidentally while awaiting their flights at international airports. The feelings of being cut off from one’s life and of the, as yet, unachieved aim of traveling from one world to another are familiar to the majority of those who fly, whether with large or small airlines. We become part of a special club of people who are united by the condition of a body and soul located between the abandoned and the not yet found. Together, i.e. simultaneously, we listen to the flight announcements, watch the flight board with its changing tableau of figures and cities, try to focus on the newspaper, on an SMS or the internet, or simply on the advertisements on the airport monitors. But everyone is wrapped up in themselves, and it is this which unites us. There is, perhaps, one more thing which somehow links us during this interval in time – we look at each other, having never seen one other before and being unlikely to do so again.

The airport is Purgatory. Only there does one understand that the knowledge of one’s ‘tomorrow’ is a total illusion. We imagine the airport as a space where reality transforms itself – it gets covered with snow, which alters the interior and then melts, the runway turns in to the river Styx as in Bellini’s painting, airplanes become ancient, mystic craft. The light-boxes in Duty Free live a life of their own, showing pictures of heaven. In Allegoria Sacra, we wish to retain Bellini’s metaphorical heroes using the image of modern-day people from various countries and cultures. At the same time we believe that the airport space can include such mythological personalities as the centaur, who we imagine in his literal embodiment. Or the Indian elephant god Ganesha, with the features of a coffee machine. Even the various aircraft may take on the image of ancient gods like the eastern dragon.

The allegorical heroes of the painting can be seen in those awaiting their flights. The Saracen turns into a group of transit passengers from Darfur or Peshawar. Sebastian is a young traveler from the exotic countries of the south, naked to the waist and barefoot, having not yet changed his shorts for jeans. Job is represented as an elderly patient being transported on a hi-tech stretcher and covered with tubes, indicators and monitors, who becomes younger before our very eyes and turns into a magical mutant-baby. A policeman of Biblical appearance carries a sword alongside the more traditional equipment, like Paul. The stewardesses, angels from a new heaven, appear on fantastic flying machines like the cabin crew in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and start to serve passengers.

The film follows in part the reality of airport life. As well as experiencing the usual crowds of passengers we witness the location and destruction of an unidentified piece of luggage, a fight between migrants, the emergency services helping a patient. Alongside everyday reality we see a whole range of mystical transformations of this world, from a jungle with exotic tribes to an underwater kingdom, then to a snow field which melts to form the river Styx, flowing to the horizon in to an endless sea in the direction which the passengers will eventually fly, their planes becoming mystical craft.

[Artist Statement]

Seen in light of the recent pandemic lockdowns and restrictions on travel we have all faced, the metaphor of the airport recast as Purgatory takes on a depth of meaning relevant to all of us for whom freedom of travel and mobility has until now been a given.

 


 

AES+F (Artist Group founded in 1987. Live and work in Berlin, Germany; Moscow, Russia; New York, USA.)

First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky, the collective became AES+F when Vladimir Fridkes joined in 1995. AES+F work at the intersection of traditional media, photography, video and digital technologies. They define their practice as a kind of “social psychoanalysis” through which they reveal and explore the values, vices and conflicts of contemporary global culture. In 2015, AES+F premiered Inverso Mundus at the 56th Biennale di Venezia, and later showed it at the Kochi-Muziris Biennial and a number of other museums and festivals around the world. AES+F achieved worldwide acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007, and since then have participated in many signature biennials around the world, including: Adelaide, Gwangju, Havana, Helsinki, Istanbul, Kiev, Kochi-Muziris, Lille, Lyon, Melbourne, Moscow, St. Moritz, Sydney, Taipei, Vancouver, and others. Festivals devoted to new media include: ARS Electronica (Linz), Mediacity Seoul and Video Zone (Tel Aviv). AES+F had over 100 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, including: ZKM (Karlsruhe), HAM (Helsinki), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Tate Britain (London), MAXXI and MACRO Future (Rome), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires), and many others.



 

 
 

Shaarbek Amankul

 

 

Shaarbek Amankul, Lenin Stands – Lenin Fell Down (2003), video, 1’30″

With the advent of Communism in Kyrgyzstan, pre-Soviet ways of life were transformed as nomads became fighters for an international revolution, farmers became citizens, and Muslims became atheists. In the central square of Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, Lenin’s sculpture proudly stood from 1982 to 2003. In an almost comic case of cultural confusion, even after gaining their independence, masses of former communists came to pray beneath this statue; the worship of Communist ideology giving way to the mass prayers of Ramadan. Lenin towered above this square until 2003, when he was brought down from the facade of the Historical Museum (the Museum of Revolution until 1992), and moved to its backyard. This procedure, though oddly ceremonial, was not advertised by local authorities. This work captures a rare historic moment – Lenin in flight, suspended between a past of failed ideologies, and an uncertain future. The ceremony of the changing of the guard – so appropriate to this notable event – is ironically incidental to it, taking place every day at this location, and clearly oblivious to Lenin’s historic flight.

Shaarbek Amankul (b. 1959 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Lives and works in Bishkek.)

Shaarbek Amankul is a curator and interdisciplinary artist working with a variety of media: ceramics, sculpture, installation, performance, video and photography, in addition to conceptual research projects. Amankul holds art and history degrees from Frunze Art College, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (1980) and Kyrgyz National University (1989), respectively. Amankul founded the international artist group Art Connection (2001-2006), the first art initiative in Kyrgyzstan focused on environmental issues. Amankul’s conceptual and curatorial work also includes the extensive art platform B’Art Contemporary, which he founded in 2007 to instigate a critical arts dialogue between the communities of Central Asia and the global art world.

B’Art Contemporary, amongst the very first contemporary art initiatives in Kyrgyzstan, is an artistic research platform which considers art as an essential facilitator of critical dialogue on environmental, social, economic and cultural issues faced by the societies of Central Asia. To continue his mobile art practice and artistic research, in 2011 Shaarbek Amankul founded the Nomadic Art Camp, an series of nomadic art projects in Kyrgyzstan, using the practice of the traditional way of life of nomads as a source of inspiration for contemporary art practices. The project, continuing to this day, focuses on the relationship between art and the political, economic and social processes at the intersection of issues of globalization, migration and bio-cultural diversity.


 

 
 

Inna Artemova

 

Inna Artemova, Utopia 8-151 (2021), ink, marker, paper on cardboard, 50 x 125 cm

Escaping the borders of the 2-dimensional work on paper or canvas, this installation embodies Artemova’s focus on architectures of utopia. Yet while the idea of utopia is the dream of a perfect society, this work evokes a sense of impending cataclysm, as yet quite far removed from an idealized state of perfection. Seeming to capture the aftermath of some volatile force, this exploded and explosive installation sends a suitably ambiguous message about the future and the present. The sense of velocity in Artemova’s works gives her floating structures a futuristic speed, propelling them – as the title suggests – into a more perfect future. Contriving to comingle a notion of existential threat with the sense of the sublime, Utopia 8-151 can be seen as portrait of our precarious times. Having witnessed first-hand the collapse of the Communist utopia in her native Soviet Union, Artemova’s utopias are fragile constructivist visions in a state of constant flux; exploding, imploding, teetering on the edge of a perilous balance, or perhaps already being rebuilt. Every collapse presents the hope of a new beginning; a renewed dream of an ideal future. Utopias are too often built on the ashes of their opposites.

Inna Artemova (b. Moscow, USSR. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Born in Moscow, Inna Artemova studied architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). For her diploma project, she received the 2nd prize of the Russian Federation. In 1998 she moved to Berlin and started to focus on her work as an artist in the field of painting and drawing. Artemova’s practice remains heavily influenced by her professors at the MArchI in Moscow, the “Paper Architects“, a movement originating in the 1980s that developed futuristic architectural creations never intended to be realized. The visionary projects of the Paper Architects and her experience of the failure of the Communist utopia with the fall of the Soviet Union, has led Artemova to explore, through her constructivist painting style, the ideas of architectural utopias from the 1960s up to her own futuristic visions. In creating utopian landscapes and spaces, Artemova interrogates the future of living spaces and their impact upon human relationships. The concept of utopia stands for a space of possibility in human consciousness in which the crucial questions have to be answered again and again: Is there no alternative to the reality in which we live? What will we do in the future? Do we have to fail because of our ideal ideas?



 

 
 

Marina Belikova

 

Marina Belikova, BALAGAN!!! (2015), video animation, 1’47”

In Russia balagan is a popular exclamation that describes, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups. BALAGAN!!! is also a major international exhibition produced by MOMENTUM in 2015 of contemporary art from the former USSR and Eastern Bloc that reveals a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are celebrated and scathingly exposed. Balagan originally meant ‘fairground’. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked in them: puppeteers, clowns and jesters, who made fun of and satirised established order. And, from the beginning, artists have realised the potential of balagan as an effective framework for revealing the truth. Today, the revolutionary politics of laughter, as well as the cathartic release it promises, are engendered by a sense of outrage at cruelty, inhumanity and the abuse of human rights. But balagan is not only modern: ever since time began, chaos has been ever-present. The exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places is about how some artists choose to depict the chaos of our times critically, challenging its power through humour, parody and the power of art itself. For this exhibition, the curator David Elliott wrote his own unique description of BALAGAN, which Jonathan Barnbrook designed, and Marina Belikova visualized as an animated film. We reprise BALAGAN!!! for Birds & Bicycles, as it remains equally relevant to our world today, still afflicted by chaos and misrule, and now also a global pandemic to contend with. Perhaps the power of humour, parody, and art itself lies in its ability to lift us out of the darkness and, soaring above it, develop new perspectives and better hopes.

 


 

Marina Belikova (b. in Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Berlin.)

Marina Belikova is a Berlin based media artist, working with photography, graphic design and 2D animation. She has a background in web and media design. In 2012-2013 she did an M.A. in Communication Design in Kingston University London and in 2016 she graduated from Bauhaus University Weimar with an M.A. in Media Art and Design, making “The astronaut’s journal” as her master thesis. Belikova tells narratives through the old school oil on glass animation technique, where each frame is painted individually and then captured with a camera as stop motion animation. She also works with photography and mixed media, exploring the topics of human memories and interaction between people and urban spaces. Her animation have been screened at multiple film festivals in more than 10 countries and her photo series have received the Bauhaus Essentials Prize and have been shown various exhibitions.

David Elliott (text) & Jonathan Barnbrook (graphics), BALAGAN!!! (2015), print on paper

 
 


 

 
 

Zuzanna Janin

 

Zuzanna Janin, Pas de Deux (2001), video, 5’

With a title appropriated from ballet, Zuzanna Janin’s Pas De Deux (2001) is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues. Shot in a jerking close-up of two pairs of legs in constant motion on a blank white background, we are drawn into what could be a dance as readily as a fight. It is a dialogue between two bodies, a give and take of power and physical space. It is also a different perspective on one of Janin’s best-known works, the video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), where the slight, fragile-looking artist takes on a professional heavyweight boxer. To create this work, Janin spent 6 months training with him in the ring. The boxing match in The Fight is real and harrowing to watch in its intensity. In this work, the camera weaves in and out, dodging and feinting with the fighter’s blows, as close-up and personal as the physical act of combat.

Yet for Janin, this combat between two mismatched opponents is also a dance, a language allowing two bodies to communicate. The direct perspective of the camera in The Fight draws us into the brutality of this uneven combat. But changing the perspective and dropping the camera to ground level suddenly reveals the ambiguity lurking beneath the violence. For Pas De Deux, Janin’s fight performance is shot with the intimacy of a camera moving with the two bodies as they follow the same motions as The Fight, but without seeing the blows. The violent mismatch is transfigured into a match, a term which in sports signifies a contest between opposing competitors, whilst in normal usage it means a harmonious pair.

Zuzanna Janin (b. 1961 in Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw and London.)

Zuzanna Janin is a visual artist and former teen actor, having in her youth starred in the Polish TV serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron). Having turned her talents to visual art, Janin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw (1980-87), and in 2016 completed her PhD at the University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland. Throughout her diverse practice of sculpture, video, photography installation, and performative actions, Zuzanna Janin deals with the subject of space, time and memory, as well as the problem of exclusion and absence. The main theme of her work is a conceptual approach to the visualization of processes, changes, comparisons, continuity, what’s “in between.” Janin transforms fragments of private memory, comingling her own experience with collective memory and images of universal history, contemporary social and political problems. Zuzanna Janin is also he co-founder of the independent art space lokal_30 in Warsaw (2005-2012).

Zuzanna Janin has taken part in a number of international Biennals, including the Sydney Biennial (1992), Istanbul Biennial (1992), Soonsbeek (1993), Liverpool Biennial (1996), Łódź Biennale (2010), 54th Venice Biennale (2011) (in the official program of Romania). She had a solo shows, screenings and performances at: Foksal Gallery Warsaw, Kunsthalle Wien, MAM Rio de Janeiro, Salzburger Kunstverein, National Museum Cracow and Warsaw. Group exhibition include: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal School of Art, Edinburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Jeu de Pomme Paris; Japanese Palace, Dresden; Kunstmuseum Bern; Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin; TOP Museum Tokyo; Foundation Miro, Barcelona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunsthalle, Bern; Hoffmann Collection, Berlin; TT The THING, NY.

Since 2019, Zuzanna Janin is a lecturer in Postgraduate Study of Contemporary Art at the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. Janin was Guest Professor in a number of universities, incuding: Academy of Fine Art Cracow (Poland) , ASAB Academia del Arte, Bogota (Colombia), Sapir College of Art in Sderot , (Israel), Haifa University (Israel), Academy of Fine Art Bratislava (Slovakia) , Bezalel Jerusalem (Israel), Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (Poland) , Academy of Fine Art Warsaw and King’s College London (UK) and took part in conferences, meetings and talks in many other art institutions.


 

 
 

Alexei Kostroma

 


BLACK BILL 10,16 (2021)
Oil, acrylic gel on canvas, 40×25 cm
Courtesy of STUDIO KOSTROMA, Berlin

 

The works selected for this exhibition embody Alexei Kostroma’s concept of the Organic Way – the artist’s dedication to the study of interrelations between natural and social laws. Working throughout his practice with eggshells, white feathers, figures (numbers), and lemon yellow pigment, Kostroma identifies these four strands in his work as his ‘signs’ or ‘brands’. In his ongoing examinations of the unity of meanings in society and nature alike, and his use of four distinct media as metaphors for these meanings, Kostroma’s work exemplifies the very idea of the Birds & Bicycles initiative to create a factory of metaphors with which to reflect back on our societies.

Shown here are two works from two new series the artist began during the COVID-19 lockdown. Ongoing to this day, these series of works are a portrait of the artists’ experience of the world in pandemic. ELEVEN [Stability] (2020) and BLACK BILL 10,16 (2021) were both created while Alexei Kostroma was in isolation in his studio. BLACK BILL 10,16 forms one entry in Kostroma’s lengthy diary of consumption. Embedding into his works quotations from supermarket receipts for the food he consumes, the original bill is attached to the back of each painting; as much a proof of life as it is a reflection upon the monotony of long months of lockdown. ELEVEN [Stability] uses Kostroma’s idea of the eggshell as an image of the genome, of coding and storage of information, to present us with a single eggshell enumerated with the number 11, signifying stability. In these unstable times when we seem little closer to solving the ongoing global problems of poverty, disease, war, and climate catastrophe, we need all the talismans of stability we can get. An older work, NANO 163, also uses the egg as symbolic of the basis of life, arranging eggshells in a geometric structure, numbered with ink visible only under UV light, to reveal the invisible mathematical harmony of numbers. Yet in the disharmonious realities of our times, by embedding a secret code into his vision of the universe, Kostroma seems to be searching for a formula within nature to solve the many woes we inflict upon it.

 


 

Alexei Kostroma (b. 1962 in Russia. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Alexei Kostroma is an artist, theorist, and researcher living and working in Berlin since 2003. Alexei Kostroma was born in 1962, and in 1989 graduated in painting from the Repin Institute, Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Two years later he founded the “TUT-I-TAM” (ТУТ-И-ТАМ, meaning Here and There) group and began working with an inventory concept, associating natural objects with a theory of numbers. Soon after, he developed the Introspective Actions series of projects engaging social environment wherein he created actions and installations in which he enveloped objects, people, animals, or entire spaces in feathers. Since the early 1990’s, Alexei Kostroma has been working with his Organic Way concept as a study of interrelations between natural and social laws. His practice focuses around series of works using primarily feathers, eggshells, numbers and color theory.

FEATHERS: For Kostroma the structure of the feather represents the unity of chaos (fluff at the base of the feather), order (the precise structure of the main part) and spirit (ethereal weightlessness). The white feather was the iconic material that first made a name for Kostroma in the 1990s. He became famous for the high-profile project ‘Feathering Names and Symbols’, and for installations where he covered various urban objects in white goose feathers: for example, a cannon on the bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg (‘Feathered Aggression’, 1994), the ‘Feathered Purse’ in Germany that gained admission to the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, 1996 (role of money in art), etc. In the mass media, feather installations and actions became a pacifist symbol for the smothering of aggression.

EGGSHELL: an image of the genome, of coding and storage of information. Eggshell objects reveal the theme of micro-macro worlds ruled by the invisible mathematical harmony of numbers. The artist uses natural white eggshells to create geometric structures. Applied in invisible ink to the inner surface of the shell are numbers from 1 to 9, the sum of which presents an information code. Rows of eggshells form an image of the atomic microcosm; circles form an image of the macrocosm. Study of the world of atoms has been actively developed in the age of nanotechnology, hence the series is entitled ‘NANO’. These invisible numbers are only visible under UV light.

NUMBERS: universal coding characters. The artist uses digits from 1 to 9. Zero is an abstract mathematical number and therefore excluded from the concept. There is no stopping in nature. Everything is incessantly evolving and in constant motion. Since 1991 Kostroma has been producing large-scale projects for his ‘Inventory’, covering stone waterfronts and urban buildings with figures. While working on the theory of colour he created a spectral-digital scale and published the FNP concept: Figurative Numerical Painting. Since 1999 he has been painting in numbers. In Berlin these numerals take an acutely social character in the series ‘CODES’ and ‘BILLS & DEBTS’, under the slogan WE ALL REVOLVE AROUND TIME, MONEY AND FIGURES.

 

ELEVEN (Stability) (2020)
Oil, tempera on eggshell on canvas, 30x25x6 cm
Courtesy of STUDIO KOSTROMA, Berlin

 


NANO 163 (2017)
Invisible nano color on eggshells on canvas, 60x60x10 cm
Framed in acrylic glass box
Courtesy of STUDIO KOSTROMA, Berlin

 
 

Berlin Girl (Feathered Bicycle) (2008)
Image Courtesy of STUDIO KOSTROMA – Object not on view.


 

 
 

Dominik Lejman

 

Dominik Lejman, 60 Sec. Cathedral (2011), Projected Video Mural, 24’30” [Courtesy of Persons Projects]

60 Sec. Cathedral is a video-fresco showing a specially trained group of skydivers recreating the vaulted ceiling of Durham Cathedral as they fall to earth. The title of the work is derived from the 60 seconds of free-fall in which they must complete their task. Projected in the artist’s signature style of negative image, these small white figures undulating in the vastness of black space come to resemble at one moment the geometric shapes of gothic church architecture, and in the next the biological forms of chromosomes; continually switching in this way between the spiritual and the scientific origins of life. 60 Sec. Cathedral reveals shapes representing Christian values, philosophy and ethics and also bioethical science, bringing into question notions of good and evil and the biological and molecular formations they might take. In a world of global humanitarian, ecological, and medical disaster, we may often feel as if we are in free-fall. Whether it’s a higher spiritual force, or the natural laws of science which will save us, we all need some source of hope to look up to.

60 Sec. Cathedral is accompanied by a making-of video chronicling the immense preparation and training which resulted in the production of this work.

‘Jump’ Production: Dariusz “Dafi”, Jarosław “Widget” Szot, Artur “Bravos” Ceran (cameramen).

Sky Divers: Marcin Szot, Jacek Łącki, Krzysztof Kiebała, Markiz Białecki, Grzegorz Szusta, Kinga Komorowska, Jarosław Szot, Dominika Godlewska, Robert Wolski, Amelia Bobowska, Maciej Machowicz, Dariusz Banaszkiewicz, Robert Przytuła, Sebastian Matejek, Maciej Węgrzecki, Witold Kielerz, Maciej Król, Artur Karwowski, Grzegorz Leonow, Anna Dzido, Agnieszka Szczerbakow, Marcin Laszuk, Agata Chmielak, Izabela Pilarczyk, Laura Stachowska, Dariusz Filipowski, Artur Ceran, Marek Nowakowski.

Dominik Lejman (b. 1969 in Gdnask, Poland. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Poznan, Poland.)

Dominik Lejman graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts at The School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 1993, and in 1993-95 studied at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1996, Lejman completed a further research degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He has lead the painting workshop at the University of the Arts in Poznań since 2005. Dominik Lejman is the winner of the 2018 Berlin Art Prize awarded by the Akademie der Künste, and is the recipient of many other awards, including: Polityka’s Passport Award in 2001, The Kosciuszko Foundation, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Location 1 in New York, and The Polish Ministry of Culture. Dominik Lejman’s works have been exhibited broadly in many international biennales, museums, and galleries.

Dominik Lejman’s practice is one of painting with time. Since the 1990’s he has been exploring the boundaries of painting by combining videos with paintings. His video projections onto architecture become murals, while in his paintings he projects videos onto prepared canvases such that the video lives in the painting, seamlessly intermingling the still and moving image. In his work, Lejman pays particular attention to architecture and spaces as well as to the question of how they influence or even determine people’s patterns of movement. The structures that the artist uncovers in the process and presents in his installations are extremely fragile, often last only for several moments, cause the limits of space to blur, and in part directly involve the viewer.



 

 
 

Almagul Menlibayeva

 

Almagul Menlibayeva, Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia (2020), Single-channel version of 10-channel Video Installation, with Sound, 38’22”

Almagul Menlibayeva, Astana. Departure (2016/20), 4K Video, with Sound, 21’30”

Originally made for the 2nd Lahore Biennial “Between Sun and Moon”, the remarkable 10-channel video installation Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia was shown at the PIA Planetarium of Lahore as an immersive experience with an original soundtrack by German Popov in quadrophonic sound. Shown here in a single-channel format, this work is a reflection upon the life of the historically revered ruler of Samarkand in the Timurid Empire, Sultan Mirzo Ulugh Beg (1394-1449). A famed astronomer, mathematician, musician, poet, and educator, Ulugh Beg’s legacy includes a 15th-century observatory, where much of the work was filmed. Shot on location in Samarkand, in what is today Uzbekistan, this multilayered film tells the story of a man far ahead of his time. In a palimpsest comingling expert interviews with documentary materials, recreations of historical episodes, found footage, digital animation, and an electronic soundtrack referencing the complex musical theory developed by Ulugh Beg, this film paints the portrait of a visionary leader who came to a tragic end. In so doing, this complex work interweaves past and present, myth and reality, in an elegy for the cultural and environmental despoliation currently taking place throughout Central Asia. Showing the dangers of violence bred by fear and ignorance, of knowledge snuffed out by political and religious dogmas, this film also addresses the origins of the space race, of the satellite technologies which enable our contemporary ways of life. What was for Ulugh Beg the exploration of a distant border, physically and ideologically unreachable in his time, is now anew the next frontier for exploration. Much like an astronomer herself, Almagul Menlibayeva gazes out at space as the next border we have already begun to cross. In the same year as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic race to bring the first commercial passengers to outer space, Menlibayeva’s works present a timely warning against mankind’s despoliation of space and the consequent pollution of our planet.

Both of Menlibayeva’s works shown in this exhibition critically explore the current social, economic and political transformation in post-Soviet central Asia and Soviet modernity. The artist confronts the viewer with architectural sites and ruins of oppression, with haunted, surrealistic figures. Menlibayeva’s video Astana. Departure deals with the Russian-run Cosmodrome Baikanur in Kazakhstan, which is the largest producer of space debris. The artist addresses the uncontrolled pollution of the world’s hemisphere and the contamination of the ground by 11,000 tonnes of space metal with particularly toxic UDMH that is still used. She calls that scrap recovery as the “Used Futures”, which became a part of the local economy causing mass deaths of birds and wildlife. It is a repetitive scenery of the concept of the future being abused as a product and commodity for ideological, political systems and for economical and religious purposes. Furthermore, the work combines footage from Kazakhstan’s Tokamak thermonuclear testing device with critical animations of the construction of the city Astana, recently renamed to Nur-Sultan. Becoming Kazakhstan’s capital in 2007, the city was built in a short period on a desert steppe and developed quickly into one of the most modernized cities in Central Asia. Menlibayeva comments, this turbo capitalist growth created a disbalance between the futuristic city and its inhabitants. Discussing former secret military nuclear testing territories such as “Kurchatov” and its traumatic impact on the landscape and the uninformed citizens in her previous works, this video is dedicated to high tech latest- generation of nuclear reactors echoing the region’s collective trauma from the past. The work reflects on the interconnectivity of architecture, science and politics revealing the complex intersection of a totalitarian system in the past and its on-going legacy in the present.

 


 

Almagul Menlibayeva (b. 1969 in Almaty, Kazakh SSR. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Almaty, Kazakhstan.)

Almagul Menlibayeva is a video artist, photographer, and curator, holding an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Almaty. Working primarily in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation, Menlibayeva’s practice addresses such critical issues of post-Soviet modernity as: the social, economic, and political transformations in Central Asia; de-colonial re-imaginings of gender; environmental degradation; and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies. In conjunction with her solo exhibition ‘Transformation’ at the Grand Palais in Paris (France, 2016-17), she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2017. Among other notable awards, she was the Winner of the Main Prize of the International Film Festival Kino Der Kunst (2013) in Munich, Germany, and shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong (2020). Menlibayeva participated in numerous international biennales, including: the Asia Pacific Triennale, Brisbane, Australia (2020, 2012); Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020); Channels Festival, Biennial of Video Art, Melbourne, Australia (2019); Cairo Biennial, Egypt (2019); Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea (2018); Daegu Photo Biennale (2016); Venice Biennale, Italy (2005, 2007, 2009, 2015); Moscow Biennale, Russia (2011, 2015); Kiev Biennial, Ukraine (2013); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006, 2012); Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2010); Mediterranean Biennale, Israel (2010); and many others. Selected recent solo exhibitions include: De. Groen Fine Art Collection, Arnhem, Netherlands (2019); Videoart at Midnight #98: Almagul Menlibayeva, Berlin (2018); Transformation, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2016-2017); Union of Fire and Water, 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2014); An Ode for the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013); Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, Palma De Mallorca, Spain (2012); LATT: Europe at large #6, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium (2010); among others, along with numerous international group exhibitions.

Ulugh Beg: Futuristic Machine of Central Asia (2020)
Single-channel version of 10-channel Video Installation with Sound, 38’22”

 

Astana Departure (2016/20), 4K Video, with Sound, 21’30”



 

 
 

Hajnal Nemeth

 

Hajnal Németh, The Loser [version 1] (2012), Operatic Video Performance, 35”58

Video Stills: Camera, István Imreh

Two confessions are sung, performed by four soloists and completed with self-introductions by the choir. The lyrics of the songs are comprised of confessional monologues of fallen leaders, shortened and rhythmical rewrites of their self-analytical confessions. A politician and a banker give their testimonies: the direction of their fascinations differs, but the initial enthusiasm, the feeling of devotion, the experience of struggle and power, the ignorance of responsibility, the faith in ideologies and its gradual loss, the degeneration and downfall are all similar factors. It is not the confrontation of different ideologies, but their self-contradictions and the contrast of individual and collective responsibility that are put to the test on the stage.

This work from 2012 has in the intervening years proven itself all too prescient. The ignorance and irresponsibility of politicians and industry leaders has grown undiminished. In the western world alone, between Brexit, the recent US elections, the muscle-flexing of Russia, the rise of the far-right throughout Europe, and on the cusp of the upcoming German elections, we are witnessing a perpetually unfolding drama far surpassing any opera. As a form of art wherein the human voice takes flight to elevate our consciousness, opera has, nevertheless, traditionally addressed even the most base moral and political issues of its day. The first performance of The Loser took place on an open stage, shot in the vacated conference room of Collegium Hungaricum Berlin – the Hungarian Cultural Institute, itself an institution subject to the political winds of its home country. Via the large windows of the hall, the panorama of Berlin was the real set of the live and lifelike piece – a panorama which, at that time, was occupied by the construction site of the highly contested architectural reanimation of Germany’s colonial past; the building of the Humboldt Forum despite the countless voices raised against it.

Hajnal Németh (b. 1972 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

In her artistic practice Hajnal Németh creates musical performances, spatial installations, films and photographs. Her artistic activity is based on performative works of different durations, which are mainly musical interpretations of written texts, drawing on the broad spectrum of musical tendencies (pop, rock, jazz or opera) and the tools and devices of other performative fields. Focused on the process as much as the end product, Németh often includes rehearsals, the artifacts of performances and audience participation in her work. Her projects are mostly based on textbooks containing her own writings or modified quotations such as lyrics, poems or prose fragments, reflect on the gesture of quotation. By rewriting the quoted text and developing a quasi-corrected version, she endows the text with an entirely new meaning.

Németh runs a course at Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Intermedia Department in Budapest since 2010, having graduated from there in 2000. Hajnal Németh represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale 2011. Her work was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award in 2010. Other notable awards incude: Munkácsy Award (Hungary, 2011); AICA Award (Hungary, 2011); Deutsche Akademie Rom, Villa Serpentara Award (2013); Leopold Bloom Art Award (Hungary, 2017). Németh has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at prestigious art institutions in Europe, America and Asia, including MUMOK, Vienna; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; The Kitchen, New York; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Art Museum, Singapore; Ludwig-Museum, Budapest; TENT, Rotterdam; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kunsthalle, Budapest; Kunsthalle Emden; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Comunidad de Madrid; 2nd Berlin Biennale, KW Berlin; Casino Luxembourg; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne; Picasso Museum, Barcelona; Palais de Tokyo, Paris.



 

 
 

David Szauder

 

David Szauder, Parallel Universes (2021), 4 Digital Animation Loops, with Original Sound

I. The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021, 1’20”

II. Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021, 1’14”

III. Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021, 1’09”

IV. Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021, 1’10”

In this series of work, Hungarian media artist David Szauder re-animates original Super 8 footage shot by his grandfather in the 1960-80’s. Superimposing his own somewhat surrealistic universe onto the historic footage, Szauder conveys the sense of a world perpetually going slightly mad. And perhaps it is. In the state of our world today, where nationalism, political tensions, and the closing of borders are on the rise, it would indeed be mad not to look back upon the lessons of history. The artist’s grandfather developed his passion as an amateur filmmaker with the purchase of his first 8mm camera in the 1960s. Through its lens, he recorded glimpses of the world he was allowed to see, travelling as much as he was permitted within the political constraints and physical borders of the Eastern Bloc. Upon his grandfather’s death, David Szauder inherited a time-machine – a collection of over 1000 rolls of film archiving the world as his grandfather saw it. This footage forms the basis for much of Szauder’s recent work, exploring memory in the light of personal and collective history.

The Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021

For the past seven decades, the most distinctive feature of the Budapest skyline standing tall above Gellért Hill is the Liberation Monument, a Soviet-built metal statue looking eastward as a tribute to the Red Army’s triumph over Hungary’s Nazi occupiers during World War II. Because of this politically fraught past, several movements attempted to remove this feminine figure over the years, but it has persevered to become an iconic symbol of Hungary’s capital.

Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021

These guards protected the eternal flame in Berlin’s Neue Wache, the Memorial for the Victims of War and Tyranny on Unter den Linden, between 1969 and 1989. Yet in Szauder’s universe, they’ve changed their position and are now protecting the Tesla Model S. The world has found its new eternal flame, updated for our aspirational economy of luxury in a form impossible to imagine at the time the original footage was shot.

Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021

The Hungarian folk tradition of the Busó festival, shot in the 1960’s by the artist’s grandfather, remains largely unchanged to this day. Marking the end of the annual Carnival season, this procession of terrifying costumed monsters was immensely popular during the Communist regime, supported by the government as a safe non-political form of entertainment. Yet the enduring popularity of Busó today is derived from its appropriation by an opposing force. With a government leaning further and further to the right, the folklore and cultural traditions of Hungary are being today deployed to celebrate nationalist ideals and values.

Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021

The 1st of May was celebrated as a holiday for workers in every socialist country, with parades of labourers from factories and communes, pioneers and party members. Szauder comingles footage from various May Day celebrations in Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia with his whimsical animations in a game between visible and invisible – much like the political subtexts of these enforced displays of ideology.

 


 

David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in numerous international projects as artist and curator. Projects in cooperation with MOMENTUM include: “MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).

