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18/10/2018
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RESIDENCY – INSTALLATION VIEW

18/10/2018
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BREAD & ROSES – INSTALLATION VIEW

18/10/2018
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BERLIN ART WEEK – week 7 – group2

18/10/2018
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EXHIBITION INSTALLATION – week 7 – group2

28/09/2018
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Focus Kazakhstan Symposium

 
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SYMPOSIUM

 

Sunday 30 September @ 3 – 7pm

At MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

Part of the Exhibition:

Bread & Roses
Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists

Click here for more info > >

 

 

PARTICIPANTS:

 

David Elliott, Almagul Menlibayeva, Rachel Rits-Volloch:

Curators of Focus Kazakhstan Berlin – Bread & Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists and the Focus Kazakhstan Artist Residency Exhibition (2018)

Aliya de Tiesenhausen and Indira Dyussebayeva:

Curators of the Focus Kazakhstan London exhibition Post-nomadic Mind (2018)

Diana T. Kudaibergenova:

Sociologist and scholar at Cambridge University

Dina Nurpeissova:

Founder of Berlin’s Central Asian cultural association Steppenboot

Nari Shelekpayev:

Einstein Fellow at Berlin’s Einstein Forum and Visiting Professor at the University of Rome

Bojana Pejić:

Curator of Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009/10), Good Girls: Memory, Desire, Power (2013), and co-curator of HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016)

Anar Aubakir, Gaisha Madanova, Aigerim Ospanova, Saule Sulemeinova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva:

Artists in Bread & Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists and the Focus Kazakhstan Artist Residency Exhibition

 
 

PROGRAM:

 

3:00
David Elliot
Bread & Roses: Colonization and Identity in Kazakh Art

3:30
Aliya de Tiesenhausen & Indira Dyussebayeva
On “Post-Nomadic Mind” (London) and the Current Discourse on Contemporary Art and Identity in Kazakhstan

4:00
Bojana Pejic
Spaces of Self-Definition: on Theories of Identity

4:30
Discussion: Knowing Lidya Blinova
Almagul Menlibayeva, Saule Sulemeinova, David Elliott (moderator)
Knowing Lidya Blinova

5:00
Nari Shelekpayev – Shame, Power, and the Female Body: on Political Practices of Uyat in Contemporary Kazakhstan

5:20
Panel Discussion: Naming Shame: Uyat in Kazakh Culture
Nari Shelekpayev, Bojana Pejic, Aliya de Tiesenhausen, Almagul Menlibayeva, Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Indira Dyussebayeva, Dina Nour (moderator)

Artist Talks:

6:00
Aluan: Exhibition on Paper
Gaisha Madanova in discussion with David Elliott on Aluan and how it fits into her practice as artist and curator.

6:15
From the Perspective of Now: Two Generations of Kazakh Women Artists
Almagul Menlibayeva, Gaisha Madanova, Anar Aubakir, Aigerim Ospanova, Saule Sulemeinova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva, Rachel Rits-Volloch & David Elliott (moderators)

7:00
Symposium Closes.

 
 

ANAR AUBAKIR

Anar Aubakir: Born 1984 in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan. Anar Aubakir’s paintings, often shown in complex installations, emanate a disquieting poetic symbolism that, while referring to stories and relationships she has encountered in Kazakhstan, suggest a much broader reference. She completed an MA at the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty; in 2010 she won the best realist painting award in the Russian Art Week competition in St. Petersburg as well as the 1st painting prize in the Week of Kazakhstan Art competition in Almaty. Her work was awarded the Cholpan-Ata City Award in Kyrgyzstan in 2016. She is also the organizer of the first traveling exhibitions to have taken place since Kazakhstan became independent. From 2013 to 2017, she organized more than a dozen exhibitions, in which over 20 artists participated, which have travelled to Pavlodar, Semey, Aktobe, Atyrau, Kostanay, Karaganda, Temirtau, Kokshetau, Petropavlovsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Aktau and Astana. In each of the cities she conducted master classes in painting and interdisciplinary art. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Almaty (2010) and Astana (2015.) Her works are in museum collections in Kazakhstan and Tatarstan.

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

INDIRA DYUSSEBAYEVA

Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek is an independent curator and co-founder of Interntional Art Development Association (IADA), a non-profit organisation supporting and promoting contemporary art from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Indira studied History of Art at University College London (UCL) and holds an MSc in Finance from Cass Business School, City University London. In her early career, she worked for several years in the financial services industry. With IADA, Dyussebayeva has organised numerous international projects. She co-curated the collateral exhibition of Kazakhstan, ONE STEP/PE FORWARD at the 55th Biennale of Venice (2013), as an initiative for the creation of the national pavilion of Kazakhstan. She curated the solo show of British-Israeli artist Zadok Ben-David, The Other Side of Midnight (2014), which was the first international exhibition at the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Together with her partners, she organised Protagonists, Invisible Pavilion, an artist residency for artists from Kazakhstan, during the 56th Biennale of Venice (2015). In addition, she has participated in curating projects in the non-profit sections of the Vienna Art Fair, Art Dubai, and Art 15.


David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); 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 Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the 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. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.

Diana T. Kudaibergenova

Diana T. Kudaibergenova is a cultural and political sociologist. She is currently a Research Fellow in the Center of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University, Sweden. Her main research interest concerns the social theory of power. Kudaibergenova studies different intersections of power relations through realms of political sociology, with a particular focus on nationalising regimes and nationalism in the new states of post-soviet space, cultural sociology, gender studies, and socio-legal studies. She published her first book in January 2017, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature. Elites and Narratives, exploring the ways national ideas and narratives were produced, contested and rewritten in the very new genre of Soviet literature in modern Kazakhstan. Her second book, currently in production, addresses the comparative political sociology of nation-building, power struggles and new political elites in post-Soviet states. Kudaibergenova’s work on socio-legal studies of citizenship, minorities, and nation- as well as state-building is connected to this aspect of her research. She also works on gender and contemporary art fields to test similar questions of power relations, agency, and power contestations in societies that go through tremendous socio-cultural transformations.


Gaisha Madanova

Gaisha Madanova was born in Alma-Ata, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1987. In 2009, she graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Almaty College of Construction and Management. In 2018, she graduated from the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (Sculpture class, Prof. Hermann Pitz). Gaisha Madanova in her artistic practice using different mediums and techniques (silkscreen print, nitro-frottage, video, photo, installations) and her art is based on the questions to reveal the relationship between artificial and natural existence. Topics like watching and being watched, the body as an expression of the inner self or the strategies of transformations and displacement can be seen as links through the different series of her works. She is also engaged in the curatorial practice (special project DIYALOG: New Energies, OMV section at the VIENNAFAIR; contemporary art educational program VIDEO[ARTiFACT], Klaus vom Bruch; special project mikro[smART]raiony, Refunc group, ARTBATFEST; video-art program Internal Storage – Not Enough Space? Garage Museum of Contemporary Art) and since 2012 has been involved in different projects organized by Goethe- Institut Kazakhstan. Since 2007 Gaisha Madanova is a founding member of the international art collective Artpologist (Art+Antropology), since 2014 member of the Munich based art collective Roundabout and since 2016 co-founder of Kazakhstan based art communicational platform ARTCOM. Gaisha Madanova is the founder and editor-in-chief of the first in Kazakhstan conceptual art magazine ALUAN – EXHIBITION ON PAPER. Temporarily based between Kazakhstan and Germany.

Almagul Menlibayeva

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).


Dina Nurpeissova

Born in 1983 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Nurpeissova has been based in Berlin since 1999. She studied history of art, musicology and cultural sciences at the University of Tübingen, and La Sapienza in Rome. She has worked at cultural festivals in Europe and Kazakhstan: Hors Pistes (Centre Pompidou, Paris), Astana Art Fest (Kazakhstan), Ruberoid (Acud Macht Neu, Berlin), Panke Parcours. She is the founder of the cultural association “Steppenboot e.V.” in Berlin. She is also a musician and DJ.

Aigerim Ospanova

Aigerim Ospanova: Born 1991 in Astana, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan. Multimedia artist Ospanova Aigerim graduated with a BA from the Academy of Art in Almaty. Aigerim’ practice extends to installation, performance art, painting and video art. Selected exhibitions include: “India” in Almaty; “Beautiful Place Burabai” in Almaty; the open-air exhibition of young artists organized by the Union of artists of Almaty; “Always life” Central State Museum of Almaty; “Exhibition of the young artists”, contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest7”, Almaty; “Astana ArtFest”, Astana; “QWAS” bilocal transcultural exhibition, Zurich-Almaty; “Act of creation” contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest8”, Almaty; “Time and Astana: after future”, State Museum, Astana. Aigerim was invited to the symposiums: “Sacral folk songs” (Elabuga, Russia); “Images of Place and Time” (Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia); Art symposium “Made in Astana” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “Sheich Zayed Festival” (Abu-Dhabi, UAE). Also she participated in video project “Transformation” by Almagul Menlibaeva; in the video-performance “The Bitter Gift” by Askhat Akhmediyarov; in workshop on performance with Waldemar Tatarchuk (Labyrinth Gallery, Polland), 2017 Kazakhstan; and in workshop on performance with Roger Hill (UK) Almaty Art Center, 2017 Almaty Kazakhstan.


Portrait - Bojana Pejic

Bojana Pejić

Bojana Pejić (b. 1948 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is an art historian, writer, curator, and educator. From 1977 to 1991 she was curator at the Student Cultural Center of Belgrade University. Since 1991, she has been based in Berlin. She was guest professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin (2003), at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University in Oldenburg, Germany (2006/2007), and at the Central European University, Faculty of Gender Studies, in Budapest (Winter 2013). She was chief curator of the exhibition After the Wall – Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe (1999), organized by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, which was also presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Budapest (2000) and at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2000-2001). In 2008 she curated the international exhibition Artist-Citizen, the 49th October Salon in Belgrade (Serbia). She was chief curator of the exhibition Gender Check at MUMOK, Vienna (2009-2010) and Warsaw (2011). She is the editor of Gender Check: Art and Theory in Eastern Europe – A Reader (2010). She curated the international exhibition Good Girls: Memory, Desire, Power at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest (2013) and co-curated the international exhibition HERO MOTHER – Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism, at MOMENTUM, Berlin (2016). Currently, she is a guest lecturer at the Bauhaus University in Weimar in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” (2014 – present).

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. In 2016-2017, Rachel Rits-Volloch was Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” and the PhD program in Artistic Research. Rachel Rits-Volloch founded MOMENTUM in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011, and since that time has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to act as a bridge between international art communities, supporting artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Program and Archive, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 70 international exhibitions showing works by over 500 artists, in addition to ancillary education programming, artist residencies, and related projects. Born in Riga, USSR, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney.


Nari Shelekpayev

Nari Shelekpayev is the 2018 Einstein Fellow at the Einstein Forum and Daimler & Benz Foundation; an Associate Fellow at the International Research and Training Group ‘Diversity’ (2016-2019) formed by Universities of Trier-Saarland and Université de Montréal; and Visiting Professor at the Università di Roma La Sapienza (Musicology Department, 2/2018-3/2019). In the past, he was Doctoral Fellow-in-Residence at the Canadian Center for Architecture; Research Fellow at Free University of Berlin (2016-2017), and has held numerous other academic positions. Shelekpayev completed PhD thesis on: “Ottawa, Brasília, Astana: the Invention of post-Colonial Capital Cities, 1850-2000.”

Saule Suleimenova

Saule Suleimenova: Born 1970 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan. Saule Suleimenova graduated from the Kazakh State Academy of Architecture and Construction in 1996, and was awarded an MFA from the Kazakh National University of Arts in 2013. She has been a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan since 1998. She works with mixed media, creating images and sculptures from plastic bags in a process she describes as ‘waste collage’. Residual Memory, her current project, revisits the traumatic history of Kazakhstan by recycling reproductions of little-known photo documents into collages made of waste. Still painful themes such as the Zheltoksan (the Kazakh youth riots in 1986), and the Asharshylyk (the colonial genocide resulting from Stalin’s Collectivization policies during 1932-1933), give her practice an edge of activism. Awards include: Fellowship of the President of Kazakhstan (1998); Laureate of the Shabyt, Zhiger and Tengri Umai awards; Laureate ‘For creative achievements’ in the №1 Choice of the Year, Kazakhstan, 2017; Shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2017; Nominated for the Singapore Art Prize 2017; Nominated to Prince Claus Foundation Art Prize 2016. Her selected exhibitions include: Somewhere in the Great Steppe, Contemporary Art from Kazakhstan, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017-2018; Somewhere in the Great Steppe. Skyline, National Museum of Kazakhstan. Astana, 2017. Culture Summit 2017, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Dis/Possessed. A Question of Spirit and Money, Manifesta 10, Folium, Zurich, Switzerland, 2016; One Belt One Road, Federation of Women, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong; 56th Venice Biennale in the Why Self project (2015); 5th Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale in the Migrants project of RSGU (2013); ARTBATFEST Almaty contemporary art festival (2013, 2014, 2015); East of Nowhere, Foundation 107, Turin, Italy (2009); Kazakh: Paintings By Saule Suleimenova, Townsend Center, Berkeley University, USA, 2005.


Gulmaral Tatibayeva

Born 1982, Scherbakty, Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan. Gulmaral Tatibayeva received a Bachelor degree in design from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in 2002. She is a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan; the Eurasian Designers Union; the Eurasian Creative Guild; and the art group ‘KADMII QYZYL’. She has participated in many national and international exhibitions and competitions; she won the Grand Prix in the Astana city competition for the best billboard design to promote family values (2014) and has exhibited in the First Astana Art Salon; ‘Plein Air Aktobe 2015’, an international symposium of Art; the new media lab in EXPO-2017 at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; AstanaArtFest, Astana Contemporary Art Centre (2015); International Festival of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, (2017); the Eurasia Sculpture Biennale – International Biennial Of Sculpture Art, Astana (2017); ‘Days of Culture of Kazakhstan in Turkey’, Istanbul (2017). Her works may be found in museums in Kazakhstan, and private and public collections in Kazakhstan, Jordan, Turkey, Holland, Russia, and Great Britain.

Aliya de Tiesenhausen

Aliya de Tiesenhausen, PhD, is an independent scholar of Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asian art who was born in Kazakhstan and works in London. She is the author of Central Asia in Art: from Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics, I.B. Tauris, 2016. She received her doctoral degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in 2010. She worked as an icon specialist at Christie’s London; assisted with the production of the film Kazakhstan Swings; taught theory seminars for the MA programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art; organised the Beyond Borat symposium on contemporary Kazakhstan culture; and co-convened the conferences Framing the Other: 30 Years after Orientalism at the Courtauld, and Russian Orientalism through Art Production and Education at the Cambridge Central Asia Forum. Dr de Tiesenhausen makes regular public presentations, including: The Curious Case of Kazakhstan – the Influential Role of Women in an Emerging Art Market at the Association for Art History Annual Conference (2017), and Contemporary Kazakhstani artists working abroad at the Central Asia Forum, Warwick (2018). She participated in numerous publications on these subjects, including guest editing the issue on art for the Cambridge Central Asia Reviews, Volume 1, Issue 2: pages 69-148, Cambridge Scientific Publishers, 2016. She contributed to The Eastern Connection: Depictions of Soviet Central Asia, Jérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny and Piotr Piotrowski, eds.; Art beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe [1945-1989], Budapest – New York, Central European University Press, 2016. Dr. de Tiesenhausen compiled sections on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the ArtAsiaPacific Almanac 2010. She also wrote the Introduction to Treasures of Kazakhstan, exh. cat., London: Christie’s, 2010.


19/07/2018
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Focus Kazakhstan Artist Residency Exhibition

 
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FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN:

1 June – 21 October 2018

 

Artist Residency Exhibition

25 September – 20 October 2018

@ MOMENTUM Gallery

Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

Exhibition Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12:00 – 7:00pm. Closed Mondays

 

FEATURING:

Beibit Asemkul, Anar Aubakir, Liliya Kim,
Ykylas Shaikhiyev, Saule Sulemenova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva

 

A Cultural Exchange Partnership between
the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin

 

Curated by:
Rachel Rits-Volloch, Director of MOMENTUM
David Elliott, Chief Curator & Vice Director of Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China
Almagul Menlibayeva, Artist


 

Organized by:
The National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
&
MOMENTUM Berlin

 


Showing works by 7 artists created during their 2-month Artist Residencies at MOMENTUM, this exhibition is a reflection upon Berlin through Kazakh eyes. These works, produced during the artists’ first trips to Berlin, and for some their first trips abroad, encompass a cultural dialogue between their traditions and the condition of the contemporary nomad. Dealing with topics ranging from wartime histories to personal histories, today’s refugees and migrants to the nomadic migrations of the artists’ grandparents, the Focus Kazakhstan: Artist Residency Show exemplifies the talents of young artists never before seen in Berlin. Focus Kazakhstan: Berlin is a 6-month cooperation between MOMENTUM and the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan resulting in two parallel exhibitions taking place at the Kunstquartier Bethanien on 25 September – 20 October 2018: Bread and Roses, Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists and The Artist Residency Exhibition.

FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN BERLIN is a 6-month cooperation between the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin, involving Artist Residencies for 7 young artists held from 1 June to 1 October 2018, and two parallel exhibitions be held on 25 September – 20 October 2018. Focus Kazakhstan Berlin: BREAD & ROSES and the Artist Residency Show, organised by Momentum Worldwide at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, are part of the Focus Kazakhstan initiative implemented by the National Museum of Kazakhstan in association with the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan within the framework of the program Ruhani Zhangyru. Focus Kazakhstan, a cultural initiative to bring contemporary art from Kazakhstan to an international audience, is comprised of four different exhibitions, each with varying artists and curators, taking place between June 2018 to March 2019 in Berlin, London, Jersey City (USA), and Suwon (Korea).

 
 

Participating Artists

 
 

BEIBIT ASEMKUL

Beibit Asemkul: Born 1985 in Uzynagash, Almaty region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Beibit Asemkul studied at the Republican College of Art, Almaty (1998-2004), and in the painting faculty of the Kazakh National Academy of Arts, Almaty (2004-2009). Since 2012, Asemkul has been a lecturer at the Kazakh National University of Arts, Astana. Selected exhibitions and awards include: “After 52 days” (2017), Center for Contemporary Arts ACAC, Astana; “Grand Pale. International Exhibition of Contemporary Art”, ART CAPITAL, Paris (2017); Art Fest, Astana (2017); 2016 – China. Urumqi International Exhibition of Artists. Plein Air; Grand Prix 2016 -Made in Astana, Republican competition of young artists; 2016 – “Cadmium Red”, NEONOMAD, Astana National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 2016 – “Infinity 3”, Gallery Hassanat, Astana; 2016 – “Infinity 2”, Korean cultural center of Astana; 2015- 1st place at the republic plein air competition among young artists of Kazakhstan, Aktau; 2014- solo exhibition “Secret of tenderness”, National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Astana; 2013- Winner of the “PATRIOT” award of Republic of Kazakhstan; 2013 – International Exhibition of Young Artists, CHA Moscow; 2012- Winner of “Daryn” the State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 2012 – Winner of the Prize Fund of the first President of Kazakhstan – in the field of culture and art; 2012 – 1st place gold medal at the International exhibition New York Realism Fine Art. USA; 2012 – solo exhibition “POJIGRAFOMANIA” Palace of Independence. Astana; 2011 – “Discover the World of Art”, first solo exhibition at the Museum of First President of Republic of Kazakhstan; 2010 – Winner of the XIII international festival “Shabyt”, Grand Prix.

 
 

ANAR AUBAKIR

Born 1984 in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Anar Aubakir’s paintings, often shown in complex installations, emanate a disquieting poetic symbolism that, while referring to stories and relationships she has encountered in Kazakhstan, suggest a much broader reference. She completed an MA at the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty; in 2010 she won the best realist painting award in the Russian Art Week competition in St. Petersburg as well as the 1st painting prize in the Week of Kazakhstan Art competition in Almaty. Her work was awarded the Cholpan-Ata City Award in Kyrgyzstan in 2016. She is also the organizer of the first traveling exhibitions to have taken place since Kazakhstan became independent. From 2013 to 2017, she organized more than a dozen exhibitions, in which over 20 artists participated, which have traveled to Pavlodar, Semey, Aktobe, Atyrau, Kostanay, Karaganda, Temirtau, Kokshetau, Petropavlovsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Aktau and Astana. In each of the cities she conducted master classes in painting and interdisciplinary art. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Almaty (2010) and Astana (2015.) Her works are in museum collections in both Kazakhstan and Tatarstan.

 
 

LILIA KIM

Lilia Kim: Born 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

Lilia Kim, a member of the Artists’ Union of Kazakhstan, graduated from the Karaganda Pedagocical Institute (KarPi) in the graphic arts department in 1991. Recent solos exhibitions include: “Made in Karaganda”, Ular Gallery (Almaty, Kazakhstan); “Eco-Love” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “When the soul smiles” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “The Cost of Meaning” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “A Look at Asia” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “Who Is It” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “Shining Spheres”, Museum Iso (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “Oriental Motives”, Nagornaya Gallery (Moscow, Russia); “Music in colors”, Ufa Gallery (Russia); “L’artigiano in fiero”, the International Handicraft Exhibition (Milan, Italy). Awards include: Grand Prix of the international competition, nomination “Master”, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Winner of the republican contest “Sheber”, Kazakhstan; Prize-winner of spring salon, gallery “Kulanshi”, Kazakhstan. International artist residencies include: Central Asia Art Month – residence for artists, Abu Dhabi, UAE, with participation in the exhibition, “Days of Kazakhstan culture in the Emirates”.

YKYLAS SHAIKHIEV

Yklas Shaikhiev: Born 1995 in Kyzylorda region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Shaikhiev Ykylas earned a Bachelors from the KazNPU in Almaty, and is currently completing his MFA at the same university. Ykylas’s practice steers towards the conceptual, combining abstract images with realistic forms. The artist is interested in the paradoxicality that arises at the points of intersection of the modern and archaic.

 
 

SAULE SULEIMENOVA

Saule Suleimenova: Born 1970 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan.