IThe Dream of the Statue (Budapest) 1971-2021, 1’20”

 

Changing of the Guard (Berlin, DDR) 1972-2021, 1’14”

 

Busó (Mohács, Hungary) 1967-2021, 1’09”

 

Parallel Dimension (Budapest, Prague, Balaton) 1967-2021, 1’10”



 

 
 

Mariana Vassileva

 

Mariana Vassileva, Microphone (2017) mixed media / (2021) bronze, 150 x 60 x 60 cm

In an era witnessing the steady resurgence of authoritarianism, nationalism and racism the world over, Mariana Vassileva’s iconic work envisions the explosive power of the word through a subtly subverted symbol of power. While many governments still seek to curb freedoms of speech, others perhaps exploit free speech in overabundance. As the line between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ news continues to blur in our over-mediated culture, and information spreading digitally is even more viral than disease, we live in an era where the power of the wrong word has more capacity for destruction than ever before. Vassileva’s Microphone is emblematic of the very necessity for an initiative such as Birds & Bicycles to consider the meanings and repercussions of freedom in our current age.

Microphone was made during the artist’s tenure at the Tarabya Cultural Academy – an Artist Residency for German-Turkish dialogue in Istanbul – and it is shown in this exhibition concurrently with Studio Bosporus in Kunstraum Kreuzberg, the exhibition celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Tarabya Residency, also taking pace in the Kunstquartier Bethanien.

Mariana Vassileva (b. 1964 in Bulgaria. Lives and works in Berlin.)

Mariana Vassileva graduated from the Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2000, and has remained in Berlin since that time. Working across varied mediums such as video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, Vassileva’s practice is concerned with the poetry that lies beneath the quotidian and the routine. Based upon observation of daily life, her works respond to an element of playfulness inherent in artist and viewer alike. With the curious gaze of a voyeur or of an urban anthropologist, the artist observes people and their surroundings in order to capture a moment of poetic imagery. Watching, and the distance it implies, are both method and subject of a body of work reflecting on human concerns familiar to us all: communication, cultural displacement, relations with self and other, loneliness and the humor hidden within the rhythms of the day-to-day.

Mariana Vassileva is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, having shown in major institutions including: Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Canada); Tate Britain (UK); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Kunsthalle zu Kiel (Germany); Edition Block (Berlin, Germany); The Stenersen Museum (Oslo,Norway); Total Museum (Seoul, Korea); Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hong Kong).

Mariana Vassileva has participated in several international Biennials, including: the 1st Biennal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, (Argentina, 2007); the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty and the Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, (Australia, 2010); the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rewriting Worlds, (Russia, 2011); Biennale Vento Sul in Curitiba, (Brasil, 2012); the 56th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale, The Pleasure of Love, (Serbia, 2016).

Vassileva’s works are held in international public collections, including: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Rene Block Collection (Berlin, Germany); Koc Museum (Istanbul, Turkey); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel); La Caixa, Caja de Ahorros de El Monte y Fundacion el Monte (Spain); Lemaitre Collection (London-Paris); Kunsthalle Emden (Germany); Lidice Memorial.



 

 
 

Vadim Zakharov

 

Vadim Zakharov, I Am Ready To Be Dictator! (2021), Mixed Media, 45 x 50 cm

The works selected for this exhibition embody the trajectory of Vadim Zakharov’s conceptual practice – from his first work, made in 1978 at the age of nineteen, to his most recent work, plucked off his studio wall in August 2021. Growing up in the vastness of the Soviet Union, a nation proudly encompassing one-sixth of the earth, Zakharov nevertheless chaffed against his isolation from the rest of the world. Borders were closed, travel was largely impossible, and the exchange of information with the ‘free’ world tightly controlled. In a gesture designed to send his consciousness out into the universe, to communicate somehow with the world outside, the young artist made a print with his thumb on a pocket mirror and angled the reflection towards the sun. Now, over forty years later, living in Berlin, in a free world ostensibly devoid of punitive ideologies, where every child is brought up to believe that they can become whatever they want to be, the specter of oppression nevertheless looms large once more. Is it an overabundance of ‘freedom’ which has caused the resurgence of the far right throughout Europe and many parts of the world? In a Germany perpetually aware that the horrors of history must not repeat themselves, like anywhere else in the world, we can never guess when the next dictator might be born. The installation I Am Ready To Be Dictator! transforms a kitsch painting found by Zakharov in a flea market into a stark warning; a reminder that despite our best efforts, history is always on the verge of repeating itself.

Vadim Zakharov, An Exchange of Information with the Sun (1978), Photograph on Aludibond, 30 x 54 cm

 

Vadim Zakharov (b. 1959 in Dushanbe, UdSSR (now Tajikistan). Lives and works in Berlin.)

Vadim Zakharov is an artist, editor, archivist of the Moscow Conceptual art scene, and collector. Since 1979 he has participated in exhibitions of unofficial art and collaborated with such artists as: V. Skersis, S. Anufriev, I. Chuikov, A. Monastyrski, Y. Leiderman. In 1982–1983 he participated in the AptArt Gallery, Moscow. Since 1992 till 2001 he has published the “Pastor” magazine and founded the Pastor Zond Edition. In 2006 he edited book “Moscow Conceptualism”. His retrospective was held at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2006. He represented Russia at the Venice Biennale in 2013 with the project “DANAE”. In 2016-2020 Zakharov organized the exhibition space “FREEHOME-Artist to Artist” in Berlin.

Selected honors and awards include: Griffelkunst-Preis, Hamburg (1995); Renta-Preis, Kunsthalle Nürnberg (1995); Soratnik Prize, Moscow (2006); Innovation Prize, Moscow (2006); Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund, American Academy in Rome (2007); Kandinsky Prize – Best Work of Year, Moscow (2009).

In addition to numerous solo and group exhibitions, Vadim Zakharov has participated in many biennales of contemporary art, including: the 49th Venice Biennale, “Plateau of Humankind”, (Director Harald Szeemann, Arsenale, 2001); 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, “Black Birds” installation (Museum of Byzantine Culture, 2007 ); 55th Venice Biennale, Vadim Zakharov, “Danaë”, Russian Pavilion (2013); 5th Moscow Biennale, Vadim Zakharov, “Dead Languages Dance. Fall collection”, (TSUM, 2013); “2014. Space Odyssey”, CAFAM BIENNALE, Beijing (2014); 3rd Biennale of Bahia, Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (2014); 14 Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, Russia (2021).

Vadim Zakharov’s works are held in many prestigious public collections, including: Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; TATE Modern, London, UK; Modern Art Museum, Frankfurt, DE; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main, DE; Kupferstienkabinet, Berlin, DE; Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Budapest; Saint Petersburg, RU; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers USA; Museum of Art at Duke University, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, HU; Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, DE; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, RU; Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, RU; Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, RU; Moscow Collections of the NCCA, Moscow, RU



 


 

THE PARTNERS:

ACM (Association of Cultural Managers), Moscow – a large non-profit organization that supports research (including European) programs in the field of museum practices, social initiatives, and the development of public areas based on social, communication, and cultural technologies. (In 2020 – 2021, their curator Georgy Nikich was the research advisor of the analytical review “Volunteer — Museum — Society: Practice and Prospects” (http://museum-volunteer-society.ru/summary)

The Big Museum, Moscow – project organization that develops multimedia platforms.

The Polytechnic Museum, Moscow – provides expertise on the history and technology of bicycling.

The BWA Krosno Gallery, Poland – collaborates with a large number of environmental centers of expertise.

Miras Gallery, Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia – works with expert organizations in the field of migration and inter-ethnic relations.

Moscow Museum – there are many expert groups and activists united around Moscow Museum – raise and solve urban and environmental issues, as well as bicycle activists – the Red Pump community will participate in our project’s events (http://www.redpump.ru/).

MSSES, Moscow School of Economic and Social Studies – one of the bases of scientific support for the project, especially in the fields of sociology, urban studies, social and cultural projects (https://www.msses.ru/).

Vykhod Center, Petrozavodsk, Russia – has substantial experience in cooperating with social and cultural organizations in developing of creative tourism and supporting the idea of a common identity between the Finnish and Russian parts of Karelia.

MOMENTUM, Berlin – the platform for Time-Based Art, acting as a bridge between international art communities, hosts a 2-month exhibition in their gallery space in the Kunstquartier Bethanien in Kreuzberg, and online on their channel on IkonoTV, accompanied by a symposium.



 

WITH THANKS TO:


 

26/05/2021
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ART from ELSEWHERE

 
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ART from ELSEWHERE

 

Selected Works from the MOMENTUM Collection

 

11 JUNE – 25 July 2021

 

@ Kulturforum Ansbach

Kunsthaus Reitbahn 3, Ansbach, Germany


 


 
 

Featuring:

Aaajiao (CN) – Shaarbek Amankul (KG) – Inna Artemova (RU) – Eric Bridgeman (PG/AU)
Stefano Cagol (IT) – Margret Eicher (DE) – Nezaket Ekici (TR/DE) – Thomas Eller (DE)
Theo Eshetu (ET/DE) – Amir Fattal (IL) – Doug Fishbone (US/UK) – James P. Graham (UK)
Mariana Hahn (DE) – Gülsün Karamustafa (TR) – Hannu Karjalainen (FI) – David Krippendorff (US/DE)
Janet Laurence (AU) – Sarah Lüdemann (DE) – Shahar Marcus (IL) – Kate McMillan (AU/UK)
Almagul Menlibayeva (KZ/BE) – Tracey Moffatt (AU) – Gulnur Mukazhanova (KZ) – Anxiong Qiu (CN)
Varvara Shavrova (RU) – Sumugan Sivanesan (AU) – David Szauder (HU) – Shingo Yoshida (JP)

 

 

 

Today, most of us live lives of perpetual motion from one piece of information to the next, from one opportunity to the next, and – until COVID-19 stopped us in our tracks – from one place to the next. Mobility – both geographical and social – not so long ago the privilege of the few, is now taken for granted as the entitlement of the majority. Artists are at the forefront of this peripatetic existence, travelling the world for inspiration, exhibitions, and artist residencies, experiencing new places and cultures through the critical lens of the outsider, and then reflecting back upon their own locales through the prism of their expanded world views. In this way, artworks serve as windows onto the world. As we now emerge carefully after months of isolation, and learn how to negotiate the new realities of a post-pandemic world, it becomes more important than ever to have such windows through which to gaze. In these uncertain times, they remind us that, for all our differences, we are all in this together.

Art from Elsewhere brings to Ansbach, for the first time, the work of 28 international artists from 16 countries from the MOMENTUM Collection, Berlin. The works shown in this exhibition focus on global issues, equally relevant to us all, no matter where we live or where we have come from. Primarily through video works, as well as painting and installation, Art from Elsewhere addresses the central issues of our transformed times: the loss and displacement of migration; alienation and the crisis of identity; nostalgia and the distortions of memory; control and surveillance in the (social media); populism, propaganda, and truth; climate change and the impacts of mankind upon nature. Together, these works address the broader question of how images are used in a digital age to both produce and reconstruct the past, as well as to reimagine the present and the future. To this end, they reflect on the social and environmental repercussions of globalization and its impact on the transformation of cultural identities; they interrogate issues of gender, inequality, and poverty; they scrutinize the environmental traumas we inflict on our planet and its creatures; and they ponder the (un)quiet poetry, conflicts, and beauty of how we must live from day to day.



 

 

 
 


 

Featuring:
(Click on the artist to see the bio and the work description below)


 

 

 
 

Inna Artemova

 


 
 

Utopia IV (2017), oil on canvas, 180 x 240 cm, on loan from the artist

The paintings Utopia IV (2017) and Utopia XI (2018) are two out of a series of over 40 diverse works sharing the title of Utopia. Yet while the definition of utopia is the dream of a perfect society, these particular paintings evoke a sense of impending cosmic cataclysm more so than an idealized state of perfection. Whether meteors crashing through the cosmos, or the viral structures with which we have become all too familiar in the past year of pandemic, or the aftermath of some volatile force, these works send a suitably ambiguous message about the future and the present. Contriving to comingle a notion of existential threat with the sense of the sublime, these works can be seen as portraits of our precarious times. Having witnessed first-hand the collapse of the Communist utopia in her native Soviet Union, Artemova’s utopias are fragile constructivist visions in a state of constant flux; exploding, imploding, teetering on the edge of a perilous balance, or perhaps already being rebuilt. Every collapse presents the hope of a new beginning; a renewed dream of a more perfect future. Utopias are too often built on the ashes of their opposites.

 

 

Utopia XI (2018), oil on canvas, 190 x 140 cm

 

Inna Artemova (b. Moscow, USSR. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Born in Moscow, Inna Artemova studied architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). For her diploma project, she received the 2nd prize of the Russian Federation. In 1998 she moved to Berlin and started to focus on her work as an artist in the field of painting and drawing. Artemova’s practice remains heavily influenced by her professors at the MArchI in Moscow, the “Paper Architects“, a movement originating in the 1980s that developed futuristic architectural creations never intended to be realized. The visionary projects of the Paper Architects and her experience of the failure of the Communist utopia with the fall of the Soviet Union, has led Artemova to explore, through her constructivist painting style, the ideas of architectural utopias from the 1960s up to her own futuristic visions. In creating utopian landscapes and spaces, Artemova interrogates the future of living spaces and their impact upon human relationships. The concept of utopia stands for a space of possibility in human consciousness in which the crucial questions have to be answered again and again: Is there no alternative to the reality in which we live? What will we do in the future? Do we have to fail because of our ideal ideas?

Recent major exhibitions include: “Points of Resistance” with MOMENTUM, Berlin (2021); the Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020); and the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts presented her works in the solo show “Landscapes of Tomorrow” (2019). She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Italy. Additionally, her works were shown at international art fairs in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, the US, and Japan.

 
 

Eric Bridgeman

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/20601726 [/fve]   [fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/20603350 [/fve]
 

The Fight (2010), Video, 8’8”

In 2009, Eric Bridgeman traveled through remote parts of the Chimbu Province in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, his maternal homeland. Having been born in Australia, he became increasingly conscious of his own “white” Australian presence in his native land. The Fight is based on ethnographic conventions, from National Geographic to Irving Penn, which once aided in the promotion and consumption of Papua New Guinea as Australia’s next frontier. By means of acting out Western stereotypes of tribal war, The Fight parodies the history of ethnographic representation and the subsequent impact on the national and cultural identity of Papua New Guinea. The Fight documents two groups of men from Bridgeman’s own clan, the Yuri Alaiku, playfully attacking one another with spears and shields painted with artworks inspired by the bold, colorful motifs traditional to this region. Shields have been used in times of battle as potent symbols of power against attackers. Bridgeman, however, sees this icon of warfare as a protector of untold stories, undocumented histories and fading cultural practices, which have come to be integral to his subsequent practice.

   

Triple X Bitter (2008), Video, 13’

The performance video Triple X Bitter enacts a deranged pub scenario in psychedelic colors, involving Boi Boi the Labourer, a group of boisterous pub-goers, two pseudo-black babes and an inflatable pool. With Bridgeman taking center stage as Boi Boi, the artist conducts the unfolding events, allowing the participants to explore their own perceptions, fears and understandings of rules of behavior in Australian pub culture, and its pervasive role in Australian cultural identity. Triple X Bitter is one of seven performance video works produced as part of Bridgeman’s interdisciplinary project The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules (2008-2010). Drawing subversive parallels between the theatres of sport and ethnography, this body of work explores cross-cultural identity through the playful deconstruction of sex, gender and race politics – subverting stereotypes that underpin the foundations of national identity within contemporary Australia and Papua New Guinea. Performed in both public and private spaces, such as sporting arenas, pubs and work sites, and referencing ethnographic studies of tribal identities during periods of colonization, these carnivalesque acts are based on the paradoxical and improvised performances of their participants. Using blackface, whiteface, slapstick, and parody, Bridgeman irreverently constructs a bizarre amalgam between the symbologies, stereotypes, and socio-cultural roles in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

 

Eric Bridgeman (b. 1986 in Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia.Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and Wahgi Valley, Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea.)

Eric Bridgeman is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Australia and Papua New Guinea, working with photography, painting, installation, video and performance in a variety of applications often to do with masculinity, portraiture, culture and politics. His relational art works are framed by personal connections to his maternal Yuri Alaiku clan, from Omdara, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, and his paternal upbringing in the suburban landscape of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The dominant focus of his work involves the discussion of social and cultural issues, often using the theatre of sport as a springboard for his ideas, addressing notions of masculinity as expressed in sporting culture and in the realm of ‘tribal warfare’ in the PNG Highlands, which mimics the drama, color and trickery seen in its national sport, Rugby League. Challenging the hardwired stereotypes of centuries of colonialist ethnographies, Bridgeman uses reconstruction, slapstick, and parody, to interrogate his own cultural and sexual identity in a broader context of belonging. In doing so, his work also seeks to address and subvert the harsh social realities of both his homeland cultures.

Bridgeman holds a Bachelor of Photography from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (2010), where he developed his seminal work “The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules” (2008-2010). Significant solo exhibitions and commissions include: “Kala Büng”, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, AU (2018); “My Brother and the Beast”, Gallerysmith, Melbourne, AU (2018); SNO 145, Sydney Non-Objective, Sydney, AU (2018); “The Fight”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “All Stars”, Carriageworks, Sydney, AU (2012); “Haus Man”, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, AU (2012). Recent group exhibitions include: “Nirin”, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, AU (2020); “Just Not Australian”, Artspace, Sydney, AU (2019); “Australians in PNG”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “Number 1 Neighbour”, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, AU (2016); The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane, AU (2015–2016).

 
 

Stefano Cagol

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/180760247 [/fve]
 

The Time of the Flood, Fragments (2020-21), HD Video, 8’38, on loan from the artist

The Time of the Flood: Beyond the Myth through Climate Change (2020-21), is composed of 7 video performances realized by Stefano Cagol throughout a series of international artist residencies in Berlin, Venice, Rome, Vienna, and Tel-Aviv. In the time it took to complete this body of work, which began at MOMENTUM Berlin in November 2019 and ended in Tel Aviv in 2021, the world had irrevocably changed. Cagol’s concept, to re-contextualize the biblical story of the Flood within our current climate emergency, remains a crucial and timely reflection on the devastating impacts we humans have on our planet. Inspired by the biblical image of the great flood, and continuing a line that sees art, science and myth in continuous dialogue, The Time of the Flood investigates global issues such as extreme weather events, rising sea levels, the disappearance of glaciers, the mutation of winds, energy sources, and extinction. Man’s pervasive impacts upon nature – whether in the form of ecological disasters, or the unleashing of new deadly viruses – has been a persistent focus throughout Cagol’s work. What began as a reflection upon the intersections of art, ecology, and technology, acquired an even greater urgency in being realized amidst a global pandemic. Cagol’s Time of the Flood is also a snapshot of a time of global emergency – both medical and ecological. Cagol completed his multi-city series of performative interventions despite persistent travel restrictions and institutional closures, not only during the greatest global public health emergency of recent history, but also in a time of continued escalation in climactic catastrophes, with deadly floods, fires, and storms raging throughout the world. There is, unfortunately, an urgent relevance to Cagol’s work in our seemingly apocalyptic times.

 

MORE INFO ON THE TIME OF THE FLOOD VIDEO SERIES <<

 

Stefano Cagol (b. 1969 in Trento, Italy. Lives and works in Trento.)

Stefano Cagol studied at the Brera Academy of fine arts and Ryerson University in Toronto with a post-doctoral fellowship. His works, often multi-form and multi-sited, reflect on the issues of nowadays, from borders to viruses, to ecological issues and human interference upon nature. He is the recipient of prestigious awards including: the Italian Council (2019); the Visit of Innogy Stiftung (2014); and Terna Prize for Contemporary Art (2009). He participated in numerous international Biennales, including: 14th Curitiba Biennial, Brazil (2019-20); OFF Biennale Cairo, Egypt (2018); Manifesta 11, Zurich, Switzerland, (2016); and the 2nd Xinjiang Biennale, China (2014); 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2013) invited by the Maldives Pavilion; 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011) with a solo collateral event; 4th Berlin Biennale, Germany (2006); 1st Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2006). Cagol has held solo exhibitions at: CCA Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, Israel; MA*GA Museum, Italy; at MARTa, Herford, Germany; CLB Berlin, Germany; ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany; MAXXI Museum in Rome, Italy; Madre, Naples, Italy; Museion in Bolzano, Italy; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland; Museum Folkwang in Essen, amongst many others. Much of his work is created in the context of international residencies and fellowships, including: Italian Council, MOMENTUM AiR, Berlin, Germany (2019-20); Cambridge Sustainability Residency, Cambridge, UK (2016); RWE Foundation, MOMENTUM AiR, Berlin, Germany (2015); Air Bergen, Bergen, Norway (2014); Vir-Viafarini-in-Residence, Milan, Italy (2013); BAR International, Kirkenes, Norway (2010); International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP, New York, USA (2010); International Center of Photography, New York, USA (2001).

 
 

Margret Eicher

 

 

Posthuman Dance of Death (2016), Tapestry, 280 x 330 cm

The tapestry Posthuman Dance of Death (2016) refers to the strongly increasing reliance on images in society. It is no longer text and language that primarily shape political, social and individual attitudes, but ubiquitous images whose truth content is usually no longer verified. Invoking academic research in image theory and visual culture alongside quotations from art history, Margret Eicher’s tapestries are about how we think in images. Posthuman Dance of Death is a digital collage assembled from images of Pokemon-Go characters, Manga masks, Japanese fans and Mexican skulls, video game menu symbols, mobile phones, and two tattooed women in clichéd seductive poses foregrounding a magnetic resonance tomography machine. Images inscribed onto the body are set alongside the technology for making imagery of inside the body. This is a work about our addiction to images and the translatability of visual language across all cultures. Margret Eicher reimagines the historical medium and function of the tapestry for the digital age, down to the production of the works on a digital loom. By being transformed into a monumental tapestry, the content of the image gains the appearance of legitimacy and power, then as now. Traditionally serving political purposes, depicting royalty and significant occasions of the times, in the Baroque era especially, the courtly tapestry reached the height of its function in the representation of power and communication of ideologies. Eicher makes striking parallels between the functions and visual language of this Baroque communication medium and those of contemporary mass media today. Depicting the movie stars and media icons which are the equivalent of royalty in today’s content-driven digital culture interwoven with diverse symbols from the history of art and architecture, Eicher’s work looks at how media culture repurposes art history, and questions the power of visual communication in the digital age.

 

Margret Eicher (b. 1955 in Viersen, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Margret Eicher works primarily with intricate digital collages produced as large format tapestries woven on a digital loom. Invoking the traditional use of the tapestry as a tool of wealth and power, and commenting on our increasing reliance on digital culture, Eicher fills her tapestries with contemporary icons from our overly mediated age alongside quotations from art history.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Stade, Schloß Agathenburg, Germany (2010); Erarta-Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian (2011); Goethe-Institut Nancy (F) Strasbourg (F) ARTE /ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2011); Hamburg Galerie Carolyn Heinz, Hamburg, Germany (2012); Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Germany (2012); Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Berlin Orangerie Schloss Charlottenburg, Germany (2013); Anger Museum Erfurt, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany (2014); CACTicino, Bellinzona, Switzerland (2014); Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin, Germany (2015); Gallery Baku, Azerbaijan (2015); Port 25 Mannheim, Germany (2016); Kunstverein Ulm, Germany (2017); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2018); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany (2020); Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany (2021); Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, Germany (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2008); Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz, Austria (2010); Musee des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Tournai, Belgium (2011); MOCAK, Krakow, Poland (2012); Museum Liner, Appenzell, Switzerland (2012); Rohkunstbau, Berlin/Roskow, Germany (2013); Tichy Foundation, Prague, Czech Republic (2013); MPK, Kaiserslautern, Germany (2014); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2014); Gallery of Art Critics Palace Adria, Prague, Czech Republic (2015); KHM, Vienna, Austria (2015); Stresa, Italy (2015); Kaiserslautern, Germany (2016); Museum Liner, Appenzell, Switzerland (2017); Leipzig, Germany (2017); Galerie Deschler, Berlin, Germany (2017); Singen, Kunstmuseum, Germany (2017); ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017); Kunstverein Pforzheim , Haus am Lützowplatz Berlin, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, Germany (2018); Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany (2019); Room Berlin, Germany (2019); Stiftung Staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany (2019); Berlin, Germany (2020); MOMENTUM & Kleinr von Wiese, Zionkirche, Berlin, Germany (2021).

 
 

Nezaket Ekici

 

 

Kaffeeklatsch (2019), Video Performance, HD, 6’17”, on loan from the artist

In her video performance Kaffeeklatsch (2019), Nezaket Ekici refers to the German afternoon ritual of ‘coffee and cake’, a time of meeting and togetherness for many German families. The history of coffee gossip is a long one. In Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the rise of the bourgeoisie, women began meeting for coffee gossip – “Kränzchen” – to exchange ideas among themselves, allowing them a taste of freedoms that up until then had been reserved for men in social circles. Nezaket Ekici addresses the tradition of the coffee klatsch from her perspective as a migrant and a fully integrated German, questioning her sense of belonging in German society. She asks herself what her own German tradition is – which leads to the general question of what actually is German tradition? In order to answer these questions, Ekici stages herself as three characters dressed in traditional German costumes from the Black Forest, the Spreewald, and Thuringia, representing the south, the north and the center of Germany. With the focus on the articulation, gestures, and facial expressions of the performer, Ekici drinks coffee with her doppelgangers in this playful video addressing the fine line between foreignness and belonging. And though this work was made shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic, watching it now – well into the second year of social distancing and intermittent lockdowns when we have all spent far too much time in our own company – we come to see how very precious this simple freedom is, to gather together with one another.

 

 

Nezaket Ekici (b. 1970 in Kirsehir, Turkey. Lives and works in Berlin & Stuttgart, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey.)

Nezaket Ekici holds a degree in Fine Arts, an MA in Art Pedagogy, and an MFA degree, having studied Art History and Sculpture at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and Fine Arts Academy Munich (1994-2000). From 2001 to 2004 she studied Performance Art under Marina Abramović at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig. Ekici’s video, installations and performances are often process-based and ask viewers to derive their own emotional and intellectual interpretations. In her work, complex, often controversial topics are tackled with humor in highly aesthetic compostions. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, authorial bodies, art history, religion, culture and politics are central to Ekici’s works. By highlighting these themes in everyday life and placing them in a new context, she aims to interconnect every element to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk. Nezaket Ekici has presented more than 250 different performances in more than 170 cities in over 60 countries on 4 continents.

Selected international exhibitions since 2000 include: Museum Haus der Kunst in Munich; The Irish Museum of Modern art in Dublin; 25. May Museum Belgrade; PAC Milano; Venice Biennale; P.S.1 New York; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam; Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei/ Taiwan; Poznan Biennale; Curiciba Biennale; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Istanbul Modern; Marta Herford; Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai; Haus am Waldsee Berlin; KunstWerke Berlin; Oslo Museum; The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi; Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Total Museum Seoul, and many more. Ekici was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cultural Academy Tarabya, Istanbul (2013-14), and was the recipient of the Rome Prize for an Artist Residency at the German Academy, Villa Massimo, Rome (in 2016-17). She received the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Award (2018), and received the Berlin Culur Senate prize for her Artist Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York (2020).

 

 
 

Thomas Eller

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/413957159 [/fve]   [fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/98466373 [/fve]

 

THE virus – SELBST (C0vid-20-Recovered) (2020), Video, 5’24”

Thomas Eller’s THE virus – SELBST (C0vid-20-Recovered) was made in the midst of the Corona pandemic, while the artist was in lockdown in China. As so much of Eller’s work, it is a self-portrait, yet at the same time, also an intimate portrait of COVID-19; replicating in its form and content the biological basis of the virus. Eller projects himself into the frame in a visually and aurally layered palimpsest. The artist re-duplicates himself, again and again, with each of his copies reciting the complete genetic code of one of the first strains of the SARS-CoV2 virus identified in Wuhan, where the COVID-19 outbreak began. But the copies are not perfect. The duplicates vary. Eller makes mistakes while reciting dense lines of genetic code, scrambling the RNA sequence here, dropping a nucleotide there…. More copies of genetic code, more small mistakes here and there. Thomas Eller has translated into visual language an approximation of how the virus replicates itself, spreading its genetic information through multiplication, and through mistakes from copy to copy, mutating to create new strains. Amongst the duplicates on the screen, a digitally altered copy of the artist enters the frame; an Eller in pixels, with a computer’s robotic voice reciting the sequence of nucleotides. Technology is racing to overtake the virus, but when will it catch up? A year and a half after the start of the pandemic, we are still waiting for vaccines, for treatments, for cures. Until then, we hide from the virus, and from each other. We distance, socially, and wait for science to win the race against nature. We should be so lucky if the virus simply stops, as Eller does, and goes away.

 

THE white male complex #5 (lost) (2014), HD Video, 11’25”

Shot on the beach of Catania on the Italian island of Sicily in 2014, THE white male complex, #5 (lost) uncannily prefigures the tragic shipwreck of 2015 which killed 700 African migrants on the same coastline, and alludes to the nearby island of Lampedusa, infamous for its migrant traffic and for the tragic shipwreck which killed 366 African migrants packed onto an overcrowded fishing boat in 2013. With the all too familiar promiscuity of news cycles in our turbo-charged information age, these tragedies occupied the media for some days or weeks, only to move on to more pressing concerns. But while the media may have lost interest, the underlying issues behind these tragedies and many others like them will persist as long as people anywhere on this globe nurture hopes of a better life and follow their instincts to flee hardships of all kinds. Into this gap between the global media’s disinterest and the persistent need to tell the story of people in such desperate situations, enters the space for art.

A man wearing the ubiquitous attire of innumerable professions – black suit and tie, white shirt, black shoes – is incongruously floating in the ocean. Floating or drowning? This is what we inevitably come to ask ourselves as the shot lurches between the surface of the water to to submerged beneath it. This man perpetually struggling in the sea is the artist himself, living the plight of so many who wash up on such shores. Eternally looping at the cusp of life and death, this work leaves the viewer feeling oddly complicit in one man’s surreal struggle. Yet while one white man submerged in a suit comes across as surreal, the countless migrants braving a similar plight are the reality we live in. Thomas Eller, in his own visual language tackles the watery deaths of migrant workers as a sadly universal suffering, devoid of markers of place or time. This could be any sea, any beach, any tragedy. And in the timeless metaphor of treading water, this work equally signifies our persistent inability to move forward in finding a solution to the myriad issues driving people around the globe to risk their life in the pursuit of a better one. Taken out of context and read solely through the metaphor of keeping one’s head above water, THE white male complex, #5 (lost) becomes a timeless work, equally applicable to the struggles of the human condition. Professionally, personally, who amongst us has not at some point in their lives felt as if they were drowning. Almost, but never quite, succumbing to the pressures, expectations, and fears pulling him under, Thomas Eller translates an experience universal to the human condition into a visual language which can be read as at once hopeful, hopeless, and immutable.

Thomas Eller (b. 1964 in Coburg, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Beijing, China.)

Thomas Eller started his studies in Fine Arts at the Hochschule der Künste of Berlin. After his forced dismissal, he went on to graduate in Sciences of Religion, Philosophy and Art History from the Freie Universität, Berlin (1989). After returning to Berlin from 9 years in New York, Eller founded the German edition of artnet magazine, where he served as editior-in-chief (2004-2008) and was appointed executive director of the German branch of artnet AG (2005-2008). In 2008-2009, Eller served as Artistic Director of the Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. He has been a member of various institutions, including the Association of International Art Critics (AICA), a Member of the Board for Creative Industries at the Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, and on the Steering Committee for Creative Industries in the Berlin Senate. Since moving to Beijing in 2014, Eller has taught at the Chinese National Art Academy, Beijing (2019), Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (TAFA) (2017), Tsinghua University and Sotheby’s Institute (2016 – 2017), and was associate researcher at Tsinghua University (2019-2020). He was a correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Beijing (2016-2017). In 2018 he founded Gallery Weekend Beijing. And since 2018, Thomas Eller is the Founding Artistic Director of China Arts & Sciences in Jingdezhen – a major new art district to feature international artist residencies, a contemporary art museum and a biennial. Since 2013 to the present, Eller is president of RanDian art magazine. Thomas Eller has received various prizes, including the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff Prize (1996), the Villa-Romana Prize (Florence, 2000), the Art Omi International Art Center (New York, 2002) and the Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize from the Akademie der Künste (Berlin, 2006). In his artistic practice, Eller has had innumerable international exhibitions dating back to 1991.

 
 

Theo Eshetu

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/161355780 [/fve]
 

Festival of Sacrifice (2012), HD Video, 18’

The Festival of Sacrifice was originally made as a 6-channel video installation, depicting the ritual slaughter of a goat during the celebration of Eid-ul-Adha, the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice. Through multiple mirroring the extreme footage is sublimated into a series of images that resemble traditional Islamic ornamentation. The skilled dissection of the animal body is reflected in the kaleidoscopic dissolution of the video image. The emotional and aesthetic aspects of ritual religious practices are here heightened by the musical soundtrack of the work.

“The celebration of Sacrifice harks back to the very origins of religious thought. All religions begin with a sacrifice. Festival of Sacrifice is part of a series of videos that looks at aspects of Islamic culture as a source to explore formal qualities of representation and the underlying links between cultures. Filmed on the Kenyan island of Lamu during the celebrations of Eid-ul-Adha, the video recreates, through the multiplication of images, the kaleidoscopic patterns that highlight the spiritual aspect of the event. Intercultural relations, whether seen as an exchange or a battle, are strongly influenced by the impact of images and their use. While religion and technological development are often used to reinforce differences, electronic inter-connectivity has created a platform for mutual interaction and transformed the very concept of landscape.“

– Theo Eshetu

 

Theo Eshetu (b. 1958 in London, England. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Ethiopian artist Theo Eshetu was born in London, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. A pioneer of video art, Eshetu explores the relationship between media, identity, and global information networks. After studying Communication Design, Eshetu began making videos in early 1982, seeking to deconstruct the hegemonic status of television, which he viewed as a state apparatus. Forging a hybrid language to merge practices of video art and documentary filmmaking, Eshetu explores perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. He draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context. Though essentially conceptual, and often exploring video’s formal components of time and light, Eshetu’s work is often focused on cultural displacement, and is always grounded in compelling aesthetic components, often achieved through fractal repetition, such as kaleidoscopic mirroring, multi-screen projections, or mosaic-like patterning of images.

Among various international awards, Eshetu was Artist in Residence at Tarabya Cultural Academy, Turkey where he completed aspects of production for Altas Fractured (2017) which was featured in Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel in 2017. In 2012 he was Artist in Residence at the DAAD program in Berlin, where he exhibited The Return of the Axum Obelisk at DAADgalerie in 2014. In 2011 he participated the Venice Biennale and the Sharjah Biennale. His work has appeared at: The New Museum, NY; the New York African Film Festival; DIA Foundation’s Electronic Arts Intermix, NY; Snap Judgments at ICP (International Centre for Photography), NY; BAM Cinemateque, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland USA; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Africa Remix at The Hayward Gallery, London; the Venice Film Festival; Roma Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art in Rome; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, France; the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; among many other museums, biennales, and film festivals.

 
 

Amir Fattal

 

 

ATARA (2019), HD Video, 15’20”

ATARA is a 1970‘s styled sci-fi film designed as a 2-channel video installation set to contemporary opera music. The score is based on the opera Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner together with original music by Boris Bojadzhiev. Shot on location in Berlin, it tells the story of two buildings that used to stand at the same place: the Berliner Stadtschloss, destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII, and the Palast der Republik, built in its place as the GDR seat of government in 1973, and destroyed amidst much controversy in 2008 to make way for the rebuilding of a contemporary copy of the Stadtschloss. The resurrection of this historical copy did not begin until 2013 due to the controversy surrounding this project. In a city perpetually treading the fine line between moving on from its painful history while never forgetting it, the decision to resurrect the Stadtschloss in order to move and consolidate all Berlin’s ethnographic and history of science museums, is interpreted by many as a willful erasure of its GDR past and a dangerous rewriting of history. This controversy is keenly felt in a city still building over its bomb craters, even more than 75 years after the end of WWII.

ATARA follows a ceremony that takes place in the Palace during a moment when one building is being resurrected and the other building is dematerializing into a ghostly memory. Following an astronaut wandering through the construction site of the new Stadtschloss, carrying an iconic lamp from the destroyed Palast der Republik, ATARA deals with the collective memory of architecture and its symbolic representation in public space. The music is based on the Liebestod aria from the opera Tristan and Isolde, sung by Isolde after Tristan’s death. The score was made by copying the last note of each line of the musical score as the first note, and proceeding in this way until a new ‘mirrored’ piece was formed. Like travelling backwards and forwards in time, the recording of this piece is then digitally reversed backwards to become the soundtrack to ATARA, forming another play on the idea of resurrection.

 

Amir Fattal (b. 1978 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Fattal is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Working in the media of video, photography, sculpture, and installation, his work forms a focused response to the diverse questions raised by his adoptive city of Berlin, where the memory, culture, architecture, indeed every thread in the fabric of this city is problematized by its history. Alongside his art practice, Fattal is the curator of Tape Modern Berlin, an acclaimed series of group exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists.

Amir Fattal was distinguished with the GASAG Art Prize in 2008 and graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009. Fattal has participated in numerous international group exhibitions. Acclaimed solo exhibitions include: Mesopotopography, Anna Jill Lüpertz Gallery, Berlin (2015); From the End to the Beginning, Kunstquerier Bethanien, Berlin (2014); Parallel Lines, Teapot Gallery, Cologne, Germany (2013); Goral Ehad, St-art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012); Shadow of Smoke Rings on the Wall, Artitude Kunstverein, Berlin (2011); Tomorrow Gets Me Higher, Wilde Gallery, Berlin (2010). Selected group exhibitions include: Collection Enea Righi, Museo Fortuny, Venice (2016); Interior / Exterior / Sculpture, Belenius/Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); A Naked Singularity, Studio Garaicoa, Madrid, Spain (2015); Fragments of Empires, MOMENTUM, Berlin (2014-15); A Letter From Dr. Faustus, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2014); Fundación Botín, Villa Iris, Santander, Spain (2014); Dahlstrøm & Fattal, Beers Lambert Contemporary, London (2013); III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2012); Body Without Body, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin (2011).

 
 

Doug Fishbone

 

 

Artificial Intelligence (2018), Video, 2’48”, on loan from the artist

Artificial Intelligence (2018) is a short meditation on time, impermanence and loss, originally made for the Werkleitz Festival in Halle, Germany. Spanning from the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 to the shortages of sausages in the German Democratic Republic to the Mahabharata, it offers an unusual perspective on the rise and fall of human civilization through the prism of the chaos of 20th- century Europe. The piece grants a moment of pause to consider the fragility and vanity of our daily lives, though with a light-hearted touch. Unfolding a comical and philosophical narrative using a slideshow of historic images found online, Fishbone takes us on a journey through the turbulence of war-time and post-war Germany and its legacy of instability. Watching this work now in the context of Corona-times,Artificial Intelligence paints an oddly prescient portrait of our times, reminiscent of the fears and uncertainties of the first pandemic lockdown over a year ago – from food shortages in shops, to wildlife taking over our city streets, to a willful denial of our own mortality in the face of all evidence to the contrary. We all hope that history will not repeat itself.

 

 

Doug Fishbone (b. 1969 in New York, USA. Lives and works in London, England.)

Described as a “stand-up conceptual artist”, Doug Fishbone’s work is heavily influenced by the rhythms of stand-up comedy. Fishbone examines some of the more problematic aspects of contemporary life in an amusing and disarming way, using satire and humor in his films, performances and installations to critically examine consumer culture, mass media, and the relativity of perception and context. In his video and performance practice, he uses images found online to illustrate and undermine his own confrontational monologues on contemporary media and its corollary, the underground and avant-garde. Fishbone’s conceptual practice is wide-ranging, using many different forms of popular culture in unexpected ways. He earned a BA from Amherst College in the US in 1991, and MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London in 2003, and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Tate Britain, London (2010-11), Rokeby, London (2010-11, and 2009), Gimpel Fils, London (2006) and 30,000 Bananas in Trafalgar Square (2004). Selected group exhibitions include Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain (2010), Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2008); Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery (2008), London; British Art Show 6, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester (2006). Fishbone’s film project Elmina (2010) was premiered at Tate Britain in 2010, and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. Other notable projects include: the Mayor of London’s Thames Festival, London, UK (2013, 2014), and the Look Again Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland (2016). He curated Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and realised his solo project Made in China at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2015). Artificial Intelligence was commissioned by Werkleitz Festival, Halle, Germany (2018); and he showed a specially commissioned video The Jewish Question in the exhibition Jews, Money, Myth at the Jewish Museum, London (2019). Fishbone teaches and performs at major international and UK venues, including: the Hayward Gallery, ICA London, the Southbank Centre, Hauser and Wirth Somerset, and the Royal Academy. Fishbone is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Yinka Shonibare Foundation, an organization which fosters international cultural exchange.

 
 

James P. Graham

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/20608426 [/fve]
 

Chronos (1999), Video, 6’20”

Chronos (1999) is the second part of Graham’s Cycle of Life series, made between 1999 and 2001. It uses humor within everyday life to contrast the “use of” and “loss of” time. Originally commissioned by Channel 4 Television UK, this work was shot on location in Rajastan India between February and March 1999. The joyful soundtrack accompanies fast-paced images of street-side barber shops providing momentary respite from the ceaseless movement of a bustling city. Seen now at the height of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in India due to the ravages of the pandemic, Chronos acquires a painfully wistful poignancy, harking back to more carefree times.

 

James P. Graham (b. 1961 in Windsor, England. Lives and works in London and Italy.)

James P. Graham is a multi-media artist working in film, photography, drawing and sculpture. He is autodidactic, having left Eton College at 18. He began his career in photography while working in Paris, and transitioned to TV and cinema when he left for London in 1994. Within this period he completed international commissions in editorial and advertising photography as well as television commercials. He abandoned commercial work, turning to art in 2002, creating screen-based, experimental film works using Super 8 film framed within a landscape of metaphysical and ontological significance. Having trained traditionally in photography and filmmaking, Graham particularly enjoys the interface between analogue processes and high-end technology. Mainly using landscape and nature, his work interprets and re-creates notions of sacred space. Infused with ideas that derive from intuitive and ritualistic sources, Graham cites two fundamental factors in his work: first, intuition, or the catalyst behind the creation of every artwork; and second, resonance, or the result of the work as expressed through the viewer.

James P. Graham’s work has been shown in major museums and biennales around the world, including: Eleventh Plateau, Historical Archives Museum, Hydra, Greece (2011); Busan Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea (2010); Locus Solus, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2010); Volcano: from Turner to Warhol, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK (2010); Searching for Empedocles, Islington Metalworks, London, UK (2009); Space Now!, Space Gallery, London UK (2007); Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg (2007), amongst many others.

 
 

Mariana Hahn

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/70407307 [/fve]
 

Burn My Love, Burn (2013), Performance Video, 5’24”

Burn My Love, Burn (2013) explores the body as the carrier of historical signature. By inscribing a poem on a shroud that once belonged to her recently deceased grandmother – and then burning and consuming its remains – Mariana Hahn examines the relationship between text, memory-making, and the human – particularly female – form.

“The body does so by will, it inscribes, devours the story, becoming a container that vibrates and lives within a narrative. The shroud becomes the elementary signifier of such a historical narrative, it has been impregnated by the story, acts as the monument. Through the burning, it can become part of an organic form in motion. The text conditions and creates the body within the very specifically hermetically sealed space. The words activate the body’s field of memory as much as they create new memories. The ritual becomes the form through which this transformation can be made. The body eats the body, destroys and paints again, another image. Again this is done by the word, it creates the flesh, gives it differentiating coloration, its plausible point of view. The body acts as a paper, it is inscribed by those murmurs of history, becoming a living artifact of its own history.”

– Mariana Hahn

 

Mariana Hahn (b. in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany. Lives and works in Paris, France.)

After initially pursuing Theater Studies at ETI, Berlin in 2005, Mariana Hahn graduated with a Fine Art degree at Central St. Martins, London in 2012. Hahn’s practice is driven by the exploration of the relationship between the body and the transmission of memory and knowledge. Silk, hair, salt, copper, and textile are part of her research on memory and its means of transmission. Hahn poetically questions human fate as a universal condition through photography, performance and video. Her artistic practice is based on thinking of the body as carrier of continually weaving narrative. She believes that ‘weaving’ is a metaphor for creating human autonomy and often uses textiles to take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the carrier of the living narrative.

Mariana Hahn has participated in international biennales including: Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France (2021); the Venice Biennal, collateral event My Ocean Guide (2017); the 56th October Salon – Belgrade Biennial, Serbia (2016); the Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2014). She has exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries and festivals, such as: MOMENTUM, die Raeume, PS120, and Diskurs, in Berlin, Germany; The Moutain View, Shenzen, China; Ding Shung Museum, Fujian, China; Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China; Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong; Gelleria Mario Iannelli, Rome, Italy; Trafo Museum of Contemporary Art in Stettin, Poland; Corpo Festival of Performing Arts, Venice, Italy; amongst others. She has participated in Artist Residency programs, including: the Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong (2016); Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2017); Treeline Residency, Capalbio, Italy (2017); and others.

 
 

Gülsün Karamustafa

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/115125359 [/fve]
 

Personal Time Quartet (2000), 4-channel Video Installation, 2’39” on loop

The video and soundscape Personal Time Quartet (2000) is designed as an ever-changing soundscape to accompany continually repeating images of a never-ending childhood. The sound was composed especially for this work by Slovak rock musician, Peter Mahadic. Comprised of various sound-samples (some of which are from rock concerts), each track was made to activate one of the four channels of moving image. The work is installed in such a way that each time it is turned on anew, the four channels never synchronize, instead producing a new quartet to accompany the looping images. Personal Time Quartet is concerned with the point of intersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country. The timeframe, or ‘personal time’, covered by these four videos begins in the year of her father’s birth and ends in the early days of her own childhood. Filmed in Karamustafa’s apartment in Istanbul, each video screen shows the same young girl – the artist’s alter ego – engaged in various activities. The girl skipping suggests a carefree childhood; the girl painting her nails indicates a concern with the artist’s own femininity; the girl folding laundry could be read as a comment on the expected role of women in society; while for the girl opening cupboards and drawers is a way of discovering the hidden secrets and stories that are so much a part of our recollections of childhood and adolescence. In this installation Karamustafa exposes just how similar the evolution of (female) identity can be, even in very disparate cultures. This timeless work, intended as a portrait of the artist’s childhood, when seen in our current context now paints a picture of how many of us have felt during long periods of lockdown, stuck indoors and perpetually repeating the same domestic tasks.

 

Gülsün Karamustafa (b. 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. Lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey and Berlin, Germany.)

Gülsün Karamustafa is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. She received her MFA from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Art in 1969. Using personal and historical narratives, Karamustafa explores socio-political issues in modern Turkey, addressing themes including: sexuality and gender; exile and ethnicity; displacement and migration. Her work reflects on the traumatic effects of nation building, as it responds to the processes of modernization, political turbulence, and civil rights in a period that includes the military coups of 1960, 1971, and 1980. During the 1970s Karamustafa was imprisoned by the Turkish military dictatorship. She was refused a passport for sixteen years until the mid-80s and, unlike other Turkish artists, could not emigrate or travel. This enforced isolation led her to an analysis of her own situation and context: the city of Istanbul, interior migration and nomadism within Turkey, and the ideological and psychological ramifications of identity. Like a sociologist or anthropologist, Gülsün Karamustafa explores the historical and social connections of oriental cultures in her works, often using materials that express the hybrid character of different cultures and religions. Karamustafa’s approach — poetic, but also marked by a documentary impulse — serves to address the marginalization of women and the violence witnessed by itinerant populations in the wake of Western economic and territorial expansion.

Gülsün Karamustafa is one of the laureates of the prestigious 2014 Prince Claus Awards that are presented to individuals whose cultural actions have a positive impact on the development of their societies. Her recent major exhibitions include: “Chronographia” at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016-2017); “Citizens and States”, Tate Modern, London (2015); “Artists in Their Time”, Istanbul Modern (2015); the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial (2014); the 3rd and 10th Gwangju Biennials (2000, 2014); “Art Histories”, Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2014); “Artevida Politica”, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (2014); the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale (2013); the 1st Kiev Biennale (2012); Singapore Biennial (2011), the 3rd Guangzou Triennial (2008); the 11th Cairo Biennial (2008); and very many others.

 
 

Hannu Karjalainen

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/39542109 [/fve]
 

Woman on the Beach (2009), Video, 13’6”

Woman on the Beach (2009) is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. We see a woman, filmed with a focus on her immobile face, as she lies motionless on wet sand. The illusion of a still image is broken only by the intermittent rush of waves washing over her. The moving image then reverts into stillness. In this tableau vivant, Hannu Karjalainen subverts conventions of classical portrait photography to create a striking tension between the still and moving image.

 

Hannu Karjalainen (b. 1978 in Finland. Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.)

Hannu Karjalainen is an award winning visual artist, filmmaker photographer, and composer based in Helsinki, Finland. Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School at Alver Alto University, Finland. Karjalainen’s experimental films, video installation work, photography and sound art have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Finland and internationally, including: UMMA University of Michigan Museum of Art, International Biennale of Photography Bogota, Scandinavia House New York, Fotogalleriet Oslo and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki. Karjalainen won the main prize at the Turku Biennial in 2007, and was chosen as Finnish Young Artist of the Year in 2009. Karjalainen’s latest album LUXE was released by Berlin based Karaoke Kalk in late 2020. Karjalainen has collaborated with Simon Scott (of Slowdive), Dakota Suite and Monolyth & Cobalt among others.

 
 

David Krippendorff

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/261725727 [/fve]
 

Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015), HD Video, 14’9”

Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015) takes us on an intimate journey through identity and history. David Krippendorff’s time-warping tribute to a changing world presents a would-be Aida, to a moving soundtrack from the eponymous opera, shedding tears for a place and time which no longer exist.

Nothing Escapes My Eyes is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being, both subjected to the melancholy of conforming. The film was inspired by the famous opera Aida, to depict in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. The film refers to the following historical event related to this opera: Aida premiered in Cairo in 1871 at the Khedivial Opera House. One hundred years later the building was completely destroyed by fire and replaced by a multi-story parking garage. Nevertheless, to this day, the place is still named Opera Square: Meidan El Opera. The film combines this urban alteration with the painful transformation of a woman (actress Hiam Abbass) in the process of shedding one identity for another. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from Verdi’s opera Aida, whose lyrics express the difficulties of being loyal to one’s country and cultural identity. The personal and urban transformation tackles issues of identity, loss and disorientation as a result of historical colonialism and contemporary globalization.”

– David Krippendorff

 

David Krippendorff (b. 1967 in Berlin, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin.)

David Krippendorff is a US/German interdisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker. He grew up in Rome, Italy, and studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he graduated with a Masters degree in 1997, and was subsequently based in New York for some time. The son of a Holocaust survivor and the grandchild of practicing Nazis, cultural contradiction and dislocation shaped Krippendorff’s experience early on. His artistic practice inquires into this state of being a “permanent foreigner” and explores resulting questions of home, national and cultural identity, and belonging. Krippendorff’s works, films and videos have been shown internationally, including at: the New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem). He has participated in four Biennials (Prague, Poznan, Tel Aviv, and Belgrade), as well as in many international art and film festivals worldwide.

 
 

 
 

Janet Laurence

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/70449386 [/fve]
 

Grace (2012), HD Video, 5’22” & Dingo (2013), HD Video, 4’8”

 

The Other Side of Nature / Panda (2014), HD Video, 9’18”, on loan from the artist

 

Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef – Part 2(2015), HD Video, 11’51”, on loan from the artist


Renowned Australian artist Janet Laurence is known for her work with the environment, often undertaken together with scientists engaged in international conservation initiatives. Laurence’s practice is a direct response to contemporary ecological catastrophes, positioning art within the essential dialogue of environmental politics to create and communicate an understanding of the impact that humans have upon the threatened natural world, in order to restore our vital relationships with it. Works from two series are shown here: the Vanishing series, depicting endangered animals on the verge of extinction; and Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef, shot while working with scientists researching corral collapse in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – a World Heritage site which is the planet’s largest living, and rapidly dying, structure – and commissioned for Artists 4 Paris Climate, the exhibition program for COP21, the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015.

“This ecological crisis demands we shift our focus from a human-centred perspective to a broader multispecies, environmental approach, for how else are we to live ethically and find our place in this world. These works are from a series of videos made during my research in wildlife sanctuaries, using hidden cameras specialized for zoology research. In projection, the videos are altered and slowed… I want to bring us into intimacy with these animals and to reveal our interconnection… I want to bring us into contact with the life-world. With a focus on the animals and their loss, I think about the loneliness of the last one of a species. What was their death? I wonder about their umwelt, the unique world in which each species lives: the world as its body represents it, the world formed by the very form of the organism. It is a sensory world of space, time, objects and qualities that form perceptual signs for living creatures. I think it’s important to find this link in order to find compassion and care for developing a real relationship with other species we have to share the planet with.”

– Janet Laurence

 

 

Janet Laurence (b. 1947 in Sydney, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney.)

Janet Laurence is recognized as one of the most accomplished Australian artists. Bridging ethical and environmental concerns, Laurence’s art considers the inseparability of all living things and represents, in her words, “an ecological quest”. For over 35 years, Laurence has explored the interconnection of all living things – animal, plant, mineral – through her multi-disciplinary practice. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, she explores the natural world in all its beauty and complexity, as well as the environmental challenges it faces today. Researching historical collections and drawing on the rich holdings of natural history museums, her practice has, over time, brought together various conceptual threads, from an exploration of threatened creatures and environments to notions of healing and physical, as well as cultural, restoration. Exploring notions of art, science, imagination, memory, and loss, Janet Laurence’s practice examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world through site-specific, gallery, and museum works. Laurence creates immersive environments that navigate the interconnections within the living world. Her work explores what it might mean to heal, albeit metaphorically, the natural environment, fusing this sense of communal loss with a search for connection with powerful life-forces. Laurence’s work alerts us to the subtle dependencies between water, life, culture and nature in our eco-system. Her work reminds us that art can provoke its audience into a renewed awareness about our environment.

Laurence has participated in numerous international museum exhibitions and Biennales, including: The Entangled Garden of Plant Memory, Yu Hsiu Museum, Taiwan (2020); the major survey exhibition Janet Laurence: After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2019); Matter of the Masters, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017); Inside the Flower, IGA Berlin (2017); Force of Nature II, curated by James Putnam, The Art Pavilion, London (2017); the 13th Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Anthropocene, Fine Arts Society Contemporary, London (2015); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Muséum National D’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (2015), as the Australian representative for the COP21 / FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate Exhibition; After Eden, Tarrawarra Museum of Art (2013) and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney (2012); Memory of Nature, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie, New South Wales (2011); 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); In The Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2010); Clemenger Award, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2009); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan (2003, 2006); amongst many others. Laurence is a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill and Australia Council Fellowships, and the Alumni Award for Arts, UNSW. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, a former Board Member of the VAB Board of the Australia Council, was Visiting Fellow at the NSW University Art and Design, and held the 2016/17 Hanse-WissenschaftKolleg (HWK) Foundation Fellowship.

 
 

 
 

Sarah Lüdemann

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/63734941 [/fve]
 

Schnitzelporno (2012), HD Video Peformance, 174’

Schnitzelporno (2012) is a durational performance video in which an unidentifiable Lüdemann beats a piece of meat ceaselessly for two hours. This physically taxing action, which begins with the pristine, white-clad figure sensually stroking the meat’s surface, eventually ends in the steak’s total demolition. Slowed down to three hours of video and artificially lightened, the final, washed-out video disconcertingly emphasizes the separation between soft, caressing gestures and the brutality of the action itself. Each initial stroke strips away the immediacy of the violence – an act that, when paired with an understanding of the meat as bodily metaphor, calls into question the viable limits of (female) identity shaping. What happens, Lüdemann asks, when this familiar, formative action is repeated without end?

“The idea of making, shaping and even distorting your body and hence your ‘self’ in order to create a loveable, admirable, respectable etc. (re)presentation of ‘self’ suggests a desire to control and a degree of violence and brutality towards oneself. In Schnitzelporno I abstract the body into flesh, into meat, which I modify by means of a tenderizer. The tool itself already bears an outlandish idea, i.e., to beat something in order to make it soft and tender. The tool and its original purpose is further taken ad absurdum, for I do not stop beating the piece of meat until it is entirely erased, until I am NObody. Initially the imagery of the video installation is poetic and beautiful; slowly it becomes repetitive and eventually revolting, disgusting and absolutely brutal.”

– Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham)

 

Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham)(b. in Cologne, Germany. Lives and works in Bremen, Germany.)

Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham) studied Linguistics, Psychology and Fine Art at Cologne University (2001-2005), afterwards living in Norway, Italy, England and Holland to teach Academic Writing, Critical Thinking and Art History. In 2010 she was selected for an influential residency at Fundación Marcelino Botín, Villa Iris, with Mona Hatoum. Later that year she received the South Square Trust Award to study Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London, where she completed her MFA with distinction in 2011. Since 2017 she has been a lecturer in Contemporary Art and Mediation at the University of Bremen. Lüdemann’s work has been exhibited internationally, including: Printed Matter, New York (US) / Goethe Institute Cairo (EGY) / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin (DE) / Hayaka Arti, Istanbul (TR) / Trafo, Szczecin (PL) / LYON Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon (FR) / Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden (DE) / HDLU, Zagreb (HR) / October Salon, Belgrade Bienniale (RS) / Museum Frieder Burda, Berlin (DE) | Salon Berlin, Berlin (DE) / Ventolin Art Space, Melbourne (AUS).

“Sarah Lüdemann’s artistic work explodes norms. In her performances, drawings, sculptures, she proceeds like a surgeon. In her work one sees scraps of skin, tufts of fur, pubic hair, shredded flesh – in a magical way the nervous system and the emotional reflexes, fears and desires of humans and animals are exposed. These revealed drives form a new reality, a new narrative that breaks with the old hierarchies. Through the skin, the artist penetrates to the core of the human being, develops a new systematic. With her works, Sarah Lüdemann gives subtle markings to the world in strange rituals in which sensuality is explored as the vital center of all life.”

– Stephan von Wiese

 
 

 
 

Shahar Marcus

 

 

Seeds (2012), HD Video, 5’3”

The visually stunning work Seeds (2012) follows a mine clearance team through the desert as they locate and remove land mines. The violence implicit in this action – both the danger of detonation, and the allusion to the conflict which laid these weapons there in the first place – is offset in sharp contrast with the beauty of the natural landscape and the slow meditative actions of the mine disposal crew. As they move over the arid rocky soil, they leave behind themselves trails of red tape, demarcating the landscape into clear rows. A solitary figure enters the frame, following behind the soldiers. In a reference to Millet’s famous painting, The Sower, Shahar Marcus, dressed as a pioneer, walks along the rows of earth, sowing seeds in the newly cleared soil. This act of sowing becomes a healing gesture, planting new life and hope in the scarred earth. Seeds is a poetic work about war and the hope for peace, and about the need to heal the wounds left upon our planet by mankind’s devastating impacts upon nature.

“The work Seeds explores the phenomenon of the buried mines that exist in Israel and the world over, exposing how these areas still carry the consequence of the war within their soil while supporting the new populations who must inhabit the conflict area. It examines the power of the present moment in these places where efforts are beginning to shift these death zones into places that consciously affirm life, embracing continuity in the very place where it once was blocked.”

– Shahar Marcus

 

Shahar Marcus (b. 1971 in Petach Tikva, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.)

Shahar Marcus primarily works in the medium of performance and video art. His initial works dealt with the exploration of his own body and its limitations – incorporating various perishable materials, such as dough, juice and ice. His body served as an instrument, a platform on which various ‘experiments’ took place: lying on the operating table, set on fire, dressed in a ‘bread suit’, and more. His recurrent use of bread as a symbol of essentiality and survival is juxtaposed with military symbols. By frequently working with food, a perishable, momentary substance, and by turning it into a piece of clothing or a set, Marcus also flirts with art history; transforming arbitrary objects and materials into something immortal and everlasting. His most recent works deal with local political issues, by approaching iconic Israeli landmarks with a critical and humorous point of view. Marcus reflects on his own heritage, environment and the creation of local historical narratives. His works are influenced by the visual language of cinematography along with familiar themes and tributes to the history of art.

Shahar Marcus studied Linguistics and History of Art at the University of Tel Aviv. He has exhibited at numerous art institutions, both in Israel and internationally, including: Tate Modern, London; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Petach Tikva Museum of Art; Copenhagen Kunsthalle; Moscow Biennale; Poznan Biennale; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg; and at other art venues in Poland, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Japan, USA, and Turkey. His works are in many important museum collections, such as: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Petach Tikva Museum of Art; and others.

 
 

 
 

Kate McMillan

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/78224274 [/fve]   [fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/78224275 [/fve]

 

Paradise Falls I HD Video, 2’49”

With a focus on sites of long-forgotten traumas, Paradise Falls I & II attempt to draw parallels between physical landscapes and the psychological landscapes of the artist’s own memories, broader cultural histories and stories. The sound for both films, developed by Cat Hope, provides an unnerving contrast to the poetic images of the films, highlighting the persistent disquiet of history. The films are like moving paintings, heavily referencing the romantic tradition of Germanic landscape painting. McMillan applies these quotations through a critical lens, regarding them as part of an enlightenment ideology that has helped us to forget. By means of engaging with the viewing process we participate in a re-remembering, acknowledging the shady edges of things, but also bearing witness to the beauty of sadness that is contrary to the horrors of forgetting history.

Paradise Falls I (2011) was shot in the Black Forest at a lake called Mummelsee (Mother Lake) situated on top of an extinct volcano. There are many myths associated with this lake in German folklore, most notably about a siren who lures men into the forest and kills them. In McMillan’s video, a ghostly female form flickers in and out of view at the edges of the otherwise still landscape. Setting up an interplay between landscape, memory, forgetting and history, Paradise Falls I considers how history can leave a residue in the landscape and the past often comes back to haunt us.

Paradise Falls II (2012) follows an Aboriginal man as he rows towards the craggy silhouette of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island. He too appears and disappears from sight, finally lost to the inky black of the ocean. The island was the site of an Aboriginal prison that is barely acknowledged in the historical record. The film portrays a man rowing back to his captors, indicating that history cannot always be forgotten. The spectral characters in Paradise Falls I & II are stand-ins for fractured and partial histories that disappear from focus, yet continue in our collective psyche as dark and haunting traumas.

 

Paradise Falls II (2012), HD Video, 3’28”

 

Kate McMillan (b.1974 in Hampshire, England. Lived in Perth, Australia from 1982-2012. Lives and works in London, England.)

Dr. Kate McMillan is an artist based in London. She works across media including film, sound, installation, sculpture, textile, and performance. Her work addresses a number of key ideas including the role of art in attending to impacts of the Anthropocene, lost and systemically forgotten histories of women, and the residue of colonial violence in the present. Often focusing on residues of the past. McMillan’s artworks act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are overlooked. In addition to her practice, McMillan also addresses these issues in her activist and written work. She is the author of the annual report ‘Representation of Female Artists in Britain’ commissioned by the Freelands Foundation. Her recent academic monograph ‘Contemporary Art & Unforgetting in Colonial Landscapes: Empire of Islands’ (2019) explores the work of a number of first nation female artists from the global south, whose work attends to the aftermath of colonial violence in contemporary life. McMillan is currently a Lecturer in Contemporary Art at King’s College, London.

McMillan’s work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions and Biennales, including: the 17th Biennale of Sydney; the Trafo Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Perth Institute for Contemporary Art; John Curtin Gallery, Perth; Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Recent solo exhibitions include: Edinburgh Arts Festival, Scotland (2018, 2019); Civic Room, Glasgow, Scotland (2018); Moore Contemporary, Australia, (2018); MOMENTUM, Berlin (2017); Castor Projects, London, UK (2016); ACME Project Space, London, UK (2014); Moana Project Space, Australia (2014); Performance Space, Sydney, Australia (2014), amongst many others.

 
 

 
 

Almagul Menlibayeva

 

 

Transoxania Dreams (2011), HD Video, 23’, on loan from the artist

Almagul Menlibayeva’s film tells a tale of ecological devastation in the guise of a mythological narrative staged in the vast landscape of her native Kazakhstan, ravaged by 60 years of Soviet occupation. Transoxania Dreams (2011) is filmed in the brutally changed region of the Aral Sea where its indigenous people live in the Aralkum, the desert of a once thriving region now entirely devoid of water due to radical Soviet irrigation policies. The region of Transoxiana (Greek for ‘across the Oxus’) in southwestern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, once the eastern part of the Hellenistic regime under Alexander the Great and the former homeland of the nomadic tribes of Persia and Turan at the banks of the Oxus River, remained an important trade region along the Northern Silk Road with flourishing civilizations and fertile plains for many centuries. Afflicted by former Soviet policies and abandoned by commercial and cultural interests, today, Transoxiana lies bare and stripped in a surreal state of existence with discarded fishing fleets on dusty terrain, ravaged by metal scavengers while its inhabitants look on as the sea keeps receding into a far and unreachable distance of a seemingly better world. Menlibayeva tells the tale of a young fisherman’s daughter who observes the dramatic changes to the landscape of the Aral region and its population through a child’s eyes in a dreamlike mélange of documentary and fantasy. Menlibayeva visually walks the viewer through a vacant landscape and a symbolic dream whereby the girl’s father searches for the remaining sea and new fishing grounds while encountering strange and seductive four-legged female creatures (Centaurs) on his way through the hostile desert. Drawing on the image of the Greek mythological figure of the Centaur, Menlibayeva creates alluring hybrid beings, both sexually charged and bizarre. According to the legend, when the ancient Greeks first encountered the nomads of the Transoxianian Steppes on their horses, they initially believed them to be mythological quadrupeds, part person part animal, fearing their savage and magical powers. In Transoxania Dreams, Menlibayeva, a pictorial sorceress herself, breeds an eccentric storyline and fantastical imagery extracted from her own atavistic repertoire; leading us visually through an existing, yet unimaginable, landscape in a distant and hypnagogic world.