Saule Suleimenova graduated from the Kazakh State Academy of Architecture and Construction in 1996, and was awarded an MFA from the Kazakh National University of Arts in 2013. She has been a member of Union of Artists of Kazakhstan since 1998. She works with mixed media, creating images and sculptures from plastic bags in a process she describes as ‘waste collage’. Residual Memory, her current project, revisits the traumatic history of Kazakhstan by recycling reproductions of little known photo documents into waste collages. Still painful themes such as the Jeltoksan (the Kazakh youth riots in 1986), and the Asharshylyk (the colonial genocide resulting from Stalin’s Collectivization policies during 1932-1933), give her practice an edge of activism. Awards include: Fellowship of the President of Kazakhstan (1998); Laureate of the Shabyt, Zhiger and Tengri Umai awards; Laureate ‘For creative achievements’ in the №1 Choice of the Year, Kazakhstan, 2017; Shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2017; Nominated for the Singapore Art Prize 2017; Nominated to Prince Claus Foundation Art Prize 2016.

Her selected exhibitions include: Somewhere in the Great Steppe, Contemporary Art from Kazakhstan, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017-2018; Somewhere in the Great Steppe. Skyline, National Museum of Kazakhstan. Astana, 2017. Culture Summit 2017, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Dis/Possessed. A Question of Spirit and Money, Manifesta 10, Folium, Zurich, Switzerland, 2016; One Belt One Road, Federation of Women, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong; 56th Venice Biennale in the Why Self project (2015); 5th Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale in the Migrants project of RSGU (2013); ARTBATFEST Almaty contemporary art festival (2013, 2014, 2015); East of Nowhere, Foundation 107, Turin, Italy (2009); Kazakh: Paintings By Saule Suleimenova, Townsend Center, Berkeley University, USA, 2005.

 
 

GULMARAL TATIBAYEVA

Gulmaral Tatibayeva: Born 1982, Scherbakty, Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Gulmaral Tatibayeva received a Bachelor degree in design from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in 2002. She is a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan; the Eurasian Designers Union; the Eurasian Creative Guild; and the art group ‘KADMII QYZYL’. She has participated in many national and international exhibitions and competitions; she won the Grand Prix in the Astana city competition for the best billboard design to promote family values (2014) and has exhibited in the First Astana Art Salon; ‘Plein Air Aktobe 2015’, an international symposium of Art; the new media lab in EXPO-2017 at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; AstanaArtFest, Astana Contemporary Art Centre (2015); International Festival of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, (2017); the Eurasia Sculpture Biennale – International Biennial Of Sculpture Art, Astana (2017); ‘Days of Culture of Kazakhstan in Turkey’, Istanbul (2017). Her works may be found in museums in Kazakhstan, and private and public collections in Kazakhstan, Jordan, Turkey, Holland, Russia, and Great Britain.


 

 

The title FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN was initially coined by MOMENTUM and was subsequently extended to cover all four international exhibitions taking place in 2018 within the framework of the Ruhanyi Zhangru initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan: “Modern Kazakh Culture in the Global World”. FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN takes place in Berlin (MOMENTUM), London, Seoul, and New York.

 

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18/07/2018
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MOMENTUM AiR

 

 

FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN

1 June – 21 October 2018

 

Artist Residency Program Part II

 

Anar Aubakir, Aigerim Ospanova, Saule Suleimenova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva
 
1 August – 1 October 2018

 

A Cultural Exchange Partnership between
the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin

 

Curated by:

Rachel Rits-Volloch & Almagul Menlibayeva

 

Organized by:

The National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
&
MOMENTUM Berlin

 


UPCOMING EVENTS:

She Shamans – Felt-Making Workshop


 

WORKSHOP: 8 – 9 September @ 12-5pm

[Participants need not stay for the full duration]

CLICK HERE for MORE INFO > >

Workshop led by Almagul Menlibayeva, with Anar Aubakir, Aigerim Ospanova, Saule Suleimenova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva

Shamanistic Feminism translates traditions of folk art from the Kazakh Steppe to the Kunstquartier Bethanien. A Project for making a large felt hanging for the Focus Kazakhstan Bread & Roses exhibition at MOMENTUM. Anyone may participate. Participants will receive an exhibition catalogue (upon publication), where their names will be listed in relation to this work. Participants can drop in and drop out at any time during the course of the 2-day workshop. We recommend a minimum of two hours. Refreshments will be served.

@ MOMENTUM

Kunstquartier Bethanien

Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 
 

Participating Artists

 
 

ANAR AUBAKIR

Born 1984 in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Anar Aubakir’s paintings, often shown in complex installations, emanate a disquieting poetic symbolism that, while referring to stories and relationships she has encountered in Kazakhstan, suggest a much broader reference. She completed an MA at the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty; in 2010 she won the best realist painting award in the Russian Art Week competition in St. Petersburg as well as the 1st painting prize in the Week of Kazakhstan Art competition in Almaty. Her work was awarded the Cholpan-Ata City Award in Kyrgyzstan in 2016. She is also the organizer of the first traveling exhibitions to have taken place since Kazakhstan became independent. From 2013 to 2017, she organized more than a dozen exhibitions, in which over 20 artists participated, which have traveled to Pavlodar, Semey, Aktobe, Atyrau, Kostanay, Karaganda, Temirtau, Kokshetau, Petropavlovsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Aktau and Astana. In each of the cities she conducted master classes in painting and interdisciplinary art. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Almaty (2010) and Astana (2015.) Her works are in museum collections in both Kazakhstan and Tatarstan.

 

SAULE SULEIMENOVA

Saule Suleimenova: Born 1970 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan.

Saule Suleimenova graduated from the Kazakh State Academy of Architecture and Construction in 1996, and was awarded an MFA from the Kazakh National University of Arts in 2013. She has been a member of Union of Artists of Kazakhstan since 1998. She works with mixed media, creating images and sculptures from plastic bags in a process she describes as ‘waste collage’. Residual Memory, her current project, revisits the traumatic history of Kazakhstan by recycling reproductions of little known photo documents into waste collages. Still painful themes such as the Jeltoksan (the Kazakh youth riots in 1986), and the Asharshylyk (the colonial genocide resulting from Stalin’s Collectivization policies during 1932-1933), give her practice an edge of activism. Awards include: Fellowship of the President of Kazakhstan (1998); Laureate of the Shabyt, Zhiger and Tengri Umai awards; Laureate ‘For creative achievements’ in the №1 Choice of the Year, Kazakhstan, 2017; Shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2017; Nominated for the Singapore Art Prize 2017; Nominated to Prince Claus Foundation Art Prize 2016.

Her selected exhibitions include: Somewhere in the Great Steppe, Contemporary Art from Kazakhstan, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017-2018; Somewhere in the Great Steppe. Skyline, National Museum of Kazakhstan. Astana, 2017. Culture Summit 2017, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Dis/Possessed. A Question of Spirit and Money, Manifesta 10, Folium, Zurich, Switzerland, 2016; One Belt One Road, Federation of Women, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong; 56th Venice Biennale in the Why Self project (2015); 5th Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale in the Migrants project of RSGU (2013); ARTBATFEST Almaty contemporary art festival (2013, 2014, 2015); East of Nowhere, Foundation 107, Turin, Italy (2009); Kazakh: Paintings By Saule Suleimenova, Townsend Center, Berkeley University, USA, 2005.

AIGERIM OSPANOVA

Aigerim Ospanova: Born 1991 in Astana, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan.

Multimedia artist Ospanova Aigerim graduated with a BA from the Academy of Art in Almaty. Aigerim’ practice extends to installation, performance art, painting and video art. Selected exhibitions include: “India” in Almaty; “Beautiful Place Burabai” in Almaty; the open-air exhibition of young artists organized by the Union of artists of Almaty; “Always life” Central State Museum of Almaty; “Exhibition of the young artists”, contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest7”, Almaty; “Astana ArtFest”, Astana; “QWAS” bilocal transcultural exhibition, Zurich-Almaty; “Act of creation” contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest8”, Almaty; “Time and Astana: after future”, State Museum, Astana. Aigerim was invited to the symposiums: “Sacral folk songs” (Elabuga, Russia); “Images of Place and Time” (Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia); Art symposium “Made in Astana” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “Sheich Zayed Festival” (Abu-Dhabi, UAE). Also she participated in video project “Transformation” by Almagul Menlibaeva; in the video-performance “The Bitter Gift” by Askhat Akhmediyarov; in workshop on performance with Waldemar Tatarchuk (Labyrinth Gallery, Polland), 2017 Kazakhstan; and in workshop on performance with Roger Hill (UK) Almaty Art Center, 2017 Almaty Kazakhstan.

 

GULMARAL TATIBAYEVA

Gulmaral Tatibayeva: Born 1982, Scherbakty, Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Gulmaral Tatibayeva received a Bachelor degree in design from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in 2002. She is a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan; the Eurasian Designers Union; the Eurasian Creative Guild; and the art group ‘KADMII QYZYL’. She has participated in many national and international exhibitions and competitions; she won the Grand Prix in the Astana city competition for the best billboard design to promote family values (2014) and has exhibited in the First Astana Art Salon; ‘Plein Air Aktobe 2015’, an international symposium of Art; the new media lab in EXPO-2017 at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; AstanaArtFest, Astana Contemporary Art Centre (2015); International Festival of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, (2017); the Eurasia Sculpture Biennale – International Biennial Of Sculpture Art, Astana (2017); ‘Days of Culture of Kazakhstan in Turkey’, Istanbul (2017). Her works may be found in museums in Kazakhstan, and private and public collections in Kazakhstan, Jordan, Turkey, Holland, Russia, and Great Britain.


 

The FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN Artist Residencies and Exhibitions take place within the framework of the Ruhanyi Zhangru initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan: “Modern Kazakh Culture in the Global World”.

 
 

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RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 1:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 2:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 3:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 4:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 5:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 6:

 

“She Shamans” Felt-making Workshop

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 7:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 8:

 

Exhibition “Bread & Roses”

11/06/2018
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MOMENTUM AiR

 

 

FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN BERLIN:

1 June – 21 October 2018

 

Artist Residency Program Part I

 

Beibit Asemkul, Liliya Kim, Ykylas Shaikhiyev
 
1 June – 31 July 2018

 

Open Studio Exhibition: 21 – 29 July 2018

OPENING: 21 July @ 5-9pm

OPEN STUDIO: 22, 25-29 July @ 1-7pm

@ MOMENTUM

Kunstquartier Bethanien

Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

CLICK HERE for pictures > >

 

A Cultural Exchange Partnership between
the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin

 

Curated by:

Rachel Rits-Volloch & Almagul Menlibayeva

 

Organized by:

The National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
&
MOMENTUM Berlin

 



 

Participating Artists

 
 

BEIBIT ASEMKUL

410000, Installation with canvas, enamel, whips, charcoal, paper, photographs, durational performance (2018)

Beibit Asemkul: Born 1985 in Uzynagash, Almaty region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Beibit Asemkul studied at the Republican College of Art, Almaty (1998-2004), and in the painting faculty of the Kazakh National Academy of Arts, Almaty (2004-2009). Since 2012, Asemkul has been a lecturer at the Kazakh National University of Arts, Astana. Selected exhibitions and awards include: “After 52 days” (2017), Center for Contemporary Arts ACAC, Astana; “Grand Pale. International Exhibition of Contemporary Art”, ART CAPITAL, Paris (2017); Art Fest, Astana (2017); 2016 – China. Urumqi International Exhibition of Artists. Plein Air; Grand Prix 2016 -Made in Astana, Republican competition of young artists; 2016 – “Cadmium Red”, NEONOMAD, Astana National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 2016 – “Infinity 3”, Gallery Hassanat, Astana; 2016 – “Infinity 2”, Korean cultural center of Astana; 2015- 1st place at the republic plein air competition among young artists of Kazakhstan, Aktau; 2014- solo exhibition “Secret of tenderness”, National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Astana; 2013- Winner of the “PATRIOT” award of Republic of Kazakhstan; 2013 – International Exhibition of Young Artists, CHA Moscow; 2012- Winner of “Daryn” the State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 2012 – Winner of the Prize Fund of the first President of Kazakhstan – in the field of culture and art; 2012 – 1st place gold medal at the International exhibition New York Realism Fine Art. USA; 2012 – solo exhibition “POJIGRAFOMANIA” Palace of Independence. Astana; 2011 – “Discover the World of Art”, first solo exhibition at the Museum of First President of Republic of Kazakhstan; 2010 – Winner of the XIII international festival “Shabyt”, Grand Prix.

 

LILIA KIM

Traces, detail from installation of 56 works, linocut on paper (2018)

Lilia Kim: Born 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

Lilia Kim, a member of the Artists’ Union of Kazakhstan, graduated from the Karaganda Pedagocical Institute (KarPi) in the graphic arts department in 1991. Recent solos exhibitions include: “Made in Karaganda”, Ular Gallery (Almaty, Kazakhstan); “Eco-Love” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “When the soul smiles” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “The Cost of Meaning” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “A Look at Asia” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “Who Is It” (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “Shining Spheres”, Museum Iso (Karaganda, Kazakhstan); “Oriental Motives”, Nagornaya Gallery (Moscow, Russia); “Music in colors”, Ufa Gallery (Russia); “L’artigiano in fiero”, the International Handicraft Exhibition (Milan, Italy). Awards include: Grand Prix of the international competition, nomination “Master”, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Winner of the republican contest “Sheber”, Kazakhstan; Prize-winner of spring salon, gallery “Kulanshi”, Kazakhstan. International artist residencies include: Central Asia Art Month – residence for artists, Abu Dhabi, UAE, with participation in the exhibition, “Days of Kazakhstan culture in the Emirates”.

 

YKYLAS SHAIKHIEV

One, Two, and One, Two Again, digital photo (2018)

Yklas Shaikhiev: Born 1995 in Kyzylorda region, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Shaikhiev Ykylas earned a Bachelors from the Kazakhstan National Pedagogical University in Almaty, and is currently completing his MFA at the same university. Ykylas’s practice combines abstract images with realistic forms. The artist is interested in the paradoxicality that arises at the points of intersection of the modern and archaic.

 



 

The FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN BERLIN Artist Residencies and Exhibitions take place within the framework of the Ruhanyi Zhangru initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan: “Modern Kazakh Culture in the Global World”.

 
 

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RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 1:

 

MOMENTUM

Studio Visits

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 2:

 

Berlin Tour

BBK Facilities

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 3:

 

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 4:

 

Working in the studio

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 5:

 

MOMENTUM Studio Visit

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 6:

 

Video Shooting + Adobe Premiere Workshop

Berlin Tour

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 7:

 

MOMENTUM Residency Open Studio

 
 

RESIDENCY DIARY – WEEK 8:

 

10/06/2018
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Focus Kazakhstan Berlin
Exhibitions:

 

OPENING: 25 September at 19:00 – 22:00

SYMPOSIUM: 30 September at 15:00 – 18:00

EXHIBITION: 26 September – 20 October 2018

 

@ MOMENTUM Gallery,
& Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien

Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

Exhibition Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12:00 – 7:00pm. Closed Mondays


BREAD & ROSES:
Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists

 

Anar Aubakir, Lidya Blinova, Bakhyt Bubikanova, Ganiya Chagatayeva, Natalia Dyu, Vera Ermolaeva, Zoya Falkova, Aisha Galimbaeva, Tatiana Glebova, Gulfairus Ismailova, Kreolex Zentr (Maria Vilkovisky & Ruthie Jenrbekova), Gaisha Madanova, Aigerim Mazhitkhan, Almagul Menlibayeva, Gulnar Mirzagalikova, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Katya Nikonorova, Saule Suleimenova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva and Elena Vorobyeva

 

go to the info about the artists below ↓ ↓

 

@ Studio 1
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

Focus Kazakhstan: Bread and Roses is an exhibition of four generations of Kazakh women artists organised by MOMENTUM in partnership with the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This show comprises work in a wide-range of media by 20 artists created from 1945 to the present. Emerging Kazakh women artists are prefaced in the show by a group of eminent forerunners who have remained more or less invisible within the history of Soviet, Kazakh and world art. Against the tumult of Stalinist repression and its aftermath, the work of these women has forged a bridge between traditional Kazakh arts, crafts and ways of living, the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s and ‘30s, socialist realism and a completely new approach to art making that emerged from the beginning of the 1980s. The works that these great grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and daughters of contemporary Kazakh art have produced reflect the melting-pot of ideas and influences between east and west arising from Kazakhstan’s history of tumultuous political and social change. Bread and Roses takes place in parallel to the Focus Kazakhstan Artist Residency Exhibition at the MOMENTUM Gallery, also in the Kunstquartier Bethanien.

 

 

Focus Kazakhstan
Artist Residency Exhibition

Saule Suleimenova, Beibit Asemkul, Anar Aubakir, Gulmaral Tatibayeva, Liliya Kim, Ykylas Shaikhiyev, Aigerim Ospanova

@ MOMENTUM Gallery
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

Showing works by 7 artists created during their 2-month Artist Residencies at MOMENTUM, this exhibition is a reflection upon Berlin through Kazakh eyes. These works, produced during the artists’ first trips to Berlin, and for some their first trips abroad, encompass a cultural dialogue between their traditions and the condition of the contemporary nomad. Dealing with topics ranging from wartime histories to personal histories, today’s refugees and migrants to the nomadic migrations of the artists’ grandparents, the Focus Kazakhstan: Artist Residency Show exemplifies the talents of young artists never before seen in Berlin. Focus Kazakhstan: Berlin is a 6-month cooperation between MOMENTUM and the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan resulting in two parallel exhibitions taking place at the Kunstquartier Bethanien on 25 September – 20 October 2018: Bread and Roses, Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists and The Artist Residency Exhibition.

 

 

&

 

Artist Residency Program

 


A Cultural Exchange Partnership between
the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin

 

Curated by:
Rachel Rits-Volloch, Director of MOMENTUM
David Elliott, Chief Curator & Vice Director of Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China
Almagul Menlibayeva, Artist


 

Organized by:
The National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
&
MOMENTUM Berlin

 

FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN BERLIN is a 6-month cooperation between the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and MOMENTUM Berlin, involving Artist Residencies for 7 young artists held from 1 June to 1 October 2018, and two parallel exhibitions be held on 25 September – 20 October 2018. Focus Kazakhstan Berlin: BREAD & ROSES and the Artist Residency Show, organised by Momentum Worldwide at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, are part of the Focus Kazakhstan initiative implemented by the National Museum of Kazakhstan in association with the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan within the framework of the program Ruhani Zhangyru. Focus Kazakhstan, a cultural initiative to bring contemporary art from Kazakhstan to an international audience, is comprised of four different exhibitions, each with varying artists and curators, taking place between June 2018 to March 2019 in Berlin, London, Jersey City (USA), and Suwon (Korea).

 
 

BREAD & ROSES: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists

The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too. (Rose Schneiderman, 1911)

Rose Schneiderman was a Polish-American labour union leader and women’s rights activist who never visited Kazakhstan. Her words are invoked here because they make a poetic case for an international equality of genders, based not only on suffrage and access to the bare necessities of life, but also for common rights to culture, work and a full life, well lived. This exhibition of the work of four generations of Kazakh women artists examines how such ideas and aspirations have developed there from the late 1930s to the present.

Since 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Kazakhstan has transformed into a strategic command post at the crossroads of central Asia. From the earliest times, people, goods, ideas, religions and ideologies had flowed freely along the Silk Road. Now they begin to do so again. But the transition from nomadic steppe to bustling modern economy has been far from straightforward or happy.

From the beginning of Russian colonisation in the 19th century, Kazakhstan’s remoteness from the capital made it a suitable place for massive exile. In the soviet period, this role expanded dramatically with mass purges and the accompanying need for an ‘archipelago’ of gulags. This, with the disastrous famine that resulted from Stalin’s collectivisation of agriculture in 1932/33, is still commemorated by artists, and others, in Kazakhstan as an inhumane, barbarous episode.

Despite the suppression of national identity, the awakening of national imagination reached a head in December 1986 when mass demonstrations of Kazakh students flared in Almaty, quickly spreading throughout the country. The security forces arrested and killed a large but unconfirmed number of people. Reference to this is also made in art.

The exhibition focuses on how themes and motifs from Kazakh history and culture have combined with those of modernity in a present-day critique of colonial and patriarchal values.

Its first section examines the legacy of the classical Russian avant-garde, repressed by Stalin, as well as of folk art, its Kazakh doppelgänger. It is followed, during the 1950s and ‘60s, by the emergence of the first generation of Kazakh women artists to work within the system of socialist realism, acting and designing for film and theatre as well as making paintings.

The present is intimated by the reawakening of autonomous, non-official art in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s by people who struggled to establish a new sense of identity out of the ruins of the past. The last section, from 2005 to the present, concentrates on the birth of a new generation of independently-minded contemporary artists, more concerned with the present than the past, working across many different media in the cities of Almaty, Karaganda and Astana, the new capital.

– David Elliott




DOWNLOAD BREAD & ROSES CATALOGUE


Participating Artists
(click on the name to see the bio below)

 



PHOTO GALLERY OF BREAD & ROSES EXHIBITION


 

 

 

The title FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN was initially coined by MOMENTUM and was subsequently extended to cover all four international exhibitions taking place in 2018 within the framework of the Ruhanyi Zhangru initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan: “Modern Kazakh Culture in the Global World”. FOCUS KAZAKHSTAN takes place in Berlin (MOMENTUM), London, Seoul, and New York.

 

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01/06/2018
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Your Words Are Only Guesses:
an intersemiotic reading/screening of works-in-progress

 

Kunst Salon with Andi and Lance Olsen

 

Sunday, 22 April 2018

 

Screening: 22 – 29 April 2018

Throughout Berlin Gallery Weekend
Opening Hours: Wed – Sun, 1 – 7pm

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

 

Following their exhibition in May-June last year, There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through, MOMENTUM is proud to welcome back Andi & Lance Olsen as Artists-in-Residence, 6 March -1 May 2018.
Unveiling for the first time their works-in-progress, Lance Olsen reads from his novel, My Red Heaven, about Berlin in 1927 and the rise of a deadly populism at the heart of a thriving center for artists, writers, and intellectuals. All fences seemed down, all possibilities open, and the future unimaginable. This novel-in-progress incorporates photographs of lost spaces around Berlin by Andi Olsen and Michael Kroetch.