 

 

Almagul Menlibayeva (b. 1969 in Almaty, Kazakh SSR. Lives and works in Almaty, Kazakhstan and Berlin, Germany.)

Almagul Menlibayeva is a video artist, photographer, and curator. Menlibayeva, holds an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Almaty. Working primarily in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation, Menlibayeva’s practice addresses such critical issues of post-Soviet modernity as: the social, economic, and political transformations in Central Asia; de-colonial re-imaginings of gender; environmental degradation; and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies. In 2018, she was co-curator of the groundbreaking exhibition Bread & Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists, which took place at MOMENTUM in Berlin’s Kunstquartier Bethanien. In conjunction with her solo exhibition ‘Transformation’ at the Grand Palais in Paris (France, 2016-17), she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2017. Among other notable awards, she was the Winner of the Main Prize of the International Film Festival Kino Der Kunst (2013) in Munich, Germany, and shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong (2020).

Menlibayeva participated in numerous international biennales, including: the Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2020, 2012); the Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020); Channels Festival, International Biennial of Video Art, Melbourne, Australia (2019); Cairo Biennial, Egypt (2019); the Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea (2018); the Daegu Photo Biennale (2016); the Venice Biennale, Italy (2005, 2007, 2009, 2015); the Moscow Biennale, Russia (2011, 2015); the Kiev Biennial, Ukraine (2013); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006, 2012); the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2010); the Mediterranean Biennale, Israel (2010); amongst many others. Selected recent solo exhibitions include: De. Groen Fine Art Collection, Arnhem, Netherlands (2019); Videoart at Midnight #98: Almagul Menlibayeva, Berlin (2018); Transformation, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2016-2017); Union of Fire and Water, 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2014); An Ode for the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013); Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, Palma De Mallorca, Spain (2012); LATT: Europe at large #6, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium (2010); among others. Selected recent group exhibitions include: Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2020); Yarat Art Foundation, Baku, Azerbaijan (2020); Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF), Tunis, Tunisia (2019); M HKA, Antwerpen, Belgium (2019); Museum of Fine Art, Shymkent, Kazakhstan (2019); RMIT, Melbourne, Australia (2019); Haifa Museum, Israel (2018); Neues Museum in Nuremberg, Germany (2018, 2016); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2018); Astana State Museum, Kazakhstan (2018, 2016); Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, M HKA, Antwerp, Belgium (2017-2020, 2010); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Greece (2017); Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2016); National Centre for Contemporary Art ( NCCA), Moscow, Russia (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art Strasbourg, France (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art Arnhem, Netherlands (2014); Singapore Art Stage, Singapore (2014); MoMA PS1, NY, USA (2013); ZKM- Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien Technologie, Karlsruhe, Germany (2012); amongst many others.

 
 

 
 

Tracey Moffatt

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/416454021 [/fve]

  [fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/39552060 [/fve]

 

Doomed (2007), Video, 9’21”

Tracey Moffatt’s Doomed (2007) and Other (2010), from the Hollywood Montage series made together with Gary Hillberg, are videos collaged from clips of popular films and television programs, using the recognizable appeal of these quotations from the history of cinema and popular culture to create comically rousing celebrations of our fascination with global disaster and the perilous attractions of otherness. Shown here in an exhibition of art from elsewhere, celebrating otherness and taking place amidst the ongoing disaster of a global pandemic, these works are a lighthearted response to the severe situations we face today.

By means of its fast-paced montage of film clips, Doomed takes Hollywood’s fixation with death and disaster to its ultimate cinematic end. Using fictional and reconstructed disastrous events, Moffatt creates a highly entertaining and blackly-humorous take on the bleak side of our psychological landscape. Each clip carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory – the poignant, sublime, epic, tragic, the B-grade and the downright trashy. Playing with the disaster genre, and looking at the forms of filmic entertainment, as well as ‘art as entertainment’, Moffatt addresses what it is about death and destruction that we invariably find so entertaining. The rousing music manipulates our emotions, as the soundtrack builds and peaks to climactic effect. Yet for all the destruction that we see and enjoy on screen, the title ‘Doomed’ has the quality of the not yet destroyed. It is a description that is applied to individuals, families, lovers, politics, and nations – an observation made from the outside and yet containing the possibility and hope that the situation can be salvaged.

 

Other (2009), Video, 6’30”

In Other (2009) Moffatt uses the clichés of cinematic representation of the ‘Other’ to trace a pop culture history of how the West has represented its encounters with countries and peoples that are not itself. These mainstream representations humorously reveal more about the cultures that made and consumed these films than about the countries, peoples and histories they purport to depict. The ‘Other’ here is a people and a place where the transgression of race, gender, and cultural norms can be imagined but which has little to do with any anthropological reality. As the clichés pile up, Other is hugely entertaining, fast paced and sexy as it rolls through 60 years of moving image history. It also reiterates how desire, looking, power and the cinematic experience are so closely intertwined. In its mesmerizing focus on interracial encounters as imagined by Hollywood and TV directors, Other opens with sequences of first contact between Europeans and non-Europeans, appraising each other visually, escalating from fear to curiosity and desire, where glances become lingering and erotically charged. The glance becomes a touch, and the erotic tension mounts as Western social structures erode and we see a kitsch frenzied depiction of the Other as threatening, feverish, abandoned and erotic in faux-tribal gatherings and frenzied choreographed dance sequences, moving closer and closer to orgiastic sexual abandonment. In the final sequences desire is consummated in wild encounters which transgress race and gender, culminating in literally explosive moments which revel in the clichés of cinematic sexual orgasm: fires burn, volcanoes erupt and finally planets explode.

Other is a fast-paced montage of film clips depicting attraction between races. Marlon Brando looks at Tahitian girls and Samantha from Sex and the City ogles an African American football player in the men’s locker room. Seven minutes of gazing and touching and exploding volcanoes. Very funny, very hot.”

– Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt (b. 1960 in Brisbane, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney, Australia and New York, USA.)

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s most renowned contemporary artists. Working predominantly in photography and film for over three decades, Moffatt is known as a powerful visual storyteller. The narrative is often implied and self-referential, exploring her own childhood memories, and the broader issues of race, gender, sexuality and identity. Moffatt has held over 100 solo exhibitions of her work in major institutions in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia. Moffatt became the first Aboriginal artist to represented Australia at the Venice Biennale with her solo exhibition My Horizon at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). Her films have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Dia Centre for the Arts in New York and the National Centre for Photography in Paris, amongst others. Moffatt was the recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for Art by the International Center of Photography, New York, honoring her outstanding achievement in the field of photography. Her work is held in major international collections including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and many others. In 2016 Moffatt was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the visual and performing arts as a photographer and filmmaker, and as a mentor and supporter of, and role model for Indigenous artists.

Gary Hillberg worked with Tracey Moffatt on all 8 films in the Hollywood Montage series, spanning 16 years of their collaborative practice, from the first montage work created in 1999 to the latest in 2015. The films, two of which are shown in this exhibition, all play with and upon our fascination with cinema: Lip (1999), Artist (2000),Love (2003), Doomed (2007), Revoution (2008), Mother (2009), Other (2010), The Art (2015).

 
 

 
 

Gulnur Mukazhanova

 

 

Iron Woman (2010), Installation: nails, screws, metal wire, chain, 40 x 30 x 5 cm

The sculptural installation Iron Woman (2010) is one of the first works Gulnur Mukazhanova created after moving to Berlin from her native Kazakhstan. In this work, the artist undertakes a personal research of female identity in her Central Asian culture. The sculptural object made of metal nails and chains takes the form of an intimate undergarment, which was worn by the artist in a related series of photographs. Mukazhanova explores a woman’s body in the conflict zones of sensuality and ideology – at the intersections of personal and social environment, of ethnic vs. global culture, of modernity vs. tradition. Significations of sexuality move between the prohibited and the accessible, the exotic and the familiar, the fetishized and the mundane, the carnal and the sacred. Within this evocative object Iron Woman exists the duality of a very personal point of female resistance, alongside a loudly feminist cry against female oppression in its multitude of forms.

 

Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984 in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Gulnur Mukazhanova graduated from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty (2006), and the Weissensee Art Academy in Berlin, Germany (2013). Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses textile art, photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Mukazhanova’s art is a confrontation of two different cultures but also a dialogue between them. From her Central Asian roots she keeps a strong physical relation to traditional materials that are not only used for their aesthetics but have a symbolic and historic meaning. While living in Germany she has come to confront questions of feminism, globalization, and ethnology.

Mukazhanova has participated in international biennales such as: A Time for Dreams, IV Moscow International Biennale of Young Art, Moscow, (2014); and the Krasnoyarsk Biennale, Russia (2015). In 2018 she participated in the groundbreaking exhibition Bread & Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists, at MOMENTUM, Berlin. Selected recent exhibitions include: MOMENTUM, Berlin, Germany (2021,2018); Asia Now Art Fair, Paris, France (2019); Aspan Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan (2018); Wapping Power Station, London, UK (2018); National Museum, Astana, Kazakhstan; (2017); Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, South Korea (2017); Artwin Gallery, Moscow, Russia (2016); HWK Leipzig, Germany (2013); Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany (2013); Tengri-Umai Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan (2010), amongst others. Her work is held in international collections, including: Fondazione 107, Turin, Italy; Krasnoyarsk Museum, Russia; La Metive, Moutier-d’Àhun, France.

 
 

Anxiong Qiu

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/118084226 [/fve]
 

Cake (2014), Video Animation, 6’2”

Qiu Anxiong’s Cake (2014) combines painting, drawing and claymation with a discordant soundtrack of mechanical noises to offer an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two. At once timeless and prescient, this work made six years before the viral pandemic of Corona, already evokes a mounting sense of emergency. With heart-rate monitors, sirens, and police radio scanners running throughout the soundtrack, and images of wrestlers rendered in a variety of media, this work can be read as particularly emblematic of our struggles in a pandemic age. Cake marks Qui Anxiong’s first venture into animation with clay. As in the creation of his previous video works, the artist generates thousands of acrylic-on-canvas paintings that are often erased and reworked as the film evolves. These are digitized and organized in a laborious effort that results in the final animated video. Though working in acrylic paint, Qiu makes it look like ink on rice paper and by doing so, has established himself at the forefront of the experimental ink painting movement, combining classical aesthetics with contemporary digital technology.

 

Anxiong Qiu (b. 1972 in Chengdu, China. Lives and works in Shanghai, China.)

Qiu Anxiong is one of China’s most prominent contemporary artists. He studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China, and graduated from the University of Kassel College of Art, Germany (2003). In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University. After having worked predominantly in oil painting during his studies in Kassel and having later turned to landscape painting in the tradition of the old Chinese masters, Qiu’s return to Shanghai marked a shift in interest towards animations and video art. In his animated films, Qiu co-mingles the classical and the contemporary, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes, taking the undifferentiated mass of history as his raw material. Qiu’s works are known for their profound and bleak contemplation on the relationship between man and nature, and criticism of mass urbanization and environmental degradation.

Qiu Anxiong’s work is held in numerous museum collections, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, UK; Kunst Haus Zurich, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan; Art Museum of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway; Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas, USA. Qiu Anxiong rose to international prominence in the 2006 Shanghai Biennial, and, the same year, received the CCAA Contemporary Art Award from the Shanghai Zhengdai Museum of Modern Art. Selected recent exhibitions at major museums include: MOCA Yinchuan, China (2017); Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2017); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2016/2013); MOCA Shanghai, China (2016/2014/2012); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2015); Hong Kong Museum of Art, China (2013); Times Art Museum , Guangzhou (2013); Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark (2013/2009); UCCA Art Museum, Beijing, China (2012); OCAT, Shenzhen, China (2011); Istanbul Modern Art Museum, Turkey (2011); Crow Collection of Asian Art Museum, Dallas, TX, USA (2011); Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, USA (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (2007).

 
 

 
 

Varvara Shavrova

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/174793198 [/fve]
 

The Opera: Three Transformations (2010/16), 3-channel Time-lapse Video Projections with Sound, 3’41”

The Opera (2010/16) portrays the gender fluidity in traditional Peking opera. Made during the 6-year period in which Shavrova was living in Beijing, the project includes photography, sound and video projections compiled from over 60 hours of video footage shot in various Peking Opera performances, theatres, dressing rooms, and private meetings. The Opera: Three Transformations, shown here, is one aspect of the broader project, animating photographs of the Peking Opera artists taken during the production of The Opera film. The Opera is an insight into the fragile world as well as social and human aspects of the Peking Opera, one of the most revered cultural heritages of the Chinese national scene. The work focuses on the transformation of the Peking Opera artists from male to female, and from female to male. Although they are admired by society as artists, their true identities and personal hardships cannot be lived out openly. Looking into the archaic and often utopian world of Chinese opera, Shavrova investigates issues of personal identity, sexuality and gender bending as they are manifested by both traditional and contemporary culture in modern day China. Balancing moments of pure visuality with the austere formal movement codes of traditional choreography, the video underscores the striking avant-garde qualities of this most traditional of art forms. The Opera is accompanied by a specially commissioned music score written by the Beijing-based composer Benoit Granier, that incorporates elements of traditional Chinese and contemporary electronic music.

 

Varvara Shavrova (b. in Moscow, USSR. Lives and works between Dublin, Ireland, Berlin, Germany, and London, England.)

Varvara Shavrova studied at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, and received her Masters in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, London, with ‘Dreamworlds of Flight in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism’. Shavrova’s practice is focused on excavating the layers of her family’s history through the process of remembering, recalling, retracing and re-enacting stories. In engaging memory, nostalgia and reflection, Shavrova creates installations that make connections between historic and current narratives, between the archival and the present. Notable projects include: Inna’s Dream reinterprets the first Soviet amphibious aeroplane designed by Shavrova’s great uncle in the 1930s as a site-specific installation at the Science Museum, London (2021), and Imperial War Museum, Duxford (2021); Mapping Fates reflects on Shavrova’s family migration, and includes tapestries and sound, shown in V.I. Lenin’s apartment-museum in St. Petersburg (2017); The Operaportrays the gender fluidity in traditional Peking opera, shown at Temple Beijing (2016), MOMENTUM Berlin (2016), Gallery of Photography Ireland (2014), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014), Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Tenerife (2011); amongst many others. Shavrova curated multiple international exhibitions and projects, including: The Sea is the Limit at York Art Gallery (2018) and at Virginia Commonwealth University, Doha, Qatar (2019), and Map Games: Dynamics of Change at Today Art Museum, Beijing, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, UK and at CAOS Centre for Contemporary Arts, Terni, Italy (2008-2010).

 
 

 
 

Sumugan Sivanesan

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/45305238 [/fve]
 

A Children’s Book of War (2010), Video Animation, 1’45”

The short animation A Children’s Book of War (2010), packed with seemingly cheerful imagery and low-tech video game aesthetics, is not at all what it initially appears. Packed into this concise video collage are images comingling diverse icons of popular culture with references to centuries of colonial conflicts underlying the foundation myths of Australian nationhood. The power of A Children’s Book of War lies in its jarring conjunction of war, sovereignty, and violence with a format usually reserved for much more lighthearted topics. With its bright color palette and amusing soundscape, this video incorporates iconography as diverse as Julian Assange, the Sydney Opera House, and the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Sivanesan’s research underlying this work draws upon Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the “state of exception” to discuss 9/11, Australia entering the Iraq War in 2003, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the first fateful contact that Captain Cook made in Australia. The “state of exception,” in short, is the temporary suspension of the rule of law in the name of a greater force – whether that be a defense against insurrectionary forces or the preservation of the very constitution of a sovereignty. Sivanesan seeks to remind us that the sovereignty of Australia rests on the suspension of indigenous rights – indeed, that everywhere in the Western world our lives are made possible by suspensions of rights that are felt and suffered primarily elsewhere.

 

Sumugan Sivanesan (Lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Berlin, Germany.)

Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist, researcher and writer, and a transcultural radical. His eclectic practice is concerned with the legacies of colonialism, the experience of cultural differences, and the diaspora. Often working collaboratively his interests span migrant histories and minority politics, activist media, artist infrastructures, more-than-human rights and multispecies politics, queer theory, Tamil diaspora studies and anticolonialism. In Berlin, he organizes with Black Earth, a collective who address interacting issues of race, gender, colonialism, and climate justice. Sivanesan earned a PhD from the Transforming Cultures research center at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia (2014). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for English and American Studies (Cultural Studies), University of Potsdam (2016) supported by the DAAD.

Sivanesan has produced events and exhibitions at: Nadine Laboratory for Conetmporary Arts (Brussels 2020); Akademie Schloss Solitude (2020); Tehai (Dhaka 2020); Frame Contemporary Art (Helsinki, 2019); The Floating University Berlin (2019); EX-EMBASSY (Berlin 2018); BE.BoP 2018: Black Europe Body Politics, Maxim Gorki Theatre (Berlin, 2018); Nida Art Colony Inter-format Symposium (Lithuania, 2018); Art Laboratory Berlin (2015); ZK/U Centre for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin (2015, 2014); Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2014); The Reading Room (Bangkok 2013); Performance Space (Sydney 2013); MOMENTUM Berlin (2012); Yautepec Gallery (Mexico City 2011) and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney 2011, 2010); MOMENTUM Sydney (2010). Sivanesan was a member of the experimental documentary collective theweathergroup U, who formed for the Biennale of Sydney in 2008. He was active with media/art gang boat-people.org who engaged the Australian publics in issues of borders, race, and nationalism in 2002-2014.

 
 

 
 

David Szauder

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/450055147 [/fve]
 

Light Space Materia (2020), HD Video, Digital Animation, 8’27”

David Szauder’s film Light Space Materia (2020) translates Bauhaus ideas on technology, new materials, and light into a digital context, upgrading an iconic work of the 1930’s into a 3D digital animation and algorithmically derived soundscape. Taking as his inspiration the kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (1930) by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder re-created his own large-scale rendition of this iconic work – Light Space Modulator (2020). Szauder subsequently used this installation as the basis upon which to make a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes. David Szauder recontextualizes into digital media the driving principal of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy’s aim to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how contemporary technology could change the formal expression of movement and capture the physicality of materials in a digital context. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. This characteristic forms the essential basis of Szauder’s work, which applies computer code to create his animations and soundscapes derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of his Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of the materiality of the image.

 

David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in numerous international projects as artist and curator. Projects in cooperation with MOMENTUM include: “MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).

 
 

Shingo Yoshida

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/417440010 [/fve]
 

The Summit (2020), 4K Video, 23’54” (2020)

Following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, Shingo Yoshida embarks upon a journey to the peak of Mt. Fuji – Japan’s national monument. The Summit was made at the height of the global pandemic lockdown in the winter of 2020, when the closest most of us got to travelling was looking through old photographs or watching films about far-away places. Yoshida chose this time of travel bans and closed borders in which to undertake this most personal of journeys, travelling back to Japan from Berlin in order to re-live his forefathers’ dream to place his grandfather’s poetry atop Mount Fuji. The Summit is a film of static shots and mobilized photographs. In an interplay between photography and moving image, the video comingles images filmed by the artist in his ascent up the mountain, with historic footage of the construction of the observatory at its peak, and family photographs from 1974 – the year of the artist’s birth – of his father and grandfather placing the engraved boulder beside the observatory. This intergenerational journey through a timeless landscape is the work of an artist who approaches his practice like an explorer, inviting us to accompany him on his travels.

“On August 20th, Shōwa 49 (1974), a stone tablet inscribed with a haiku was set atop Mt. Fuji. This was my father’s near-reckless project – to fulfill the dream of my grandfather who was a haiku poet — to bring a stone tablet to Kengamine next to the observatory on Mt. Fuji, the highest peak of Japan worshipped as its symbol from ancient times.”

Shingo Yoshida

下界まで断崖富士の壁に立つ 山口誓子

[Standing atop a sheer cliff of Mt. Fuji continuing down to the world below]

Seishi YAMAGUCHI

大沢崩れ覗きてすくむ登山靴 北舟子 (祖父)

[Looking down Osawa Kuzure my feet tremble]

Hokushushi

初富士に一礼頂に父の句碑 南舟子 (父 : 菊次郎)

[Making a bow to Mt. Fuji on New Year, where stands a stone tablet inscribed with my father’s haiku]

Nanshushi

[Translation of the HAIKU in the video.]

 

Shingo Yoshida (b. 1974 in Tokyo, Japan. Lives and works in Marseille, France.)

Photographer and video artist Shingo Yoshida finds inspiration in travelling, myths, traditions and the overwhelming beauty of nature. With a practice based on seeking out what is normally hidden from view, Yoshida considers the world as his studio and therefore a place of constant creation. In his video and photographic works Yoshida expresses his deep reverence for nature and its power. Undertaking long journeys to distant places, Yoshida searches for legends and myths that are in danger of being forgotten, striving to capture encounters with the magnificent. Shingo Yoshida received his MA with highest honors from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Villa Arson in Nice France in 2004. In 2005 he earned a post-graduate diploma at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France, and subsequently in 2007 he received another post-graduate diploma in the Program La Seine of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Yoshida completed the prestigious international artist residencies at Villa Arson, Nice, France (2013), and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (2007-8), among many others. In 2017, MOMENTUM invited him to show his film and photographs made in Siberia in an exhibition for the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP23. Subsequently, his work came to be acquired by the Art Collection of the Ministry of Environment, Germany. In 2016, his film works entered the collections of three major institutions in Berlin: the Berlinische Galerie, the Akademie der Künste, and Fluentum.

Yoshida’s work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including: Berlinische Galerie, Museum for Modern Art & Videoart at Midnight, Berlin, Germany (2020); Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Loko Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2020); S.Y.P. Art, Tokyo, Japan (2019); Mikiko Sato Gallery, Hamburg, Germany (2018); Pavillon am Milchhof, Berlin, Germany (2018); UN Conference on Climate Change, COP23, Ministry of Environment, Berlin & Bonn, Germany (2017); ikonoTV (2017); Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma, Japan (2016); Tokyo Wonder Site / Kunstraum Kreuzberg-Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2016); ‘POLARIZED! Vision’ Competition Winner, Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland (2015); Mulliqi Prize, National Gallery of Arts, Prishtina, Kosovo (2016); Instituto Zappa, Accademia Di Brera, Viale Marche, Milan, Italy (2016); Onufri International Prize, National Gallery of Arts, Tirana (2016); Videoart at Midnight #67, Babylon Cinema, Berlin, Germany (2015); Istanbul Modern Museum, Turkey (2015); 60th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany (2014); Villa Arson Nice Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France (2013); Arte TV Creative, France-Germany (2013); 66th Cannes Film Festival, France (2012); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Santiago, Chile (2012); Maison de l’Amérique Latine, Paris, France (2012); 22nd, 23rd, 27th FID International Film Festival, Marseille, France (2011, 2012, 2016); ‘Based in Berlin’ by Klaus Biesenbach, Christine Macel and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Berlin, Germany (2011); Rencontres Internationales Film Festival, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2010); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2007, 2012); Sonom 07, Festival of UNESCO Universal Forum of Cultures, Monterrey, Mexico (2007); Lyon Biennale, France (2005); NCCA Natuional Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2005), among many others.

 
 

 
 

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OPENING PHOTOS
by Beate Grötsch
08/04/2021
Comments Off on InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown @ CHB.

InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown @ CHB.

 
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MOMENTUM InsideOut @ CHB Fassadenkino

Presents

 

Lockdown Schmockdown

 

16 April – 30 May 2021

 

Please note that
THE SCREENINGS ON 7 – 30 MAY ARE CANCELLED
due to Lockdown regulations. We hope to resume the program after the end of the Lockdown.

 

But you can still watch the Lockdown Schmockdown program
as Season 4 of COVIDecameron on the MOMENTUM Channel on IkonoTV!

WATCH on IkonoTV >>

 
 

 

Open-Air Video Program on the Media Façade of

CHB – Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

& on the MOMENTUM Channel on IkonoTV

 

Gáspár Battha, Marina Belikova, Theo Eshetu, Gülsün Karamustafa, Tamás Komoróczky, David Krippendorff, Júlia Lantos, Éva Magyarósi, Bori Mákó, Map Office, Kate McMillan, András Nagy, Bea Pántya, Qiu Anxiong, Eszter Szabó, Kristóf Szabó, David Szauder, Viktória Traub

 

Curated by
Zsuzska Petró, David Szauder, Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

In Partnership With

 
 

@ Collegium Hungaricum
Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Corona-Compatible Outdoors with FFP2 Masks and Social Distancing Required

 

Watch the videos on the outdoor screen. And listen to the sound in real-time on your phone!
Click Here to Listen during the screening times > >

https://stream.radio.co/sb3ec6b52c/listen > >

 

Every Friday – Sunday @ 8:30 – 10:00pm

PROGRAM CHANGING WEEKLY

 

& On IkonoTV


Due to the 10pm curfew in Berlin, we are happy that you can also watch the Lockdown Schmockdown video art program as Season 4 of COVIDecameron on the MOMENTUM Channel on IkonoTV any time of the day!

WATCH on IkonoTV >>

 

 

With the eyes and hearts of the world still locked onto the terrible aftermath of COVID-19, and with Berlin still in lockdown over a year after the pandemic began, MOMENTUM together with the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin gathers a selection of exceptional artists from the MOMENTUM Collection COVIDecameron exhibition in dialogue with artists from Hungary. Showing video artworks re-contextualized through the prism of life at the time of Corona, this exhibition series of video art in public space is a contemplation through art from elsewhere upon the poetry of the day-to-day as it relates to the changing world we inhabit. Created during the pandemic lockdown in Berlin, this open-air program of video art is our response to the long months of gallery and museum closures, and our gift to a public craving for culture in real-space and real-time. MOMENTUM Inside out and .CHB Façade Kino bring video art out of the gallery and onto the streets for all to see on Berlin’s Museum Island!

– Rachel Rits-Volloch

While Berlin is cautiously looking forward to spring and freedom in these uncertain times, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin has teamed up with MOMENTUM to offer a unique COVID-compatible art experience adjacent to Berlin’s Museum Island. We have gathered a selection of cutting-edge media and video art from Hungary to be shown in dialogue with works from the MOMENTUM Collection, reflecting on our shared experience of a world affected by a global pandemic. Starting on April 16th, the open-air screening program Lockdown Schmockdown, initiated by MOMENTUM IsideOut together with CHB Fassadenkino, will be running every Friday to Sunday from sundown until 11pm, until the end of May.

– Zsuzska Petró



 

WEEK 1 / 4 / 7

16 – 18 April, 7 – 9 + 28 – 30 May

 

Eszter Szabó, Dispenser of Delights (2013-2015)

Eszter Szabó’s video is dealing with the notion of waiting for miracles to happen. The weary protagonists exercise self healing rituals, and appear in front of a 3D background with textures of photos from existing real estate advertisements that were downloaded from the internet. The original photos give a very sincere insight into a typical home in today’s Hungary. The movements of the lonely figures were inspired by traces of “sublime beauty” that can be detected in these very familiar spaces.

BIO

Eszter Szabó lives and works in Budapest. She has a master’s degree from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, and a postgraduate degree from Le Fresnoy Studio, France. Eszter has also participated in several workshops and study visits, among others at the Salzburg Summer Academy with Shirin Neshat, in Bielefeld with Artist Unlimited, as well as in Brooklyn, New York with Triangle Arts. Her works have been presented at various solo and group shows around the world, eg. Paris, Bruxelles, New York, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Rome, Salzburg.

Gülsün Karamustafa, Personal Time Quartet (2000)

Gulsun Karamustafa’s 4-channel video installation and soundscape, Personal Time Quartet, was intended as a portrait of the artist’s childhood. Yet now, seen through the prism of Corona-times, this portrait of innocent domesticity instead paints a picture of how many of us have felt during the various pandemic lockdowns, stuck indoors and perpetually repeating the same domestic tasks.

BIO

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. She received her MFA from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Art in 1969. Using personal and historical narratives, Karamustafa explores socio-political issues in modern Turkey, addressing themes including sexuality-gender, exile-ethnicity, and displacement-migration. Her work reflects on the traumatic effects of nation building, as it responds to the processes of modernization, political turbulence, and civil rights in a period that includes the military coups of 1960, 1971, and 1980.

Karamustafa is one of the laureates of the 2014 Prince Claus Award, and her recent solo exhibitions include: “Chronographia” at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016-2017); “Swaddling the Baby”, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2016) / Villa Romana, Florence (2015); “Mystic Transport” (a duo exhibition with Koen Thys), Centrale for Contemporary Art, and Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels (2015-2016); “An Ordinary Love”, Rampa, Istanbul (2014); “A Promised Exhibition”, SALT Ulus, Ankara (2014), SALT Beyoglu, SALT Galata, Istanbul (2013); amongst many others. Karamustafa took part in numerous international biennales, including: 31st Sao Paulo Biennial (2014); 3rd & 10th Gwangju Biennials (2000, 2014); 4th Thessaloniki Biennale (2013); 1st Kiev Biennale (2012); Singapore Biennial (2011), 3rd Guangzou Triennial (2008); 11th Cairo Biennial (2008); 2nd Contour Video Art Biennale, Mechelen (2005); 1st Seville Biennial (2004); 8th Havana Biennial (2003); 3rd Cetinje Biennial (2003); 2nd, 3rd & 4th Istanbul Biennials (1987, 1992, 1995).


Viktória Traub, Loops (2020/2021)

Viktória Traub’s figures repeat the same ritualistic movements over and over again. These movements are rituals of love, connection and care, which may give joy, or cause pain at the same time. During the past year, some of us experienced isolation, or loneliness, others found the constant companionship of their loved ones rather challenging. Either way, our life in lockdown has once again proven the importance of meaningful personal connections.

BIO

Viktória Traub graduated at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design as an animation artist in 2008. In 2006, she spent a semester at the animation department of ESAD (Escola Superior de Artes e Design) in Portugal. Since her graduation, she has been working as animation director for various production companies. Her short films The Iron Egg and Mermaids and Rhinos have been presented at a series of film festivals around the world. In 2018, the Mermaids and Rhinos was selected by the Association of Hungarian Film Critics as the Animation of the Year. At the moment, she is working on the preproduction of the short animation Shoes and Hooves, as well as GIF-animations and graphic designs.

Qiu Anxiong, Cake (2014)

In a timeless and exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two, Qiu Anxiong’s Cake combines painting, drawing and clay with a discordant soundtrack of mechanical noises. With heart-rate monitors, sirens, and police radio scanners running throughout the soundtrack, and images of wrestlers rendered in a variety of media, this work can be read as particularly emblematic of the struggles of our viral times.

BIO

Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972, Chengdu) is one of China’s most prominent contemporary artists. He studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and in 2003 he graduated from the University of Kassel College of Art in Germany after six years of studying both contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture. After having worked predominantly in oil painting during his studies in Kassel and having later turned to landscape painting in the tradition of the old Chinese masters, Qiu’s return to Shanghai in 2004 marked a shift in interest towards animations and video art. In his animated films, Qiu co-mingles the classical and the contemporary, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes, taking the undifferentiated mass of history as his raw material. Qiu’s works are known for their profound and bleak contemplation on the relationship between man and nature, and criticism of mass urbanization and environmental degradation.

Qiu Anxiong’s work is held in numerous museum collections, including: Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, USA; Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas, USA; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, UK; Kunst Haus Zurich, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan; Art Museum of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway. Qiu Anxiong rose to international prominence in the 2006 Shanghai Biennial, and, the same year, received the CCAA Contemporary Art Award from the Shanghai Zhengdai Museum of Modern Art (2006). Subsequently, he participated in numerous international biennales and festivals, including: 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival, China (2016); 1st Animation Film Festival Xi An, China (2012); 4th Ink Painting Art Biennale Tai Pei, Taiwan (2012); 1st Animation Biennale, OCAT Art Center, Shen Zhen, China (2012); Chengdu Biennale, China (2011/2001); 54th Venice Biennale, Italy, Collateral Program (2011); 29th Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil (2010); Busan Biennale, Korea (2010); Nanjing Bienale, China (2010); Animamix Biennial, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2009); 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6), Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2009-2010); 11th Cairo Biennale, Egypt (2008); 2nd Athens Biennial, Greece (2009); 5th Media Biennale, Seoul, Korea (2008); Mediations Biennale, Poznań, Poland (2008); 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008); 16th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2008); 3rd Lianzhou International Photo Festival, China (2007);


Júlia Lantos, Incognito (2020/2021)

Incognito’s main character struggles with the challenges of everyday life. She sees her job as a prison, and the world as a war that is fought with alienation, aimlessness and selfishness instead of weapons. Her only refuge from the cruelty of the outside world is her apartment, while her only companion is a yellow bird, symbolising her desire for freedom. One day, a peculiar cloud appears above her apartment, which triggers an almost supernatural process in her life: she gradually withdraws from society, stops going to work and ignores the world beyond the four walls of her home. However, the outside world cannot be ignored forever, eventually it breaks down the protective walls around her.

BIO

After finishing high-school, Júlia spent a year in Berlin in order to further her professional and personal development. She earnt her bachelor’s degree from the Budapest Metropolitan University in 2018 with her short film Incognito. Since 2018, she has been undertaking illustration and animation projects. Currently, she is finishing her master’s degree. Incognito has been screened at several international film festivals, and won an award at the Alternative Film Festival in Toronto for Best Animated Short Film.