Andi and Lance Olsen also screen for the first time a new video by fictional artist Alana Olsen. Set in the American desert, vYour Words Are Only Guesses investigates the toxic sublime using visual, textual, and sonic erasure as a metaphor for ecological dissolution. Your Words Are Only Guesses reflects Alana Olsen’s continued interest in desertscapes around the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the erasure of that environment through human impact on the air, water and land. It is also about the complex act of reading, about trying to make self-conscious that which our culture has made invisible, about the consequences of reading one way rather than another. The screening will continue through 29 April 2018, throughout Berlin Gallery Weekend.

A work-in-progress, Your Words Are Only Guesses is part of a collaborative, multimodal installation by Andi & Lance Olsen entitled There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through. The installation takes the form of a real retrospective of videos dedicated to the career of Alana Olsen, one of America’s most overlooked experimental video artists who never existed. An interplay of videos, texts, objects, fictional catalogue, website, and interventions, There’s No Place Like Time translates Alana Olsen’s life (which began as a fictional character in Lance’s novel, Theories of Forgetting (2014) into a three-dimensional reality. There’s No Place Like Time explores the relationship between the visual and the verbal, redefining the page, the novel, and the gallery space while investigating the problematics of identity construction and historical knowledge.


Your Words Are Only Guesses (HD video, work-in-progress) attributed to Alana Olsen
text by Lance Olsen
video by Andi Olsen
sound engineers: Juanfe Rehm, Tricone Studio, Funkhaus Berlin


 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Andi Olsen is an assemblage, computer-generated collage, and experimental video artist. Her videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad. Her ongoing solo project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay.

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge. In 2015-2016 he was a guest of the D.A.A.D. Berlin Artists Program. In 2013 he served as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize in Fiction Fellow at the American Academy also in Berlin. A Guggenheim and N.E.A. fellowship recipient, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence from 1996-1998, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he is professor of innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.


 

MORE INFORMATION:

CLICK HERE for MOMENTUM AiR Artist Residency > >

CLICK HERE for ARTIST TALK: The Intermedial Moment, Andi & Lance Olsen in conversation with Cécile Guedon >>

 
 


KUNST SALON VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni and Sean Gallup

23/03/2018
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MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ

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

 

Milovan Destil Marković is a conceptual artist whose practice spans installation, painting, performance, and video. Marković studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts, Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1986. Defining himself as a conceptual painter, Marković has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, and in the Americas. 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, Germany; Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria; The Artists’ Museum, Lodz, Poland; MOMENTUM, Berlin, Germany; amongst others.

Marković’s work has been featured in the 42nd Venice Biennial (Aperto ’86); 4th Istanbul Biennial; 46th Venice Biennial; 6th Triennial New Delhi, India; the 56th, 49th, 24th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale; 2018 Lorne Sculpture Biennale; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art 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; the art program of the European Capitol of Culture Novi Sad; and many other notable institutions.


 

SUNSET!

Sunset on 16.02.2016 in Bundanon, NSW, Australia.

2016, Pigments on Canvas, 70 x 70 cm

 

 

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, Markovitch 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.

His works contain short text quotations from pornographic literature, politics and banking; representations of the world of power and oppression. Marković’s 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. Sunset! is a landscape painting, taking as its subject the date and location of a sunset witnessed by the artist while on an Artist Residency in Bundanon, NSW, Australia.



 

Messenger Irma / Messenger Dora / Messenger Megi / Messenger Maria / Messenger Mangkhut [Barcode: Commodity Dream]

2021, 5 framed prints, ink print on paper, each 29 x 42 cm (53 x 63 cm with frame)

 

 

The five prints shown in this exhibition are digital studies for a series of five large paintings (each 300 x 200 cm) from Marković’s conceptual practice of Barcode Paintings, with which he has been working since 2008. This body of work consists of stripes that signify written words, often intertwined with visual imagery. Barcodes are the product of a systematic process of codification, at the end of which only a rhythmic series of vertical lines remains. Every text can be translated into a barcode and thereby enter the system of global trade. It is possible to scan the bar code with a laser reader or a smartphone app to decode its meaning. Marković’s seemingly abstract images can thus be translated into concrete content.

Marković’s Messengers series is composed of spatial images that, by means of abstract coding, thematize the relationship between environmental destruction through climate change, toxic pollution, current and historical economic interests and their impact on the planet Earth. The five prints consist of barcodes intertwined with satellite images of hurricanes and typhoons which have hit various geographical regions since 2010. Each of these works is composed of an interwoven matrix of barcode and meteorological satellite image of a natural disaster. The barcodes embedded in these works translate to the term “Commodity Dream”. While the titles of the works, taken from the sweetly innocent female names given to these hurricanes and typhoons by the World Meteorological Organization, form a stark counterpoint to the harsh truths and tragic aftermath of such natural disasters.

This body of work conceptually and visually addresses the effects of climate change leading to super-storms and massive fires (which the artist has experienced in recent years in Australia), resulting in damage, death and displacement on a massive scale. This environmental devastation is a consequence of the climate catastrophe resulting from humankind’s mistreatment of the planet which sustains us; a vicious cycle pulling us ever closer to the brink of disaster. Driven by human greed and anomalous management of resources, large geographical areas of healthy nature are disappearing from the face of the Earth due to economic colonization and ecocide by aggressive corporations. The Messengers series addresses how the profit-oriented focus of humanity is a disastrous commodification of the world. If things continue as they are, human greed will turn our planet into a consumed good, like any other commodity.

– Milovan Destil Marković



 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with Milovan Destil Marković

23/03/2018
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David Krippendorff

 

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DAVID KRIPPENDORFF

 

(b. 1967 in Berlin. Lives and works in Berlin.)

 

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, and was 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 earlier work focused on Hollywood films and investigated underlying ideologies in iconic movies such as The Wizard of Oz, Gilda, Gone With the Wind, and West Side Story. His more recent work has shifted away from found material towards the creation of a personal visual vocabulary based on original footage, but still using products of our collective culture as a departure point and inspiration.

Krippendorff’s works, films and videos have been shown in major international institutions and Biennales, including: the New Museum (New York, USA); ICA, Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK); Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany); Museum On The Seam (Jerusalem, Israel), RMCA, Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art (Guangzhou, China); Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art (Chengdu, China); Aram Art Museum (South Korea). He has participated in four Biennials (Prague, Poznan, Tel Aviv, and Belgrade), as well as in many international art and film festivals worldwide.

Selected recent exhibitions include: Minor Universes: Technology-led Emotions, Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu, China (2022); Gilded, Schloss Biesdorf, Berlin, Germany and Chateau de Nyon, Switzerland (2022); States of Emergency, MOMENTUM, Berlin (2021); Parallel Worlds, Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art, Samarkand, Uzbekistan (2021); Art from Elsewhere, Kunsthaus R3, Ansbach, Germany (2021); Timescapes, K.P.Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2021); Points of Resistance, MOMENTUM & KvW, Zionskirche, Berlin (2021); 2nd Bienal Internacional de Asunción, German-Paraguayan Cultural Centre, Paraguay (2020); Elysium, MOMENTUM & KvW, Berlin (2020); In weiter Ferne so nah, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, (2020); COVIDecameron, MOMENTUM (2020); Show Me Your Selfie, Diskurs, Berlin, and Aram Art Museum, Goyang Cultural Foundation, South Korea (2019); Bonum et Malum, MOMENTUM & KvW, Villa Erxleben, Berlin (2019); Connections and Fractures, RMCA – Redtory Museum for Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2019); Word Up!, C24 Gallery, New York, USA (2019); Power Struggle, Mah-e Mehr Gallery, Teheran, Iran (2019); Für Immer Blau, Kunstverein Duisburg & Villa Waldsteige, Germany (2018); Møenlight Sonata, Kunsthal 44Møen, Møen, Denmark (2018); The Women Behind, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel (2018); and numerous others dating back to 1999.



 

NOTHING ESCAPES MY EYES

2015, Video, 14 min 9 sec

 

 

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]


 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with David Krippendorff

23/03/2018
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aaajiao

 

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aaajiao

 

aaajiao (b. 1884, Xi’an, China. Lives and works in Shanghai and Berlin)

 

Active online as a media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao is the virtual persona of Shanghai- and Berlin-based artist Xu Wenkai. Born in 1984 — the title of George Orwell’s classic allegorical novel — and in one of China’s oldest cities, Xi’an, aaajiao’s art and works are marked by a strong dystopian awareness, literati spirit and sophistication. Many of aaajiao’s works speak to new thinking, controversies and phenomenon around the Internet, with specific projects focusing on the processing of data, the blogosphere and China’s Great Fire Wall. aaajiao’s work is interdisciplinary, extending from post-internet art to architecture, topography, design, and beyond to capture the pulse of the young generations consuming cyber technology and living in social media.

aaajiao’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world. Recent shows include “Deep Simulator” Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2019-2021); “Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today”, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA (2018); “unREAL”, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel, Switzerlan (2017); “Shanghai Project Part II”, Shanghai, China (2017); “Temporal Turn: Art and Speculation in Contemporary Asia”, Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas, USA (2016); “Take Me (I’m Yours)” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter), Jewish Museum, New York, USA (2016); “Overpop”, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2016); “Hack Space” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira Gad), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Shanghai, and K11 Art Museum, Hong Kong, China (2016); “Globale: Global Control and Censorship”, ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2015); “Thingworld International Triennial of New Media Art”, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China (2014); Transmediale Festival of Digital Art, Berlin, Germany (2010). His solo exhibition includes: “Remnants of an Electronic Past”, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK (2016); OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an, China (2016), among others. aaajiao was awarded the Illy Present Future Prize in 2019, the Art Sanya Awards Jury Prize in 2014, and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT-Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014.



 

404404404

2017, Installation, Ink & Sponge Roller, Dimensions Variable

 

 

404 is the error message which appears on blocked websites in China and around the world – a digital language transcending alphabets and cultures to be understood everywhere. Translating the digital message back into analog form, 404404404 (2017) is aaajiao’s subtle commentary on censorship and the flow of information in our digital culture. The error message is always the same, no matter the diversity of content it is covering from view. But in the artist’ rendition, the work becomes entirely site-specific, taking a new form with each installation; multiplying the message 404 in a diversity of forms and contexts.

As it relates to his native China, 404404404 becomes a striking commentary on China’s increasingly stringent censorship of artistic expression and communication platforms. As a media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao has for many years throughout his practice addressed the issue of China’s Great Firewall – the policy of restrictions on internet content begun in 2000, blocking websites which would enable unfettered access to media and information.


 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with aaajiao

23/03/2018
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Claudia Chaseling

 

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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. Chaseling’s work is included in the major survey exhibition and publication “DISSONANCE. Platform Germany” (2022) edited by Mark Gisbourne & Christoph Tannert.

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.


Murphy the Mutant

2013, Video, 13 min 58 sec

 

 

Murphy the Mutant is a 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.

International scientific research has proven the irreversible radioactive pollution caused by depleted uranium weapons. 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.


 

metal 2

2015, Pigments, egg tempera and oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

 

 

Claudia Chaseling’s practice is characterised as Spatial Painting. At once 2- and 3-dimensional, her work encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation; the works leaping off the gallery walls. Chaseling creates swirls of organic from, upside down landscapes with reversed perspective and bright fluorescent wave structures with political content. 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.

“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

metal 2 has been previously shown in the solo exhibition site-mutative painting at the Magic Beans Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2017).



 

Publications by Claudia Chaseling

 



 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with Claudia Chaseling

22/03/2018
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Amir Fattal

 

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AMIR FATTAL
 

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

 

AMIR 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. Since 2020, Fattal is the Founding Director of Geisted, the platform for digital art, new media and immersive experience.

Amir Fattal was distinguished with the GASAG Art Prize in 2008 and graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009. Based in Berlin to this day, Fattal participated in numerous international 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: Gender-Bender Time Traveller, Geisted, Berlin (2022); Points of Resistance, MOMENTUM, Zionskirche Berlin (2021); Floating Presence, Humboldt Carre, Berlin (2020); Connections and Fractures, RMCA – Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2019); Bonum et Malum, Villa Erxleben, Berlin (2019); Future Life Handbook, Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2017-18); Collection Enea Righi, Museo Fortuny, Venice (2016); ID Festival, Radialsystem, Berlin (2016); Interior / Exterior / Sculpture, Belenius/Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); A Naked Singularity, Studio Garaicoa, Madrid, Spain (2015); Wo der Ort beginnt, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin (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); and many more dating back to 2007.


ATARA (2019)

 

 

ATARA is both a science-fiction film set to contemporary opera music, and a reflection on the collective memory of architecture and its symbolic representation in public space. Shot on location in Berlin, it tells the story of two vastly different, and ideologically opposite, buildings that used to stand upon the same place: the Berliner Stadtschloss and the Palast der Republik. The Stadtschloss, the imperial and royal palace, was built between the 15th and 18th centuries, damaged by Allied bombing in WWII, and in 1950 was finally destroyed by the GDR as a symbol of Prussian militarism. The Palast der Republik, built in its place, was in 1973 opened as the seat of government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, communist East Germany). This was closed upon German Reunification in 1990, and was destroyed amid much public controversy in 2006-2008 to make way for the rebuilding of a contemporary copy of the Stadtschloss in 2013-2020. In 2021 this new (re)building was opened to the public as the Humboldt Forum Museum. The decision to resurrect the Stadtschloss in order to move and consolidate all Berlin’s ethnographic and history of science museums, is a highly contentious one, interpreted by many as Germany’s 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, nearly 80 years after the end of WWII – a city perpetually treading the fine line between never forgetting its painful past, and reinventing its future.

Shot at several stages during construction of the new building, ATARA imagines 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. In a sci-fi synchronicity of timelines, the film follows an astronaut wandering through the construction site of the new Stadtschloss, carrying an iconic lamp from the destroyed Palast der Republik – like an explorer in an alien land where past and future merge. The haunting score is based on the opera Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner, together with original music by Boris Bojadzhiev. Starting with the Liebestod aria, 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.



 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with Amir Fattal

07/03/2018
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Für Babette

 
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Für Babette
 

8 March 2018
@ Bar Babette
Karl-Marx-Allee 36, 10178 Berlin

 

MOMENTUM is proud to co-host together with Berlin Art Link and Schlachthaus. fresh&fine art an evening of art, drinks, and music on International Women’s Day – all to SAVE BAR BABETTE!
 

DON’T FORGET TO SIGN THE PETITION TO SAVE BAR BABETTE!
Just click here and fill in the form! > >

 

Music by:
DJ and Sound Artist Mieko Suzuki

 

Art by:
Inna Artemova // Mariana Hahn // Bjørn Melhus // Andi Olsen // Jesus Pastor // Varvara Shavrova // Ming Wong

 
All-night floor-to-ceiling art!
 

9:00pm – 10:00pm
complimentary welcome drink

9:30pm – 10pm
Performance by Mariana Hahn
The Oracle of Babette

10pm – late
Immersive DJ set by Mieko Suzuki

 

Click Here for FB Event > >
 
 

More than just a party to celebrate women and art, this event will also help prevent the disappearance of yet another Berlin underground cultural landmark: Unless a petition reaches 11,000 signatures, Kosmetiksalon Babette will be forced to shut. Follow this link to sign the petition and save one of Berlin’s most unique art event venues:

SAVE BAR BABETTE – SIGN THE PETITION: http://barbabette.com/petition/
 

About Kosmetiksalon Bar Babette > >

Bar Babette is an architectural icon located in a former GDR cosmetic salon on Karl Marx Allee. Originally a place for women to pamper themselves with rare luxuries, this artist-run bar and art venue is the perfect place to celebrate International Women’s Day. Artist Maik Schierloh is the creative force not only behind Bar Babette, but also, together with Joep van Liefland, founded the much loved art space Autocenter.

 
 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

 

BJØRN MELHUS

No Sunshine (1997), video, 6 min

Depicting pairs of infantile doppelgängers floating in a space that evokes their own interior world, NO SUNSHINE is a tragicomedy that explores the images—or rather the remembered images—of childhood, and the ensuing questions of identity. Triggering associations of the sexless toy figures of Playmobil, which set the stage for the perception of the world and the playful coming to terms with it for many children, the childhood projection is played out further as the figures sing a duet in the childlike voices of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. Taken to such pseudo-romantic and cliche-ridden extremes of what constitutes childhood in the eyes of the entertainment industry, this work delves in its inherent absurdity and goes as far as to hint to the popular patterns of explanation and the reception of psychoanalysis in the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back into the past, at the toy model, means dissolution, an implosion in a vacuum. Dissolving the idyllic romantic image of childhood, NO SUNSHINE mirrors the images of television memories and in their alienated otherness points them back towards the medium.

Bjørn Melhus – BIO

Bjørn Melhus, born 1966, is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. Originally rooted in an experimental film context, Bjørn Melhus’s work has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals. He has held screenings at Tate Modern and the LUX in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MediaScope) in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others. His work has been exhibited in shows like The American Effect at the Whitney Museum New York, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, solo and group shows at FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery London, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Museum Ludwig Cologne, ZKM Karlsruhe, Denver Art Museum among others.
 
 
 

ANDI OLSEN

There’s no Place Like Time (1988/2018), video, 2 min 19 sec

We are proud to welcome Andi Olsen back to Berlin for an artist residency at MOMENTUM, after her exhibition, together with Lance Olsen at MOMENTUM in May-June 2017: There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through. The video work There’s No Place Like Time, shown here, is an avant-pop appropriation and manipulation of one of the most famous Merrie Melodies cartoons, Duck Amuck: the long-distance call, the stutter step, the instant where nothing happens—again and again. Beyond Daffy Duck’s universal existential wrestling match with time, Judy Garland’s voice as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz rewrites and re-rights the predetermined cultural expectations of gendered domesticity.

Andi Olsen – BIO

American artist Andi Olsen works with assemblage, computer-generated collage, and experimental video. Her videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad. Her ongoing solo project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay.

 
 
 

INNA ARTEMOVA

Utopia (2017), oil on canvas, 110 x 115 cm

Berlin-based Russian artist Inna Artemova is a painter of re-imagined histories. Using archival images and found material from period publications, Artemova reconstructs fantastical images. Her paintings are visual collages of alternative nostalgias rooted in a past that never was.

Inna Artemova – BIO

 
 
 

MIEKO SUZUKI

Mieko Suzuki is a Japanese DJ and sound artist who has been based in Berlin since 2007. Grounded in hauling deep bass, Mieko’s sets create a constant tension between the delicate, the raw and the daring. Folding together and finding connections between the subtle textures and qualities of different genres, Mieko’s experimental approach always gives careful attention to the space and to the people. Noise and warm ambience, rhythm and industrial resonance are improvised together to submerge you in a big adventure of electronic sound.

MING WONG

Windows on the World (2014),
video, 3 min 11 sec

This work focuses on the concept of “future” in Chinese modernity, and in particular, how it is manifested in the unlikely relationship between sci-fi and 20th century Cantonese opera.
The former has been at the core of Chinese modern reformation, the latter is viewed more as a potent modern national identifier, than as a continuous art form, surviving from pre-modern times unaltered.

Ming Wong – BIO

Gender-bending Singaporean media artist Ming Wong is renowned for refined video works that reimagine excerpts from art films and world cinema. Wong not only researches, plans, directs and produces the films; he also casts himself portraying multiple primary characters, irrespective of language, gender or ethnicity. Through his distinctive and at times humorous translations and reinterpretations of classic film scenes, Wong builds layers of social structure, introspection and cinematic language, questioning how identity is both constructed and disseminated.

 
 
 

VARVARA SHAVROVA

The Opera: Three Transformations (2010/16), Timelapse Video, 3 min 41 sec

Varvara Shavrova is an interdisciplinary Russian artist based in London and Dublin, having previously lived in China for six years. Für Babette screens her work from the MOMENTUM Collection. The Opera: Three Transformations focuses on the transformation of two famous 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.

Varvara Shavrova – BIO

Shavrova’s projects include over 20 solo exhibitions in Dublin, Galway, Sligo, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Frankfurt, Moscow, St.Petersburgh, Shanghai and Beijing, and a number of curatorial visual arts projects, artistic initiatives and group exhibitions in Ireland, UK, Italy and China. Shavrova curated a number of international group projects, including ‘Through the Lens: new media art from Ireland’ in Beijing where she co-ordinated visual arts programme for the First Festival of Irish Culture at Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City, in 2008. Shavrova’s recent projects include ‘The Opera’, a multi-media six screen projected installation at Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in November 2011. ‘The Opera’ solo exhibition at the Gallery of Photography Ireland opened Dublin Chinese New Year Festival 2012 and toured to Limerick City Art Gallery and Ballina Arts Centre in 2012. Shavrova participated with a solo project ‘Mirrors on the Opera’ in 2012 Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, and took part in ‘New Irish landscapes’ group show at the Three Shadows Photography Arts Centre in Beijing in 2013, as part of the Irish Culture Festival. Shavrova received a number of international awards and fellowships including Culture Ireland grants, London Arts Board grant, Ballinglen Arts Foundation fellowship awards and Prince’s Trust artist’s travelling award. Shavrova’s works can be found in important public and private collections, including Department of Foreign Affairs, Arts Council England, Museum of Modern Art Moscow, among others.

 
 
 

JESUS PASTOR

Inhabited Silence (2017), photo series (Spain)

Inhabited Silence is a series of portraits of the nuns of the “Sacred Heart” who one day chose to dedicate their lives to faith. It is almost possible hear the rustle of quiet habits, the soft step of sandals on the terrazzo floor, the echo of the halls and prayers. A dialogue inhabited by women who look towards the light, raising the eyes in an attitude of contemplation. Baring their gestures and their faces, they offer us their souls. In silence. Jesus Pastor developed this project by visiting the prayer space of these nuns every morning at 7am and staying with them quietly and reading the Bible. After some time, he mentioned his intention of making their portraits, with natural light coming through a window.

Jesus Pastor – BIO

Berlin-based Spanish photographer Jesus Pastor balances his practice between art, fashion, and documentary. Specializing in portraiture, Pastor discovers remarkable subjects, drawing from them untold stories captured in the evocative moment of an image.
 
 
 

MARIANA HAHN

Site Specific Performance

In her performances, installations, and videos, Berlin-based German artist Mariana Hahn engages with both archetypical and local legends by weaving a common female mythology between them that enters into dialogue with the present. Concerned with women’s histories and folklores across many cultures, Hahn develops complex narratives reimagining these women’s stories. Für Babette presents a new performance commissioned for this occasion.


 

THIS EVENT IS A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN:


 

IN COOPERATION WITH

27/02/2018
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Andi & Lance Olsen

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 

Andi & Lance Olsen

 

6 March – 1 May 2018

 

KUNST SALON
 

Your Words Are Only Guesses:
an intersemiotic reading/screening of
works-in-progress

 

Artist talk: 22 April 2018
@ 3pm to 5pm

 

Listen here the podcast of the talk >>
 

Screening: 22 – 29 April 2018
Opening hours Wed – Sun, 1 – 7pm

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

ARTIST STATEMENT – RESIDENCY PROJECT:
 

We are proud to welcome back Andi & Lance Olsen after their MOMENTUM exhibition in May-June 2017: There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through.

During their Residency, Andi and Lance Olsen will expand their collaborative multimodal installation There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through by creating a new video by fictional artist Alana Olsen. Set in the American desert, Your Words Are Only Guesses will investigate the toxic sublime using visual, textual, and sonic erasure as a metaphor for ecological dissolution.

Lance Olsen will continue work on his novel-in-progress, My Red Heaven, about Berlin in 1927 and the rise of a deadly populism at the heart of a thriving center for the artists, writers, and intellectuals. All the fences seemed down, all the possibilities open, and the future unimaginable. The novel will incorporate photographs of lost spaces around Berlin taken by Andi Olsen and Michael Kroetch.
 

MORE INFORMATION:
 

CLICK HERE for EXHIBITION: There’s No Place Like Time: A Novel You Walk Through > >
 

CLICK HERE for ARTIST TALK: The Intermedial Moment, Andi & Lance Olsen in conversation with Cécile Guedon >>
 
 
 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Andi Olsen is an assemblage, computer-generated collage, and experimental video artist. Her videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad. Her ongoing solo project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay.

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge. In 2015-2016 he was a guest of the D.A.A.D. Berlin Artists Program. In 2013 he served as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize in Fiction Fellow at the American Academy also in Berlin. A Guggenheim and N.E.A. fellowship recipient, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence from 1996-1998, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he is professor of innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.


07/02/2018
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Marc Lee

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 

Marc Lee

Website

 

21 January – 10 February 2018

 
 

ARTIST BIO

Marc Lee (born 1969) is a Swiss media artist. Since 1999, he has created network-oriented interactive projects, interactive installations, media art, internet art, video and performance art. Throughout his practice, Marc Lee experiments with information and communication technologies. His artworks reflect the visions and limits of our information society through a close scrutiny of its creative, cultural, social, economic and political aspects.

His works have been exhibited in numerous major museums and new media art exhibitions including: ZKM, Karlsruhe; New Museum, New York; Transmediale, Berlin; Ars Electronica, Linz; HMKV, Dortmund; HeK, Basel; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Read_Me Festival, Moscow; CeC, Dehli; MoMA, Shanghai; ICC, Tokyo; Nam June Paik Art Center, Media Art Biennale, and MMCA, Seoul; amongst many others.

Marc Lee’s works are held in private and public collections including: the Federal Art Collection Switzerland, Bern; ZKM, Karlsruhe; HeK, Basel; and Fotomuseum, Winthertur. He has won many prizes and honorary mentions at international festivals, including “Interaction” and “Software” Awards at Transmediale Berlin, and the Social-Media-Art-Award at Phaenomenale Wolfsburg, amongst others.

A graduate of Basel University of Art and Design (FHNW) and of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Marc Lee also lectures and teaches workshops on art and software art in many universities, including: the China Academy of Art (CAA) Hangzhou; Strelka Moscow; Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul; ZHdK Zurich; amongst others.

 


 

ARTIST STATEMENT – RESIDENCY PROJECT:

None Place

(new work in production, 2018)
 

During his Residency at MOMENTUM, Marc Lee is developing a new app-based artwork. None Place will be an interactive net-based installation with two mirroring projections and a mobile phone or tablet as interface. In this installation, the audience will be able see and hear what’s happening in real-time around the world. The endless flow of countless stories enables the viewer to experience how our world is constantly changing and how more and more places are becoming “non-places”, as described in Marc Augé’s book and essay Non-places. We become an observer and at the same time we can actively participate and became live performers.

We have lived in different eras, but we also coexist in the new century. We also live in different places: in Los Angeles, Shanghai, Sydney, Zurich and other parts of the world. We can be different persons: women, men, children, but also ourselves. Time, places and identities change in the web, in social networks and also in reality. This is real, this is the truth, this is our reality. None Place captures and reflects this kind of real; our lives, our time, our places, our identities, the profound digital information and communication revolutions and the changing role and works of artists.

By moving the smartphone or tablet, audiences will be able to choose Shanghai or any other city. Projected onto virtual building fronts, you now see images, sounds or videos which users post on social media networks in real-time. Futuristic as it may seem, this is how your place might look like in 100 years. The animations on the display follow your movements. You walk along the exhibition-space and, at the same time, you move virtually between the buildings. They rise up to different heights, forming a skyline. For each chosen place, the app looks for current posts on social media and projects them onto the virtual building fronts. The user can walk around in the chosen virtual city and interact with the app by walking and moving the mobile device. By clicking on a building front, a new post is searched and projected in in real-time. By clicking many times, the building will sink into the ground. The collages of images and sounds on the virtual cityscape keep changing as new posts are sent continuously, even if you choose the same city twice. From one city to another, our world and our places are changing continuously to be experienced as increasingly similar non-places.

 
 


11/01/2018
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Station Paradox

 
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STATION PARADOX

A dialogue between artists from Korea and the MOMENTUM Collection.
 

aaajiao <> Claudia CHASELING <> JANG Jaerok <> Kira KIM + Hyungkyu KIM <> Zinu KIM <> David KRIPPENDORFF <> Hye Rim LEE <> Milovan Destil MARKOVIĆ <> Jihye PARK

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch & Jung Me Chai, Assistant Curator, Gyusik Lee
 

OPENING: 26 January 2018 @ 7:00 – 11:00pm
 

ARTIST TALK: 28 January @ 3:30 – 4:30pm

STATION PARADOX Explained: Jung Me Chai, JANG Jaerok, Zinu KIM, David KRIPPENDORFF, Gyusik LEE, Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

EXHIBITION: 27 January – 11 March 2018
 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanein
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin 10997

 

 

 

This exhibition is a dialogue between artists from Korea and from Berlin working with painting, video art, installation, and performance. As the title suggests, cultural dialogue can often highlight the paradoxes inherent to questions of identity and shifting perspectives. The artists selected for this exhibition, each in their own way, push the boundaries of the expected: from Claudia Chaseling’s spatial paintings spilling out of the canvas and exploding off the gallery walls; to the transfigurative paintings of Milovan Destil Markovic, translating a digital language onto his canvases; the hyperrealist calligraphic ink painting of Jang Jaerok; the meditative emotional journeys of Jihye Park’s and David Krippendorff’s films; the socially conscious videos of Kira Kim and Hyungkyu Kim; the zany performances of Zinu Kim; the digital animations of Hye Rim Lee; and aaajiao’s interrogation of our post-internet culture. The works in this exhibition push the limits of their form, highlighting the paradoxes in how we perceive the world through the shifting perspectives of cultural landscapes mediated through technologies of viewing. Nothing here is quite what it seems.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a dual language (english/korean) catalogue. The opening of STATION PARADOX on 26 January 2018 coincides with the opening of the CTM Festival of Digital Culture, also at the Kunstquartier Bethanien. By way of this exhibition, MOMENTUM is proud to show works by three artists never before seen in Berlin – Jang Jaerok, Hyungkyu Kim, and Jihye Park – and to welcome four new artists and their works to the MOMENTUM Collection – aaajiao, Claudia Chaseling, David Krippendorff, and Milovan Destil Marković.

 

 
 

Watch the artist talk, STATION PARADOX Explained:
with Jung Me Chai, JANG Jaerok, Zinu KIM, David KRIPPENDORFF, Gyusik LEE, Rachel Rits-Volloch:


 
 

ARTISTS and their WORKS

 

aaajiao

404 (2017), ink, sponge roller, dimensions variable

404 is the error message which appears on blocked websites in China. Translating the digital message back into analog form, 404 (2017) is aaajiao’s subtle commentary on censorship and the flow of information in our digital culture. The message is always the same, no matter the diversity of content it is covering from view. Entirely site-specific, this work takes a new form with each installation; multiplying the message 404 in a diversity of forms and contexts.

aaajiao – BIO

Active online as a media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao’s practice is marked by a strong dystopian awareness. His work speaks to new thinking, controversies and phenomena around the Internet, the processing of data, the blogosphere, and China’s Great Fire Wall. aaajiao’s work is interdisciplinary, extending from post-internet art to architecture, topography, design, and beyond to capture the pulse of the young generations consuming cyber technology and living in social media.

aaajiao, born 1984 in Xi’an, China, is the virtual persona of Shanghai and Berlin-based artist Xu Wenkai. aaajiao’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world. Upcoming and recent shows include: Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); unREAL, Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Basel (2017); Shanghai Project Part II, Shanghai (2017); Temporal Turn: Art and Speculation in Contemporary Asia, Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas (2016); Take Me (I’m Yours) (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter), Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Overpop, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2016); Hack Space (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira Gad), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong and K11 Art Museum, Shanghai (2016); Globale: Global Control and Censorship, ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2015); Thingworld International Triennial of New Media Art, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2014); and Transmediale, Berlin (2010). His solo exhibition includes: Remnants of an Electronic Past, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an, Xi’an (2016), among others. He was awarded the Art Sanya Awards in 2014 Jury Prize, and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT-Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014.
 
 
 

JANG JAEROK

Another Landscape-Frankfurt Hbf (2018), Korean ink and Acrylic on Korean Paper, 360 x 180 cm

Jang Jaerok, since his early career, has examined everyday life in capitalist societies through contemporary images made from traditional Korean ink painting. What appear to be black and white photos are actually photo-realist ink paintings expressed meticulously through light and shade of ink. His subject is largely the material objects of desire: luxury cars, jewels, chandeliers, and monumental industrial architecture. JAEROK characterises his mission as an artist as “The method I use is Asian painting. Asian painting is neither an imitation of nature nor expression of mind, which is different from the method of Western paintings. At the same time, I explore the world through the pixels of images. I use traditional Asian painting as a form, and for content, I examine the reality of the absurd human civilization that has been mythicized in the name of rationality. The form is photographic images fabricated by the 0s and 1s of the binary system. I question the issues of the 21st century, in the firm belief of the dialectical pattern of the immense human history.”

“Jang was fascinated by huge artificial structures and sophisticated machines. Consequently, his Korean paintings somewhat look like architectural drawings on graph paper measured with a ruler. In his paintings, we cannot find traditional features of Asian painting like drawing with one stroke of a brush or cheerful vitality. We live in a world full of machinery and artificial structures. He does not only show surface of neatly cut machines or structures; they feel like bizarre, scary anatomical charts of human body.” (Another Landscape (Brooklyn Bridge) catalog text, Busan Biennale).

JANG JAEROK – BIO

Jang Jaerok is a Korean artist born in Seoul in 1978. He lives and works in Seoul, Korea. Jaerok’s artistic sense has been inspired since childhood by his mother who is a traditional calligrapher. He completed a BA in Asian painting at Dan-kook University and an MA at Hong-ik University. He is currently a PhD candidate in art at Hong-ik University. He has exhibited at many museums in Korea including the Seoul Museum of Art, Gansong Museum, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyeongnam Art Museum, and the Pohang Museum of Steel Art. Recently he participated in the main exhibition at the Busan Biennale (2016) where he extended his work by adding installation to his traditional Korean ink painting of contemporary images. Recent international exhibitions include: Westwerk e.v., Hamburg, Germany (2016); Musee Adam Mickiewicz, Paris, France (2016); and other museums and galleries in China, Japan, Germany, and New York.

 
 
 

ZINU KIM

Take a Docent Tour (2018), site specific performance

Zinu Kim has worked as a tour guide and docent at museums and galleries in Germany since 2008. For this exhibition, he will make a series of guide performances, acting as a docent at the exhibition. He will be helping visitors appreciate the exhibition as a performer, occupying the space somewhere between the artworks and the audience. Reprising his role as a gallery guide, Zinu Kim’s performance at the exhibition engenders a wilful ambiguity between what some may perceive as a docent tour, while others might experience it as art. In this direct address to the audience, the artist poses the question, when an artist does a performance that is closely linked to his or her job for a living, how will the audience draw the line between art and life?

ZINU KIM – BIO

Zinu Kim was born in South Korea in 1979. He studied Oriental Painting at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea, and Fine Art at Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, Germany. Sine 2016, he has worked and lived in Berlin. He creates paintings that combine two different cultures: German and Korean. He also does performances to share ideas and topics found in his everyday life. Zinu Kim has shown his works in exhibitions in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, and Korea.
 
 
 

DAVID KRIPPENDORFF

Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015), HD Video, 13’43”

Nothing Escapes My Eyes is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being. Inspired by the texts of Edward W. Said, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Verdi’s opera Aida, the film depicts in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from 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.

DAVID KRIPPENDORFF – 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.
 
 
 

HYE RIM LEE

Black Rose v1 (2016), 3D digital animation, 4’45”

Hye Rim Lee’s work questions the role of new technology in image-making and representation, reviewing aspects of popular culture in relation to notions of femininity and looking at the way fictional animated identities are propagated within contemporary culture. Her work has developed through the critical and conceptual evolution of her animated character TOKI, the principal component of her ongoing TOKI/Cyborg Project (2002-present). Hye Rim has positioned her work at a progressive interface between Eastern and Western popular culture, and the exploration of how new technologies, through the intersection of computer gaming, cyber culture, and animamix, influence contemporary myth-making. Black Rose v1 continues the ongoing TOKI mythscape, with a soundtrack composed by Hye Rim Lee and Jiyeon Won. TOKI’s story is a narrative of an infinite dream where TOKI the shapeshifter afloat in her fantasy world, becomes a Princess, a Queen and a Rose.

Crystal City Spun (2008), 3D digital animation, 3’17”

An earlier work from the TOKI/Cyborg Project, Crystal City Spun opens with a cityscape of spinning dildo towers. Out of the landscape emerges TOKI, a highly stylized curvaceous, warrior-cum-vixen who draws upon the Japanese tradition of Manga, Korean animamix and Western ideals of sexuality and beauty. TOKI exists in a fantasyland ripe with sexual energy. To sadistically erotic effect, a dragon taps TOKI’s exposed nipple with the tip of his pointy claw. This titillation sends TOKI into a pirouette. She stops only when whipped by the dragon’s whiskers, sparking the crystallization of both the landscape and its characters. Steeped in sexual innuendo, Crystal City Spun is a fantasyland where dream and reality mix. The video has a paradoxically playful, childlike quality invoking fantasy and toys, while alluding to the darker side of obsession and addiction. Hye Rim Lee’s ongoing series challenges the conventions of the traditionally male-dominated worlds of game structure and 3D animation, specifically when it comes to virtualized images of women.

HYE RIM LEE – BIO

Hye Rim Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and is based between New York, Auckland (New Zealand), and Seoul. She graduated with degrees in time-based arts and music from, respectively, the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland, New Zealand (2003) and the Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea (1985). Hye Rim Lee’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions at: Kukje Gallery Seoul; Max Lang Gallery, New York; Kate Shin New York; Freight+Volume, New York; Gallerie Volker Diehl, Berlin; Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver; MoCA Shanghai; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona; Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, NZ; San Jose Museum of Art, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; SeMA, Seoul, Korea; Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ; Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ. She has participated in numerous international Biennales, including: collateral exhibitions in the 54th and 53rd Venice Biennales; the Incheon Women’s Art Biennale, Incheon, Korea; Animamix Biennale, China (2011); Samsung Media Exhibition, Daegu, Korea (2011); The World Expo (2010), Shanghai. Hye Rim was awarded Artist Residencies at Ssamzie Space, Seoul, and at ISCP, New York. She was a Visiting Fellow at Auckland University of Technology in 2013, and was a finalist of the Wallace Art Awards in 2016. Hye Rim Lee’s works are held by major public and private collections, including: SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art) Korea; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealan; Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ; Te Papa (The National Museum of New Zealand) Wellington; The University of Auckland, NZ; Ernst&Young, NZ; Saatchi&Saatchi NZ; Hara Museum, Japan: National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA); Byron Aceman Collection (BAC), Canada. Hye Rim Lee currently works with Venice Projects, Venice, Italy; 12 Gallery, Queenstown/Auckland, NZ; and Waterfall Mansion & Gallery, New York.

 
 

JIHYE PARK

Rumination (2017), HD video, 6’30”

Rumination captures a man from various angles who has a deadpan face and seems lost in thought. In this video work, Jihye Park intends to interpret the multilayered psychological state of anxiety caused by underlying conflicts in our closest relationships and our desire for possession as “the moment of absence”. Jihye Park, throughout her practice as a video artist, explores relationships and their reciprocity. Her contemplations of relationships are not about grandiose interactions, but are about those close to our everyday lives such as dating, love, jealousy, sympathy, etc. The most intimate of relationships are the spatial identities that are infused with unfathomable levels of convention, mythology, and formalities. The seemingly simple person-to-person meeting ground is actually festered with underlying basic conflicts, a complicated and complex place where innumerous conventions and desires that control individuals collide, exchange, and compromise with the other. The violence that lies concealed in such familiar and close relationships is all the more dangerous because it is masked, and because it is born of intimacy. Through this form of violence concealed in everyday life, Park investigates the identity of the potential desire that exists within the relationship between human beings and while the work does not portray a distinct event it does exude a rather bizarre sense of psychological unease.

JIHYE PARK – BIO

Jihye Park was born in Busan in 1981 and currently lives and works in Seoul. She received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London. Jihye Park portrays a human’s psychological state driven by his/her underlying desire, and the conflicting and contradictory emotions a human undergoes using the video format. She combines symbolic elements from fairytales/fables, myth, actual incidents and personal experiences to recreate the essence of ambition and lust dormant in close relationships. Her works have been shown internationally, including: La Compagnie, (Marseille, France); Westwerk e.V, (Hamburg, Germany); Busan Biennale, (Busan, Korea); OVNi, (Nice, France); Sanshang Contemporary Art Museum, (Hangzhou, China); Art Stage Singapore, Korea Platform, (Singapore, Singapore); SongEun Artspace, (Seoul, Korea); Korean Cultural Centre, (London, UK); Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), (New Delhi, India); Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, (Rome, Italy). She is currently participating at Seongnam Cultural Foundation Residency program, Creative space of public art Sinheungdong.

CLAUDIA CHASELING

yesterday is tomorrow (2018),
leaf aluminium, aluminium, egg tempera and oil on wall, floor and 2 oviform canvasses; 500 x 200 x 300 cm

Claudia Chaseling’s practice is characterised as Spatial Painting. At once 2- and 3-dimensional, her work encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation; the works leaping off the gallery walls. Chaseling creates swirls of organic from, upside down landscapes with reversed perspective and bright fluorescent wave structures with political content. 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. yesterday is tomorrow (2018) is a new site specific work made especially for this exhibition. This spatial painting has a particular view point from which the work is composed. Seen from this single point, optically, the work looks paradoxically flat. Yet stepping out of this particular persecutive, the work explodes off the gallery walls, melting onto the floor, oozing onto the adjacent wall. Contained within the 2 small oviform paintings within the work, are two links to online sources for the artist’s research into depleted uranium. One leads to the documentary by Frieder Wagner about the use of depleted uranium munitions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djv8UyrrC34 >>.

The other link leads to an article about how the west historically and currently uses other countries to test their weapons:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/14/military-weapons-history-the-west-bombs >>.

The imagery in both paintings is of the MOB bomb that was dropped on Afghanistan in 2017, and surrounding the landscape.

CLAUDIA CHASELING – BIO

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 zeitgenoessische 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. The artist is currently 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.

 
 
 

KIRA KIM + HYUNGKYU KIM

Kira KIM, A weight of Ideology _ The Letters to North _ Let me know how are you? _ On the yellow Sea (2013), HD Video, 10min

In this video work, a letter describes a brief thought on Korean North-South relations, starting from a trifling thing – naengmyeon noodles. The content of this letter addressed to an unspecific person in North Korea is banal. The narrative in this letter – that one remembered someone in North Korea when eating naengmyeon – ends with the common Korean greetings: “you don’t skip meals”. This letter, however, is not ordinary. Its content carries no serious ideology or thought. In this prologue-like work the artist asks questions such as “what are ideal North- South relations?”, and “with what ideology do we see the world?”, arguing that our discussion on unification with North Korea should be from the heart, to preserve equal, basic human life and to respect human beings, not any logic of political, national, or economic ideologies.

Kira KIM & Hyungkyu KIM X, Hear the Wind_Across the Border (2017), 4K video, 12min

Hear the Wind_Across the Border is a video using an experimental filmmaking technique called ‘360-degree time lapse’. This film portrays four symbolic sites where the Republic of Korea’s political, economic and historical contexts intersect from a contemplative view through the 2016 ‘axis of time’. In particular, the 360-degree camerawork is especially meaningful in that it captures the landscape of ‘time and space’, which human vision alone cannot capture. Such broadened perspective leads to the question of what is the eye of the camera gazing at, in other words, where is the camera located? The artists explore four sites which represent the historical and political symbolization of the Republic of Korea, recording each site using 360-degree video and making montages of them. By doing so, they capture time and space on a single screen while recording the history of the present through a novel technology of vision.