David Szauder, Six Easy Pieces About Nothing (2020-2021)

1 – Personal Rain Snow (2021). 2 – Galactic Drama (2020). 3 – The Philosopher Garden (2020). 4 – Kinetic Amusement (2020). 5 – Joyride /em>(2021). 6 – Cosmic Accident (2020)

“Last June, after almost four months of lockdown, I began to work with animated compositions that depicted imaginary figures in a timeless space, with no other human being in sight. The figures themselves are motionless, while the space they peacefully inhabit shows some kind of cosmic motion. The objects of this environment, as well as the space itself are animated by a mysterious force. The ensuing rhythmic movement renders their experience eternal. The figures are peaceful, pensive, and subdued, yet isolated and perhaps even lonely. They appear as though they were all ‘sitting on the edge of the void…’ – But perhaps, it’s not about the void, and one day, they might swing into action. We’ll see. Will we?” (Dávid Szauder)

BIO

Media artist David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture. Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include: “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014);



 

WEEK 2 / 5 / 7

23 – 25 April, 14 – 16 + 28 – 30 May

 

Éva Magyarósi, Garden of Auras (2015)

Éva Magyarósi’s work is a manifestation of poetic visualisation and visual poetry. Her works typically tell us about the mysteries of the female soul, about the body and feelings, displaying polyphonic stories of strange dreams and situations experienced in real life. The pieces often blend strategies of experiencing evanescence through images and narration, and of processing remembrance through making it collective. Her works of art can be interpreted as visual diaries, in which the fictive and the personal past are blended, thus contributing to the literary works of different philosophical theories on time and memory.

BIO

Éva Magyarósi (born in Budapest, 1981) lives and works in Budapest. She graduated at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design as an animation artist in 2005. Éva is represented by Erika Deák Gallery, and has participated in various solo and group shows nationally and internationally, including: Love Stories, Video Forever, Isztambul, 2017; Ghosts, Château du Rivau, Patricia Laigneu Collection, Kochi – Muziris Biennale, Kerala, 2016; Un Instant Forever, Analix Forever, Genova, 2014; Planking and Dreaming, balzerARTprojects, Basel, 2013; Print Biennale, Kairo, Egyipt, 2003.

Éva is a very versatile artist, working in several genres: she writes short stories, creates public sculptures, animations, photos, and drawings, even though she is primarily known for her video art. Her work is a manifestation of poetic visualisation and visual poetry. Her works typically tell us about the mysteries of the female soul, about the body and feelings, displaying polyphonic stories of strange dreams and situations experienced in real life. The pieces often blend strategies of experiencing evanescence through images and narration, and of processing remembrance through making it collective. Her works of art can be interpreted as visual diaries, in which the fictive and the personal past are blended, thus contributing to the literary works of different philosophical theories on time and memory.

Marina Belikova, The Astronaut’s Journal (2016), Animation, 5 min 19 sec

In The Astronaut’s Journal, painted in the frame-by-frame oil on glass technique, the viewer is taken on a journey through memories, fears, hopes and other distant corners, found in one’s inner space. The immersive trip between planets is based on the author’s life story and was inspired by Stanislav Lemm’s Solaris: “Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.”

BIO

Marina Belikova is a Berlin based media artist, working with photography, graphic design and 2D animation. She has a background in web and media design. In 2012-2013 she did an M.A. in Communication Design in Kingston University London and in 2016 she graduated from Bauhaus University Weimar with an M.A. in Media Art and Design, making “The astronaut’s journal” as her master thesis. Belikova tells narratives through the old school oil on glass animation technique, where each frame is painted individually and then captured with a camera as stop motion animation. She also works with photography and mixed media, exploring the topics of human memories and interaction between people and urban spaces. Her animation have been screened at multiple film festivals in more than 10 countries and her photo series have received the Bauhaus Essentials Prize and have been shown various exhibitions.


Bori Mákó, Silence (2018)

“My favoured subjects are natural images, landscapes and spaces that still preserve traces of human activities. In my work, I research transitory ethereal atmospheres, that are strongly influenced by the theme of solitude. My multidimensional site-specific video installations are designed to pull the audience into the imaginary world of the video itself. The process of inward attention is essential to me, and I feel that focusing on nature ist the best way to evoke this meditative state.” (Bori Mákó)

BIO

Bori Mákó graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design in 2018 and holds a master’s degree in animation. Her visual language represents different genres of digital painting, and her exhibition portfolio includes large-scale prints, printed publications and video installations. In addition to her artistic work, she participates in animated movie projects. She is a founding member of Hen Studio, and she has been teaching Digital Paintings since 2019.

Kate McMillan, Paradise Falls I (2011) + Paradise Falls II (2012)

A topic made especially poignant in today’s pandemic reality, Kate McMillan’s Paradise Falls is a tribute to the disappeared, to the forgotten sites of distant traumas, to the frailty of personal and historic memory. Drawing parallels between physical and psychological landscapes, McMillan has created moving paintings where ghost-like people flicker in and out of existence, as symbols of fractured histories that disappear from focus, yet continue in our collective psyche as haunting traumas. Seen now, from the epicenter of our pandemic crisis, this begs the question of how will we look back upon, and remember, the time of Corona?

BIO

Kate McMillan (b.1974, Hampshire, UK), lived in Perth, Australia from 1982-2012, relocating to London in 2013. McMillan’s work incorporates a range of media including sculpture, film, sound, installation, textiles and performance. She is interested in the linking narratives of forgetting and place, often focusing on the residue of the past. McMillan’s artworks thus act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are overlooked. McMillan has resided on the Board of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) based in Sydney. She earned her Phd at Curtin University, Perth. In addition to her practice as an artist, she is currently a Lecturer in Contemporary Art in the Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College, London.

McMillan’s work has been featured in various museums and biennales, including: the 17th Biennale of Sydney; the Trafo Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Perth Institute for Contemporary Art; John Curtin Gallery, Perth; Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Previous solo exhibitions include ‘The Past is Singing in our Teeth’ presented at MOMENTUM in 2017, which, in 2018, toured to the Civic Room in Glasgow and Arusha Gallery for the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Other solo exhibitions include ‘Instructions for Another Future’ 2018 Moore Contemporary, Australia; ‘Songs for Dancing, Songs for Dying’, 2016, Castor Projects, London; ‘The Potter’s Field’, 2014, ACME Project Space, London; ‘Anxious Objects’, Moana Project Space, Australia; ‘The Moment of Disappearance’, 2014, Performance Space, Sydney; ‘In the shadow of the past, this world knots tight’, 2013 Venn Gallery; Paradise Falls, 2012, Venn Gallery; ‘Lost’ at the John Curtin Gallery in 2008, ‘Broken Ground’ in 2006 at Margaret Moore Contemporary Art and ‘Disaster Narratives’ at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts for the 2004 Perth International Arts Festival.


Bea Pántya, Transit (2012)

“If you stay still for a long time, nature will draw you in and absorb you. You can listen to its rhythm, its depth, and explore previously hidden details. Sometimes it moves fast, sometimes it makes only one minuscule movement a day.

My textile sculptures are based on existing and non-existing, living, and decaying forms in nature, abstract shapes and patterns, which are created by time, gravity and different organisms. If you watch them closely, you can see and understand the connection between the textures, colours, dimensions, scents and dynamics. I create gardens, a living and moving world, which can feel different from our universe, yet built from the elements of our reality. Transit is an experimental object animation about the dynamics of devastation and the micro worlds, spaces, and new life forms – the fantasy worlds beyond the humanly observable spheres.” (Bea Pántya)

BIO

Bea Pántya graduated at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2021 as an animation artist. She works with textile sculptures and has participated in several exhibitions in Hungary. Her most recent short films, Transit and Horizon Leap have been presented at a number of international film festivals, such as: the Hungarian Independent Film Festival, 2009 and 2010 (1st prize); IX Videominute, Zaragoza, Spain, 2009 (3rd prize); Naoussa International Film Festival, Greece, 2010; Mediawave Film Festival, Hungary, 2013; International Short Film Festival, Lille, France, 2013; Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Japan, 2013; Montreal Stop-motion Festival, Canada, 2014.

Theo Eshetu, Festival of Sacrifice (2012)

Faith and spirituality is the subject of Theo Eshetu’s Festival of Sacrifice, depicting an ancient cultural tradition, the celebration of Eid-ul-Adha, the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice. Turning the ritual itself into a trance, the video recreates, through its multiplication of images, the kaleidoscopic patterns that highlight the transcendental aspect of the event. In creating aesthetic beauty from images of ritual slaughter, Eshetu shows us how spirituality can locate beauty, hope and a deeper meaning even in times of death and disease.

BIO

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. A pioneer of video art since 1982, Theo Eshetu draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context. Though essentially conceptual, and often exploring video’s formal components of time and light, Eshetu’s work is often focused on cultural displacement, and is always grounded in compelling aesthetic components, often achieved through fractal repetition, such as kaleidoscopic mirroring, multi-screen projections, or mosaic-like patterning of images.

Among numerous international awards, Eshetu was Artist in Residence at Tarabya Cultural Academy, Turkey where he completed aspects of production for Altas Fractured (2017) which was featured in Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel in 2017. In 2012 he was Artist in Residence at the DAAD program in Berlin, where he exhibited The Return of the Axum Obelisk at DAADgalerie in 2014. In 2011 he participated the Venice Biennale and the Sharjah Biennale. His work has appeared at: The New Museum, NY; the New York African Film Festival; DIA Foundation’s Electronic Arts Intermix, NY; Snap Judgments at ICP (International Centre for Photography), NY; BAM Cinemateque, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland USA; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Africa Remix at The Hayward Gallery, London; the Venice Film Festival; Roma Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art in Rome; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, France; the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; among many other museums, biennales, and film festivals.



 

WEEK 3 / 6 / 7

30 April – 2 May, 21 – 23 + 28 – 30 May

 

Tamás Komoróczky, Nondirectionality (2019)

The vertigo-inducing composition of Tamás Komoróczky’s video Nondirectionality (outlook from the tower) evokes the imagery of ancient Christian hermits living in secluded towers. Looking down from the protagonist’s point of view towards the swirling chaos of the world beneath, the feeling of isolation, loneliness and quiet tranquility become palpable. As we are about to enter the second year of the global pandemic, most of us are painfully familiar with the sense of total isolation and the role of the quiet observer.

BIO

Tamás Komoróczky was born in 1963 in Budapest, currently lives and works in Budapest and Berlin. He graduated as painter in 1990, and two years later finished his postgraduate studies in the mural department at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest. He also studied in the Video Department of the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany in 1991. Tamás was awarded several scholarships and artist residencies, among others at the Hungarian Academy in Rome, at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin as well as at the European Center for Contemporary Art Actions in Strasbourg. His works have been presented nationally and internationally at a great number of solo and group shows, eg. The Dead Web – The end, Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, 2020; Public Private Affairs, Ferenczy Múzeumi Centrum – Művészet Malom, Szentendre, 2019; Abstract Hungary, Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, 2017; Opus Aquanett, Wissenschaftshafen, Magdeburg, 2017; Video Art Projections on the Manhattan Bridge, New York, 2016; Kritik und Krise #3:Ornament der Brüderlichkeit, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Berlin, 2014; PANDAMONIUM PREVIEW / INTERPIXEL, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, 2014; The Hero, the Heroine and the Author, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2012; Action!, INFERNOESQUE, Berlin, 2010; Screening Room: Contemporary Hungarian Video Artists, Janos Gat Gallery, New York, 2009; Art Forum Berlin (Lada projekt), Berlin, 2008; Focus Istanbul, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2005; Loud and Clear Too, Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen University Art College Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2005; 1. Muestra del Internatcionale Video, El Salvador, San Salvador, 2003; Try again later, Gaswork Gallery, London, 1998; Beyond Belief, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1995.

David Krippendorff, Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015)

David Krippendorff’s Nothing Escapes My Eyes is a time-warping tribute to a changing world where, to a moving soundtrack from the eponymous opera, a would-be Aida sheds tears for a place and time which no longer exist. COVID-19 changed our world forever, leaving gaping holes in the hearts of those who lost loved ones, impoverishing those prevented from working. Yet it also generated a remarkable outpouring of creativity, good will, and good humor as people around the world try to cope, individually and communally, with our changing world in the time of Corona.

BIO

David Krippendorff, born in Berlin in 1967, is a US/German interdisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker. Currently based in Berlin, he grew up in Rome, Italy, and studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, Germany, where he graduated with a masters degree in 1997. His works, films and videos have been shown internationally, including: the New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem). He has participated in four Biennials (Prague, Poznan, Tel Aviv, and Belgrade), as well as in many international art and film festivals worldwide.


Kristóf Szabó, WRONG DATA / empty space (2020)

“In February 2020, I visited the ARCO Madrid fair, and almost immediately after my return to Budapest, Covid-19 reached Europe. My friend from Madrid sent photos of the empty city, which I developed further, and created the first piece of the series. I decided to send out a request to artists around the world to collaborate in a photographic series. Luckily, I received a great number of photos from artists, who helped me to expand the project. We created a global artwork that symbolises the collaboration of artists and, at the same time, draws attention to the defects of the functioning of our society, which we must re-evaluate to avoid further catastrophes.

Due to Covid, a certain error, or glitch occurred in our lives. Previously busy urban spaces have been abandoned, the world has stopped, people are forced to stay at home. The problem was caused by human activity in the first place: by our way of life, excessive travelling, globalisation and international trading. Now that globalisation is at a standstill, CO2 emissions have dropped drastically, and our biological footprint has been considerably lowered in a relatively short time. The newly empty spaces are the true witnesses of our overworked, wasteful lives, and also the proof that we need to change our ways urgently, in order to avoid future tragedies.” (Kristóf Szabó)

Contributors: Kiszner Édua, Antal István, Marcin Idźkowski, Angela Galvan, Gasquk, Kristijonas Dirse, Peter Korcek, Erhan US, Ciro Di Fiore, Elena Kilina, Sangeeth Aiyappa, Vladimir Stepanchenko, Raki Nikahetiya, David Leshem, Haccoun Myriam

BIO

Kristóf Szabó was born in 1988 in Győr (Hungary). He graduated as a graphic artist (2012) and art teacher (2013) at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 2011, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Kristóf has been using the brand name KristofLab since 2016, in order to highlight the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of his creative process, as well as his media art practice. He is a member of the Ziggurat Project, a Hungarian interdisciplinary ensemble creating artistic performances bridging over various genres of creative output. Kristóf has been working with the group on site-specific experimental projects around Europe since 2015.

Map Office, Viral Operation (2003)

In Viral Operation the Hong Kong artist duo Map Office fly to Berlin from a Hong Kong ravaged by the SARS epidemic, this century’s first major viral outbreak in 2003, for a road trip crossing all possible European land borders on their way to the Venice Biennale. Wearing masks, they are treated as suspect Others, potential contaminants. Now, 18 years later, when we are all wearing masks and travel restrictions abound, we look back at Viral Operation as a social experiment, prefiguring what was to come.

BIO

MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (b. Casablanca, 1966) and Valérie Portefaix (b. Saint-Etienne, 1969). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression that includes drawing, photographs, video, installations, performance and literary and theoretical texts. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space. Their projects have been included in major international art and architecture events, including: the 7th, 11th and 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2000, 2008, 2010), the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), the 10th Istanbul Biennale (2007), the 15th Sydney Biennale (2006), and the 52nd Venice Art Biennale (2007).

Laurent Gutierrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he leads the Environment and Interior Design discipline and the Master of Strategic Design as well as the Master in Urban Environments Design. He is also the co-director of SD SPACE LAB. Gutierrez is currently finishing a PhD on the “Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta region.”

Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE. She received her Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and a PhD in Urbanism from the Pierre Mendes University France. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.


Gáspár Battha & András László Nagy, Parallel Waves (2018)

Inspired by the idea of “levitation”, Parallel Waves makes reference to the tensions induced by this phenomenon and its various forms found in nature: sound and light waves, smoke, wind and gravity or the murmuration of flocking birds. Parallel Waves takes the viewer to another dimension full of wonder, yet fully rooted in scientific facts.

Concept & Animation: Gaspar Battha (gasparbattha.com) & Andras Nagy (andrasnagy.xyz/) | Sound: Adrian Newgent (adriannewgent.nl/)

BIO

Born in Budapest (born in 1988, Hungary), Gáspár Battha spent a considerable part of his childhood in Bergen, Norway. He received his master’s degree in art and media at the University of Arts in Berlin (UdK). He has been working as a freelance art director, motion designer and media artist. Gásoár has produced a great number of independent art projects and has developed multimedia projects for museums, exhibitions and product launch events around the world. He has been guest lecturer at the University of Arts in Berlin since 2014.

David Szauder, Light Space Materia(2020)

Szauder’s film Light Space Materia commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations and a soundtrack made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of the materiality of image and sound. Szauder focuses on the fundamental question of how modern technology could change the formal expression of movement. Just as the Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology, this synergy becomes increasingly important as new technologies of making and viewing images continue to evolve in our over-mediated pandemic age where we engage with the world predominantly through our screens.

BIO

Media artist David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture. David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include: “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014);

 


ABOUT .CHB

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (CHB) was established in 1924 with the aim of facilitating scientific exchange between Hungary and Germany. Today, CHB is active in the fields of both science and culture. Collaboration with Hungarian, German and international organisations plays an essential role in the professional programme of CHB. Between 1973 and 1990, the predecessor of CHB, the old “House of Hungarian Culture” in Karl-Liebknecht Straße, was an integral part of the intellectual community of East Berlin. In 2007, CHB moved to its new, cutting-edge building next to the Museum Island and Humboldt University. Collegium Hungaricum Berlin is part of the worldwide network of Hungarian Cultural Institutes, and a founding member of EUNIC Berlin, the association of European Cultural Institutes.

 

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07/10/2020
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MOMENTUM AiR

 
 

David Szauder

Website

 

STUDIO RESIDENCY

1 March – 27 September 2020

 


 

Light Space Modulator

In Homage to Moholy-Nagy

 

5 June – 27 September 2020

Open Studio with the Artist every Friday at 14:00 – 18:00

And during Berlin Art Week:
9 June – 13 September 2020 at 14:00 – 18:00

 

@ MOMENTUM

Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 
 
 

David Szauder – Artist Bio

 

Media artist David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include:
“Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).




 

About Light Space Modulator

 

Taking as his inspiration the eponymous sculpture by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder has re-created his own large-scale 3.5m rendition of this iconic work as a kinetic light and sound sculpture for public space. First premiered in Korea, MOMENTUM brought Szauder’s Light Space Modulator to Berlin for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019. Initially installed at the historic Villa Erxleben, Light Space Modulator now moves to the MOMENTUM gallery to serve as a starting point for David Szauder’s visual experiments and re-interpretations of Moholy-Nagy’s work.

 

Over the course of six months, David Szauder continues to develop his translation of Moholy-Nagy’s seminal ideas into a multi-mediated interactive installation; creating two videos and a soundscape algorithmically derived from the motion and sound of the sculpture: Light Space Materia and Kinetic Study no. 68. In addition, Szauder experiments with adding a virtual component to enable the Moholy Cloud, designed to translate the ambient data recorded by sensors on the sculpture into visual and auditory forms.

 

Every day throughout the course of the Studio Residency, Szauder completes a Digital Sketch, which he publishes on social media. A selection of these works has been assembled into a series of video animations acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection.

 

Within the limits of the COVID-19 restrictions, this work-in-progress is punctuated with Open Studio presentations and Artist Talks throughout the course of David Szauder’s Studio Residency.

The original Moholy-Nagy work (151.1 × 69.9 × 69.9 cm), one of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light Space Modulator) holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture. Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. He presented Light Prop at a 1930 exhibition of German design as a mechanism for generating “special lighting and motion effects” on a stage. The rotating construction produces a startling array of visual effects when its moving and reflective surfaces interact with the beam of light. The sculpture became the subject of numerous photographs as well as Moholy’s abstract film Lightplay: Black, White, Gray (1930). Over the years the artist and later the museums made alterations to the sculpture to keep it in working order. It is still operational today.
– [citation from Harvard Art Museums, holding the original Light Space Modulator in the Harvard Museum Collection]

 

The Original: Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator



 
 

Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM

 



 
 

ARTIST STATEMENT

 

One of the greatest Hungarian innovations, and one of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture.

Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world.

Light Prop for an Electric Stage, as Moholy-Nagy referred to it, not only pushes the temporal dimension of art but expands its spatial dimensions into the entire environment, including the viewer, who becomes a surface onto which light is reflected.

It embodies Moholy-Nagy’s goal of pushing art beyond static forms and introducing kinetic elements, in which the volume relationships are virtual ones, i.e., resulting mainly from the actual movement of the contours, rings, rods, and other objects.

To the three dimensions of volume, a fourth: movement – in other words, time – is added.

Moholy’s masterpiece is not just a piece of art, it is the perfect combination of science, art, and innovation.

To Moholy-Nagy’s original design, David Szauder adds a fifth dimension: the virtual.

Szauder’s vision for the Moholy Cloud expands the kinetic interactivity of the sculpture into the realm of connectivity in virtual space. Every moving part of the sculpture contains a sensor engaging with its environment, and through a wireless connection, all the acquired data is visualised to create a virtual Light Space Modulator.

 

[David Szauder]



 



 
 
 

ADDITIONAL WORKS CREATED DURING THE STUDIO RESIDENCY

 
 

LIGHT SPACE MATERIA

2020, Video, 8 min 27 sec

Created by David Szauder for the exhibition Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM, and subsequently acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/450055147 [/fve]
 

Translating Moholy-Nagy’s seminal ideas for the Bauhaus into a digital context, David Szauder’s large-scale kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (2020) serves as the basis for his film Light Space Materia in addition to a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes algorithmically derived from the motion and sound of his sculpture. David Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how modern technology could change the formal expression of movement. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. For this reason, this characteristic always formed an essential basic notion of Szauder’s work and led him to choose computer code when creating the animations. The code contributed to a better understanding of the compositional methods and movements and opened a new door for the perception of the 3-dimensional kinetic world. As the last step, a soundscape was derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of Szauder’s Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of materiality of the image.

 
 
 

Works from the Digital Sketches Series:

 

In his ongoing series of Video Sketches, David Szauder hand draws animated collages incorporating family photos and found footage. In the artist’s words, “They are kinds of kinetic systems, structures, moving like the ‘perpetuum mobile’. In my case, the perpetuum mobile is the metaphor of the continually changing inner world of mine. There are a good number of nodes which are connected like impossible machines, and the movements of these nodes create an impossible hierarchy or dominations between the elements of the structure. Occasionally the system strives for completion, but these operations are just alibis, the real aim is to keep the movement endless, the structure closed and the hierarchy sustainable. Easy. Like these sketches.” The works created during Szauder’s Studio Residency and shown here are all related to his analysis of the Bauhaus focus on art and technology which led him to use computer code when creating the animations.

 
 
 

KINETIC STUDY no. 68

2020, Video Animation, 4 min 2 sec

Created by David Szauder for the exhibition Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM, and subsequently acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection

Kinetic Study no. 68 is based on the structure of David Szauder’s Light Space Modulator sculpture. Using algorithms to translate the motion and sound of the sculpture into a 2-dimensional video animation, Szauder breaks down this work into four stages: The Skeleton (Line Art), Colours, Textures, and Collage.

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/455296041 [/fve]
 
 
 

SUPPORTIVE STRUCTURES

2020, Video, 1 min 10 sec

Assemblage of Digital Sketches, including
Motivators , Hanging Around, Sunday Meditation, Kinetic Sunglasses Machine

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/498961609 [/fve]
 
 

KINETIC MOVEMENTS WITH SOUND

2020, Video, 5 min 32 sec

Assemblage of 6 Digital Sketches:
Kinetic Stability 1, Kinetic Stability 2, Pendulum, Vertical, Horizontal, Magnetic

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/498959138 [/fve]
 
 

With thanks to:

 

 

LIGHT SPACE MODULATOR IN PROCESS (6 JUNE 2020)
LIGHT SPACE MODULATOR IN PROCESS (17 JUNE 2020)
LIGHT SPACE MODULATOR IN PROCESS (22 JUNE 2020)
17/09/2020
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Elysium

 
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In Partnership With

 
 

ELYSIUM

 

Group Exhibition at

POSITIONS BERLIN Art Fair

@ Tempelhof Airport, Hanger 3-4 / Booth C5
Columbiadamm 10, 10965 Berlin

 

PROFESSIONAL PREVIEW:

10 September at 2:00-10:00pm

PUBLIC DAYS:

11-12 September: 12:00 – 8:00pm

13 September: 11:00 – 6:00pm

 

MORE INFO on All ELYSIUM Artists > >

BEYOND ELYSIUM

 

Group Exhibition at

Kleiner von Wiese Gallery

Friedrichstrasse 204, 10117 Berlin

 

OPENING:

Wednesday 23 September at 6 – 11pm

 

EXHIBITION:

24 September – 14 October 2020

Opening Hours: 3-6pm

 

MORE INFO on All BEYOND ELYSIUM Artists > >



 
 

CHRISTIAN ACHENBACH // NASSER ALMULHIM // CHRISSY ANGLIKER // INNA ARTEMOVA // TOM BIBER // ANDREAS BLANK // ANINA BRISOLLA // CLAUS BRUNSMANN // CLAUDIA CHASELING // ALI DOWLATSHAHI // KERSTIN DZEWIOR // ALI FITZGERALD // DANIEL GRÜTTNER // CHRIS HAMMERLEIN // ANNE JUNGJOHANN // DAVID KRIPPENDORFF // VIA LEWANDOWSKY // MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIC // SARA MASÜGER // ALMAGUL MENLIBAYEVA // KIRSTEN PALZ // MANFRED PECKL // DAVID REGEHR // STEFAN RINCK // HUDA AL SAIE // JÖRG SCHALLER // MAIK SCHIERLOH // NINA E. SCHÖNEFELD // KERSTIN SERZ // YASMIN SHARABI // VARVARA SHAVROVA // POLA SIEVERDING // DAVID SZAUDER // VADIM ZAKHAROV // JINDRICH ZEITHAMML // IREEN ZIELONKA

Curated By

Constanze Kleiner, Stephan von Wiese, Rachel Rits-Volloch, Frances Stafford

 
 

 
 

ELYSIUM

 

There has never before been a pandemic that, like the rampant Covid 19 infection, can apparently endanger all people on earth at the same time; never before have all people on earth, at the same time, asked themselves the question: What is really important now? Through their shared vulnerabilities, never before have so many people faced the realisation of their similarities. And with so much going wrong in the world, our thoughts can’t help but turn to dreams of a happier beyond. “Elysium”, the island of the blessed as a mythological place, as an ideal or state, is an image that contrasts to the sufferings of this world. As a concept, it is present in many cultures and religions as a utopia, as an idea and as hope. The longing for Elysium is therefore a deeply human need. It has been redesigned and defended again and again, and also in connection with religious supremacy and ideologies instrumentalized in power politics, or simply with the need for anesthesia and intoxication or the right to individual love and sexuality.

In our small exhibition, the Elysian realms are not to be understood as a place of flight from the world. Elysium is not to be found only in the unattainable. You find it – beautiful and mysterious, non-violent and full of humor – even in the middle of everyday life, in the here and now. Elysium is also signified in the heightened moments of life, an intoxication with existence, the moment of happiness. This short exhibition aims to raise awareness of this possibility of fulfilled moments.

We all have only this one world and only this one life – and we have only one duty, namely to find happiness for ourselves and for others. To find our “gap”. This corresponds to the meaning of the Middle High German word for “luck”, which was also “gap”. Nobody can really be happy if they have no chance, no gap in which to realize themselves, and nobody can be “happy” or “successful” in the face of the misery of others. Since Corona, more people around the world have become aware of this than ever before.

It is all the more exciting to be able to tie the the ELYSIUM exhibition in with the themes of the previous large group exhibition by KLEINERVONWIESE and MOMENTUM, “bonum et malum”. What does “bonum et malum” / good and evil mean in our current times? What exactly is paradise today?

The aim of the ELYSIUM exhibition is to interrogate this from a wider perspective and, at the same time, refer to the phenomenon of the connectedness of all people, despite our supposedly profound cultural differences. We all have common roots, as expressed in our cultural histories, which are often older than the history of the respective religions of the various peoples. All Abrahamic religions have a common, geographically localized starting point, namely the city of Uruk, which was a cultural hotspot in Mesopotamia and the hometown of Abraham more than 5000 years ago. However, Gilgamesh, the hero of an even older mythical tale, was also born here. The Sumerian-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (12th century BC) tells of the search for an earthly paradise.

According to current knowledge, this “Dilmun” (the Sumerian name for a paradisiacal land) is the cultivated land of the gardens in what was then Bahrain and nearby areas. Contemporary research assumes that these Oriental Gardens of Paradise were the inspiration for the Occidental Paradise Garden. Seen in this way, the inspiration for the Garden of Eden of the Jews, Christians and Muslims came from Bahrain and from the Dilmun culture around the Persian Gulf.

In this context, and as a result of initial collaborations with partners from this region, KLEINERVONWIESE & MOMENTUM are also showing two Arab artists, with more to follow. The assembled positions of the ELYSIUM exhibition consciously or unconsciously reflect these interrelationships and – also thinking about the challenges and puzzles of Corona – at the same time the questions: Why do we no longer know about these correlations? Why have we lost our consciousness of what connects us as humans, regardless of where we live and what we believe in? The curators trust in the interplay, correspondence and dissonance of the works, which alternately communicate with, and may reinforce and complement, one another.

Much is currently being rethought in how we live our daily lives and go about our professional lives. Above all, however, when museums and galleries had to close, the Corona crisis showed that work in the artists studios did not come to a standstill. It is especially in times of crisis that we need the clairvoyance of art and its real, sensual knowledge. The ELYSIUM exhibition, and its sister show – BEYOND ELYSIUM – are designed to support art-lovers, artists and their galleries at a time of crisis, and to remind us all that perhaps Elysium can be found in the small miracle of simply bringing people together.

[Constanze Kleiner]



 

MOMENTUM Collection Artists Featured in ELYSIUM:

 

Inna Artemova

Inna Artemova, born in Moscow, studied architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). For her diploma project, she received the 2nd prize of the Russian Federation. In 1998 she moved to Berlin and started to focus on her work as an artist in the field of painting and drawing. Recently, Inna Artemova has participated in: the Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020), and in 2019, the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts presented her works in the solo show “Landscapes of Tomorrow”. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Italy. Additionally, her works were shown at international art fairs in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, the US, and Japan.

Inna Artemova, Utopia #4532 (2020)

ink, marker, pencil on paper, 75 x 110cm

Inna Artemova, Utopia #5569 (2020)

ink, marker, pencil on paper, 75 x 110cm

Inna Artemova, Utopia IX (2017)

oil in canvas, 190 x 140cm

 

Artemova’s practice remains heavily influenced by her professors at the MArchI in Moscow, the “Paper Architects“, a movement originating in the 1980s that developed futuristic architectural creations never intended to be realized. The visionary projects of the Paper Architects and her experience of the failure of the communist utopia with the fall of the Soviet Union, has led Artemova to explore, through her constructivist painting style, the ideas of architectural utopias from the 1960s up to her own futuristic visions. In creating utopian landscapes and spaces, Artemova interrogates the future of living spaces and their impact upon human relationships. The concept of utopia stands for a space of possibility in human consciousness in which the crucial questions have to be answered again and again: Is there no alternative to the reality in which we live? What will we do in the future? Do we have to fail because of our ideal ideas?



 
 

Claudia Chaseling

Claudia Chaseling is a German artist, born in Munich in 1973, currently living and working between Berlin, Germany and Canberra, Australia. She is known for developing the practice of Spatial Painting, comprised of canvases and sculptural paintings with mixed media on objects, walls and floors. The artist has exhibited her works in over fifty solo and group exhibitions, notably in the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, and beyond. Recent exhibitions in 2017 include solo exhibitions at Magic Beans Gallery in Berlin, and the Wollongong Art Gallery, Australia, as well as a group exhibition at Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York. The “Verlag für zeitgenössische Kunst und Theorie” published her first extensive monograph in 2016. Claudia Chaseling studied at Academy for Visual Arts in Munich, Germany, and Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, Austria, before graduating in 1999 from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin, Germany. She received her Masters degree in Visual Arts from both the University of the Arts Berlin, in 2000, and the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, in 2003. In 2019 the artist is completing her PhD in Visual Arts at the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Major grants and scholarships received in Australia and Germany include the DAAD; the Samstag Scholarship; the Studio Award of the Karl Hofer Society; the Australia Council for the Arts Grant in 2014; and the 2015/16 artsACT Project Grant. She has taken part in various international visiting artists programs and artists residencies, including Texas A&M University; Yaddo in New York; the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City; the Australian National University (ANU); amongst others.