The four sites in the artist’s work reflect the ironic history and reality of the Republic of Korea in a symbolic manner. The first site, the Yongsan redevelopment area in Seoul, is a representative space which symbolizes the Republic of Korea’s shallow capitalism. The second site, the observatory at Yeonmijeong in Ganghwado, embraces the more than 500-years-long history of repeated invasions and divisions in its entirety in one place. The third, Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, is the place where the passion for new politics was ignited in the Republic of Korea in 2016. Lastly, the DMZ (demilitarised zone between North and South Korea), is one of the places which have a sharp ideological conflict from the viewpoint of the outside world, but regardless of this political sensitivity, the wind in this area flows calmly and silently, revealing irony as if nothing ever happened in the past.

KIRA KIM + HYUNGKYU KIM – BIO

Kira Kim working together with Hyungkyu Kim ’characterise their practice as, “We are interested in the social and cultural position of an individual as well as and in the desire of a group that is contrary to that of an individual. In our work we examine historical events and human activities related to human behaviors and habits, social inequality and prejudice, the contradiction between myth and religion, ideology, and the individual. This examination is founded upon an understanding of the artist’s role in a sociocultural and political context to address and share the human nature of desire and agony with the public through art. As for methods, we would like to integrate visual art into community programming, choreography, music, and other genres. Conceptually, we are looking for the intersection where a concept develops into a form of art. Sometimes, this examination feels like it is fantasy yet it is a reflection of contemporary society shown through a language of humor and visual signs. In our projects, a multitude of cultural symbols are presented. This is to represent the spectacle of contemporary society with its social structure that is dotted with fundamental contradictions. Our spectrum of visual languages include but are not limited to: collecting, elegant painting, collage, site-specific installation, and video that deal with the history of an individual or events.”

Kira KIM was born in 1974 in Korea, and currently lives and works in Seoul. He received his BFA and MA at the Kyoungwon University of the fine Art and sculpture, in Sungnam, South Korea in 1993-2003, and eared an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2007. International exhibitions include: the Animax Biennale (2017); ART:1 Museum Jakarta Indonesia; Artist of the Year, MMCA, Korea (2015); Transfer, Korea-NRW (2011-2012); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2013), Kunstverein Hagen, Germany (2013); Common good _ Every clime the mountain, Doosan Art Center, Korea (2011); Super-Mega-Factory, Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2009); A Palace of Mirages, King’s Lynn Arts Centre, UK (2009); MOCA Taipei (2014); Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; SEMA Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; Samsung Leeum Museum, Korea; The Guild, Mumbai, India; Liverpool Biennial, UK (2010); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Kunstverein Bochum, Germany; Santral Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; The Bienniel of Graphic Arts, Slovenia; Prague Biennale, Karlin Hall, Czech Republic; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Nanjing Museum, China; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chile; amongst others.

Hyungkyu KIM was born in 1983, in Yeoncheon, which is near the DMZ in South Korea. He majored in communication and media arts, and is currently working as a director of music videos, films, and advertisements in Seoul. The artist mainly focuses on the narratives, relationships and forms viewed through a camera, and is interested in contemplating the views, locations and implications of a camera based on time. Recently, he has begin studying video works that use 360-degree camerawork and flattening with multiple cameras. He was selected as one of the 3 final winners of the 2017 VH Award, participated in the Ars Electronica Residency Program, and won the Grand Prix of VH Award in 2017.

 
 
 

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ

It Really Fills My Mouth / Morning (2013), pigments on canvas, 86 x 250 cm

 

Sunset! (2016), pigments on canvas, 70 x 70 cm. Sunset on 16.02.2016 in Bundanon, NSW, Australia.

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, Markovitch 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. His works contain short text quotations from pornographic literature, politics and banking; representations of the world of power and oppression. Marković’s 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. In the case of the two works shown in this exhibition, Sunset! is a landscape painting, taking as its subject the date and location of a sunset witnessed by the artist while on an Artist Residency in Bundanon, NSW, Australia. While It Really Fills My Mouth / Morning is a quotation from The Sexual Life of Catherine M., the infamous autobiography of Catherine Millet (the French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press).

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ – BIO

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. Markovic’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. Markovic 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, and many others.
 
 
 

ABOUT the CURATORS

 

JUNG ME CHAI

Jung Me Chai is the Founder of DISKURS Berlin, a non-profit art space and residency program which initiates, arranges, and develops an international network of contacts between the contemporary art scenes in Germany and Korea. Jung Me studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Prof. Fritz Schwegler and at the Rietveld Academy audio visual media. From 2011 to 2013 she worked as project manager for the project “Transfer Korea – NRW ” at the NRW Kultursekretariat. She currently works as a freelance curator and as assistant curator at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. She has curated exhibitions such as: No More Daughters And Heroes, Aram Art Gallery, The Goyang Cultural Foundation, Korea // Organ Mix, Total Museum, Korea // Kleines Affektchen (Part Film, Video, Performance), Museum Bochum. She contributed articles to Wolgan Misul (Print), Artnow (Print), amongst other publications.
 

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. In 2016-2017, Rachel Rits-Volloch was Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” and the PhD program in Artistic Research. Rachel Rits-Volloch founded MOMENTUM in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011 as a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Program and Archive, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 65 international exhibitions showing works by over 450 artists, in addition to ancillary education programming, artist residencies, and related projects.


CURATORS TEXTS

 

Jung Me Chai

The word Paradox is found in fields of academia as well as popular culture. The ancient Greek word Paradoxa is a compound of Para and Doxa. Para has many meanings, but is mostly used to infer opposition, beyond or abnormal. Doxa is understood as notion or opinion. In general, Paradoxa is classified into twelve categories such as philosophy, logic, mathematics, physics, economics and politics, and the range of its interpretations can be varied and complex. The term Station could be interpreted as transformation rather than as the conventional interpretation of where travel begins. So, it would be interesting to examine the influences of paradox and transformation in the world of contemporary art and culture.

The extravagantly successful American artist Jeff Koons´ legal battles over custody of his son with his ex-wife La Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) is well known in the art world. His mirror-finish stainless steel with transparent color coated sculptures reflect his private life ironically. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis begins with, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” His abrupt transformation and subsequent struggle symbolize a mechanism of political power as well as sexual obsession. Ironically, it sparks the negative implications of paradox and transformation that has inspired many artists.

What does it mean therefore for artists from Korea and Berlin, and how do they deal with notions of paradox and transformation? It might seem perplexing and paradoxical at first sight. Another Landscape-Frankfurt Hbf, by JANG Jaerok was inspired by the ceiling of the Central Railway Station in Frankfurt am Main. Using the method of Asian painting in ink, it appears surprisingly hyper-realistic. The huge ceiling structure, consisting of lines and dots in black and white, cannot be seen in the entire figure. Another Landscape-Frankfurt Hbf evokes the strange beauty of monumental industrial architecture. KIM Zinu works as a tour guide for a living. A tour guide is one of the professions that capitalism created. Being in a group as a tourist, the individual experiences the danger of being fed passive thoughts rather than thinking for themselves. A semi-improvised performance as a docent at the exhibition expresses the ambiguity of identity-transformation. KIM Kira eats Pyongyang Naengmyeon in his video work, A weight of Ideology _ The Letters to North _ Let me know how are you? _ On the yellow Sea. Naengmyeon is a noodle dish served cold. Is ‘Eating Pyongyang Naengmyeon’ and ‘Send a Message in a Bottle’ extending the account of reality to emphasize the performative aspects of a political ideology which got lost? PARK Jihye’s video work Rumination contains neither storytelling nor inversion. However, PARK questions the notion of the human psychological state, fairy tales, myths and personal experience. A commonality between the paintings of Claudia CHASELING and Milovan Destil MARKOVIC is the use of fluorescence and intense colour. The wall installation yesterday is tomorrow by Claudia Chaseling can be read as a painting with the element of radioactive poison. She highlights and builds images in a demanding process about environmental issues that cause bizarre genetic mutations. Compared to the themes of distorted nature by Claudia Chaseling, Milovan Destil Markovic transforms the barcode into a colourful deformation in his work It Really Fills My Mouth / Morning. 404 describes the communication error that commonly occurs on the Internet. China-born artist, aaajiao poses questions about the politically influenced acts that claim control not only of individuals, but also the suppression of digital society by a political interest. LEE Hye Rim’s animation, Crystal City Spun, humorously expresses the limited phantom of the Phallus through the collective movement of the artificial penis. David KRIPPENDORFF took 3 years to finish his monumental video work, Nothing Escapes My Eyes, which is inspired by Verdi’s opera Aida. His critical and poetic introduction to cultural imperialism questions loss, cultural identity and transformative fiction. This kind of dialog consists of a set of conceptual and ideological spaces which goes beyond conventional cultural disciplines. The subjective perception of paradox and transformation of the participating artists offer a platform for a further paradox.

Rachel Rits-Volloch

STATION PARADOX is a dialogue between two curators and ten artists from Korea and from Berlin working with painting, video art, animation, installation, and performance. As the title suggests, cultural dialogue can often highlight the paradoxes inherent to questions of identity and shifting perspectives. Juxtaposing artists from Korea with an international array of Berlin-based artists from China, Italy, Serbia, and Germany, this exhibition, by way of its diversity of media and perspectives, takes the viewer on a journey through a complex geography of interpenetrating landscapes: cityscapes, political landscapes, emotional landscapes, fantasyscapes, memoryscapes, cyberscapes. This exhibition takes the premise that our cultural landscape is itself a paradox; like the works shown here, an assemblage of contradictory yet interrelated elements. Though driven by different motivations and media, the stories told by these works are interwoven in a complex social fabric of shared concerns about our world today.

The physical landscapes of South Korea and its border with the North are the subject of Kira Kim and Hyungkyu Kim’s 360-degree video work greeting the viewer upon entering the exhibition. In a second video work, Kira Kim extends his views on the ideological landscape of North-South relations in Korea, imagining a letter to the North, delivered in the only way available to him; as a message in a bottle cast into the sea in a meeting of ideological and physical landscapes. Worries over precarious political relationships with North Korea are a global concern in our current historic moment of rising nuclear tensions. The devastating consequences of nuclear testing are the focus of Claudia Chaseling’s ongoing series of spatial paintings, spilling out of the canvas and exploding off the gallery walls. Inscribed with a steganography of URLs related to her research, the abstract 3-dimentional painting invites us to engage the landscapes of the internet in order to navigate its meanings. The virtual landscape of cyberspace is brought into analogue focus in aaajiao’s ink print of the code 404, denoting the error message which appears on blocked websites in China, and the standard global message for a failure to connect. Whether through censorship or technical fault, one can get lost in this digital landscape. The alphanumeric language of our digital culture is mirrored in Milovan Destil Marcović’s barcode paintings. Also portraying codified language as painting, Marcović goes one step further, translating memoryscape and landscape into the systematic optical language of the barcode; depicting in one work, a quotation from a scandalous autobiography, and in another, the physical coordinates and time of a particular sunset. From transfigurative landscapes, we move to the hyper-real. Jang Jaerok’s exquisitely crafted photorealist painting of a German architectural landmark here speaks to David Krippendorff’s video tribute to the defunct landmark of the Cairo Opera House. Krippendorff’s singular portrait of a physical space across time, is equally an emotional portrait of human heartbreak. Such emotional landscapes are likewise explored in Jihye Park’s mesmerizing video where the simple action of a man sitting in his idling car gives rise to a profusion of possible readings of his drives and desires. Female desire in its most blatant and appropriated forms is the subject of Hye Rim Lee’s ongoing series of 3D digital animations. Lee’s fantasyscapes, modeled as an interface between Eastern and Western popular culture, pose a hyper-feminized challenge to the mostly male perspectives of computer gaming, animamix, and cyberculture. Navigating all these diverse landscapes is Zinu Kim’s performance as an exhibition guide. Re-appropriating a professional role as an artwork in a willful ambiguity between art and life, Kim leads the viewer on a physical journey through the gallery space and the many landscapes of this exhibition.


 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

 

IN COOPERATION WITH


17/11/2017
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Down Under

 
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To mark the end of 2017, which is the year of friendship between Australia and Germany, MOMENTUM holds two concurrent shows with an all-Australian line-up, taking us back to our Australian roots (MOMENTUM having been founded in Sydney before moving to Berlin in 2011).

MOMENTUM’s two exhibitions, taking place in parallel at the Kunstquartier Bethanien, are:
Kate McMillan’s solo show The Past Is Singing In Our Teeth,
and DOWN UNDER featuring three Australian women from the MOMENTUM Collection: Kate McMillan, Janet Laurence, and Shonah Trescott.

CLICK HERE FOR The Past Is Singing In Our Teeth > >

 

 

DOWN UNDER

Kate McMillan, Janet Laurence, Shonah Trescott

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

9 – 22 December 2017
 

OPENING 8 December @ 7-10pm
 

@ MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanein
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin 10997

 

DOWN UNDER brings together three Australian artists from the MOMENTUM Collection – Kate McMillan, Janet Laurence, and Shonah Trescott – all of whom engage in their practice with the impact that humankind has upon our planet, both through mankind’s role in relation to the environment, and through the construction and re-construction of memory, and how this impacts upon our perceptions of past and future. How reliable is memory when the act of re-membering itself is prone to so many reconstructions of the past? How can we foresee the future, when we can’t even agree on a past? How different is our perspective on both our internal and external landscapes when viewed by artists from the other hemisphere?
 

KATE McMILLAN

Kate McMillan’s works from the MOMENTUM Collection, the video diptych Paradise Falls I & II (2011/12), are shown alongside more recent works, such as the three part photo series entitled The Vast Structure of Recollection (2017), in which she explores the relationship between body memory and landscape, and her video installation The Island Is Silent (2017), which she made during her Artist Residency at the National Center of Contemporary Art (NCCA) St. Petersburg, on the island of Kronstadt. Using film, photography and sculpture, McMillan explores how the intense residue of memory can be located through quiet gesture, landscape, and the objects we carry around with us. Exploring internal and external landscapes alike, McMillan’s practice encompasses an open-ended dialogue between abstraction, felt experience and memory; a sort of visual poem. She premiers a new body of work in her solo show The Past is Singing in My Teeth, taking place in parallel to this exhibition.

Paradise Falls I (2011/12), HD Video, 2’49”

Paradise Falls I (2011/12, courtesy of the MOMENTUM Collection) is the philosophical culmination of the time McMillan spent in Switzerland in 2011 as well as her ongoing PhD project into the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, Western Australia. This significant body of work highlights a shift in her practice, evidenced by a dark and moody palette and the combination of figurative and abstract works that set up an interplay between landscape, memory, forgetting and history. Working across a diverse range of mediums including painting, collage, photography, film and sculpture, this exhibition examines the complex and sustaining residue of these overarching themes. The works cover a range of specific landscapes including Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, the Black Forest in Germany and the winter landscapes of Switzerland. With a focus on island sites and places that exist in isolation, the works attempt to draw parallels between physical landscapes and the psychological landscapes of the artist’s own memories, broader cultural histories and stories.
 

Paradise Falls II (2011/12), HD Video, 3’28”

Paradise Falls II (2011/12, courtesy of the MOMENTUM Collection) follows a man as he rows towards the silhouette of a craggy island off the coast of Wadjemup/Rottnest. He too appears and disappears from sight, finally lost to the inky black of the ocean. These characters are stand-ins for fractured and partial histories that disappear from focus, yet continue in our collective psyche as dark and haunting traumas. The films are like moving paintings, heavily referencing the romantic tradition of Germanic landscape painting. Unsurprisingly then the work of artists such as Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901) and Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) become distant cousins to McMillan’s oeuvre. The artist acknowledges and even embraces these quotations but she also holds them in a critical eye as part of an enlightenment ideology that has helped us to forget. Through engaging with the viewing process we participate in a re-remembering, acknowledging the shady edges of things, but also baring witness to the beauty of sadness that is contrary to the horrors of forgetting history.
 

The Island Is Silent (2017), Video Installation, 3’20”, salt, plaster

The Island Is Silent (2017) takes as its starting point the story of Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) eating her poems to conceal them during the period of Stalinist oppression. McMillan recreates this act using poems she wrote in Pittman’s shorthand, a rapid method of writing used by her mother for taking dictation. She recalls illegible notes left around the family home recording shopping lists, draft letters and other texts she could not decipher as a child. During McMillan’s residency in St Petersburg with NCCA in 2016, she taught herself Pittman’s shorthand. In The Island is Silent we can see McMillan slowly eating her own words as she stands within a cork-lined film set constructed in her studio. The cork room is a reference to Marcel Proust who famously wrote In Search of Lost Time (1913) from a cork lined bedroom in Paris. The cork creates a physical and sound barrier from the outside world. For Akhmatova and McMillan, the body becomes a container of secrets, of lost information – an island of isolation that serves as a barrier to the outside world.

The footage of McMillan eating the poems is then overlayed with interrelated footage, including images of Fort Alexander on the island of Kronstadt, recorded during her NCCA Residency. The fortress island built in the Gulf of Finland by Alexander the Great served to protect St Petersburg from outside invasion. The Island is Silent also incorporates the cavernous structure inside Fort Alexander; the stone and concrete tunnel system forms a giant oesophagus mirrored with found footage of an endoscopy. These cavernous spaces were used by scientists to test for vaccines on animals in the early 20th century. This connects to other Archival film sequences from a Cold War covert germ warfare experiment called ‘Operation Cauldron’ on the Isle of Lewis in Britain in 1952. Removed from their context and presented in their mute state, the reworked footage suggests polarised divisions are unclear and meaningless. The structure of the film is more like a moving collage, refusing a narrative – instead attempting to allude to the sensation of oppression, isolation and of being deep within the body. Conflating the personal and the political, drawing analogies between the present and the past, the work continues McMillan’s interest in seeing connections between all things. The sound, composed by Cat Hope, and titled ‘Shadows’ is played by two instruments who shadow each other throughout the score.
 

The Vast Structure of Recollection (2017), 3 prints: c-type photograph, torn, digitised and printed onto archival cotton rag

The Vast Structure of Recollection (2017) is an edition of three prints. Each print provides an insight into different aspects of Kate McMillan’s work: a photograph from a site visit to Pontikinisi in Greece for the development of The Moment of Disappearance (2014); a film still of my clenched hand used in two film works, Tuned Darker (2015) and Stones for Dancing, Stones for Dying (2016) – both of which indicate a material and aesthetic shift central to the development of a number of important sculptural works; and a collaged film-still from the work The Island is Silent (2017), also shown here.
 

FOR MORE INFO CLICK HERE > >

Kate McMillan’s solo exhibition, The Past Is Singing In Our Teeth (2017), is concurrently on view at Projecktraum in the Kunstquartier Bethanien, downstairs from the MOMENTUM gallery. The Past Is Singing In Our Teeth extends the notion that artworks, objects and even smells can serve as an umbilical cord back in time, thus functioning as an intermediary into the past – in this case, a fictional past reinvented in the absence of women’s histories. Like a conjuring or a haunting, it seeks to draw a line around the things that sit at the periphery of our vision. In particular, it imagines a lost archive of women’s knowledges, a remembrance of which is triggered through the recovery of sacred objects and landscapes. A mixed-media collage, The Past is Singing in our Teeth reconstructs a labyrinth of lost things through a film-based installation incorporating projected films, photography, sound, performance and sculpture. During the exhibition opening, the sculptures will be ‘performed’ as musical instruments by Perth-based percussionist Louise Devenish based on a score written by Australian composer Cat Hope.

 

Kate McMillan – BIO

Kate McMillan’s work incorporates a range of media including sculpture, film, sound, installation and photography. McMillan is interested in the linking narratives of forgetting and place, often focusing on the residue of the past. Her artworks thus act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are over-looked.

Previous solo exhibitions include 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. Her work has been featured in various museums and biennales, including the 17th Biennale of Sydney; the Trafco 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 and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.

In 2017 she was a finalist in the Celeste Prize curated by Fatos Üstek. In 2016 she was invited to undertake a residency in St Petersburg as part of the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) where she developed new film works which were shown at the State Museum of Peter & Paul Fortress in Russia in 2017. In early 2017 she was selected to be in the permanent collection at The Ned, for Vault 100, a new Soho House project which reversed the gender ratio of the FTSE 100 by showing the work of 93 women and 7 men. In 2016 McMillan took part in ‘Acentered: Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image’ during Art Basel Hong Kong, curated by Videotage. In 2015 McMillan was included in ‘StructuralObject HouseProject27’ curated by Linda Persson at a site in Greenwich, London, alongside other artists such as Bridget Currie and Laure Provoust.

Since 2002 she has also undertaken residencies in London, Tokyo, Basel, Berlin, Sydney, Beijing and Hong Kong. She 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. Her PhD (2014) explored the capacity for Contemporary Art to unforget colonial histories. McMillan lectures on the Masters Program in the Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College, London. She has also guest lectured at The Ruskin, Oxford University. Her PhD is currently being developed into a book called ‘Contemporary Art & Unforgetting: Methodologies of Making in Post-settler Landscapes’, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.

Her work is held in private collections around the world, as well as in the Christoph Merian Collection, Basel; Soho House Collection, London; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Wesfarmers Arts Collection; KPMG; Murdoch University, Australia; University of Western Australia and Curtin University, Australia.
 
 
 
 

WITH THANKS FOR THE GENEROUS SUPPORT:
 

JANET LAURENCE

Renowned Australian artist Janet Laurence is best 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 three series are shown here: the Vanishing series, depicting endangered animals on the verge of extinction; Chlorophyll Collapse, a series addressing the extinction of plants endemic to the anthropocene; and Deep Breathing, shot while working with scientists researching corral collapse in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and commissioned for Artists 4 Paris Climate, the exhibition program for COP21, the UN Climate Change Conference which took place in Paris in 2015.

The Other Side Of Nature / Panda (2014), HD video 9’18”

Dingo (2013), HD video 4’9″

Reflecting on the loneliness of the last of a species, The Other Side of Nature / Panda (2014), and Dingo (2013), shot in nature reserves in Chengdu, China and Victoria, Australia, chronicle in intimate proximity the lives of animals that could soon be the last of their kind.

“These are the days of violent extinctions, of global dimming and moving dust bowls, of habitat fragmentation, ice melt, and plundered lives. Animals are experiencing all this loss, and if we could better hear the waves of their agony, we would know this and be tormented.” (Debbie Bird Rose)

Transplant: a Forest for Chlorophyll Collapse (2017), Installation: wood, glass, plexiglass, plants, drawings, 3D printed objects (in cooperation with Leslie Ranzoni)

Transplant: a Forest for Chlorophyll Collapse revisits Janet Laurence’s Inside the Flower installation which she made for IGA Berlin 2017. The IGA work formed an experiential contemporary medicinal garden, immersing the viewer into our historical, spiritual and mythological relationship with psychotropic plants; an invitation to understand medicinal plants in a time of biochemical intelligence, when their roles in nature and history are being reconsidered. The Cellular Vitrines from Inside the Flower are here transplanted into a gallery context to bring renewed life to broken, fallen trees. Are they regeneration cells or medicines, analgesics for our wounded world? The world was once forest. The trees used in this installation are the remnants of the destruction waged this year by Berlin’s autumn storms, felling trees throughout the city. A medicinal garden sprouts out of the detritus of winds and floods symptomatic of global warming and endemic to the anthropocene, posing the the hopeful possibility of healing our planet.

Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), HD video 32’58”

Janet Laurence’s video Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), and accompanying photo series Corral Collapse Homeopathy (2015) were created for the UN Climate Conference,COP21, in Paris. Shot in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – a World Heritage site which is the planet’s largest living, and rapidly dying, structure – this series of works envisions a hospital for the Reef’s threatened corals and other marine species, making visible the otherwise invisible devastation beneath the surface of the sea, and offering hope for the healing of the marine world from the consequences of global warming and human impact. If we can care for marine life in the same way that we care for our own species, there is a chance of deflecting environmental catastrophe. Laurence’s work is an emergency response: a hospital for the Reef in this time of ecological crisis, intended to aid survival and effect transformation.

Corral Collapse Homeopathy No. 8 (2015), series of 10 photo

Janet Laurence – BIO

Janet Laurence is among Australia’s most established artists. In 2015 she was the Australian representative for the COP21/FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate Exhibition for the UN Climate Conference in Paris, for which she created Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef and Corral Collapse Homeopathy, both shown in this exhibition. Further selected recent international projects and exhibitions include: Matter of the Masters, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017-18); Lost Habitats, Nautilus Exhibition, Oldenburger, Germany (2017); Warning Shot, Topography of Art, Paris (2017); Moving Plants, Rønnebæksholm, Denmark (2017); Force of Nature, The Art Pavilion, curated by James Putnam, London (2017); the 57th Biennale of Venice (2017); Veiling Medical Glass, A Medicinal Maze, Novartis Campus, Sydney (2017); The Treelines Track, Bundanon, Australia (2017); GASP: Parliament, Hobart, Tasmania (2017); Inside the Flower, IGA Berlin (2017); AUFTRAG LANDSCHAFT, Schloss Biesdorf, Berlin (2017); The Pleasure of Love, October Salon, curated by David Elliot, Belgrade (2016); H2O Water Bar, Paddington Water Reservoir, Sydney (2016); Deep Breathing (Resuscitation for the Reef), Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Cuenco Bienal, Cuenco, Ecuador (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (2015); The Skullbone Experiment: A Paradigm of Art and Nature, Queen Victoria Museum, Tasmania (2014); Animate/ Inanimate, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Australia (2013); 1⁄2 Scene, Australia China Art Foundation Shanghai (2013); SCANZ: 3rd Nature, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2013); After Eden, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney (2012); The Alchemical Garden of Desire, McClelland Gallery, Victoria, Australia (2012). Janet Laurence is a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill, and Australia Council Fellowships, and the Alumni Award for Arts, University of New South Wales. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a former Board Member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and is a Visiting Fellow at the New South Wales University Art and Design, and at the Hanse-WissenschaftKolleg (HWK), Germany (2016-2017).

 

SHONAH TRESCOTT

Shonah Trescott is an award winning Australian artist, known for her work centering around mankind’s relationship with the natural world. Her work focuses on how humans create, interact with and impact upon the material and cultural landscapes we inhabit. The text-based works shown in this exhibition, Ode to Paris (2017) and Kyoto Protocol (2014) both take as their starting points two documents which are the most crucial international agreements designed to mitigate climate change.

Ode to Paris (2017), print on paper

Shonah Trescott’s Ode to Paris (2017, courtesy of the MOMENTUM Collection) is a surreal poem created in the ‘cut-up’ method devised by avant-garde Dadaist Tristan Tzara in How To Make a Dadaist Poem (1920):
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Using this method Shonah Trescott created Ode to Paris after Donald Trump announced in the ‘Rose Garden’ in July 2017 that the USA would withdraw from the Paris agreement, reached at the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP21. The entire ‘Paris Agreement’ document of over 7,500 words becomes a red cloud as a reference to the rose garden, a narrative lost in a rambling and incoherent stream of ‘alternate facts’. Created from the very document which aimed to unify the world in setting a target to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the very meaning of the agreement becomes no longer legible, and by the nature of chance even describes such antipodal sentences to the intent of the agreement. All at once this word cloud could be read both as a sobering manifesto, an incomprehensible warning of the gravity of the ‘business as usual’ road ahead, while simultaneously ridiculing a president who insists with child-like defiance that the USA stands alone as the only non signatory to the Paris Agreement.

Kyoto Protocol (2014), silkscreen on paper x 24

Also shown here is an earlier work, Kyoto Protocol (2014, courtesy of Gallery Eigen+Art), resulting from Shonah Trescott’s participation in a scientific expedition to the Arctic. In 2012 Shonah was invited by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research as Artist in Residence in the high Arctic, where she lived and worked with the scientific community at the German/ French AWIPEV Koldeway Station, Ny-Alesund, Svalbard. Probing the meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory, here in the most northerly settlement of the world she observed the ecological and human impact caused by anthropogenic environmental negligence and climate disruption. Shonah took the approach of a true artistic expedition to record and to document her concerns with the landscape; a process she sees as relating human culture and function to its surroundings. Diverging from her usual practice of painting, Shonah’s Arctic experience caused her to explore the mediums of photography, printmaking, and video, as she archived and captured the dark and light side of the high Arctic.

Probing the meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory, Shonah observed the ecological and human impact caused by anthropogenic environmental negligence and climate disruption. Questioning the current lack of international protection of the Arctic environment, Shonah began looking at environmental treaties alongside the past and current exploitation of the land taking place in the Arctic region. Using the Kyoto Protocol (an international Protocol aimed at collaboration between nations to curb emissions) as a canvas to comment on our society’s addiction to fossil fuels, we see the evident shock she felt on seeing and experiencing first-hand the aggressive and continued exploitation of the Arctic environment through mining for coal and other minerals. These existing industrial processes which obliterate the intended impact of the Kyoto Protocol are highlighted in Shonah’s work Kyoto Protocol (2012), where she uses carbon to address the damage it continues to effect on the environment. In a layered practice filtered through multiple studies and techniques ranging from ink blots, mono-prints, photocopies and then silkscreen reproductions, Shonah addresses, through the idea of the carbon copy, our heavy (man made) carbon footprints. But these silk screen prints also hold a personal story which harks back to the landscapes of Shonah’s childhood in a town nestled in a valley in NSW Australia which is one of the largest coal mining areas in the country. It is her experience and memory of chimney stacks and scarred landscapes which re-occur in these prints. Here she plays with the idea of the reproduction and repetition of transforming something banal into something inherent and familiar, blurring the line between beauty of atmosphere and destruction of vistas. The familiar forms, smells, plumes and silhouettes of black carbon she found in the Arctic was, as she states, ‘is a testament which is all too close to home’. This screen print edition is a timely reminder of this international protocol which is presently subject for re-evaluation.

Shonah Trescott – BIO

Shonah Trescott (b. 1982) is an Australian artist based between New York City and Berlin. She graduated from the National Art School, Sydney, Australia in 2005 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in painting. She has been the recipient of many awards and residencies including ‘La Cite Internationale Des Arts’ residency Paris, the ‘Leipzig International Arts Program’ Leipzig and the Martin Bequest Traveling Art scholarship. In 2011 she was an artist fellow of the ‘Hanse- Wissenschaftskolleg for Advanced Study’ ‘Arts in Progress Program’ and in 2012 she was the first artist of the residency project ‘Expedition Kunst und Wissenschaft’, a collaboration between the HWK and the AWI (‘Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research’) where she spent one month in Svalbard at the ‘AWIPEV Koldeway Station’. Her work is held in public and private collections in Germany, Australia, USA, Puerto Rico, and Japan. She exhibits with Eigen+Art Germany, Ando Gallery Tokyo and Dominick Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

 



INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

04/11/2017
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The Past is Singing in our Teeth

 
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To mark the end of 2017, which is the year of friendship between Australia and Germany, MOMENTUM holds two concurrent shows with an all-Australian line-up, taking us back to our Australian roots (MOMENTUM having been founded in Sydney before moving to Berlin in 2011).

MOMENTUM’s two exhibitions, taking place in parallel at the Kunstquartier Bethanien, are:
Kate McMillan’s solo show The Past Is Singing In Our Teeth,
and DOWN UNDER featuring three Australian women from the MOMENTUM Collection: Kate McMillan, Janet Laurence, and Shonah Trescott.

CLICK HERE FOR DOWN UNDER > >

 
 

Kate McMillan

The Past is Singing in Our Teeth
 

9 – 22 December 2017
 

OPENING: 8 December @ 7-10pm

PERFORMANCE: 8 December @ 8-8:30pm

Percussionist Louise Devenish performing a composition by Cat Hope
 

 

 

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object…” (Proust 1922: 45)

 

“When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us – we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand.” (Richard Martin, 20 Responses to The Past is Singing in Our Teeth, quoting Stephen Grosz)
 

The Past is Singing in our Teeth extends the notion that artworks, objects and even smells can serve as an umbilical cord back in time, thus functioning as an intermediary into the past – in this case, a fictional past reinvented in the absence of women’s histories. A mixed-media collage, The Past is Singing in our Teeth reconstructs a labyrinth of lost things through a film-based installation incorporating projected films, photography, sound, performance and sculpture. Like a conjuring or a haunting, it seeks to draw a line around the things that sit at the periphery of our vision. In particular, it imagines a lost archive of women’s knowledges, a remembrance of which is triggered through the recovery of sacred objects and landscapes.

Filmed in three UK locations – the Welsh Borders, the Kent coast and a Hampshire lake, as well as film sets (memory rooms) constructed in the artist’s studio, the exhibition traces the journey of a young girl as she rediscovers a heritage of knowledge and power. The work stitches together recreations of memories, combined with their physical remainders in the present day – objects, ephemera, locations and sounds. The films are inter-dispersed with photographs, spoken word and poetry, attempting to articulate the way memory inflects and informs the present, not as a series of linear and knowable narratives, but as constantly changing, ambiguous, beautiful and haunting residue.
 
 
 
 
 
 

These filmic spaces become points of access into a world that is somewhat disjointed from language, a world that is felt and internalised, carried in the body, played out and recreated in present day events. A central mechanism in this work is the creation of a series of sculptural objects that slip in and out of roles – functioning at once as props, as sculptures, and as musical instruments that form the basis for the film score: a ‘spell making’ dress befit with numerous pockets, that house sculptures / percussion objects / relics; a silver necklace decorated with children’s teeth; percussion stands for various sculptures and percussion objects; shorthand poems; silk fabrics with film stills printed on them which act as veils and barriers throughout the installation. Many of these objects will be ‘performed’ as the score is restaged with percussionists in a live performance during the opening.

The Past is Singing in our Teeth plays with ideas include the repeating of history, the presence of linked signs, archetypes, place and the objects we carry alongside us throughout our lives. The interplay between what is lost and what remains, the repetition of certain behaviours, the seeking out of certain systems and themes become the visual language of the work. So, whilst the impetus for the work begins with the artist’s own biographical engagement with time and memory, the concepts expand outwards, inviting viewers to connect to the work through their own experiences and ideas. The work is quiet, refusing monumentality – instead framing a precarious and fragile movement through the world. Like a psychoanalytic investigation, the construction of the work becomes a tenuous relationship between the real and the unreal, what is known and what is not.
 


 

ARTIST BIOS

 

Kate McMillan

Kate McMillan’s work incorporates a range of media including sculpture, film, sound, installation and photography. McMillan is interested in the linking narratives of forgetting and place, often focusing on the residue of the past. Her artworks thus act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are over-looked. Prior to this exhibition ‘The Past is Singing in Our Teeth, previous solo exhibitions include ‘Songs for Dancing, Songs for Dying’ at Castor Projects in London in 2016.

In October 2017 her work will be on exhibition during Frieze Week in London as a finalist in the Celeste Prize curated by Fatos Üstek. In July 2016 she was invited to undertake a residency in St Petersburg as part of the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) where she developed new film works which were shown at the State Museum of Peter & Paul Fortress in Russia in July 2017. In early 2017 she was selected to be in the permanent collection at The Ned, for Vault 100, a new Soho House project which reversed the gender ratio of the FTSE 100 by showing the work of 93 women and 7 men, curated by Kate Bryan, British art historian and global head of collections at Soho House.

In April 2016 McMillan took part in ‘Acentered: Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image’ during Art Basel Hong Kong, presented by the Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative, Acentered was part of the Crowdfunding Lab and curated by Videotage. In June 2015 McMillan was included in ‘StructuralObject HouseProject27’ curated by Linda Persson at a site in Greenwich, London, alongside other artists such as Bridget Currie and Laure Provoust. In April 2015 McMillan presented an exhibition of small sculptures and experimental films at Moana Project Space in Perth, Australia entitled ‘Anxious Objects’. In November 2014 Kate staged a project three years in development with Performance Space in Sydney that was presented at Carriageworks, entitled ‘The Moment of Disappearance’, curated by Bec Dean. The five channel film and installation included a new sound work composed by Cat Hope and recorded with the London Improvisers Orchestra.Previous solo exhibitions include ‘The Potter’s Field’, 2014, ACME Project Space, London; ‘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.Her work has been featured in various museums and biennales, including the 17th Biennale of Sydney; the Trafco 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 and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.

Since 2002 she has undertaken residencies in Russia, London, Tokyo, Switzerland, Berlin, Sydney, China and Hong Kong. McMillan has been the recipient of numerous grants including more recently an International Development Grant from the British Council and Arts Council England; and in 2015 a New Work Grant from the Australia Council, which she also received in 2011 and 2009. In 2013 McMillan was awarded a Fellowship from the Department of Culture and the Arts (Western Australia) and a Mid-Career Fellowship in 2008.She has resided on the Board of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) based in Sydney and has worked as a Peer and an Advisor for the Australia Council for the Arts. Her PhD (2014) explored the capacity for Contemporary Art to unforget colonial histories. McMillan is a part-time Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London where she lectures on the Masters Program in the Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries.

She is also an External Examiner for Brighton University, UK and has guest lectured at The Ruskin, Oxford University. McMillan has taught at Open University via Curtin University, Australia; Coventry University and the University of Creative Arts, Farnham. Her PhD is currently being developed into a book called ‘Contemporary Art & Unforgetting: Methodologies of Making in Post-settler Landscapes’, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. She is also undertaking research into gender equality in the contemporary art world, which will also be published in 2018.Her work is held in private collections around the world, as well as in the Christoph Merian Collection, Basel; Soho House Collection, London; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Wesfarmers Arts Collection; KPMG; Murdoch University, Australia; University of Western Australia and Curtin University, Australia.


Cat Hope

Cat Hope’s music is conceptually driven, using mostly graphic scores, acoustic /electronic combinations and new score-reading technologies. It often features aleatoric elements, drone, noise, glissandi and an ongoing fascination with low frequency sound. Her composed music ranges from works for laptop duet to orchestra, with a focus on chamber works, and in 2013 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to develop her work, as well as fellowships at the Civitella Ranieri (Italy) and the Visby International Composers Residency (Sweden). Her practice explores the physicality of sound in different media, and has been discussed in books such as Loading the Silence (Kouvaris, 2013), Women of Note (Appleby, 2012), Sounding Postmodernism (Bennett, 2011) as well as periodicals such as The Wire, Limelight, and Neu Zeitschrift Fur Musik Shaft.

Her works have been recorded for Australian, German and Austrian national radio, and her work has been awarded a range of prizes including the APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music in 2011, and the Peggy Glanville Hicks composer residency in 2014. She has founded a number of groups, most recently the Decibel new music ensemble, the noise improv duo Candied Limbs, and the Abe Sada and Australian Bass Orchestra bass projects. She has also founded and written pop songs for Gata Negra (1999-2006).Cat Hope is currently Professor of Music at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia where she is Head of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music.

Reviews of Cat Hope:
“one of the most important voices of modern Australian music” Thomas Meyer, JazzNMore, 2017.
“a superstar of Australian new music” Alex Turley, Realtime133, 2016
“Intense and dramatic” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2017
“highly successful musical innovation” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2017
“… of the five works on the program, composer Cat Hope was the most successful…she shows that “new music” can be both accessible and relevant.” Joephine Giles, Aussie Theatre, July 2012.
“.. work of great psychological and theatrical impact” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2011.

Louise Devenish

Louise Devenish is a Perth-based percussionist whose practice incorporates performance, directing, research and education. Her work with contemporary, world and interdisciplinary ensembles includes co-directing the percussion duo The Sound Collectors, directing Piñata Percussion, percussing for electro-acoustic sextet Decibel and curating the annual Day of Percussion, a full-day event exploring percussion via performances and workshops. Louise works regularly with Speak Percussion (Vic) as a percussionist and contributor to Sounds Unheard. She has also performed with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Synergy Percussion (NSW), Clocked Out Duo (Qld), redfishbluefish (USA) and was a core

member of Tetrafide Percussion (2004- 2010). Louise has performed throughout Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam. Highlights have included performances at the Nagoya and Shanghai World Expos, Percussive Arts Society International Convention (USA), Ojai Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, Melbourne Festival, Tongyeong International Music Festival, and more. An advocate of Australian music, Louise has commissioned over 40 percussion works and has recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree researching the development of Australian contemporary percussion music, which culminated in the show Australian Music for One Percussionist. In 2012 she studied at the University of California San Diego with Steven Schick. Louise is Head of Percussion at the University of Western Australia School of Music, where she also teaches world music and musicology, and she is also a lecturer for the acting and music departments at WA Academy of Performing Arts. Her research is published in Musicology Australia, Resonate, Percussive Notes and PERCUSscene.




 
 

With thanks for the generous support in realizing this exhibition:

 


 

 


 


OPENING PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 


PERFORMANCE VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 


INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

16/10/2017
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Landscapes of Loss

 
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Landscapes of Loss

The Exhibition for the UN Climate Change Conference, COP23

3 – 5 November in Berlin // 6 – 17 November in Bonn

 

An Initiative of the Ministry of Environment, Berlin > >

 


 
 

Landscapes of Loss

The Exhibition for the UN Climate Change Conference, COP23

 

Featuring:

Andreas Blank, Stefano Cagol, Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus, Miru Kim,
Janet Laurence, Reifenberg, Stefan Rinck, Erwin Wurm, Shingo Yoshida

 

Curated by Constanze Kleiner & Rachel Rits-Volloch
 
 

3 – 5 November 2017

@ The Ministry of Environment

Stresemannstraße 128 – 130, 10117 Berlin

 
 

6 – 17 November 2017

The video works from this exhibition will also be shown at COP23
for the duration of the UN Climate Change Conference
:
@ UNFCCC Secretariat, Bonn
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1

 

Eshetu_ROMA_grab

 

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), adopted 25 years ago, this year holds the 23rd World Climate Conference in Germany under the presidency of the Fiji Islands. Diplomats, politicians and representatives of civil society from all over the world meet in Bonn on 6-17 November 2017 to reach the target set by the Paris Climate Change Agreement at COP21 in 2015: to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius and to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The World Climate Conference in Bonn will be the largest intergovernmental conference ever held in Germany. Up to 25,000 participants from 197 nations around the world, as well as around 500 non-governmental organizations and more than 1,000 journalists are expected. In this context, we are proud to present Landscapes of Loss in Berlin and Bonn for the 23rd World Climate Conference.

Landscapes of Loss at Berlin’s Ministry of Environment, is the exhibition for the UN Climate Change Conference, COP23, bringing together ten international artists with strong links to Berlin, who, each in their own way, address mankind’s role in relation to the environment. Through video, photography, and sculpture, this exhibition is designed as an antidote to the hyper-immediacy of the lives we live. Landscapes of Loss invites us to disengage from our phones, to stop tweeting and messaging, to switch off the data stream, to opt out of the constant barrage of the now and immerse ourselves in our planet – from the Arctic tundra of Siberia, to the deserts of the Middle East, and the jungles and seas of the Antipodes – while we still can. As the world’s climate change experts convene in Bonn in mid-November for COP23, Landscapes of Loss creates a space of contemplation and time for reflection upon the role we all play in halting the disastrous deterioration of our planet’s climate. It is not only at the governmental level that drastic changes must be made to mitigate the human impact on the environment. The damage already done will be healed through a transformation of the attitudes, expectations, and actions of every one of us. Yet this is a race against time; decisions implemented now will take years to show results. In this age of instant gratification, we need to re-learn how to think in the long-term. Landscapes of Loss asks us to stop and take the time to experience our planet at its most fragile; abandon the urgency of the now to reconnect with the rhythms and needs of the natural world.