This work is presented in parallel to Claudia Chaseling solo exhibition mutopia5 at the Australian Embassy Berlin [also presented by MOMENTUM]. Chaseling’s practice of Spatial Painting, at once 2- and 3-dimensional, takes us on a psychedelic journey through the nuclear chain leading to depleted uranium and its toxic aftermath. metal 2 continues Chaseling’s inquiry into the ways that abstract, non-representational painting can communicate narratives with a socio-political meaning – namely, the radioactive contamination of depleted uranium munitions. The imagery of her Spatial Paintings consists of distorted landscapes, estranged places, mutated creatures and plants whose deformation is caused by radioactive poisoning. Her images, often including text and URLs referencing her source materials, are not predictions of some post-apacalyptic future, but rather the result of her research into historic and ongoing ways in which we continue to poison our planet with radioactive materials.

Claudia Chaseling, metal 2 (2015)

pigments, egg tempera and oil on canvas, 100 x 120cm

 

“The painting metal 2 seems at first glance to have a biomorphic abstract dynamic. On a closer look, one can decode explosive forms, grenades and even the contour of a particular war plane. The depicted scene is sourced from photos of a US plane in action shooting depleted uranium munitions above a middle eastern landscape. In the middle of the painting, one can see another layer embedded into the painting: the shape of a depleted uranium rocket. The title of the work refers to this part of the painting and the heavy metal ‘uranium’ used in munitions in wars today.”

– Claudia Chaseling



 
 

David Krippendorff

David Krippendorff, Silenced with Gold 1 (2017)

Gold leaf on paper

 

David Krippendorff, born in Berlin in 1967, is a US/German interdisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker. Currently based in Berlin, he grew up in Rome, Italy, and studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, Germany, where he graduated with a masters degree in 1997. His works, films and videos have been shown internationally, including: the New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem). He has participated in four Biennials (Prague, Poznan, Tel Aviv, and Belgrade), as well as in many international art and film festivals worldwide.

David Krippendorff, Silenced with Gold 2 (2017)

Gold leaf on paper

 

Emerging from Krippendorff’s video work Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015), Silenced with Gold 1 & 2 are part of a series of works on paper superimposing arabic designs in gold leaf onto the musical score for Verdi’s opera Aida. Nothing Escapes My Eyes is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being, both subjected to the melancholy of conforming. The film was inspired by the famous opera Aida, to depict in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. The film refers to the following historical event related to this opera: Aida premiered in Cairo in 1871 at the „Khedivial Opera House“. One hundred years later the building was completely destroyed by fire and replaced by a multi storied parking garage. Nevertheless, to this day, the place is still named Opera Square: Meidan El Opera. The film combines this urban alteration with the painful transformation of a woman (actress Hiam Abbass) in the process of shedding one identity for another. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from Verdi’s Aida whose lyrics express the difficulties of being loyal to one’s country and cultural identity. The personal and urban transformation tackles on issues of identity, loss and disorientation as a result of historical colonialism and contemporary globalization.



 
 

Milovan Destil Marković

Milovan Destil Marković was born in 1957 in Yugoslavia/Serbia. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1986. Having studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts, Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983. Marković’s works can be found in numerous public and private collections throughout the world: in between others in the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto/Japan; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin/Germany; Museum of the City of Belgrade/Serbia; Istanbul Art Museum Foundation, Istanbul/Turkey; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade/Serbia; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf/Germany and Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz/Austria, The Artists’ Museum Lodz/Poland. Marković has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia and in the Americas.

His work was featured at 42nd Venice Biennial Aperto, 4th Istanbul Biennial, 46th Venice Biennial, 6th Triennial New Delhi, 5th Biennial Cetinje, Sao Paulo Biennial, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center New York, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Ludwig Museum for Contemporary Art Budapest, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken, The Artists’ Museum Lodz, National Museum Prague, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Landesmuseum Graz, Kunstmuseum Duesseldorf, Art Museum Foundation – Military Museum Istanbul, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunstvoreningen Bergen, Galleri F15 Oslo, Nishido Contemporary Art Tokyo, Fei Contemporary Art Center Shanghai, the 56th October Salon Biennial in Belgrade, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, Museum of Contemporary Art Banja Luka, and many others.

 
 
 
 
 

Milovan Destil Marković, Ivory Lipstick Aureole (1992)

gold leaf, lipstick, beewax, paraffin on wood, 26,5 x 22,5 cm

Milovan Destil Marković, Green Lipstick Aureole (2016)

gold leaf, lipstick and paraffin on wood, 26,5 cm x 22,5 cm

Milovan Destil Marković, Lead Aureole (1992)

gold leaf and lead on wood, 26,5 x 22,5 cm



 
 

Almagul Menlibayeva

Almagul Menlibayeva, Walking Head (2019), Shamans 02 (2018), Posthuman Shamanism (2019)

inkjet print on archival paper, 110 x 175.76 cm

 

Video artist and photographer Almagul Menlibayeva holds an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Almaty. She works primarily in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation and her work addresses such critical issues of post-Soviet modernity as social, economic, and political transformations in Central Asia, de-colonial re-imaginings of gender, environmental degradation, and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies.

In conjunction with her solo exhibition Transformation at the Grand Palais in Paris (France, 2016-2017), she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2017. Other awards include the ‘Daryn’ State Prize of Kazakhstan (1996), and the ‘Tarlan’ National Award of the Club of Maecenas of Kazakhstan (2003). She was also the Winner of the Grand Prix Asia Art at the II Biennial of Central Asia, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1995) and the Winner of the Main Prize of the International Film Festival Kino Der Kunst (2013) in Munich, Germany.

Menlibayeva has gained international recognition by participating in: the Venice Biennale, Italy (2005, 2007, 2009, 2015); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006, 2012); the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2010); the Mediterranean Biennale, Israel (2010); the Moscow Biennale, Russia (2011, 2015); the Kiev Biennial, Ukraine (2013); the Daegu Photo Biennale (2016); and the Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea (2018).

Selected solo exhibitions include:Videoart at Midnight #98: Almagul Menlibayeva, Berlin (2018); Transformation, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2016-2017); Union of Fire and Water, 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2014); An Ode for the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013); Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, Palma De Mallorca, Spain (2012); LATT:Europe at large #6, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium (2010); Kissing Totems, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, USA (2008). Recent selected group exhibitions include: Haifa Museum, Israel (2018); Neues Museum in Nuremberg, Germany (2018, 2016); Astana State Museum, Kazakhstan (2018, 2016); Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, M HKA, Antwerp, Belgium (2017-2020, 2010); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Greece (2017).

Almagul Menlibayeva made her curatorial debut with Bread & Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists, co-curated with David Elliott and Rachel Rits-Volloch, organised by MOMENTUM in partnership with the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2018).

 

Almagul Menlibayeva, Dilora (2013)

inkjet on soft Hahnemühle paper, 55 x 50 cm

From the series Milk for Lambs (2010)

In the Steppes of her native Kazakhstan, Menlibayeva stages and films complex mythological narratives, with reference to her own nomadic heritage and the Tengriism traditions of the cultures of Central Asia. The series of works in Milk for Lambs explores the emotional and spiritual residues of an ancient belief system as well as a historic conflict, still resonating among the peoples of Central Asia today, between the Zoroastrian ideology of former Persia, spreading widely across Eurasia and influencing Western politicians and philosophers and the mysterious Tengriism (sky religion) reaching as far as the Pacific Ocean. The nurturing earth goddess Umai and favorite wife of Tengri, the god of the sky, much like Gaia in the Greek mythology, created life on earth out of herself. This figure of the ‘Earth Mother’ symbolizes the close relationship of the people to the land and its given riches, through symbolic rituals of animals and humans feeding off of her body and drinking her milk. Often described as “punk-shamanism,” Menlibayeva’s videos are embedded in theatricality that leads them through a complex set of references — from tribal symbolism to images of the communist industrial past. Milk for Lambs begins as the story of the artist’s grandfather, merging documentation of an annual ritual of the formerly nomadic peoples with a stylised fantasy of their myths and legends.



 
 

Kirsten Palz

Kirsten Palz, born Copenhagen 1971. is a visual artist working in Berlin. She holds a degree in Computer Science from the IT-University in Copenhagen and a degree of Fine Arts/ Painting from School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2007, Kirsten Palz initiated her ongoing archive of manuals. The archive is a work in progress consisting today of 317 manuals, including objects, prints on paper and drawings. The manuals engage with various topics, such as dreams, memories, myth, sculpture and social space. Kirsten Palz has shown her works in spaces in Germany and abroad.

Recent works were presented in F******* -Towards New Perspectives on Feminism, Neue Berliner Kunstverein (nbk), Berlin and ff /Temporary Autonomous Zone /2/ in Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin. Palz’s performances frequently take place non-officially in the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg – outside the institution’s listed program – and include readings and experimental guided tours for audiences.

Kirsten Palz’s series of Song Books emerge from her practice of “Sculpture as Writing”, encompassing her manuals and other text-based works. Song Book, Book of Verse, Covid-19 was created especially for the ELYSIUM exhibition, and has been acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection.

Kirsten Palz, Song Book, Book of Verse, Covid-19 (2020)

Limited edition prints, Number of prints: 100 pieces. Stamped and signed by the artist



 
 

Nina E. Schönefeld

Nina E. Schönefeld, Free Julian Assange (2020)

print collage, 30 x 40cm

 

Nina E. Schönefeld (b. 1972 in Berlin) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. She studied Fine Art in Berlin (UdK) and in London (Royal College of Art). She holds a Master of Arts and a PhD in Art History. Schönefeld’s art examines the contemporary social and political climate. Through unusual mediums, objects and videos, the artist questions the contemporary roles of artists, exploring the relationship between art, blockbuster movies and the present digital age. Her stories imagine a dystopian world where, due to drastic political and environmental shift, we need to fight for our democratic rights and survival.

Selected recent exhibitions include: ‘Some Demonstrations’, Manifesta / Manifestina, Zurich (2016); solo show at CoGalleries, Berlin (2016); solo show at Fahrbereitschaft, Berlin (2017); Diskurs Gallery, Berlin (2017); Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi, Venice (2018); Goethe Institute, Beijing (2018); BBA Gallery Award Exhibition, Berlin (2018); solo show at Berlinische Galerie, 12 x 12 IBB Video Space (2018); Villa Heike, Berlin (2019); Lage Egal Gallery, Berlin (2019); Mitte Media Festival, Berlin (2019); Made in NY Media Center by IFP, New York (2019); Bamhaus in Luxembourg (2019); Aram Art Museum, Korea (2019).

 
 

The future scenarios in schönefeld’s video installations are intricately linked to current political, environmental and social world issues. In video projects like #freejulian assange #freedomofpress #femaleheroes, #hackerontherun, #trilogyoftomorrow, #contamination, #leftwingprepper, #pandemics, #conspiracy & #enemywithin schönefeld tells stories of hackers, journalists, environmental activists and “out of the box people” in general. The focus lies on radical changes and extreme phenomena like democracies developing into autocracies, escape & persecution of political activists, prepping & survival techniques, hacking & whistleblowing, environmental disasters like nuclear accidents, radical digital inventions like the darknet, conspiracy theories and recently on pandemics.

Nina E. Schönefeld, Get The Truth (2020)

print collage, 30 x 40cm

 

Nina E. Schönefeld, Truth Radio (2019)

installation, found materials: plastic, metal, electronics

 

Schönefeld’s print collages emerged from a series of media works published on instagram. While her installations made from vintage media objects linked to both autocracies surveillance and the resistance movements struggling against it – old radios, walkie-talkies, monitors, microphones, etc – come out of her video installation Classified Hacker (2019). Echoing the themes of her video work Born To Run (B.T.R.) (2019) and Classified Hacker, Schönefeld addresses the increasing strength of authoritarian autocracies, and the rising restrictions upon journalists and the freedom of speech, as well as the possible extradition of Julian Assange to the US and what this could mean in the future for the situation of independent publicists, whistleblowers and journalists worldwide. Prevalent throughout Schönefeld’s activist practice is a call to start fighting for basic democratic rights.



 
 

Varvara Shavrova

Varvara Shavrova, Migrant Crisis Series (12) (2015-16)

graphite and acrylic on watercolour paper, 25 x 28.5 cm

 

Varvara Shavrova is a visual artist born in the USSR who lives and works in London and Dublin. Shavrova’s practice is focused on excavating the layers of her family’s history through the process of remembering, recalling, retracing and re-enacting stories. In engaging memory, nostalgia and reflection, Shavrova creates installations that make connections between historic and current narratives, between the archival and the present. Shavrova studied at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, and received her Masters in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. Shavrova received Culture Ireland awards for her solo exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai and Berlin, British Council award for individual artists, and Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship awards. Shavrova curated international visual arts projects, including The Sea is Limit exhibition at York Art Gallery (2018) and at Virginia Commonwealth University Arts Qatar Gallery in Doha (2019), examining migration, borders and refugee crisis, Giving Voice exhibition of Mary Robinson’s presidential archive in Ballina library in County Mayo, and Map Games: Dynamics of Change, international art and architecture project, at Today Art Museum Beijing, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, CAOS Centre for Contemporary Arts, Terni, Italy (2008-2010). Shavrova’s works are included in the collections of the Office of Public Works, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the MOMENTUM Collection Berlin, the Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, Minsheng Art Museum Beijing, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

Migrant Crisis – Artist Statement

My work examines the themes of migration, borders and borderlines, as they are manifested in Cartesian, territorial, geo-political, and cultural sense. As a Russian who has lived in London and Beijing and now based in Ireland, I belong to the category of many migrant artists who have travelled literally and metaphorically across borders, observing the many ironies and intricacies that they entail, of arbitrary separations and unnatural divisions. Yet in my the works on borders I also observe the long meandering border of rivers and streams, separating land over thousands of years, thereby questioning the relationships between natural and manmade borders, tapping into the ancient origin of societies and cultures fundamentally shaped by such divisions and crossings.

Despite historical notion that borders around the world are permanent, the reality is very different, as borders remain fluid and constantly challenged. Mobility of national borders becomes particularly evident in the light of recent migration from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into Eastern, Central and Western Europe, leading to redefinition and challenges of the existing borders, introduction of tougher border control systems and establishment of new border ethics, that in turn is leading to inevitable transformation of our understanding of the meaning of the term ‘borders’. I am interested in further investigating the mobility of borders in the light of continuing migration across Europe, and in particular developing new works that will reflect on the current state of borders, migration and migrant’s rights.

Variety of approaches I use in order to explore, reflect and comment on migration and borders are multi faceted, and I often work collaboratively, employing a variety of media, including painting, drawing, installation, video, photography and elements of performance. I present my work in the context of traditional institutions, including exhibitions in museums and galleries, whilst exploring alternative approaches and ways of engaging with new audiences, and placing my projects in a wider context of diverse social platforms. I am interested in developing the idea of interpreting the themes of borders, migration and memory through collaborative, participatory and outreach projects, and exploring the themes of borders and migration in the context of projects themselves, where performance borders with sound installation, video migrates into painting, drawings merge with projections.

‘Migrant Crisis’ project renders out the ideas of recent peoples’ movements along, across and through European borders. The work is realized as a deluge of time based drawings created in order to inform a possible end point. These drawings represent the unfolding story associated with the “refugee crisis”, as it has been labeled in the press. I have chosen to catalogue the daily routine of this crisis, its rise in importance through politico-montage and its subsequent fall to the latter regions of the press cycle. In one of the project’s iterations, I have removed it from its paper based origination and created a clustering of the original time based drawings in a looped video, where the work becomes a multiple projection that changes its context from reportage to a multi-level screen installation, that also stimulates a multi sensory response from the viewer.



 
 

David Szauder

David Szauder, Hanging Around (2020)

video animation, loop

 
 

David Szauder, Motivators (2020)

video animation, loop

 

Media artist David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include:
“Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).

David Szauder, Sunday Meditation

video animation, loop

 
 

David Szauder, Kinetic Sunglasses Machine (2020)

video animation, loop

 

4 Easy Pieces – Video Sketches – Artist Statement

These four animations, from an ongoing series of video sketches, are hand drawn animated collages incorporating family photos and found footage. They are kinds of kinetic systems, structures, moving like the ‘perpetuum mobile’. In my case, the perpetuum mobile is the metaphor of the continually changing inner world of mine. There are a good number of nodes which are connected like impossible machines, and the movements of these nodes create an impossible hierarchy or dominations between the elements of the structure. Occasionally the system strives for completion, but these operations are just alibis, the real aim is to keep the movement endless, the structure closed and the hierarchy sustainable. Easy. Like these sketches.



 

ELYSIUM @ Positions Berlin Art Fair 2020

[fve] https://vimeo.com/473730815 [/fve]


 

ELYSIUM INSTALLATION PHOTOS @ Positions Berlin Art Fair 2020
ELYSIUM OPENING PHOTOS @ Positions Berlin Art Fair 2020

 

BEYOND ELYSIUM INSTALLATION PHOTOS
BEYOND ELYSIUM OPENING PHOTOS
06/05/2020
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DAVID SZAUDER

 

(b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

 

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include:
“MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).



 

LIGHT SPACE MATERIA

2020, HD Video, Digital Animation, 8 min 27 sec

 

 

David Szauder’s film Light Space Materia (2020) translates Bauhaus ideas on technology, new materials, and light into a digital context, upgrading an iconic work of the 1930’s into a 3D digital animation and algorithmically derived soundscape. Taking as his inspiration the kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (1930) by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder re-created his own large-scale rendition of this iconic work – Light Space Modulator (2020). Szauder subsequently used this installation as the basis upon which to make a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes. David Szauder recontextualizes into digital media the driving principal of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy’s aim to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world.

Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how contemporary technology could change the formal expression of movement and capture the physicality of materials in a digital context. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. This characteristic forms the essential basis of Szauder’s work, which applies computer code to create his animations and soundscapes derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of his Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of the materiality of the image, along with film footage of the original Light Space Modulator and of Szauder’s reinvention of this work.



 
 

Works from the Digital Sketches Series:

 

In his ongoing series of Video Sketches, David Szauder hand draws animated collages incorporating family photos and found footage. In the artist’s words, “They are kinds of kinetic systems, structures, moving like the ‘perpetuum mobile’. In my case, the perpetuum mobile is the metaphor of the continually changing inner world of mine. There are a good number of nodes which are connected like impossible machines, and the movements of these nodes create an impossible hierarchy or dominations between the elements of the structure. Occasionally the system strives for completion, but these operations are just alibis, the real aim is to keep the movement endless, the structure closed and the hierarchy sustainable. Easy. Like these sketches.”

 
 
 

KINETIC STUDY NO.68

2020, Video, 4 min 21 sec

 

 
 
 

SUPPORTIVE STRUCTURES

2020, Video, 1 min 10 sec

Assemblage of Digital Sketches, including
Motivators , Hanging Around, Sunday Meditation, Kinetic Sunglasses Machine

 

 
 
 

KINETIC MOVEMENTS WITH SOUND

2020, Video, 5 min 32 sec

Assemblage of 6 Digital Sketches:
Kinetic Stability 1, Kinetic Stability 2, Pendulum, Vertical, Horizontal, Magnetic

 

 
 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with David Szauder

23/02/2020
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David Szauder

 

Light Space Modulator

 

In Homage to Moholy-Nagy

 
 

Presentation by the Artist every Friday at 14:00 – 18:00

5 June – 27 September 2020

And during Berlin Art Week:
9 June – 13 September 2020 at 14:00 – 18:00

 

We resume normal gallery hours: 9 – 27 September, 13:00 – 19:00

& Viewing by Appointment. Please contact: staff@momentumworldwide.org

 

@ MOMENTUM

 

Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 
 

 
 

Taking as his inspiration the eponymous sculpture by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder has re-created his own large-scale 3.5m rendition of this iconic work as a kinetic light and sound sculpture for public space. First premiered in Korea, MOMENTUM brought Szauder’s Light Space Modulator to Berlin for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019. Initially installed at the historic Villa Erxleben, Light Space Modulator moved to the MOMENTUM gallery in March 2020 for a 6-month Studio Residency with David Szauder.

This exhibition of David Szauder’s work in progress comprises the process and results of his work over the course of his Studio Residency, in which he continued to develop his translation of Moholy-Nagy’s seminal ideas into a multi-mediated interactive installation; creating two videos and a soundscape algorithmically derived from the motion and sound of the sculpture – Light Space Materia and Kinetic Study no. 68.

Within the limits of the COVID-19 restrictions, this work-in-progress is punctuated with Open Studio presentations and Artist Talks throughout the course of David Szauder’s Studio Residency and Exhibition.

The original Moholy-Nagy work (151.1 × 69.9 × 69.9 cm), one of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light Space Modulator) holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture. Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. He presented Light Prop at a 1930 exhibition of German design as a mechanism for generating “special lighting and motion effects” on a stage. The rotating construction produces a startling array of visual effects when its moving and reflective surfaces interact with the beam of light. The sculpture became the subject of numerous photographs as well as Moholy’s abstract film Lightplay: Black, White, Gray (1930). Over the years the artist and later the museums made alterations to the sculpture to keep it in working order. It is still operational today.
 
– [citation from Harvard Art Museums, holding the original Light Space Modulator in the Harvard Museum Collection]



 

The Original: Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator


 
 

Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM


 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

 

One of the greatest Hungarian innovations, and one of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture.

Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world.

Light Prop for an Electric Stage, as Moholy-Nagy referred to it, not only pushes the temporal dimension of art but expands its spatial dimensions into the entire environment, including the viewer, who becomes a surface onto which light is reflected.

It embodies Moholy-Nagy’s goal of pushing art beyond static forms and introducing kinetic elements, in which the volume relationships are virtual ones, i.e., resulting mainly from the actual movement of the contours, rings, rods, and other objects.

To the three dimensions of volume, a fourth: movement – in other words, time – is added.

Moholy’s masterpiece is not just a piece of art, it is the perfect combination of science, art, and innovation.

To Moholy-Nagy’s original design, David Szauder adds a fifth dimension: the virtual.

Szauder’s vision for the Moholy Cloud expands the kinetic interactivity of the sculpture into the realm of connectivity in virtual space. Every moving part of the sculpture contains a sensor engaging with its environment, and through a wireless connection, all the acquired data is visualised to create a virtual Light Space Modulator.

 

[David Szauder]



 



 

ARTIST BIO

 

David Szauder

Media artist David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include: “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).



 



 
 
 

WORKS SHOWN TOGETHER WITH LIGHT SPACE MODULATOR

 
 

LIGHT SPACE MATERIA

2020, Video, 8 min 27 sec

Created by David Szauder for the exhibition Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM, and subsequently acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/450055147 [/fve]
 

Translating Moholy-Nagy’s seminal ideas for the Bauhaus into a digital context, David Szauder’s large-scale kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (2020) serves as the basis for his film Light Space Materia in addition to a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes algorithmically derived from the motion and sound of his sculpture. David Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how modern technology could change the formal expression of movement. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. For this reason, this characteristic always formed an essential basic notion of Szauder’s work and led him to choose computer code when creating the animations. The code contributed to a better understanding of the compositional methods and movements and opened a new door for the perception of the 3-dimensional kinetic world. As the last step, a soundscape was derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of Szauder’s Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of materiality of the image.

 
 
 

KINETIC STUDY no. 68

2020, Video Animation, 4 min 2 sec

Created by David Szauder for the exhibition Light Space Modulator at MOMENTUM, and subsequently acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection

Kinetic Study no. 68 is based on the structure of David Szauder’s Light Space Modulator sculpture. Using algorithms to translate the motion and sound of the sculpture into a 2-dimensional video animation, Szauder breaks down this work into four stages: The Skeleton (Line Art), Colours, Textures, and Collage.

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/455296041 [/fve]
 

Drawing on techniques developed in his ongoing series of Video Sketches, Szauder hand draws animated collages incorporating family photos and found footage. In the artist’s words, “They are kinds of kinetic systems, structures, moving like the ‘perpetuum mobile’. In my case, the perpetuum mobile is the metaphor of the continually changing inner world of mine. There are a good number of nodes which are connected like impossible machines, and the movements of these nodes create an impossible hierarchy or dominations between the elements of the structure. Occasionally the system strives for completion, but these operations are just alibis, the real aim is to keep the movement endless, the structure closed and the hierarchy sustainable. Easy. Like these sketches.”

 
 
 

PARALLEL SCREENING:

 

Moholy-Nagy’s Dynamik der Großstadt (2006)

Filmic experiment after Lászlò Moholy-Nagy

35 mm, 16 mm / Super 8 mm / DV-PAL and VHS, 3-channel video, 13:48 min. loop
Project team: Nike Arnold, Prof. Dr. Andreas Haus, Aline Helmcke, Frank Hoppe, Frédéric Krauke, Walter Lenertz
Production: UDK-Berlin

In his avant-garde film “Dynamics of the Big City” László Moholy-Nagy portrays the endless flow of big-city life. It is one of the first attempts in the history of film to visually capture the manifold moments of movement in a modern metropolis. The foto film “Dynamics of the Big City” (1921/1922) became part of a new genre that emerged in the 1920s in several places at once: the Big City Symphony (even though Moholy-Nagy’s film could only be realized posthumously). The working group of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UDK Berlin implemented the sketch as a 3-screen projection in their interpretation of “Dynamics of the Big City – A Filmic Experiment after László Moholy-Nagy”.

 
 

Installation at Gallery Kleiner von Wiese, Villa Erxleben, Berlin, December 2019 – January 2020

 



 



 
 

With thanks to:

 

 

 

28/09/2014
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ON THE OCCASION OF BERLIN ART WEEK 2014

 

MOMENTUM together with present:

 

Xu Zhen: From Inside His Skin

 

A Presentation of Xu Zhen: The Catalog

 

In Dialogue with Chris Moore And David Elliott

With a screening of Rainbow and 8848-1.86 by Xu Zhen

 

 
 

 

21 September 17:00

@ .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Dorotheenstrasse 12, 10117, Berlin Mitte


This is an education program jointly presented by MOMENTUM, Randian and Collegium Hungaricum as an in-depth followup to the previous presentation of XU ZHEN in the PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL Exhibition on 1 – 4 May 2014

 

THE BOOK

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, lives and works in Shanghai) came to prominence at the 49.Biennale di Venezia with Rainbow (1998) a visceral video performance of his back being slapped, turning red, with hand marks visible but never the hands. Further actions including sawing off the summit of Mount Everest equivalent to his own height, 8,848-1.86 (2005) invading neighboring countries with radio-controlled tanks, ships and helicopters, 18 Days, 2006, the controversial The Starving of sudan (2008) and Untitled (2009), a vast house of poker cards in the form of the Potala Palace. With essays by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Christopher Moore and an interview with Li Zhenhua, this is the first monograph concentrating on Xu Zhen’s practice, focuses on his early career until 2009, when he subsumed his identity within the corporate-collective “MadeIn” (in Chinese “No Roof”), and with a postscript on MadeIn’s recent adoption of a new brand “Xu Zhen.”

XU ZHEN

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, Shanghai) is a trans-medial conceptual artist based in Shanghai. Incorporating painting, installation, video, photography performance and even extending into curatorial practice, Xu’s work satirizes, exposes and reworks dominant rhetoric of the contemporary art-world. Currently working under his company name MadeIn Inc, a self-declared ‘multi-functional art company’, he appropriates the art-as-brand discourse to criticize it from within. A jester at heart, he plays on authorial conventions and expectations, creating pseudo-fictions replete with cultural clichés, wittingly challenging the pervasive longing for clearly delineated so-called cultural authenticity. An irreverent artist with a unique ability to produce work across multiple platforms and media, Xu Zhen is the key figure of the Shanghai art scene and a foundational figure for the generations of Chinese artists born since 1970. Xu’s practice reflects the lingering concerns of an artist participating in the international art world while remaining deeply sceptical of it and its conventions, most immediately the label ‘Chinese contemporary art’. Working in his own name since the late 1990s, Xu Zhen is now producing new works under MadeIn Company’s newly launched brand ‘Xu Zhen’. Recent major exhibitions include his retrospective, “Xu Zhen: A MadeIn Company Production”, at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2014) and his Commissioned Artist exhibition at the Armory Show in New York (2014).


CHRISTOPHER MOORE

Christopher Moore is the publisher of randian 燃点 digital art magazine. From 2008-10 Christopher was the Shanghai correspondent for Saatchi Online. In 2012 Chris co-curated “Forbidden Castle” at Muzeum Montanelli in Prague, an exhibition of Xu Zhen’s pre-MadeIn work, and in April 2014 he curated Yan Pijie “Children of God” at orangelab Berlin. He is also the editor of the first monograph on Xu Zhen, to be published by Distanz Verlag this Spring, with contributions by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Li Zhenhua.

DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. From 1976 to 1996 he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001), founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007), Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008 – 2010) and Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014), Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London and on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.


THE PRESENTATION WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY TWO WORKS BY XU ZHEN

 

8848-1.86
2005, 8:11 min

In August 2005 Xu Zhen and his team climbed the 8,848-meter high Mount Everest, which sits partly within China’s borders. They succeeded in slicing off the peak of the mountain—an amount equal to Xu Zhen’s own height—and taking it down. His video 8.848-1.86 (2005) documents the expedition, which included displaying the removed 1.86 metres of the mountain’s peak in a large refrigerated vitrine cabinet (now in the collection of Tate Modern). The video, among other allusions, is a subtle and humorous commentary on China’s nationalism but also on the ‘measure’ and perception of the individual within the mass. At the time, the work caused huge outcry in China because many people thought it had really happened, whereas the entire performance was actually a calculated confection.

Rainbow
1998, 3:50 min

Xu Zhen started out making videos that focused on the body and public space in a manner reminiscent of early Bruce Nauman or Vito Acconci: the video Rainbow (1998) depicts the gradual change in color of an anonymous subject’s back. Using arhythmic shots and ominous slap sounds, the viewer never actually observes the assaults but waits to see the next inevitable blow. Rainbow was first exhibited at the 49. Venice Biennale 2001.


THE BOOK LAUNCH AT ART BASEL HONG KONG

 



PICTURES FROM THE TALK
(photos by Marina Belikova)

29/05/2014
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SYMPOSIUM

China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai Meets Beijing

4 May 2014: 16:00 – 19:00
 

AT .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Dorotheenstrasse 12, Berlin
 

Free for admission. Please make reservation via info@chronusartcenter.org
 

 

Speakers:

DAVID ELLIOTT and LI ZHENHUA / Curators of PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai

THOMAS ELLER and ANDREAS SCHMID / Curators of Die 8 der Wege: Kunst in Beijing | The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing

CHRISTOPHER MOORE / Publisher of Randian China

COLIN CHINNERY / Artist Director, Wuhan Art Terminus, and Director of Multitude Art Prize

MARIANNE CSÁKY, QIU ANXIONG / Artists

WALING BOERS / Founder & Director, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

CHAOS Y. CHEN, Founder & Director, WiE KULTUR, Berlin

ALEXANDER OCHS/ Founder & Director, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin & Beijing

Moderated by CHRISTOPHER MOORE and DREW HAMMOND, Independent Curator, Writer, Art Historian

 

Session 1 – Geography:
Making a Map of Contemporary Chinese Art
16.00 – 17.30

Moderated by Drew Hammond
With: Waling Boers, Marianne Csáky, David Elliott, Christopher Moore, Qiu Anxiong, Andreas Schmid

Session 2 – Social and Political Context:
The Market and the Practice. Where do they come together?
17.30 – 19.00

Moderated by Christopher Moore
With: Chaos Y. Chen, Colin Chinnery, Thomas Eller,
Li Zhenhua, Alexander Ochs


With such a strong focus in Berlin at the moment on contemporary art from China, the aim of this panel is to bring together the curators of the concurrent exhibitions – PANDAMONIUM, and Die 8 der Wege 八种可能路径 The 8 of Paths – together with artists, writers and art historians, for an open discussion of what’s happening now in the art scene in China and why bring it to Berlin. The Panel is followed by a Performance, by Jia, ‘Untitled’, at 7:00 pm and a screening on the Facade of the .CHB from 8:30.

 

A Collaboration with .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin and CAC | Chronus Art Center Shanghai


Session 1 – Geography: Making a Map of Contemporary Chinese Art

 

Session 2 – Social and Political Context: The Market and the Practice. Where do they come together?

 
 

SPEAKERS
 

DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. From 1976 to 1996 he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001), founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007), Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008 – 2010) and Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014), Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London and on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

LI ZHENHUA

Li Zhenhua has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly concerning curation, art creation and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (Switzerland), as well as for The Prix Pictet (Switzerland). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” to be held at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. Li Zhenhua has edited several artists’ publications, including “Yan Lei: What I Like to Do” (Documenta, 2012), “Hu Jieming: One Hundred Years in One Minute” (2010), “Feng Mengbo: Journey to the West” (2010), and “Yang Fudong: Dawn Mist, Separation Faith” (2009). A collection of his art reviews has been published under the title “Text” in 2013. http://www.bjartlab.com | http://www.msgproduction.com


ANDREAS SCHMID

Andreas Schmid is an artist and curator who lives in Berlin. After studying painting and history in Stuttgart, he moved to Beijing to learn Chinese before studying Chinese calligraphy from 1984–1986 at the Zhejiang Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Since then he has been continuously involved in contemporary art in China. Curated events: 1993 CHINA AVANTGARDE, HKW, Berlin, with Hans van Dijk & Jochen Noth, 1997 Contemporary Photo Art from the P.R. China, NBK, Berlin, 2003 Sitting in China, exhibition of Michael Wolf, Kestner-Museum Hanover, 2013, Hidden Images – on the situation of Art in China, 16 panel discussions, lectures, workshops with Chinese & European artists & intellectuals for the UdK Berlin with Bignia Wehrli and “The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing”, 2014, Uferhallen Berlin with Thomas Eller and Guo Xiaoyan. Andreas Schmid himself has been exhibiting and teaching widely in Europe, USA, and Asia.