From endangered species to the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian artist Janet Laurence confronts us with the beauty and loneliness of creatures that could soon be the last of their kind. With the works of German sculptors Andreas Blank and Stefan Rinck, we turn from the ephemeral landscape and its vanishing creatures to the solid permanence of stone. Whether ironically recreating the detritus of our planet or populating it with totems of an alternative mythology, both artists work consciously with stone as a material reflecting the very substance of time; in its strata are recorded the ages of the planet. Berlin-based Israeli artist Reifenberg also addresses the detritus polluting our environment, working throughout his practice with plastic bags recycled into the medium of his art. Italian artist Stefano Cagol and Japanese artist Shingo Yoshida each ventured on long journeys into the Arctic to record mankind’s impact upon nature at its most extreme, and at its most threatened from the impacts of climate change; from Cagol’s solitary sojourn in the Norwegian Arctic Circle, to Yoshida’s documentation of communities surviving outside of time, straddling the International Date Line in the Siberian Arctic Circle. Out of the frozen north we visit the burning sands of Israel’s Negev Desert with Turkish/German artist Nezaket Ekici and Israeli artist Shahar Marcus. In this actual and political hotbed, time is running out, and Muslim and Jew alike are turned into human sand-clocks measuring how quickly we are getting nowhere with solutions for political and environmental stability. Likewise, Korean/American artist Miru Kim engages with the desert in Jordan’s Wadi Rum. In positioning the fragility of her own body within the drama of this natural landscape, she succeeds in highlighting the fragility of the landscape itself. Austrian artist Erwin Wurm brings us out of the jungles and seas, the Arctic wastes, and the scorching deserts, back into the city. Our urban landscape is an environment changing as rapidly as our natural one. In confronting through absurdity our place in the urban landscape, the humor inherent to these scenarios gives us hope that humanity will find a way to fit into all the world’s landscapes, however fragile the balance.

 

ARTISTS AND WORKS

 

ANDREAS BLANK

This exhibition ranges from the ephemeral landscape and its vanishing creatures, to the solid permanence of stone. German artist Andreas Blank is a sculptor working exclusively with stone. He is conscious of his chosen medium as a material reflecting the very substance of time; in its strata are recorded the ages of the planet. In Untitled (2010) Andreas Blank fashions out of quartz a perfect replica of a plastic bag, turning his art to sculpting the detritus of our planet, recreating in timeless stone the all too temporary objects of the day-to-day. Untitled (2010) is on loan for this exhibition from the Collection of the Ministry of the Environment.

Landscape Metaphor (2014), sculpture, quartz

Andreas Blank was born in Ansbach in 1976. He attended the Karlsruhe State Academy of Art (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste) and was Meisterschüler under Prof. Klingelhöller. He held a scholarship with the German National Academic Foundation and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. In 2009 he was a finalist for the New Sensations Award by Channel 4 and the Saatchi Gallery. He lives and works in Berlin. Andreas Blank‘s stone encarved trompe l’oeils seem casual at first sight. However, his arrangements are precisely staged and after closer inspection one discovers that light bulbs, transport boxes and plastic bags are made of marble, alabaster or sandstone. In his sculptural practice, Andreas Blank combines the abstract and the realistic, the conceptual as well as the technical. He sources stones from quarries from all over the world, carves them with elaborate deliberation and assembles them into sometimes consciously stylized, and other times deceptively realistic objects of the everyday. In his precise installations, the apparently ephemeral objects achieve monumental permanence. Whether marble, alabaster, or porphyry, material historically used to serve religious or political functions, has in Blank’s hands acquired the seemingly casual character of the mundane and wasteful. Questioning the obvious and transforms traditional ideals and values, the geographical and cultural identity of the stone and the memorial function of stone-sculpture in general subvert our usually impermanent relation to the objects we use.

 
 

STEFANO CAGOL

The impact which mankind has upon the natural environment is at the root of this work created at Kirkenes, in the Norwegian Arctic Circle, during one of the periods Cagol spent abroad as an artist in residence. The artist staged a series of emblematic actions that he filmed with a video camera, in total solitude, immersed in a fascinating but hostile natural environment, in extreme climactic conditions. The setting seems to be cloaked in twilight, barely dispelling the darkness, and the temperature is 25 degrees below zero. In those frozen lands, Cagol tries to communicate in one way or another, using different forms of signaling. He endeavours to modify the landscape, to light it up, to melt the snow with a flame, but every attempt at interaction with this harsh environment is in vain. The irony here is not lost. While one man cannot make a visible impact upon this frozen landscape, the impact of mankind as a whole is all too devastating. For Cagol in this case the border is precisely the one between himself, his body and his mind, the extreme nature that surrounds him, and the impact which mankind has upon this natural environment. Evoke Provoke (The Border) was shown at the solo exhibition Concilio in the church of San Gallo, as a collateral event at the 54th Venice Biennale.

Evoke Provoke [the border] (2011), HD video 12’30”

Stefano Cagol (Trento, 1969) received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, after having graduated from the Accademia di Brera in Milan. He participated in Manifesta 11 and Manifesta 7; at the 55th Venice Biennale, invited by the Maldives Pavilion; at the 54th Venice Biennale with a solo collateral event; and at the 1st Singapore Biennale. In 2017 a still from Evoke Provoke [the border] becomes part of the Collection of the German Ministry of Environment (Sammlung Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Deutschland), and he is part of the grand inaugural exhibition curated by Veit Loers at Haus Mödrath – Räume für Kunst in Cologne. In 2014-2015 his solo project “The Body of Energy (of the mind)” was presented at a series of European museums, such as the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Madre Museum in Naples, Maga Museum in Gallarate, Museion in Bolzano, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Museum Folkwang in Essen, Landmark / Bergen Kunsthall. Among grants and awards he won the Visit prize of Innogy Foundation in 2014 (Germany) and the Terna Prize for Contemporary Art in 2009 (Italy). He has been selected for many artist in residence programs including: Ruhr Residence 2016; Cambridge Sustainability Residency 2016; Air Bergen; BAR International in Kirkenes; International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP in New York; ICP-International Center of Photography in New York.

 
 

NEZAKET EKICI & SHAHAR MARCUS

Turkish/German artist Nezaket Ekici and Israeli artist Shahar Marcus together address geopolitical and environmental forces through the medium of performance in their video Sandclock (2012). Shot in the burning sands of Israel’s Negev Desert, their performance ironically confronts human endurance with the extremes of nature and culture. In this actual and political hotbed, time is running out, and Muslim and Jew alike are turned into human sand-clocks measuring how quickly we are getting nowhere with solutions for political and environmental stability.

Nezaket Ekici and Shahar Marcus both work separately as artists but started to collaborate on projects in 2012. Their ongoing project In Relation revolves around an exploration of time, space, culture, religion, and the often absurd ways in which people interact with the environment. In this, as a German-based Muslim and an Israeli-based Jew, they collaborate on performances and videos that bridge cultures and religions as well as the long distances between Berlin and Tel Aviv. Focusing on the origin of the latin word relatio (relation), meaning ‘bringing back’, they set out to bring back a knowledge that has been forgotten by most of us: a relation with ourselves and our environment. Since 2012 they have produced seven video works together: Salt Dinner, Sand Clock, Floating Ourselves, Clean Coal, Fossils, Fields of Breath and Lublin Beach, all concentrating on the Ancient Greek aphorism γνῶθι σεαυτὸν: know thyself.

Sandclock (2012), HD video 5’7″

Nezaket Ekici was born in 1970 in Kırşehir, Turkey, and lives and works between Berlin and Stuttgart. She studied art pedagogy, art history, and sculpture at Ludwig Maximilian University and the Fine Arts Academy, Munich, and received her MA degree in art pedagogy (1994–2000). Thereafter, she studied performance art with Marina Abramovic at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig, where she received her BFA and MFA (2001–04). Nezaket Ekici recently participated in the prestigious international Artist Resedency Programs of the German Aacademy in Rome at the Villa Massimo (2016-2017), and the German Foreign Ministry Residency in Tarabia, Istanbul (2015-2016). Recent group exhibitions include: 56th Venice Biennale, 2015; Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel, 2015; The Pleasure of Love, 56th October Salon, Belgrade, 2016; The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi, 2016; MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakau, 2016; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, 2016; Gabriele Münter Preis, Akademie der Künste, Berlin & Frauenmuseum, Bonn, 2017.

Shahar Marcus was born 1971 in Petach Tikva, Israel, and lives and works in Tel Aviv. He studied Linguistics at the University of Tel Aviv (1993–1997), and continued his studies for an M.A. in History of Art (1999–2004) at the University of Tel Aviv. Selected solo exhibitions include: Going, Going Gone, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2015); All is Gold, The Municipal Gallery, Rehovot (2014); Solo project at Threshold Gallery, India Art Fair, New Delhi (2013); 1,2,3 Herring, MoCA Hiroshima, Hiroshima (2012); The Curator, The Petach Tikva Museum of Art; The Memorial Employee, Dana Art Gallery, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai (2011); Bread & Bunker, Mediations Biennale, Poznań (2010).

 
 

MIRU KIM

Korean/American artist Miru Kim, in her Camel’s Way series (2012), immerses herself in the world’s deserts for over two years. The Camel’s Way follows her journey to deserts around the world, including the Arabian Desert, the Sahara in Mali, Morocco, and Egypt, the Thar in India, and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, where she lived with desert nomads, slept in caves, and photographed herself with camels. In the work shown in this exhibition, the female nude, an archetype since the dawn of western art history, is transposed to the sands and mountains in a 3-week journey through Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert. In positioning the fragility of her own body within the drama of this natural landscape, Miru Kim succeeds in highlighting the fragility of the landscape itself.

Wadi Rum, Jordan, Arabian Desert 3 from the The Camel’s Way series (2012), photograph

Miru Kim was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts in 1981, but was raised in Seoul, Korea. She moved to New York in 1999 to attend Columbia University, and in 2006 she received an MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute. Miru Kim is a New York-based artist and explorer. Her first series, Naked City Spleen is based on her exploration of urban ruins such as abandoned subway stations, tunnels, sewers, catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. Her next series, The Pig That Therefore I am juxtaposes her skin against the pig’s skin in industrial hog farms to explore the changing relationship between humans and animals. Currently she is working on a book about her body of work, The Camel’s Way.Miru’s work has been featured in many international publications, and is held in public collections including: the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; Hanmi Photography Museum; Leeum Samsung Museum of Art; Borusan Contemporary, Turkey; and the Addison Gallery of American Art.

 
 

SHINGO YOSHIDA

Japanese artist Shingo Yoshida ventured on a long journey into the Arctic to record mankind’s impact upon nature at its most extreme. Yoshida’s journey in his film The End of Day and Beginning of the World (2015) took him to Siberia, to the point where the Arctic Circle crosses the 180th Meridian, the basis for the International Date Line separating two consecutive calendar days. Inspired by local Chukchi folklore and customs, this film is a journey into a place where nature rules, and mankind clings to the traditions of their ancestors in order to survive. Straddling the border between two days, it is a place of strong mythologies and magical landscapes; an environment of extremes which defies man-made borders and mankind’s influence, yet is still perilously close to destruction from climate change.

The End of Day Beginning of the World (2015), 4K Video 22’8″

Photographer and video artist, Shingo Yoshida, finds inspiration in travelling, myths, traditions and the overwhelming beauty of nature. 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. In his photo series Journey to the Center of the Earth, Yoshida travels to Iceland to envision his own reinterpretation of Jules Verne’s eponymous book.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2014), photograph

Shingo Yoshida, born in 1974 in Tokyo, and currently lives and works in Berlin. 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. in 2013 Yoshida completed the prestigious international artist residencies at Villa Arson Nice France – Centre National d’Art Contemporain, and was awarded the Fellowship of Overseas Study Programme for Artists by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government. Yoshida’s work has been shown in many international exhibitions, including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007, 2012); the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Santiago, Chile (2012); the 60th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, (2014); Videoart at Midnight #67: Shingo Yoshida, BABYLON, Berlin (2015); POLARIZED! Vision Competition Winner, Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland (2015); Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma, Japan (2016); 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); IkonoTV (2017). In 2016 Shingo Yoshida’s works entered into the following Collections in Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, Akademie der Künste, and Fluentum.

JANET LAURENCE

Of the ten artists in this exhibition, renowned Australian artist Janet Laurence is most 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, shot while working with scientists researching corral collapse in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and commissioned for Artists 4 Paris Climate, the exhibition program for COP21, the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015.

The Other Side Of Nature / Panda (2014), HD video 9’18”

Dingo (2013), HD video 4’9″

Reflecting on the loneliness of the last of a species, The Other Side of Nature / Panda (2014), and Dingo (2013), shot in nature reserves in Chengdu, China and Victoria, Australia, chronicle in intimate proximity the lives of animals that could soon be the last of their kind.

“These are the days of violent extinctions, of global dimming and moving dust bowls, of habitat fragmentation, ice melt, and plundered lives. Animals are experiencing all this loss, and if we could better hear the waves of their agony, we would know this and be tormented.” (Debbie Bird Rose)

Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), HD video 32’58”

Janet Laurence’s video Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), and accompanying photo series Corral Collapse Homeopathy (2015) were created for the UN Climate Conference,COP21, in Paris. Shot in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – a World Heritage site which is the planet’s largest living, and rapidly dying, structure – this series of works envisions a hospital for the Reef’s threatened corals and other marine species, making visible the otherwise invisible devastation beneath the surface of the sea, and offering hope for the healing of the marine world from the consequences of global warming and human impact. If we can care for marine life in the same way that we care for our own species, there is a chance of deflecting environmental catastrophe. Laurence’s work is an emergency response: a hospital for the Reef in this time of ecological crisis, intended to aid survival and effect transformation.

Corral Collapse Homeopathy No. 8 (2015), series of 10 photo

Janet Laurence is among Australia’s most established artists. In 2015 she was the Australian representative for the COP21/FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate Exhibition for the UN Climate Conference in Paris, for which she created Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef and Corral Collapse Homeopathy, both shown in this exhibition. Further selected recent international projects and exhibitions include: the 57th Biennale of Venice (2017); Veiling Medical Glass, A Medicinal Maze, Novartis Campus, Sydney (2017); The Treelines Track, Bundanon, Australia (2017); GASP: Parliament, Hobart, Tasmania (2017); Inside the Flower, IGA Berlin (2017); Schloss Biesdorf, Centre for Art and Public Space, Berlin (2017); Fellowship at the Hanse-WissenschaftKolleg (HWK), Germany (2016-2017); H2O Water Bar, Paddington Water Reservoir, Sydney (2016); Deep Breathing (Resuscitation for the Reef), Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Cuenco Bienal, Cuenco, Ecuador (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (2015); The Skullbone Experiment: A Paradigm of Art and Nature, Queen Victoria Museum, Tasmania (2014); Animate/ Inanimate, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healsville, Victoria, Australia (2013); 1⁄2 Scene, Australia China Art Foundation Shanghai (2013); SCANZ: 3rd Nature, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2013); After Eden, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney (2012); The Alchemical Garden of Desire, McClelland Gallery, Victoria, Australia (2012). Janet Laurence is a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill, and Australia Council Fellowships, and the Alumni Award for Arts, University of New South Wales. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a former Board Member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and is a Visiting Fellow at the New South Wales University Art and Design.

 
 

REIFENBERG

Berlin-based Israeli artist Reifenberg addresses the detritus polluting our environment, working throughout his practice with plastic bags recycled into the medium of his art. In Oil Spill 12.10 (2010) he fashions a lightbox recreating the satellite image of an oil spill; ironically using the petroleum-based material of the ubiquitous plastic bag to depict one of the many man-made catastrophes to devastate our planet. In using the trash of consumerist excess and a pollutant of our environment as the material of his artworks, Reifenberg’s works live from the inner tension between commodity fetishism and worthlessness, the world of consumerism and decay, colourful splendor and environmental destruction. And in making Oil Spill 12.10 into a lightbox, Reifenberg adds the tension between the sacred and profane; creating out of trash the likeness of a stained glass window, only to depict demise of our environment in its mosaic of colours.

Oil Spill (2010/2017), lightbox

Reifenberg was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1960 and studied Philosophy of Aesthetics at Gideon Ofrat in Tel Aviv. Reifenberg left his homeland during the Lebanon War in 1982, and since 1988 he has lived and worked in Berlin. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including: Museo Metropolitano, Lima, Peru (2015); Stiftung Zollverein, Essen (2014); dotLand, Peninsula, Berlin (2014); Musraramix Festival, Jerusalem (2014); Natura Naturata, WiE Gallery, Berlin (2014); Conjunction, Greenhous, Berlin (2014); Capilla del Arte UDLAP, Mexico (2014); Marta Traba, Sao Paulo (2013); Pool, MUDAC, Lausanne (2013); Memory of Present, coup de des, Berlin (2012); Green Bag – Movement, Nachahmung Empfohlen!, Iberia Center, Peking (2012)

 
 

STEFAN RINCK

German artist Stefan Rinck is a sculptor working exclusively with the solid permanence of stone. Conscious of the timelessness of his medium, Stefan Rinck creates creatures reminiscent of a bygone age of totems and effigies. In the series of five sculptures shown in this exhibition – Die Streichwürstin (2017), Chiaroscuro (2014), Gibbons don’t have good press (2014), Roo (2013), and Unicorn (2009) – Stefan Rinck builds an alternative mythology, pitting man-made time against the timelessness of imagination, populating our world with eternal creatures of stone able to withstand any extinction.

Gibbons Don’t Have Good Press (2014), sculpture, sandstone

Stefan Rinck was born in 1973 in Homburg/Saar, and currently lives and works in Berlin. Rinck studied Art History and Philosophy at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, and Sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. Stefan Rinck has had many gallery and museum exhibitions, including: Sorry We`re Closed (Brussels), Vilma Gold (London) and Patricia Low Contemporary (Gstaad, St. Moritz), de Hallen (Haarlem), Gallery Rüdiger Schöttle (Munich), The Breeder (Athens), Galeria Alegria (Madrid), Cruise&Callas and Klara Wallner Gallery (both in Berlin). He participated in the Busan Biennale in South Korea and at the Vent des Foret in France where he has realized permanent public sculptures.

 
 

ERWIN WURM

In this exhibition, celebrated Austrian artist Erwin Wurm brings us out of the jungles and seas, the Arctic wastes, and the scorching deserts, back into the city. Our urban landscape is an environment changing as rapidly as our natural one. The way people have lived upon this planet for millennia in family groups and villages is well on its way to being replaced by the megacity, with millions living and working packed into faceless high-rises. Erwin Wurm’s photo series of one-minute sculptures, Leopoldstadt (2004), confronts through absurdity our place in the urban landscape. The solitary figures posing incongruously in empty streets could be seen as a sign of urban alienation, but the humor inherent to these scenarios gives us hope that humanity will find a way to fit into our landscape, however fragile the balance.

Erwin Wurm came to prominence with his One Minute Sculptures, a project that he began in the late 1980s. In these works, Wurm gives written or drawn instructions to participants that indicate actions or poses to perform with everyday mundane objects. These sculptures are by nature ephemeral, and by incorporating photography and performance into the process, Wurm challenges the formal qualities of the medium as well as the boundaries between performance and daily life, spectator and participant. While in this series he explores the idea of the human body as sculpture, Wurm consistently works within the liminal space between high and low, merging genres to explore what he views as a farcical and invented reality. While Wurm considers humor an important tool in his work, there is always an underlying social critique of contemporary culture.

Leopoldstadt, 07 (2004), one-minute performance photograph

Erwin Wurm was born in 1954 in Bruck an der Mur/Styria, Austria, and lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. He graduated from the University of Graz, Austria, in 1977, and Gestaltungslehre University of Applied Art and the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna in 1982. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Austrian Pavilion, the 54th Biennale of Venice (2017); 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna (2017); Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2017); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2017); Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2016); Schindler House, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, West Hollywood, CA (2016); Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Thailand (2016); Indianapolis Museum of Art, IL (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, Poland (2013); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2012); and Dallas Contemporary, TX (2012). Select group exhibitions include: Performing for the Camera, Tate Modern, London (2016); Precarious Balance, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch, New Zealand (2016); Desire for Freedom, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, Poland (2013); HEIMsuchung: Uncanny Spaces in Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2013); The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); and Temporary Structures: Performing Architecture in Contemporary Art, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, USA (2011). Wurm’s work is in numerous international public and private collections, including Albertina, Vienna; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.



 

ABOUT THE CURATORS

 

Rachel Rits-Volloch

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA degree in Literature, and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. In 2016-2017, Rachel Rits-Volloch was Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” and the PhD program in Artistic Research. Rachel Rits-Volloch is Director of the non-profit global platform for time-based art, MOMENTUM, which she founded in 2010.

Having been founded in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney, in 2011 MOMENTUM moved to Berlin to the thriving Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, Performance and Education Programs and Archives, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 65 international exhibitions showing works by over 500 artists, in addition to ongoing education programming, artist residencies, and related projects. Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, Germany.

Constanze Kleiner

Constanze Kleiner has more than 20 years of experience in the field of art and culture. After majoring in Slavic Studies and German Language and Literature, Kleiner began her curatorial career as founder and managing partner of the production company White Cube Berlin, which realized the exhibition project 36x27x10 in Berlin’s former Palast der Republik (2005). When this iconic landmark was torn down, Kleiner founded the Temporary Kunsthalle on the same site. Constanze Kleiner headed the Temporary Kunsthalle as managing partner and was responsible for concept and implementation from 2007 to 2009. From November 2012 until October 2013 she was the first Chief Curator of the newly founded TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland. In 2017 Kleiner founded her peripatetic gallery Schlachthaus Fresh&Fine Art, with an ongoing exhibition program throughout multiple venues in Berlin.

Constanze Kleiner has worked as curator and advisor on many international exhibitons, including: Gregor Schneider, STERBERAUM, National Museum in Szczecin, Poland (2012); Ryszard Wasko, Genesis, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland (2012); Christian Jankowski, The Eye Of Dubai, National Museum in Szczecin, Poland (2013); THRESHOLDS, MOMENTUM Berlin, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland (2013); Sanatorium Artist Residency Exchange, MOMENTUM Berlin and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland (2013-2014); WE ALL LOVE ART, Schlachthaus Fresh& Fine Art, Berlin (2017); The Landscape In Us, Schlachthaus Fresh& Fine Art, Berlin (2017); Landscapes of Loss, for the UN Climate Conference COP23, Ministry of Environment, Berlin (2017).