THOMAS ELLER

Thomas Eller (born 8 September 1964) is a German visual artist and writer. Born and raised in the German district of Franconia he left Nürnberg in 1985 to study fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts. After his expulsion, he studied sciences of religion, philosophy and art history at Free University of Berlin. During this time he was also working as a scientific assistant at the Science Center Berlin for Social Research (WZB). From 1990 he exhibited extensively in European museums and galleries. In 1995 he obtained his greencard and moved to New York. Next he participated in exhibitions in museums and galleries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. In 2004 he moved back to Germany and founded an online arts magazine on the internet platform artnet. As managing director he developed the Chinese business team and was instituting several cooperations e.g. with Art Basel and the Federal German Gallery Association (BVDG). In 2008 he became artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin.


CHRISTOPHER MOORE

Christopher Moore is the publisher of randian 燃点 digital art magazine. From 2008-10 Christopher was the Shanghai correspondent for Saatchi Online. In 2012 Chris co-curated “Forbidden Castle” at Muzeum Montanelli in Prague, an exhibition of Xu Zhen’s pre-MadeIn work, and in April 2014 he curated Yan Pijie “Children of God” at orangelab Berlin. He is also the editor of the first monograph on Xu Zhen, to be published by Distanz Verlag this Spring, with contributions by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Li Zhenhua.

COLIN CHINNERY

Colin Chinnery is an artist and curator based in Beijing. He is currently Artistic Director of the Wuhan Art Terminus (WH.A.T.), a contemporary art institution under development in Wuhan, China; and Director of the Multitude Art Prize, a pan-Asian art award and international conference. He was Director in 2009 and 2010 of ShContemporary Art Fair in Shanghai, and before that, Chinnery was Chief Curator / Deputy Director at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, where he was instrumental in setting up China’s first major contemporary art institution. Between 2003 and 2006, as Arts Manager for the British Council in Beijing, he initiated major projects in experimental theatre, live art, sound art, and visual arts, bringing a wider public into contact with experimental practice. An active artist in his own right, Chinnery co-founded the Complete Art Experience Project (2005-6), an artists’ collective whose works were presented in several important exhibitions in China and United States. Chinnery has also served as artistic advisor to a wide range of institutions and events, ranging from Tate Collections to Norman Foster’s Beijing International Airport.


QIU ANXIONG

Qiu Anxiong was born in 1972 in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied the progressive artistic practice of Ye Yongqing and Zhang Xiaogang. A bar opened by Qiu and his friends became a hub for the blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan, and his colleagues included He Duoling, Zhou Chunya, and Shen Xiaotong. In 2003 he graduated from the University Kassel’s College of Art in Germany after six years of studying both contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture. In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University, and currently lives and works in Shanghai.

MARIANNE CSÁKY

Born in Hungary, Marianne Csaky currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She has spent longer periods of time in Korea, China and the US as a resident artist, exhibiting her work, teaching at universities and holding workshops. She uses various media, ranging from video, sound and photo to drawing, sculpture, embroidery and installation. In addition to classical training in art, she studied multimedia design and video art, and holds an M.A. in cultural anthropology and literature. She is currently working on her PhD thesis “Animated history: the genre of animated documentary in the contemporary visual art”.


ALEXANDER OCHS

Since founding his first gallery in Berlin-Mitte in 1997, Alexander Ochs has focused on the exchange of artistic strategies and works between China and Europe. The list of artists that he has presented with exhibitions and projects is similar to a ‘Who is Who’ of young Chinese Art History: Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobin, Miao Xiaochun, Lu Hao, Yue Minjun, Xu Bing, Yin Xiuzhen, and Tan Ping. In 2004, Alexander Ochs opened the WHITE SPACE BEIJING and through this, became a founding member of the 798 Art District in Beijing. Since 2008, he has published many texts and has been an editor of books and artist monographs in both China and Germany. After a consequential redevelopment of the gallery program between 2010 and today, the gallery now presents artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.

Waling Boers_Photo

WALING BOERS

Waling Boers is a Beijing-based art gallerist and former curator, writer and founding director of BüroFriedrich-Berlin (1996 – 2006). Initiating various curatorial projects, he is one of the most successful programmatic gallerist in recent China. Establishing the non-profit space Universal Studios with Pi Li in 2005, it subsequently metamorphosed into Boers-Li Gallery and is since 2010 situated in Beijing’s well-known gallery district “798” and is continued now under his own direction. A range of contemporary and media non-specific art is represented by Waling Boers, including large-scale installations, video, photography, painting and sculpture. The artists are showed internationally in institutional shows and art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel. The exhibition program includes works by international artists as Zhang Peili, Zhang Wei, Qiu Anxiong, Song Kun and Wang Wei as well as up-coming artist like Yang Xinguang und Fang Lu.


Chen Yang_Photo

CHEN YANG

CHEN Yang / Chaos Y. Chen is the founder and director of WiE KULTUR, an art platform in Berlin for the dialogue and collaboration between Asia and Europe. Prior to this, Chen Yang was the head of the Curatorial Department at the Millennium Art Museum (2003-2004), and worked with The Asia Society, New York (1998-1999), Kunst-Werke Berlin (2002), and collaborate with the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003). Her curatorial practices include Picture from the Surface of the Earth: Wim Wenders (2004), Driving the Sky-line: Frank O. Gehry & his contemporaries (2004), Mexican Modern (2005), etc. Since the end 1990s, she has been frequent contributor for art and cultural columns, i.e. Dushu Monthly, Economic Observer weekly. She is the co-author for two recent books published in Germany, “Wall Journey: Expedition into Divided Worlds” and “Contemporary Artists from China”. She holds a Master’s Degree in Art History and Theory from the Nanjing Academy of Arts. She is the recipient of Luce Scholarship (1998, USA) and RAVE Scholarship (2001, Germany). She served as jury member for CENTRAL Contemporary Art Award (Cologne, Germany, 2004) and REAL Photography Award (Rotterdam, 2008).

DREW HAMMOND

Former Beijing bureau chief and Senior International Correspondent for The Art Economist, Hammond has also held lectureships in Chinese Contemporary Art for Global Architecture History and Theory Program of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design, and has also directed a graduate seminar in Beijing on the Theory of Perspective in Classical Chinese Art for the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also lectured in Mandarin on Contemporary Art at the Graduate Faculty of the China Art Academy in Beijing. Among his publications are texts on Chinese artists such as Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Xu Bing, Li Songsong, Jia, Yuan Gong, and Wang Xingwei.


29/05/2014
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PANDAMONIUM_InsideOut:

 

FENG BINGYI – Undertow (2012)

LU YANG – The Beast (2012)

QIU ANXIONG – Flying South (2006-09)

YANG FUDONG – City Light (2000)

ZHANG DING – Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (2012)

 
 

INTERPIXEL InsideOut:

 

MARIANNE CSÁKY − Delete (2010)

MARCELL ESTERHÁZY − h.l.m. v2.0 (2005)

TAMÁS KOMORÓCZKY − Absolute-absurd (2012)

ANDRÁS RAVASZ − Ball (2005)

JÁNOS SUGÁR − Typewriter of the Illiterate (2001)

DÁVID SZAUDER − Acceptance (2012)

TAMÁS ZÁDOR − Gangsta’Tripin’ (2005)

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE DOSSIER FOR INTERPIXEL

 
 

With such a strong focus in Berlin at the moment on contemporary art from China, the aim of this panel is to bring together the curators of the concurrent exhibitions – PANDAMONIUM, and Die 8 der Wege 八种可能路径 The 8 of Paths – together with artists, writers and art historians, for an open discussion of what’s happening now in the art scene in China and why bring it to Berlin. The Panel is followed by a Performance, by Jia, ‘Untitled’, at 7:00 pm and a screening on the Facade of the .CHB from 8:30.


 

ARTISTS & WORKS

 

FENG BINGIY

Feng Bingyi (b. 1991) is a young rising star in the Chinese art scene. Having studied under Yang Fudong at the China Academy of Fine Arts, she follows in his footsteps with her focus on cinematic traditions, while working with installation, photography, documentary, and animation. She is exhibited in China alongside superstars of contemporary art, but has never been shown in Berlin. Feng Bingyi is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Artist Residency in Berlin.


The Undertow, 2012

In this black and white split-screen video, the earthiness from the movement of mud as bare feet tamper at it and of the texture of a horse’s pelt as it breathes, contrasts with the digitized sound-samples that are laid over the thick blacks and greys of the imagery. In Feng’s reposed, poetic style, The Undertow creates a liminal, ambiguous space, which the viewer is impelled to fill in.

LU YANG

Lu Yang (b. 1984) holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from the New Media Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts, having studied under Zhang Peili. Using 3D animation, video projections, detailed schematics, medical diagrams, supporting text, and music, she has created a brand of BioArt that explores the darker implications of modern science and technology to comment on issues of control in modern society.

The Beast: Tribute to Neon Genesis Evengelion (2012)

Lu Yang’s focus on issues of control leads her to delve into the conundrum whereby human beings cannot escape their physiological realities, yet they use their bodies to create external devices that enable them to break free from their limitations, while at the same time being subject to the controlled of their physical form or illnesses. The Beast is based on the infamous Japanese Manga, Neon Genesis Evangelion. With costumes by Givenchy and music by the New York-based composer and performance artist Du Yun.


QIU ANXIONG

Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972) also co-mingles the classical and contemporary in his animated films, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes. Qiu Anxiong is a friend of and neighbor of Yang Fudong and had exhibited internationally, having studied for 6 years at the Kunsthochschule in Kassel. He will be one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency and will be producing new work for this show.

Flying South, 2006

After working predominantly in oil painting during his studies in Kassel and having later turned to landscape painting in the tradition of the old Chinese masters, Qiu’s return to Shanghai in 2004 marked a shift in interest towards video art. In Flying South (2006), humanity struggles to create its own artificial systems of self-control, proving absurdly counterproductile. Using allegorical imagery to explore the impact of environmental degradation and social change, Qiu offers an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two.

YANG FUDONG

Yang Fudong (b. 1971) is one of China’s best known artists working in film and photography. Having graduated in painting from the China Academy of Fine Arts, since the early 1990s, Yang Fudong has been working with 35mm film, transferred to digital media. Famous for works such series of works as Seven Intellectuals In A Bamboo Forest at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Yang Fudong has exhibited widely internationally. PANDAMONIUM presents the gallery premier of his most recent work.

City Light, 2000

Yang regularly makes use of traditional film genres and City Light is no exception. In a style that references detective- and slapstick-movies, a young, well-dressed office clerk and his doppelgänger move in unison along the street and around the office. Like pre-programmed robots they fit perfectly into their apparently ideally organised environment. The day is entirely dominated by work, but the evening provides space for dreams and creative thinking, causing a schizophrenic situation to arise. In their heroic conduct the two gentlemen sometimes develop into two gangsters who engage in a form of shadowboxing.


ZHANG DING

Zhang Ding (b. 1980) is a rising star of Chinese multimedia art. Having studied under Zhang Peili, Zhang Ding works with large-scale mixed-media installations, incorporating video and interactive components. Zhang explores ethnic tensions, the plight of migrant workers, and the marginal urban culture that lurk in the recesses of Chinese society. He has exhibited internationally at major institutions, but never before in Berlin.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, 2012

The culinary dish called Buddha Jumps over the Wall – a variety of shark fin soup – is regarded as a Chinese delicacy and so much so that it is said to even entice the vegetarian monks from their temples to partake in the meat-based dish, hence its name. In allusion to this dish, Zhang’s video features a group of animal plaster-sculptures that are individually shot at and finally exploded altogether, to shatter into pieces. Accompanied by a magnificent and solemn symphony and filmed by means of a high-speed camera lens that captures every detail, we see bloodlike liquid and shards of debris flying everywhere in a shocking and cruel, though undeniably aesthetic manner.


11/04/2014
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PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL

On the Occasion of Berlin Gallery Weekend

1-4 May 2014

At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

 


The PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL
OPENS MAY 1 at 19:00, Running Until MAY 4

A Collaboration Between CHRONUS ART CENTER Shanghai, MOMENTUM, and .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch and Fanni Magyar

 


OPENING:
1 May at 19:00, Live Performance by Jia 20:00 and InsideOut Screening 20:00
4 May 10:00 – 23:00
 

 

Exhibition Program

1 – 4 May 2014 | Opening 1 May at 19:00

Opening Hours: 2 & 3 May 10:00 – 19:00, 4 May 10:00 – 23:00
 

PANDAMONIUM PREVIEW // INTERPIXEL focuses on the work of Shanghai and Budapest artists who engage in experiments with new media, introducing into Chinese and Hungarian art new creative ideas and aesthetic approaches. This exhibition addresses the first three generations of media artists in China and in Hungary. Starting with pioneers, working since the 1980′s to break new ground with the technologies of media art, to the successes of the next generation, and moving on to their students, who are developing their own visual languages in response and in contrast to their pioneering teachers. The selection of Chinese media works shown here is a Preview of the larger PANDAMONIUM Group Show opening on May 9 at the Kunstquartier Bethanien, presented by CAC | Chronus Art Center Shanghai together with MOMENTUM Berlin.

PANDAMONIUM PREVIEW:

LU YANG | QIU ANXIONG
ZHOU XIAOHU | JIA | XU ZHEN | XU WENKAI
DOUBLE FLY ART CENTER | HU JIEMING
ZHANG PEILI | ZHANG DING

INTERPIXEL – Media Art from Budapest:

ANTIMEDIA | GÁBOR ÁFRÁNY, SZABOLCS TÓTH-Zs. | MARIANNE CSÁKY | MARCELL ESTERHÁZY | ROLAND FARKAS | DÁVID GUTEMA | GUSZTÁV HÁMOS | TIBOR HORVÁTH | TAMÁS KASZÁS | SZABOLCS KISSPÁL | KRISZTIÁN KRISTÓF | TAMÁS KOMORÓCZKY | LÉNA KÚTVÖLGYI | MIKLÓS MÉCS | ANDRÁS RAVASZ | STRASSZ | JÁNOS SUGÁR | ESZTER SZABÓ | PÁL SZACSVAY | DÁVID SZAUDER | JÚLIA VÉCSEI | TAMÁS ZÁDOR

 

 

InsideOut Program:

1 – 4 May 2014 | 20:00 – 24:00

InsideOut is MOMENTUM’s initiative for Video Art in Public Space – Turning The Museum and Gallery Insideout.

PANDAMONIUM_InsideOut:

FENG BINGYI | LU YANG | QIU ANXIONG
YANG FUDONG | ZHANG DING

INTERPIXEL InsideOut:

MARIANNE CSÁKY | MARCELL ESTERHÁZY | TAMÁS KOMORÓCZKY | ANDRÁS RAVASZ
JÁNOS SUGÁR | DÁVID SZAUDER | TAMÁS ZÁDOR
 

 

Symposium

China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai Meets Beijing

4 May 2014 | 16:00 – 19:00

Speakers:

DAVID ELLIOTT and LI ZHENHUA / Curators of PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai

THOMAS ELLER and ANDREAS SCHMID / Curators of Die 8 der Wege: Kunst in Beijing | The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing

CHRISTOPHER MOORE / Publisher of Randian China

COLIN CHINNERY / Artist Director, Wuhan Art Terminus, and Director of Multitude Art Prize

MARIANNE CSÁKY, QIU ANXIONG / Artists

WALING BOERS / Founder & Director, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

CHAOS Y. CHEN, Founder & Director, WiE KULTUR, Berlin

ALEXANDER OCHS/ Founder & Director, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin & Beijing

Moderated by CHRISTOPHER MOORE and DREW HAMMOND, Independent Curator, Writer, Art Historian

 

Session 1 – Geography:
Making a Map of Contemporary Chinese Art
16.00 – 17.30

Moderated by Drew Hammond
With: Waling Boers, Marianne Csáky, David Elliott, Christopher Moore, Qiu Anxiong, Andreas Schmid

Session 2 – Social and Political Context:
The Market and the Practice. Where do they come together?
17.30 – 19.00

Moderated by Christopher Moore
With: Chaos Y. Chen, Colin Chinnery, Thomas Eller,
Li Zhenhua, Alexander Ochs


 

With such a strong focus in Berlin at the moment on contemporary art from China, the aim of this panel is to bring together the curators of the concurrent exhibitions – PANDAMONIUM, and Die 8 der Wege 八种可能路径 The 8 of Paths – together with artists, gallerists, writers and art historians, for an open discussion of what’s happening now in the art scene in China and why bring it to Berlin. The Panel is followed by a Performance, by Jia, ‘Untitled’, at 19:00 pm and a screening on the Facade of the .CHB from 20:00.



 

 

ARTISTS & WORKS:

 

JIA

Jia (b. 1979) is a Berlin-based artist, born in Beijing. Jia’s work reinterprets Chinese paradigms, such as compositional patterns in Chinese calligraphy, and projection systems of the traditional Chinese landscape. This general tension of cultures between the work’s formal and conceptual elements serves a more specific critique of conditions in both China and the West. Most often, the artist chooses an outwardly ‘pretty’ aspect in order to address an atrocious reality. For this exhibition, Jia is premiering a new performance installation.

Untitled, 2014

Untitled (2014) is a combined text installation and performance work in which the installation remains as a discrete work once the performance is finished. The installation comprises two principal elements:
1. The titles of several thousand exhibitions that have taken place in public institutions and private galleries of note, internationally, during the past ten years, and affixed to the walls and ceiling of the exhibition space as though they were constituents of a single sentence, an arrangement that empties them of their original meanings, and makes possible many alternative possible meanings by virtue of their juxtaposition.
2. A podium that holds a book of similar dimensions to a book of Scripture, but which contains a succession of the same titles, together with the dates and the institutions where the exhibitions took place. In the performance phase, the artist enters the installation space and, in solemn tones, reads from the book the titles of the exhibitions contained therein, and then exits the space, converting it thereby to a spatial metonym of the semantic emptying of the titles that the installation imposes.

 

DOUBLE FLY ART CENTER
CVWebsite

Double Fly Art Center is a 9-member art collective which was formed in 2008 after all its members graduated from the New Media Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, having studied under Zhang Peili. Working across media as diverse as performance, video games, music videos, painting, and video art, they remain irreverent and anarchic in their critique of social norms in China, as well as of the international art market. Double Fly Art Center members now live predominantly in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing and work collectively as well as individually. Recent exhibitions of their work include SEE/SAW: COLLECTIVE PRACTICE IN CHINA NOW (2012) and ON | OFF: CHINA’S YOUNG ARTISTS IN CONCEPT AND PRACTICE (2013) at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and a solo-show at the Vanguard Gallery in Shanghai (2012). Their work has never before been shown in Berlin.


Double Fly Save the World, 2012

Faced with the self-assigned task to save the world, Double Fly produces a music-video starring themselves as our global leaders. In the frenzied commotion that is typical of the genre, such figures as Barack Obama and Bin Laden engage in frantic orgies, reminiscent of Silvio Berlusconi’s infamous Bunga Bunga parties, while they indiscriminately intermingle with superheroes and farm-animals (of which a few living specimens also fetter around), all impersonated by Double Fly’s members.

FENG BINGIY
CVWebsite

Feng Bingyi (b. 1991, Ningbo) is a young emerging talent in the Chinese art scene. Having studied under Yang Fudong at the China Academy of Art, she follows in his footsteps with her focus on cinematic traditions, while employing a poetic language. Distancing herself from the chains of external reality, she looks for inspiration within her internal impressions, which she expresses in the forms of installations, photography, documentary and animation. After receiving both the Outstanding Graduation Work Award and the China Academy of Art Scholarship from the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in 2013, Feng continued her studies at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts in London in 2014. Though she has been exhibited in China alongside well-established contemporary artists, she has never before been shown in Berlin. Feng is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency.


The Undertow, 2012

In this black and white split-screen video, the earthiness from the movement of mud as bare feet tamper at it and of the texture of a horse’s pelt as it breathes, contrasts with the digitized sound-samples that are laid over the thick blacks and greys of the imagery. In Feng’s reposed, poetic style, The Undertow creates a liminal, ambiguous space, which the viewer is impelled to fill in.


HU JIEMING
CVWebsite

Hu Jieming (b. 1957, Shanghai) is one of the foremost pioneers of digital media and visual installation art in China, and a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. Hu graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Shanghai Light Industry College in 1984. Since the 1980s he has used emerging technologies to create works which deconstruct time, historical strata and contemporary elements of Chinese culture. One of his main focuses is the simultaneity of the old and the new: a theme that he constantly questions in a variety of media ranging from photography, video works and digital interactive technology in juxtaposition with musical comments. Through his work, Hu strives to reveal the interconnected nature of the digital universe, imagining, as he describes it, “a kind of socialism of the future”. Hu Jieming is one of the founders of CAC | Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, where he will be exhibiting with renowned media artist, Jeffrey Shaw, concurrently with PANDAMONIUM. Recent exhibitions of his work include a solo-show titled Spectacle at the K11 Art Mall, in Shanghai (2014) and two group exhibitions at ShanghART in Beijing, both in 2014.

Outline Only, 2001

The images in Outline Only originally come from the famous postcard series The Sights of China, in which ‘the most attractive historical spots’ of China are featured. Scanned and processed, Hu has created a 9-minute video from this content. In it, the images are ‘played’ as they run sideways across the screen’s drawn-on musical staves. When positioned in the centre of the screen, coloured strokes on the staves trace the outline of the depicted cultural monuments and natural sights, thereby composing the music.

LU YANG
CVWebsite

Lu Yang (b. 1984, Shanghai) holds a Master’s degree from the New Media Department of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, having studied under Zhang Peili. Her experimental multimedia work uses video, 3D animation, scientific drawings, illustrations and installations to address topics related to science and technology, biology, religion and psychology and most notably to comment on issues of control in modern society. Her shocking combinations of grotesque imagery and deadpan instruction-manuals have made her the most controversial young Chinese multimedia artist of her generation. Recent exhibitions include various solo-shows such as the recent KIMOKAWA Cancer Baby at Ren Space in Shanghai (2014), and a group exhibition ASVOFF – A Shaded View on Fashion Film at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2013).


Reanimation! Underwater Zombie Frog Ballet!, 2011
Krafttremor: Parkinsons Disease Orchestra, 2011
The Beast: Tribute to Neon Genesis Evengelion, 2012

Lu’s focus on issues of control leads her to delve into a human conundrum: in view of their inability to escape their physiological realities, her figures use their bodies to create external devices that enable them to break free from their limitations, while at the same time becoming subjected to the control of their physical form or illness. Reanimation! Underwater Zombie Frog Ballet! is a project that started in 2009 and has been consummated as a video work. It takes the form of a music video, showing dead frogs dancing according to the signals produced by a Midi-controller. Krafttremor is a study of bodies controlled by their disease. Shot with Parkinsons patients from all around China, this work is part of a larger project, which includes 5–6 works. It has previously been shown at Meulensteen Gallery in New York and is currently on view as part of Lu’s solo exhibition at Boers Li Gallery in Beijing. Both the video and the music were made by the artist. The Beast is based on the infamous Japanese Manga figure called Neon Genesis Evangelion, with costumes by Givenchy and music by New York based composer and performance artist Du Yun.


QIU ANXIONG
CVWebsite

Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972, Chengdu) was born in the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied under the progressive artistic practice of Ye Yongqing and Zhang Xiaogang. Qiu and his friends collectively founded a bar which became a hub for the blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan, and his colleagues included He Duoling, Zhou Chunya, and Shen Xiaotong. In his animated films, Qiu co-mingles the classical and the contemporary, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes. A friend and neighbor of Yang Fudong, Qiu has exhibited broadly internationally, having studied contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Qiu received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2006 and has exhibited widely, including a recent solo-show, titled Qiu Anxiong, The New Book of Mountains and Seas II at the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, Denmark (2013) and group exhibition ‘Ink Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2013). He is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency, and will be producing new work for this show.

In the Sky (2005)
Flying South (2006)
Minguo Landscape (2006-2007)

PANDAMONIUM will show three of Qiu’s earliest animation works. After working predominantly in oil painting during his studies in Kassel and having later turned to landscape painting in the tradition of the old Chinese masters, Qiu’s return to Shanghai in 2004 marked a shift in interest towards video art. In the Sky (2005) is his first animation work. In it, the dystopian drama of urbanization is visualized as an ink painting on a single canvas, to which Qiu successively added, layer upon layer of ink, growing in tandem with the gradual metamorphosis of the city’s life-forms. In Flying South (2006), humanity struggles to create its own artificial systems of self-control, proving absurdly counterproductive. Minguo Landscape (2006-07), is marked by the same quiet detachment and timelessness as the previous two works, now in a historical exploration of the Chinese Republican period, starting in 1912. Using allegorical imagery to explore the impact of environmental degradation and social change, Qiu offers an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two.

XU WENKAI
CVWebsite

Xu Wenkai (Aaajiao) (b. 1984, Xi’an) is one of China’s foremost media artists, bloggers and free culture developers. Having studied physics and computers, Xu Wenkai is self-taught as an artist and new media entrepreneur. In his works he focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display. In 2003 he established the sound art website cornersound.com and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog We Make Money Not Art: We Need Money Not Art. He is devoted to Processing, an open-source visual programming software, Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds and Eventstructure, an interdisciplinary center for art, media, technology and academic research based in Shanghai and founded by Xu. In his works, Aaajiao focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display and on the processes of transforming content from reality to data and back again. His most significant contribution to the field of new media in China is a social one, as he act a as a vector for the interpretation and communication of international and local trends in the artistic use of software. Recent exhibitions include his solo-show titled The Screen generation, at C Space (2013) and chi K11 Art Space in Shanghai and at 9m2 Museum in Beijing (2014) and group-exhibition TRANSCIENCE – INTRACTABLE OBJECTS at Taikang Space in Beijing (2014). Xu is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency.

Hard, 2013

Sampling science-fiction author Isaac Asimov’s explanation of The Three Laws of Robotics (originally published in his 1942 short story Runaround), Xu applies profanity delay – a digital delay technique often used for live broadcasts to prevent unwanted profanity – to destroy or recycle the footage. The resulting inconsistencies in Asimov’s robot-theory are thereby generated through technological interferences.


XU ZHEN
CVWebsite

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, Shanghai) is a trans-medial conceptual artist based in Shanghai. Incorporating painting, installation, video, photography performance and even extending into curatorial practice, Xu’s work satirizes, exposes and reworks dominant rhetoric of the contemporary art-world. Currently working under his company name MadeIn Inc, a self-declared ‘multi-functional art company’, he appropriates the art-as-brand discourse to criticize it from within. A jester at heart, he plays on authorial conventions and expectations, creating pseudo-fictions replete with cultural clichés, wittingly challenging the pervasive longing for clearly delineated so-called cultural authenticity. An irreverent artist with a unique ability to produce work across multiple platforms and media, Xu Zhen is the key figure of the Shanghai art scene and a foundational figure for the generations of Chinese artists born since 1970. Xu’s practice reflects the lingering concerns of an artist participating in the international art world while remaining deeply sceptical of it and its conventions, most immediately the label ‘Chinese contemporary art’. Working in his own name since the late 1990s, Xu Zhen is now producing new works under MadeIn Company’s newly launched brand ‘Xu Zhen’. Recent major exhibitions include his retrospective, Xu Zhen: A MadeIn Company Production, at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2014) and his Commissioned Artist exhibition at the Armory Show in New York (2014).

Shouting, 1998

Moving crowds go about their regular and routinized business of commuting until suddenly startled by distressing screams behind them. They all turn their heads simultaneously to determine the cause of the cries, thereby engendering both a synchronized movement that is atypical of such street-scenes, as well as laughter from whoever is behind the camera.

YANG FUDONG
CVWebsite

Yang Fudong (b. 1971, Beijing) is considered to be one of China’s most well-known cinematographer and photographer and one of the brightest young stars in China and the greatest film writer ever to come out of China. When creating his narrative films, he portrays that anything is possible, including fantasies and dreams. There are different themes surrounding Yang’s films, but they all have a purpose, theological or literal. He is considered one of the deepest cinematographers in the world because of the time and passions he puts into each of his works. Yang Fudong’s most popular works include: Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forrest, The Fifth Night, the 17th Biennale of Sydney, East of Que Village, An Estranged Paradise, Backyard- Hey! Sun is Rising, and No Snow on the Broken Bridge. Yang continues to live and work on his films in Shanghai. As a successful filmmaker he is constantly traveling around, attending his premiers and other prestigious international art events. There are viewings of his movies in Europe, North America, and Asia. Yang Fudong does not show much interest in showing a strong political interest in his films, there are slight implications of his opinions but mostly he focuses on the interactions between different individuals.

City Light, 2000

Yang regularly makes use of traditional film genres and City Light is no exception. In a style that references detective- and slapstick-movies, a young, well-dressed office clerk and his doppelgänger move in unison along the street and around the office. Like pre-programmed robots they fit perfectly into their apparently ideally organised environment. The day is entirely dominated by work, but the evening provides space for dreams and creative thinking, causing a schizophrenic situation to arise. In their heroic conduct the two gentlemen sometimes develop into two gangsters who engage in a form of shadowboxing.


ZHANG DING
CVWebsite

Zhang Ding (b. 1980, Gansu) is a rising star of Chinese multimedia art. He first studied at the North West Minority University in the Oil Painting Department and went on to study under Zhang Peili in the New Media Arts Department at the China Academy of Fine Arts. Zhang works with large-scale mixed-media installations, incorporating video, performance and interactive components. He is influenced by the fantastical style of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini and explores ethnic tensions, the plight of migrant workers, and the marginal urban cultures that lurk in the recesses of Chinese society. He has exhibited internationally at major institutions and has had international solo shows including Orbit at The Armony Show, Focus Section, in New York (2014) and Gold and Silver at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna (2013), but has never before been shown in Berlin.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, 2012

The culinary dish called Buddha Jumps over the Wall – a variety of shark fin soup – is regarded as a Chinese delicacy and so much so that it is said to even entice the vegetarian monks from their temples to partake in the meat-based dish, hence its name. In allusion to this dish, Zhang’s video features a group of animal plaster-sculptures that are individually shot at and finally exploded altogether, to shatter into pieces. Accompanied by a magnificent and solemn symphony and filmed by means of a high-speed camera lens that captures every detail, we see bloodlike liquid and shards of debris flying everywhere in a shocking and cruel, though undeniably aesthetic manner.

ZHANG PEILI
CVWebsite

Zhang Peili (b. 1957, Hangzhou) is the dean of the New Media Department at the China Academy of Fine Arts and is widely considered to be the ‘father of video art in China’. Indeed it is no coincidence that he has taught many of the younger artists in this show. PANDAMONIUM revisits his classic work, Hygiene #3, first shown in Berlin in 1993 in ‘China Avant-Garde’ at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. 20 years later, MOMENTUM re-presents this work in the context of the younger generation of artists that has been influenced by Zhang’s groundbreaking practice. Hygiene #3 was the first Chinese installation-work to be acquired by MoMA, New York and is also included in the collection of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Zhang’s work has recently been shown in a solo-exhibition at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York (1999), as well as in notable group-shows such as China Now at MoMA, New York (2004) and Beyond Boundaries at the Shanghai Gallery of Art (2004).

Document on Hygiene No.3, 1991

This video was recorded in a classroom at Hangzhou University of Art and Design with art teacher Li Jian as the cameraman. It captures a person bathing a live chicken with soap and water for 150 minutes until the video tape runs out, at which point the chicken is covered in a thick, soapy fleece. The video was edited down to 24 minutes 45 seconds and the sound was removed.


ZHOU XIAOHU

CV – Website

Zhou Xiaohu (b. 1960, Changzhou) is a pioneer of video animation in China and one of the first artists to work sculpturally with this medium. Although originally trained as an oil painter, he began using computers as an artistic tool in 1997. He is a great-nephew of Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People’s Republic, who is said to have had a predictive eye by remarking that “this kid’s going to lead everyone astray”, when Zhou was aged only five. As one of China’s most well-known most prolific contemporary artists, he specializes in inducing confusion and bafflement, making viewers question the evidence of their senses and their assumptions about the so-called ‘facts’. He has since experimented with stop-frame video animation, video installation and computer-gaming software, whereby the interlayering of images between moving pictures and real objects has become his signature style. Working across performance, photography, installation, sculpture, video, and animation, Zhou’s practice reflects the documentation of history in a digital age, where particular details become privileged, fabricated, altered, and/or omitted. Zhou’s recent shows include his participation in Tate Liverpool’s The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China (2007) and solo-exhibitions at Long March Space in Beijing (2009-10) and at BizArt Center in Shanghai.

Beautiful Cloud, 2001

Beautiful Cloud shows masses of disturbing puppet-like cloned babies, who collectively watch found footage of the most famous cruelties of the human race on the big screen and see the atomic mushroom as ‘a beautiful cloud’. They all jointly swing to the tune of Zuoxiao Zuzhou’s song, whose starting lines can be translated as: “Put your 3-pin plug into your mouth, my darling, you can find my heartbeat is accelerating”.

 
 

Symposium

China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai Meets Beijing

4 May 2014: 16:00 – 19:00

Speakers:

DAVID ELLIOTT and LI ZHENHUA / Curators of PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai

THOMAS ELLER and ANDREAS SCHMID / Curators of Die 8 der Wege: Kunst in Beijing | The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing

CHRISTOPHER MOORE / Publisher of Randian China

COLIN CHINNERY / Artist Director, Wuhan Art Terminus, and Director of Multitude Art Prize

MARIANNE CSÁKY, QIU ANXIONG / Artists

WALING BOERS / Founder & Director, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

CHAOS Y. CHEN, Founder & Director, WiE KULTUR, Berlin

ALEXANDER OCHS/ Founder & Director, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin & Beijing

Moderated by CHRISTOPHER MOORE and DREW HAMMOND, Independent Curator, Writer, Art Historian

 

Session 1 – Geography:
Making a Map of Contemporary Chinese Art
16.00 – 17.30

Moderated by Drew Hammond
With: Waling Boers, Marianne Csáky, David Elliott, Christopher Moore, Qiu Anxiong, Andreas Schmid

Session 2 – Social and Political Context:
The Market and the Practice. Where do they come together?
17.30 – 19.00

Moderated by Christopher Moore
With: Chaos Y. Chen, Colin Chinnery, Thomas Eller,
Li Zhenhua, Alexander Ochs


 

With such a strong focus in Berlin at the moment on contemporary art from China, the aim of this panel is to bring together the curators of the concurrent exhibitions – PANDAMONIUM, and Die 8 der Wege 八种可能路径 The 8 of Paths – together with artists, writers and art historians, for an open discussion of what’s happening now in the art scene in China and why bring it to Berlin. The Panel is followed by a Performance, by Jia, ‘Untitled’, at 7:00 pm and a screening on the Facade of the .CHB from 8:30.

 

DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. From 1976 to 1996 he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001), founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007), Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008 – 2010) and Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014), Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London and on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

LI ZHENHUA

Li Zhenhua has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly concerning curation, art creation and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (Switzerland), as well as for The Prix Pictet (Switzerland). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” to be held at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. Li Zhenhua has edited several artists’ publications, including “Yan Lei: What I Like to Do” (Documenta, 2012), “Hu Jieming: One Hundred Years in One Minute” (2010), “Feng Mengbo: Journey to the West” (2010), and “Yang Fudong: Dawn Mist, Separation Faith” (2009). A collection of his art reviews has been published under the title “Text” in 2013. http://www.bjartlab.com | http://www.msgproduction.com


ANDREAS SCHMID

Andreas Schmid is an artist and curator who lives in Berlin. After studying painting and history in Stuttgart, he moved to Beijing to learn Chinese before studying Chinese calligraphy from 1984–1986 at the Zhejiang Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Since then he has been continuously involved in contemporary art in China. Curated events: 1993 CHINA AVANTGARDE, HKW, Berlin, with Hans van Dijk & Jochen Noth, 1997 Contemporary Photo Art from the P.R. China, NBK, Berlin, 2003 Sitting in China, exhibition of Michael Wolf, Kestner-Museum Hanover, 2013, Hidden Images – on the situation of Art in China, 16 panel discussions, lectures, workshops with Chinese & European artists & intellectuals for the UdK Berlin with Bignia Wehrli and “The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing”, 2014, Uferhallen Berlin with Thomas Eller and Guo Xiaoyan. Andreas Schmid himself has been exhibiting and teaching widely in Europe, USA, and Asia.

THOMAS ELLER

Thomas Eller (born 8 September 1964) is a German visual artist and writer. Born and raised in the German district of Franconia he left Nürnberg in 1985 to study fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts. After his expulsion, he studied sciences of religion, philosophy and art history at Free University of Berlin. During this time he was also working as a scientific assistant at the Science Center Berlin for Social Research (WZB). From 1990 he exhibited extensively in European museums and galleries. In 1995 he obtained his greencard and moved to New York. Next he participated in exhibitions in museums and galleries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. In 2004 he moved back to Germany and founded an online arts magazine on the internet platform artnet. As managing director he developed the Chinese business team and was instituting several cooperations e.g. with Art Basel and the Federal German Gallery Association (BVDG). In 2008 he became artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin.


CHRISTOPHER MOORE

Christopher Moore is the publisher of randian 燃点 digital art magazine. From 2008-10 Christopher was the Shanghai correspondent for Saatchi Online. In 2012 Chris co-curated “Forbidden Castle” at Muzeum Montanelli in Prague, an exhibition of Xu Zhen’s pre-MadeIn work, and in April 2014 he curated Yan Pijie “Children of God” at orangelab Berlin. He is also the editor of the first monograph on Xu Zhen, to be published by Distanz Verlag this Spring, with contributions by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Li Zhenhua.

COLIN CHINNERY

Colin Chinnery is an artist and curator based in Beijing. He is currently Artistic Director of the Wuhan Art Terminus (WH.A.T.), a contemporary art institution under development in Wuhan, China; and Director of the Multitude Art Prize, a pan-Asian art award and international conference. He was Director in 2009 and 2010 of ShContemporary Art Fair in Shanghai, and before that, Chinnery was Chief Curator / Deputy Director at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, where he was instrumental in setting up China’s first major contemporary art institution. Between 2003 and 2006, as Arts Manager for the British Council in Beijing, he initiated major projects in experimental theatre, live art, sound art, and visual arts, bringing a wider public into contact with experimental practice. An active artist in his own right, Chinnery co-founded the Complete Art Experience Project (2005-6), an artists’ collective whose works were presented in several important exhibitions in China and United States. Chinnery has also served as artistic advisor to a wide range of institutions and events, ranging from Tate Collections to Norman Foster’s Beijing International Airport.


QIU ANXIONG

Qiu Anxiong was born in 1972 in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied the progressive artistic practice of Ye Yongqing and Zhang Xiaogang. A bar opened by Qiu and his friends became a hub for the blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan, and his colleagues included He Duoling, Zhou Chunya, and Shen Xiaotong. In 2003 he graduated from the University Kassel’s College of Art in Germany after six years of studying both contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture. In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University, and currently lives and works in Shanghai.

MARIANNE CSÁKY

Born in Hungary, Marianne Csaky currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She has spent longer periods of time in Korea, China and the US as a resident artist, exhibiting her work, teaching at universities and holding workshops. She uses various media, ranging from video, sound and photo to drawing, sculpture, embroidery and installation. In addition to classical training in art, she studied multimedia design and video art, and holds an M.A. in cultural anthropology and literature. She is currently working on her PhD thesis “Animated history: the genre of animated documentary in the contemporary visual art”.


ALEXANDER OCHS

Since founding his first gallery in Berlin-Mitte in 1997, Alexander Ochs has focused on the exchange of artistic strategies and works between China and Europe. The list of artists that he has presented with exhibitions and projects is similar to a ‘Who is Who’ of young Chinese Art History: Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobin, Miao Xiaochun, Lu Hao, Yue Minjun, Xu Bing, Yin Xiuzhen, and Tan Ping. In 2004, Alexander Ochs opened the WHITE SPACE BEIJING and through this, became a founding member of the 798 Art District in Beijing. Since 2008, he has published many texts and has been an editor of books and artist monographs in both China and Germany. After a consequential redevelopment of the gallery program between 2010 and today, the gallery now presents artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.

WALING BOERS

Waling Boers is a Beijing-based art gallerist and former curator, writer and founding director of BüroFriedrich-Berlin (1996 – 2006). Initiating various curatorial projects, he is one of the most successful programmatic gallerist in recent China. Establishing the non-profit space Universal Studios with Pi Li in 2005, it subsequently metamorphosed into Boers-Li Gallery and is since 2010 situated in Beijing’s well-known gallery district “798” and is continued now under his own direction. A range of contemporary and media non-specific art is represented by Waling Boers, including large-scale installations, video, photography, painting and sculpture. The artists are showed internationally in institutional shows and art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel. The exhibition program includes works by international artists as Zhang Peili, Zhang Wei, Qiu Anxiong, Song Kun and Wang Wei as well as up-coming artist like Yang Xinguang und Fang Lu.


Chen Yang_Photo

CHEN YANG

CHEN Yang / Chaos Y. Chen is the founder and director of WiE KULTUR, an art platform in Berlin for the dialogue and collaboration between Asia and Europe. Prior to this, Chen Yang was the head of the Curatorial Department at the Millennium Art Museum (2003-2004), and worked with The Asia Society, New York (1998-1999), Kunst-Werke Berlin (2002), and collaborate with the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003). Her curatorial practices include Picture from the Surface of the Earth: Wim Wenders (2004), Driving the Sky-line: Frank O. Gehry & his contemporaries (2004), Mexican Modern (2005), etc. Since the end 1990s, she has been frequent contributor for art and cultural columns, i.e. Dushu Monthly, Economic Observer weekly. She is the co-author for two recent books published in Germany, “Wall Journey: Expedition into Divided Worlds” and “Contemporary Artists from China”. She holds a Master’s Degree in Art History and Theory from the Nanjing Academy of Arts. She is the recipient of Luce Scholarship (1998, USA) and RAVE Scholarship (2001, Germany). She served as jury member for CENTRAL Contemporary Art Award (Cologne, Germany, 2004) and REAL Photography Award (Rotterdam, 2008).

DREW HAMMOND

Former Beijing bureau chief and Senior International Correspondent for The Art Economist, Hammond has also held lectureships in Chinese Contemporary Art for Global Architecture History and Theory Program of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design, and has also directed a graduate seminar in Beijing on the Theory of Perspective in Classical Chinese Art for the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also lectured in Mandarin on Contemporary Art at the Graduate Faculty of the China Art Academy in Beijing. Among his publications are texts on Chinese artists such as Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Xu Bing, Li Songsong, Jia, Yuan Gong, and Wang Xingwei.


PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL Video Presentation:

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/96304050 [/fve]

 

PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL Opening Video

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/96304049 [/fve]

 

Untitled by Jia

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/96795695 [/fve]

 

Symposium Session 1 Video:

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/97646692 [/fve]

 

Symposium Session 2 Video:

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/97683571 [/fve]

 

Lecture The Market is an Illusion by Li Zhenhua, PANDAMONIUM Co-Curator:

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/94077062 [/fve]

 

PANDAMONIUM Gallery Weekend Preview at .CHB Photo Gallery:

12/07/2013
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Mass and Mess

 
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Our partner locations: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (left) / Polmozbyt, pl. Orła Białego – TRAFO (right)

 

MASS AND MESS

 

Curated by David Szauder

 

Featuring:

David Mozny, Eva Magyarosi, Dyorgy Kovasznai, Istvan Horkay, Bart Hess, Adam Magyar

 

Vernissage:
14 APRIL 2013

Collegium Hungaricum, Museum Island, Berlin
Uslu Airlines, Rosenthalerplatz, Berlin
TRAFO | Baltic Contemporary at Odra Zoo, Polmozbyt, pl. Orła Białego – 10, Szczecin, Poland

 

Program:
14 APRIL – 30 MAY 2013

 

Panel Discussion:

On How to Collect and Display Video Art

With Prof. Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath (Director Fine Arts, Akademie der Künste), Candice Breitz (Artist, Professor, Braunschweig University), Christian Jankowski (Artist, Professor, Akademie der Bildende Künste, Stuttgart), Ivo Wessel (Collector, Founder, Videoart at Midnight), Sylvain Levy (Collector, Founder, dslcollection), Elizabeth Markevitch (Founder, CEO, Ikono TV), moderated by Thomas Eller (curator/artist/writer)

PLACE: Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstr. 12, 10117 Berlin

DATE: 28 APRIL 2013 AT 4:00PM

More info here about the panel discussion –

 


 

MOMENTUM is proud to announce our collaboration with the Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin) and TRAFO (the new Kunsthalle in Szczecin, Poland) to mark our first international SKY SCREEN program.

MOMENTUM’s first internationally hosted SKY SCREEN program takes to the streets on April 14th, screening in 3 locations simultaneously. SKY SCREEN turns its hosts into an ever-changing canvas for contemporary art, bringing video art out of darkened galleries and onto the streets for everyone to see.

In Berlin, SKY SCREEN will be at our usual location overlooking Rosenthaler Platz, as well as on the media-facade of the Collegium Hungaricum on Museum Island. In Szczecin, SKY SCREEN overlooks the National Art School in an artist-run project space. This SKY SCREEN program is curated by David Szauder, focusing on Hungarian animation and media art, and will open in conjunction with the first TRAFO exhibition in Szczecin and with Gallery Weekend in Berlin.

Video art is still a daunting media for most collectors and art lovers. MOMENTUM and CHB will open up a discussion on the topic of why collecting video art is still intimidating, and why the commercial value of time-based media has not measured up to its institutional prominence. Aiming to address how video can be effectively collected and shown in a diversity of groundbreaking ways, MOMENTUM invites a panel of prominent international collectors, curators, and gallerists. MOMENTUM is a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin. Through our program of Exhibitions, Kunst Salons, and Public Video Art Initiatives, we are dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists working with time-based practices. This discussion is accompanying our Sky Screen program for Video Art in Public Spaces, concurrently screening at MOMENTUM, CHB, and TRAFO Szczecin.



 

MASS AND MESS features work by:

 

David MoznyRahova
2009, 7:39 min

Eva MagyarosiInvisible Drawings
2012, 13:20 min


György KovásznaiMonolog
1963, 13 min

Istvan Horkay – Covert Action
2013, 4:41 min


Bart HessGrow on You
2010, 1:14 min

Adam MagyarTokyo Stainless
2010, 8 min



 

Curated by David Szauder

MASS AND MESS is to be considered as a reflection on politics, history and society through a kind of selfexamination. The starting point is the video of David Mozny (Rahova), a really well structured and symbolical deconstruction of our architectural environment: the mass is falling into pieces creating new units, individual pieces. The next is of Eva Magyarosi’s work, attempting to arrange these pieces as a reflection of the inner world of the artist, a gesture to face her grandfather’s past, but the arrangement itself is generated by the history. György Kovásznai’s piece is somewhere between the outer play, the history and the inner play of the individual, being a cynical handling of the story of the 20th century. István Horkay’s Covert action, set up especially for skyscreen program, however, is a simple gesture to put “everything on the table” as they are given by the past. By his humour a positive taste of the past is offered. Horkay’s video can be considered as the acme of the “mass” as from that point the examination is a virtual return back to the inner world, represented by Bart Hess’s video. His blue sticks are not removable, as they are temporary or constant grooving in his skin. Bart Hess’s video is also a return to the human body, or to the state of mass. The last piece is more like a vision of the society form outside by Ádám Magyar representing everyday people in everyday situations. Faces, complexions, visages: segments of our society. (David Szauder)

David Szauder was born in 1976 in Hungary and attended Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest and studied Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest in 2004. Szauder received a scholarship to the TAIK School of Arts, Design and Architecture – Aalto Univeristy, Helsinki, where he focused on environmental studies and media design. Szauder then moved to Berlin and works for the Collegium Hungaricum as a media artist and curator. In 2012, Szauder founded a cultural association – Culture Democracy CUD e.V.

 

__________________________

 

Also showing in Szczecin

 

SKYSCREEN

 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

AES+F, Jiang Zhi, Cao Fei, Sumugan Sivanesan, MAP Office

Time:
8:00 PM until midnight, weekdays
8:00 PM – 2:00 AM. weekends
 

ALSO ON DISPLAY IN

COLLEGIUM HUNGARICUM BERLIN

ON THE SUNDAY OF GALLERY WEEKEND, APRIL 28th

 

MORE INFO ON THE ARTIST AND WORKS HERE >

 

AES+F
King of the Forest, KFNY

2003, Video, 11:01 min

AES+F
King of the Forest, Le Roi des Aulnes

2001, Video, 9:07 min


Jiang Zhi
Post Pause

2004, Video, 10 mins
Courtesy of the dslcollection

Cao Fei
Rabid Dogs

2002, Video, 8 min
Courtesy of the dslcollection


Sumugan Sivanesan
A Children’s Book of War

2010, Video animation with an accompanying text

MAP Office
Runscape

2010, Video, 24:18 min



 

__________________________

 

The Collegium Hungaricum, founded in 1924, is a prominent multidisciplinary cultural institution dedicated to the exploration of art, science, technology and lifestyle in Berlin. The mission of the CHB is to actively stimulate discourse pertaining to current issues, ideas and concepts, in order to further enrich the dialogue surrounding the European cultural experience while simultaneously disseminating Hungarian culture through various events.

The institute has been operating since the Second World War and is regarded as leading a wide array of programming including concerts, literary events, book fairs, photo exhibitions, film screenings, festivals, art exhibitions, technical installations, symposiums, workshops, panel discussions while also hosting an in house public library with over 9000 individual pieces of varying media. The Neubau CHB is a five floor cubist building designed by Schweger Architects in 2007 with a focus on harmonizing trends in Hungarian and German modern design. The structure acts as a highly flexible media facade of which the possibilities for artistic interaction remain limitless.

The Collegium Hungaricum is a part of the Balassi Institute for the promotion of Hungarian culture and also acts as host to the Moholy-Nagy Galerie.
 

uslu Airlines

uslu airlines is a Berlin based luxury cosmetics brand created by Türkish makeup artist Feride Uslu and German entrepreneurial master mind Jan Mihm in 2003. Uslu Airlines offers over products in 180 locations in over 170 countries and has hosted MOMENTUM’s SKY SCREEN at their HQ in Rosenthalerplatz, Berlin since April, 2012.

TRAFO/Baltic Contemporary

Baltic Contemporary is a newly founded centre for Contemporary Art, located in Szczecin, with the mission to link Szczecin with cultural institutions in the Baltic region and beyond, while hosting its own programme of contemporary art. TRAFO is the Kunsthalle associated with this initiative, which will open in August 2013.

TRAFO – Trafostacja Sztuki – is the new center for contemporary art in Szczecin.

TRAFO sets a new creative space of unrestrained activity and interdisciplinary experimentation.

TRAFO, using its cross-border location within the Baltic Sea region and the immediate vicinity to Berlin, becomes a transregional, international exhibition space.

TRAFO is a unique “display window,” through which it communicates its artistic appearance with the world, and through which the world can co-create the artistic appearance of Szczecin.

TRAFO supports the development of contemporary art on many different levels by organizing not only exhibition activities, but also art education, publishing, international collaboration and artistic exchange under Artist-in-Residence program.

TRAFO will provide visitors with a brand new, exceptional exhibition space in the now restored historic building in ul. Świętego Ducha in Szczecin.


14/06/2012
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Press

 
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PRESS



 

A Magazine

‘Cassandra Bird – Curator’ – on Momentum

 

Allevents

Missing Link

Sky Screen 

 

AQNB

‘Berlin Art Week Reviewed’ – including ‘Thresholds’ exhibition.
 

Artconnect Berlin

Panel discussion: on how to collect and exhibit video art

 

Arte Creative

Lost and Found: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

 

Artinasia.com

Pandamonium – Media Art from Shanghai

 

Artinfo24

Runscape

 

Artipool.net

Missing Link

The best of times, the worst of times

 

Artslant

Missing Link

Runscape

The Anticolonials

 

Asia Art Archive

Press Play

 

Berlin Art Journal

Interview with Momentum directors

 

Berlin Art Link

A Wake

Demonstrate!

on Salons

Sky Screen

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Month of Performance Art – Berlin

MOMENTUM: A gallery of galleries
 

Berlin Online

Demonstrate!

 

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Berliner Kurier

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The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

 

Collegium Hungaricum

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Mass and Mess

Pandamonium

The Way: Majka from the Movie

 

VIDEOKUNST Thresholds

 

Lynx Contemporary

The Way: Majka from the Movie

 

Contemporary Performance Network

Works on Paper

 

Der Tagesspiegal

The Way: Majka from the Movie

 

Deutsches Arkitektur Zentrum

Runscape

 

DSL Collection

Press Play

 

Estherka

Works on Paper Performances

Works on Paper: 7 Drawings, 28 Kisses

 

Exberliner.com

Panel discussion: “How to Collect and Show Video Art”

 

Eyes on the Dove

A Wake

 
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About Face

Lost and Found: do not go gentle into that good night

Sanatorium Exhibition Opening

Traveling Souls

 

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The Way: Majka from the Movie

 

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Berlin Art Week 2012

 

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A Wake

 

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Momentum – Rachel Rits-Volloch & Cassandra Bird

on Momentum

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Fragments of Empires preview (chineese)

 

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Sky Screen

 

Month of Performance Art

Berlin Celebrates Performance Art!

Works on Paper (full programme)

Works on Paper

Images from Works on Paper

 

Musraramixfest.org.il

ABOUT FACE
 

MusraraMix festival – Travelling souls
 

Nachstettin.com
Tresholds

 

Omnibus Revue

Berlin Art Week

 

Page Online

Sky Screen (D)

 

Pinvents

Works on Paper

 

Platoon Cultural Development

Sky Screen

 

Polnisches Institut Berlin

Das Künstler-Austausch-Projekt: Sanatorium / Momentum und Natalia Szostak und Aurelia Novak (DE)

 

Polynoid

A Wake: Still lives and moving images

 

REH Kunst

Out of the black

 

Salt

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

 

Shanghai Daily

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times Revisited at CAC

 

Silicon Allee

Sky Screen 

 

Sleek Magazine

Le Salon!

 

Slowtravelberlin.com

Works on Paper

 
Streaming Museum

Sky Screen

 

Styleproofed

Sky Screen (D)

 

Sugarhigh

Sky Screen (D & E)

 

Taz.de

Ab-surdus!

Ab-surdus! – Alles dreht sich, oder: Fliegen schlafen nicht

Demonstrate!

Fragments of Empires

 

The Art Newspaper China

Fragments of Empires preview (chineese)

Fragments of Empires review (chineese)

 

The Szczecinianin

Sky Screen Szczecin

 

Tip Berlin

Berlin Art Week

 

Trafo

How to Collect Video Art

Thresholds

 

TV Berlin

Traveling Souls

 

USLU Airlines

Sky Screen

 

Viralmecmua

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times (PL)

 

Was geht heute ab in Berlin

Ab-surdus!

Form As Being

 

Wherevent.com

About Face

Missing Link

Sky Screen

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times Revisited

 

Wilsonwilliamsgallery.com

About Face

 

Wszczecinie

Sky Screen

 

Zitty

Thresholds

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Fragments of Empires

 

Blogs

24trentedeux.com – Thresholds

Behindthescenesofjimmysartcave.blogspot.de – About Face

Behindthescenesofjimmysartcave.blogspot.de – About Face

Broughtonbirnie.co.uk.blog – About Face

Katie Diamond Hamer – A Wake

Lafraise – Sky Screen

Mathilde ter Heijne – Panel Discussion: Curating performance art, where does theatre end and art begin

Moj Mokotow – The Way: Majka from the Movie (PL)

Rachel Marsden – DSL Collection

Sumugan Sivanesan – The Anticolonials

 
Axel Daniel Reinert

Ab-surdus!

Awake

Lost and Found: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Missing Link

Sanatorium

Works on Paper

 
Zuzanna Janin

MOMENTUM at Berlin Art Week

The Way


18/03/2012
Comments Off on Past

Past

 
Back to Homepage
 


 

PAST EXHIBITIONS

 


You Know That You Are Human

At The Countless Cities Biennial III
Farm Cultural Park, Favara & Mazzarino
24 June 2023 – 28 January 2024

TRUTHTRUSTTREES

At Verwalterhaus
The Old Cemetery St. Marien – St. Nicolai, Berlin
28 July – 6 August 2023

In weiter Ferne, so Nah!
Far Away, So Close: Mexico in Berlin

At the Cultural Institute of Mexico in Germany
Embassy of Mexico, Berlin
6 July – 23 August 2023


 


You Know That You Are Human
& MOMENTUM Collection

At Kultursymposium Weimar
Galerie EIGENHEIM Weimar
11 May – 10 June 2023

You Know That You Are Human
& Vadim Sidur

At THE Gallery, Mürsbach
2 – 30 April 2023

ART from ELSEWHERE:
Mexico City

At LAGOS, Mexico City
2 February – 2 March 2023


 


You Know That You Are Human
@ Points of Resistance V

At Zionskirche, Berlin
3 December 2022 – 8 January 2023

ART from ELSEWHERE:
Danube Dialogues

European Capital of Culture 2022 Novi Sad, Serbia
19 August – 15 September 2022

POINTS OF RESISTANCE IV:
Skills for Peace

At Zionskirche, Berlin
8 April – 1 May 2022


 


STATES of EMERGENCY

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
11 December 2021 – 27 March 2022

PARALLEL WORLDS
ART from ELSEWHERE: Samarkand

At Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art
Samarkand, Uzbekistan
18 October – 16 November 2021


 


TAKING FLIGHT
Birds & Bicycles Berlin

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
4 September – 14 November 2021

ART from ELSEWHERE:
Seoul Selection

Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival, South Korea
19 – 27 August 2021

HOMELAND in TRANSIT:
Through the Clouds

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
11 JULY – 25 July 2021


 


ART from ELSEWHERE

At Kulturforum Ansbach, Ansbach, Germany
11 June – 25 July 2021

POINTS OF RESISTANCE

At Zionskirche, Berlin
4 April – 26 April 2021

COVIDecameron

Online on IkonoTV
From 4 February 2021


 


HOMELAND IN TRANSIT

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
1 October – 29 November 2020

ELYSIUM & BEYOND ELYSIUM

At Positions Berlin Art Fair
& Gallery Kleiner von Wiese
10 September – 14 October 2020

mutopia 5
By Claudia Chaseling

At the Australian Embassy, Berlin
30 June – 30 October 2020


 


LIGHT SPACE MODULATOR
By David Szauder

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
5 June – 27 September 2020

POLIS
By Alterazioni Video

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
24 – 26 January 2020


 


SHIRYAEVO BIENNALE
Central Russian Zen

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
27 October – 1 December 2019

BONUM ET MALUM

At KleinervonWiese, Villa Erxleben, Berlin
8 September 2019 – 12 January 2020

WATER(PROOF)

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
& Steinplatz, Berlin
26 August – 20 September 2019


 


PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Video Art in Latin America

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
19 – 28 July 2019
FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN
Bread & Roses

At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien
26 September – 20 October 2018

FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN
Artist Residency Exhibition

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
26 September – 20 October 2018


 


FÜR BABETTE
Petition and Video Art Night

At Bar Babette, Berlin
8 March 2018

STATION PARADOX

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
27 January – 11 March 2018

FUTURE LIFE HANDBOOK

At Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art
Guangzhou, China
17 December 2017 – 7 May 2018


 


DOWN UNDER

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
9 – 22 December 2017

THE PAST IS SINGING
IN OUR TEETH

At Projektraum, Kunstquartier Bethanien
9 – 22 December 2017


 


THE HOLE WITHIN THE WHOLE
An interdisciplinary exhibition
by Hobart Hughes

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
8 September – 8 October 2017

FLESH ON FLESH

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
7 July – 6 August 2017

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE TIME
A Novel You Walk Through

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
27 May – 25 June 2017


 


IN PROCESS
Amir Fattal & Clark Beaumont

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
21 April – 21 May 2017

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

At Buchenwald Memorial
20 – 24 January 2017
At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
27 – 29 January 2017

ART NOMADS:
Made in the Emirates

At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien
9 – 22 December 2016


 


NATURAL HABITATS
MOMENTUM COLLECTION Carte Blanche

On IkonoTV
1 – 30 November 2016

LOVE, ACTUALLY…

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
8 October – 27 November 2016

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

At Buchenwald Memorial
20 – 24 January 2017
At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
27 – 29 January 2017


 


The MOMENTUM COLLECTION
At the 1st Daojiao New New Art Festival

Daojiao, China
16 September – 27 October 2016

The MOMENTUM Collection at
Y – Why?

At Ballhaus Secret Garden, Berlin
14 – 22 September 2016


 


The MOMENTUM COLLECTION
At NonStopMedia Art Festival

At Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, Ukraine
2 – 9 September 2016

HERO MOTHER
Contemporary Art by Post-Communist
Women Rethinking Heroism

At MOMENTUM & Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien
14 May – 12 June 2016

VARVARA SHAVROVA
The Opera

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
20 – 30 April 2016


 


Migrating Images

at Videotage, Hong Kong
24 March – 31 March 2016

Acentered:
Reterritorised Network of European
and Chinese Moving Image

At Art Basel Hong Kong
22 March – 26 March 2016

MOMENTUM BOX

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
5 March – 30 April 2016


 


KIK EIGHT
Ganz Grosses Kino

At Kino International, Berlin
4 March 2016

MA LI
Bits En Route

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
26 February – 27 March 2016

BEYOND BALAGAN!!!
Sasha Pirogova Retrospective

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
29 January – 21 February 2016


 


I SEE
Video Art Festival

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
4 & 5 November 2015

ZHOU XIAOHU
Scheisse

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
12 September – 1 November 2015


 


THE UNFAMILIAR SHOW

At Millerntor Gallery, Hamburg
2 – 5 July 2015

Beyond the Image: Sound

On IkonoTV
3 June – 3 July 2015


 


Works on Paper III

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
3 May – 5 July 2015

CREATING FOR THE FUTURE

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
15 Feb – 19 Apr 2015


 


A TIME FOR DREAMS

At Today Art Museum Beijing
16 – 30 November 2014

Fragments Of Empires

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
7 Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015

Fragments Of Empires
Opening Weekend

At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
8 – 9 November 2014


 


OMAR CHOWDHURY
Form As Being

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
11 Sep – 5 Oct 2014

Ab-surdus by Via Lewandowsky: a case-study

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
10 Aug – 7 Sep 2014

TREVOR LLOYD MORGAN
In | boxes | zones quarters

International Artist Gathering
At Casablanca and Rabat
17 June – 17 July 2014


 


WORKS ON PAPER II

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
4 – 29 June 2014

PANDAMONIUM
Media Art from Shanghai

At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien
9 May – 1 June 2014

PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL
Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest

At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
1 – 4 May 2014


 


JACOBUS CAPONE
Saudade

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
1 February – 2 March 2014

THE BEST OF TIMES
THE WORST OF TIMES RIVISITED

At Chronus Art Center, Shanghai
16 January – 2 March 2014

THRESHOLDS

At TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin
15 December 2013 – 26 January 2014


 


SANATORIUM

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
1 November 2013 – 26 January 2014

ABOUT FACE
Travels to London

At WW Gallery, London
11 – 20 October 2013

THRESHOLDS
A Program of Performance,
Exhibition, and Discussion

At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
20 – 22 September 2013


 


THE BEST OF TIMES,
THE WORST OF TIMES RIVISITED

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
6 September – 27 October 2013

TRAVELING SOULS
and (DE)FACING REVOLT

At MusraraMix Festival 2013, Jerusalem
28 – 30 May 2013

WORKS ON PAPER

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
5 May – 30 June 2013


 


MISSING LINK

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
10 March – 28 April 2013

LOST AND FOUND

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
3 February – 3 March 2013

THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
25 – 27 January 2013


 


TRAVELING SOULS

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
14 – 23 December 2012

THE STREAMING MUSEUM

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
9 November – 2 December 2012

A WAKE travels to New York

At DAC, Dumbo Arts Center
1 – 25 November 2012


 


ZUZANNA JANIN
THE WAY: Majka from the Movie

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
8 September – 7 November 2012

ABOUT FACE
MOMENTUM EMERGING ARTISTS SERIES:
Mariana Hahn, Jarik Jongman
and Sarah Ludemann

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
23 August – 1 September 2012


 


NADJA MARCIN
KATHRYN GARCIA, PRINZ GHOLAM
Staging the World – Performing the Floor

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
11 – 12 May 2012

DSLCOLLECTION
PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives
in Contemporary Chinese Art

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
25 April – 17 June 2012


 


SUMUGAN SIVANESAN
The Anticolonials

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
17 – 26 February 2012

SAM SMITH
Cameraman

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
24 November 2011 – 22 January 2012

A WAKE
Still Lives and Moving Images

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
30 October – 20 November 2011


 


ANDREW ROGERS
Time and Space | Drawing on The Earth

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
26 August – 23 october 2011

LARRY LITT
Hate Books | Holy Fires

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
13 August 2011


 


MAP OFFICE
Runscape

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
29 April – 26 June 2011

MOMENTUM | BERLIN
Inaugural Exhibition

At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien
28 January– 28 March 2011

MOMENTUM | BERLIN
Benefit

At Gallery TAIK, Berlin
8 October 2010