01/09/2017
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Hole Within the Whole

 
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For Berlin Art Week 2017 MOMENTUM presents:

 

Hole within the Whole

An interdisciplinary exhibition with installation, animation, and performance by

HOBART HUGHES

 

8 September – 8 October 2017

 
 

OPENING: 8 September @ 7-10pm
 
 

PERFORMANCES:

Friday, 8 September @ 8 – 8:30pm
Sunday, 10 September @ 5 – 6pm

 
 

 

MOMENTUM AiR Open Studio
Performance & Artist Talk with Hobart Hughes

 

10 September @ 5-6pm
 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 


 
 

ARTIST BIO

Hobart Hughes [aka John Hughes] (b. 1954) is an Australian artist, filmmaker, sculptor, painter, animator, musician and performer, active since the early 1980s. Since 1995, Hobart Hughes has been a lecturer at COFA, the College of Fine Art in Sydney, Australia. Hobart Hughes is Artist-in-Residence at MOMENTUM AiR: 15 August – 16 September 2017.

From 1984 to 1988 Hughes was the co-founder [with Bruce Currie] and performer with the multimedia arts/theatre group Even Orchestra whose events incorporated music, film, puppetry and performance art in a variety of settings. While producing short animated films in both Super 8 and 16mm such as Germ of an Idea [1984] and Crust [1987] and the short drama Public Knowhow [1985] [nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Short Drama] Hughes also animated and directed music videos including Let’s Cook [1982], Close Again [1983], So Strong [1985] for the band Mental as Anything and for Laughing Clown’s Eternally Yours [1984]. The music video for Let’s Cook was later screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. During the 1990s Hughes produced a number of web projects including A History of Walking [1996] while also producing short films such as Dark Aisle and Because You Can [both 1992] that were screened on SBS Television. Hughes work during the 2000’s continued to explore his interests in sculpture and installation, many works featuring video and performance components such as Epiphany, a video installation at Ivan Doherty Gallery in 2007, and Placed, at Damien Minton Gallery, 2008. Single channel film/video works such as The Wind Calls Your Name [2004] demonstrated Hughes’s ability to carry his trademark concerns into new media. In 2008 his animated short Removed was featured in the exhibition Figuring Landscapes at Tate Modern.
 


 

ARTIST STATEMENT

Imprinted, Part 1: Hole Within The Whole
 

During his Artist Residency at MOMENTUM AiR, Hobart Hughes is developing the first part of a major installation/performance work entitled “Imprinted”. Through performance, sculpture and animation, the work explores an allegorical rift in space-time.

The artist writes: “When the mind disengages from conscious thought, what happens to all the energy that was previously occupied with running a myriad narratives and emotions? For the purposes of this work, I call this energy a wormhole. The structure of the work is a kind of “art collider”, derived from an absence or void in the perception of reality. As unconscious connections form or break apart, awareness can expand around everyday events and bend consciousness so as to imbue space with greater or lesser significance. The work explores how narrative forms and reforms around these ruptures.

The project comprises video, video installation, animation, sculpture, narrative and performance by creating a series of apertures or holes, both physical and metaphoric. I try to create works that are held in a liminal position where contradictory positions, mentalities, narratives or realities may be explored simultaneously. This is not something that I apply to the work, it is inherently part of my perception and method.

Having animation as part of my practice has made me even more acutely aware of the ability to replicate a space while constructing a viewer consciousness. I have always perceived animation as a kind of consciousness mapping, in the sense of ideas mapped into space via sequences on a time molecular level (of the single frame). Animation is by default a reconstruction of space/time through a prism of pattern and context. The term I’d like to use is ‘Speculative Kinematics’”.

– Hobart Hughes
 
 


WATCH “Book Worm Hole”:

[fve] https://vimeo.com/238417603 [/fve]

 

Conciousness

How I make me

You think and I am
But for once I’m doing the talking

I’m you
Literally
but you don’t get it
It’s like the future is remembered and the past is to be discovered
It’s flowing in an unfamiliar direction
So you keep yourself, wrongly, to your thoughts

Your me
And doubt the whole idea
But despite yourself
You dig the hell out of me and that makes for a kind of heaven sometimes
But because you think you’re not me you struggle

I can’t imagine
things
without you
you can’t think
things
without me
If we weren’t made for each other
We’d be beside myself

But sometimes
it’s a core current
like a cartoon Mexican mouse
are my thoughts animating life.
Is that moving drawing alive?
This only happens when we forget
who is why


 
 


WATCH HOBART HUGHES’S RESIDENCY RECORD

[fve] https://vimeo.com/235390693 [/fve]

 


OPENING PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Sara Valcárcel

17/08/2017
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Hobart Hughes

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 

Hobart Hughes

CV – Website

 

15 August – 16 September 2017

 
[fve] https://vimeo.com/235390693 [/fve]
 
 

For Berlin Art Week 2017 MOMENTUM presents:
 
 
Hole Within the Whole
Installation & Performance by Hobart Hughes

 

8 September – 8 October 2017
 

OPENING 8 September @ 7-10pm
 

 

MOMENTUM AiR Open Studio
Performance & Artist Talk with Hobart Hughes

 

10 September @ 5-6pm
 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

ARTIST BIO

Hobart Hughes [aka John Hughes] (b. 1954) is an Australian artist, filmmaker, sculptor, painter, animator, musician and performer, active since the early 1980s. Since 1995, Hobart Hughes has been a lecturer at COFA, the College of Fine Art in Sydney, Australia. Hughes’s work is marked by a poetic wistfulness combining gentle humour, poetry and the body in motion.

From 1984 to 1988 Hughes was the co-founder [with Bruce Currie] and performer with the multimedia arts/theatre group Even Orchestra whose events incorporated music, film, puppetry and performance art in a variety of settings. While producing short animated films in both Super 8 and 16mm such as Germ of an Idea [1984] and Crust [1987] and the short drama Public Knowhow [1985] [nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Short Drama] Hughes also animated and directed music videos including Let’s Cook [1982], Close Again [1983], So Strong [1985] for the band Mental as Anything and for Laughing Clown’s Eternally Yours [1984]. The music video for Let’s Cook was later screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. During the 1990s Hughes produced a number of web projects including A History of Walking [1996] while also producing short films such as Dark Aisle and Because You Can [both 1992] that were screened on SBS Television. Hughes work during the 2000’s continued to explore his interests in sculpture and installation, many works featuring video and performance components such as Epiphany, a video installation at Ivan Doherty Gallery in 2007, and Placed, at Damien Minton Gallery, 2008. Single channel film/video works such as The Wind Calls Your Name [2004] demonstrated Hughes’s ability to carry his trademark concerns into new media. In 2008 his animated short Removed was featured in the exhibition Figuring Landscapes at Tate Modern.
 


 

ARTIST STATEMENT – RESIDENCY PROJECT:

Imprinted, Part 1: Hole Within The Whole
 

During his Residency at MOMENTUM, Hobart Hughes is developing the first part of a major installation/performance work entitled “Imprinted”. Through performance, sculpture and animation, the work explores an allegorical rift in space-time.

The artist writes: “When the mind disengages from conscious thought, what happens to all the energy that was previously occupied with running a myriad narratives and emotions? For the purposes of this work, I call this energy a wormhole. The structure of the work is a kind of “art collider”, derived from an absence or void in the perception of reality. As unconscious connections form or break apart, awareness can expand around everyday events and bend consciousness so as to imbue space with greater or lesser significance. The work explores how narrative forms and reforms around these ruptures.

The project comprises video, video installation, animation, sculpture, narrative and performance by creating a series of apertures or holes, both physical and metaphoric. I try to create works that are held in a liminal position where contradictory positions, mentalities, narratives or realities may be explored simultaneously. This is not something that I apply to the work, it is inherently part of my perception and method.

Having animation as part of my practice has made me even more acutely aware of the ability to replicate a space while constructing a viewer consciousness. I have always perceived animation as a kind of consciousness mapping, in the sense of ideas mapped into space via sequences on a time molecular level (of the single frame). Animation is by default a reconstruction of space/time through a prism of pattern and context. The term I’d like to use is ‘Speculative Kinematics’”.

– Hobart Hughes
 
 


21/07/2017
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Beating the Meat

 
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BEATING THE MEAT

ARTIST TALK with CONCEPTUAL COOKING

 

With: Nezaket Ekici, Mariana Hahn, Ian Haig, Sarah Lüdemann, and Li Zhenhua

 

13 July @ 7-10pm

At Momentum, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

"Beating the Meat" Artist Talk and Conceptual Cooking from Momentum Worldwide on Vimeo.

 

Part of the Exhibition

FLESH on FLESH

7 July – 6 August 2017 @ MOMENTUM Berlin

More Info Here>>

 

In Cooperation With


FOOD ART WEEK

 


 

In 2017 with the theme “vs. Meat”, Berlin Food Art Week addresses topics such as human and animal rights, conscious consumption, environmental issues and sustainability. We are many, and as we all must eat, our diet has a huge influence on our environment. How we deal with our nature and animals, the overproduction, food quality, the impact on the planet and its cultures? These are the issues that are brought to the stage, using art and food to bring attention and awareness.

Inverting the vegetarian premise of this edition of Food Art Week, MOMENTUM uses the occasion of our partnership to engage with five artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and our Artist Residency Program (MOMENTUM AiR) who work with meat as an artistic medium, and as an effective commentary upon cultural practices and taboos. Raw meat, the very visceral building block of all animal life, whether in a kitchen or under a surgeon’s knife, is a substance which in some elicits hunger, in others disgust. Indifference is not an option – especially in this exhibition where the artists each in their own way, some gruesome and others humorous, subvert the loaded meanings of meat.

 


ARTIST’S TALKS VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni and Mizuki Kin

25/06/2017
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The Intermedial Moment

 
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ARTIST TALK

 

The Intermedial Moment

Andi & Lance Olsen
in conversation with
Cécile Guédon

 

Sunday 28 May @ 3 – 4pm

At Momentum, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

Part of the Exhibition

There’s No Place Like Time – A Novel You Walk Through

By Andi & Lance Olsen

 

There’s No Place Like Time is a novel you walk through. It takes the form of a real retrospective of videos dedicated to the career of Alana Olsen, one of America’s most overlooked experimental video artists who never existed. An interplay of videos, texts, objects, and interventions, There’s No Place Like Time forms a multimodal installation that translates Alana’s life (which began as a fictional character in Lance’s novel, Theories of Forgetting [2014], based on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty) into a three-dimensional reality. Andi and Lance Olsen’s collaboration explores the relationship between the visual and the verbal as it redefines the page, novel and gallery space. As well, There’s No Place Like Time thematically investigates the problematics of identity construction and historical knowledge.

 
 

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBITION >>

 

 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Andi Olsen is an assemblage, computer-generated collage, and experimental video artist. Her videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad. Her ongoing solo project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay.

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge. In 2015-2016 he was a guest of the D.A.A.D. Berlin Artists Program. In 2013 he served as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize in Fiction Fellow at the American Academy also in Berlin. A Guggenheim and N.E.A. fellowship recipient, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence from 1996-1998, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he is professor of innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.


CÉCILE GUÉDON

 

Cécile Guédon is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, Department of Comparative Literature (July 2015-June 2018).
She was previously a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Romance Languages and Literatures /Visual and Environmental Studies Departments at Harvard University (August 2014-June 2015) and a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Intermediality at the University of Groningen (Sept. 2012-July 2014). She was awarded her PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies in July 2014 (London Consortium, Birkbeck College, under the supervision of Daniel Albright, Harvard University and Steven Connor, Cambridge University). Prior to this, she has completed an M.A. ès Lettres Modernes (Nanterre-Paris X, 2004, Very High Hons) followed by a DEA in Comparative Literature (La Sorbonne-Paris-IV, 2005, Very High Hons) and an M.A. in European Culture on a Marie Curie Fellowship awarded by the European Commission (UCL, London, 2007, Distinction).

CÉCILE GUÉDON

 

Her doctoral dissertation is mainly concerned with modernist aesthetics, the notion of gesture and the phenomenon of abstraction across the arts. She has published papers for journals such as the ‘International Journal for the Humanities’ (2007), ‘Quaderni di Synapsis’ (2008), ‘Static’ (2009), and a number of entries in the ‘Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism’ (2013). Various chapters in edited volumes are forthcoming in 2016 (Routledge, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, de Gruyter). Her monograph ‘Abstraction in Motion: A Choreographic Approach to Modernism’ is currently under review (2015).

During the academic year 2009-2010, she has held a Visiting Scholar position at the CRAL (EHESS, Paris) under Georges Didi-Huberman’s supervision; she has then collaborated in 2010-2011 with the International Research Training Group Interart at the Institut für Theater- und Tanzwissenschaft (FU, Berlin) under the supervision of Gabriele Brandstetter–on a DAAD Research Scholarship.

Between 2007 and 2015, she has presented papers at some 35 conferences in the UK, USA, Canada, and Europe; among other prizes she has received three awards for the best paper delivered by a post-graduate student (Harvard, ACLA, 2009; Stanford, SDHS, 2009; Berlin Academy for the Arts and Sciences, 2010).

She is member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journal Evental Aesthetics (UCLA/University of Southern California).


25/06/2017
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Emily Geen Kunst Salon

 
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Emily Geen
in conversation with
Maria Kossak

 

21 June 2017

 

 

Emily Geen is a Canadian visual artist, currently based in Victoria BC on Canada’s west coast, completing her two-month Residency at MOMENTUM. During her time at MOMENTUM, Emily’s work has evolved in response to her encounters with the architectural history of Berlin, as well as to the character of its urban (and digital) landscape. Emily has further developed her practice of recording video through panes of semi reflective glass, creating a translucent, spatially contingent layering of imagery. Emily has also revisited her interest in analogue photography by shooting multiple exposure 35mm images of Berlin using a plastic toy camera. The amateur quality of the camera produces soft focus images and unpredictable results. She has been using it to photograph one of the first things she noticed upon arriving in Berlin: the towering exposed firewalls of many apartment buildings. Her interest in these was at first mainly an aesthetic one – she finds these voids of flatness amongst the otherwise richly layered urban landscape to be abrupt phenomenological pauses. Their potential as visual residue of Berlin’s volatile history is very compelling to Emily. In addition to these projects, she has begun implementing processes new to her practice which use Google Street View as a point of departure. It surprised Emily to find that while scrolling along the streets of Berlin on this virtual platform, that many of the homes and businesses are blurred out. Emily is interested in drawing aesthetic and conceptual parallels between the swaths of blurry self-censorship that pepper the streets of Berlin and the blank quality of the exposed firewalls.

Maria Kossak is a visual artist, born in Warsaw, who grew up in Berlin. She studied at the University of Fine Arts (UdK) and earned recognition there for a body of innovative artwork that incorporated analogue and digital techniques. Her academic path included a one-year scholarship at the University of Sydney (2006). She graduated from the UdK in 2008 in the fields of painting, sculpture and photography. Kossak currently lives and works in the Berlin. Maria Kossak’s visual language ranges from figurative to abstract, depending on the individual project. Her methodology incorporates objects of multiple dimensions and combines analogue and digital processes. Traditional and contemporary printing such as lithography, etching, screen-print are mixed with digital imaging on glass, wood or canvas. These hybrid forms of expression are often complemented by painting and the traditionally female ‘crafts’ of textile work and embroidery. Many of Kossak’s works allude to Eastern European iconography, as well as to the canonic Western styles of Art Nouveau and Abstract Expressionism. One of her central themes concerns the historic-cultural qualities of „gold”, and its ambivalent mediation between material power and spiritual transcendence. She explores the persistent human curiosity in the intrinsic substance of gold and its many surrogates, looking to it as an index of a more general system of social values. Maria Kossak’s work is currently featured in the inaugural exhibition, We All Love Art curated by Ryszard Wasko, of MOMENTUM’s partner gallery, Schlachthaus.fresh&fine art, which opened on June 17th.


 

MORE INFO ON EMILY GEEN RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM HERE >>

 


KUNST SALON VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

12/06/2017
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Flesh on Flesh

 
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For Food Art Week 2017 MOMENTUM presents:
 


FLESH on FLESH

An Exhibition of Artists
from the MOMENTUM Collection
and Residency Program

 

Featuring:
Nezaket Ekici, Mariana Hahn, Ian Haig, Sarah Lüdemann, Li Zhenhua
and guest starring Jan Svankmajer

 

OPENING
6 July 2017 @ 7-10pm

 

EXHIBITION
7 July – 6 August 2017

 

ARTIST TALK with CONCEPTUAL COOKING
13 July @ 7-10pm

BEATING THE MEAT
with
Nezaket Ekici, Mariana Hahn, Ian Haig, Sarah Lüdemann, and Li Zhenhua

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE >>

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

 

In Cooperation With


FOOD ART WEEK
 

 

In 2017 with the theme “vs. Meat”, Berlin Food Art Week addresses topics such as human and animal rights, conscious consumption, environmental issues and sustainability. We are many, and as we all must eat, our diet has a huge influence on our environment. How we deal with our nature and animals, the overproduction, food quality, the impact on the planet and its cultures? These are the issues that are brought to the stage, using art and food to bring attention and awareness.

Inverting the vegetarian premise of this edition of Food Art Week, MOMENTUM uses the occasion of our partnership to engage with five artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and our Artist Residency Program (MOMENTUM AiR) who work with meat as an artistic medium, and as an effective commentary upon cultural practices and taboos. Raw meat, the very visceral building block of all animal life, whether in a kitchen or under a surgeon’s knife, is a substance which in some elicits hunger, in others disgust. Indifference is not an option – especially in this exhibition where the artists each in their own way, some gruesome and others humorous, subvert the loaded meanings of meat.

 

Please scroll down for detailed descriptions of the artists and their works:

 

SARAH LÜDEMANN

Website

Berlin/Bremen-based German artist Sarah Lüdemann bases her practice on repetition and the act of looking. Her non-narrative video installations and performances can simultaneously take on epic form and repeat a single gesture or action until it looses its original purpose and gains a new, underlying meaning. Lüdemann’s work demands concentration and the willingness to look beyond surfaces, a practice that requires both the artist’s and the viewer’s engagement over time. This extended period of visual reflection and subsequent delayering of identity mirrors the process of psychological examinations of self, social and gender roles, religious beliefs, rituals and modes of perception and (re)presentation. Usually quiet but gently and cunningly persistent, Lüdemann’s works insist on an authorial presence that forcefully and consistently questions power structures within hierarchical systems. Through her works, she examines the nature of communication, language, movement and ideologies.

At the same time conceptual and sensual, her pieces embrace both mind and body, effectively inviting a holistic engagement with dislocated meanings. Lüdemann finished an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins/Byam Shaw in 2011. In 2009 she was selected for an influential residency with Mona Hatoum. She has additionally been awarded the South Square Trust Award and was shortlisted for the Arts & Humanities Research Council BGP Award in 2010. Her work has been exhibited widely and internationally, including at Printed Matter, New York / Goethe Institute Cairo, Egypt / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin / Hayaka Arti, Istanbul, Turkey / Trafo, Szczecin, Poland / LYON Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon, France / Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, Germany / HDLU, Zagreb, Croatia / October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia / and multiple shows at Momentum Worldwide.

Schnitzelporno (2012)

Commissioned for MOMENTUM’s first emerging artist series, About Face, held in Berlin (2012) and London, Schnitzelporno is a durational performance-for-video in which an unidentifiable Lüdemann beats a piece of meat for a total of 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.”

Installed as large projection, the sound in Schnitzelporno is overwhelming; each stroke of the tenderizer reverberates strongly and with a deep base that imbues the space, to the extent that it causes physical vibrations. The sound must be played through high quality speakers, either directed into the space, or installed inside a bench so that viewers sitting on it can literally feel the vibrations from below.


 

NEZAKET EKICI

Website

Nezaket 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 suspensefully countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies 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.

Born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970, Ekici studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramovic. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. In 2016-17, Nezaket Ekici is a fellow of the prestigious Villa Massimo Residency of the German Academy in Rome. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Flesh (no pig, but pork) (2011)

Credits:
Performance Installation since 2011,
originally presented at: Performance Festival, Dani hrvatskog performansa , Varazdin, 5-8.5.2011
Photo by: Edoardo Tomaselli. Camera by: Vedran Hunjek.
Edited by: Branka Pavlovic
16:9 HD, mov/Mp4, Color, Sound 9:35 min.
Duration of the Live Performance: 45 min.

The artist kneels in a pile of pork from freshly slaughtered pigs. She wears safety goggles and rubber gloves which refer to the Islamic law forbidding the touching and eating of pork. She holds up pieces of meat and sniffs at them as if to ascertain why the law exists. The sound of her breathing is amplified by a microphone and is clearly audible throughout the room. The work is a direct reference to her piece No Pork but Pig (2004) in which she spent several hours in a small pen with a living pig.

For over 15 years Nezaket Ekici has pursued performative and participatory strategies in her artistic practice. In doing so she consistently faces up to the image of a woman and an artist between cultures. Born not far from Ankara, socialised within the narrow circle of her Turkish family in Germany, she explores the limits of what is physically possible in her projects, radically committing her own body to her artworks.In Flesh, (No Pig but Pork), she targets the taboos and traditional rituals of the Islamic world, donning Lady Justice‘s blindfold, a black negligée and yellow rubber gloves to wallow in pork meat, sniffing the forbidden raw flesh.


 

IAN HAIG

Website

Ian Haig is an Australian artist who, since 1994, has worked as a Senior Lecturer in Media Art and Expanded Studio Practice at the School of Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). His work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world, including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Museum of China, Beijing; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany. In addition his video work has screened in over 120 Festivals internationally. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council and in 2013 he curated the video art show Unco at The Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.

Ian Haig works across media, from video, sculpture, drawing, technology-based media and installation. Haig’s practice refuses to accept that the low and the base level are devoid of value and cultural meaning. His body-obsessed themes can be seen throughout a large body of work over the last twenty years. Previous works have looked to the contemporary media sphere and its relationship to the visceral body, the degenerative aspects of pervasive new technologies, to cultural forms of fanaticism and cults, to ideas of attraction and repulsion, body horror, the defamiliarisation of the human body and cartoon abjection.

IAN HAIG

Website

The mutating conditions of the body overwhelm our screens; from television, cinema, the mobile phone and computer screen. The materiality of the body is ever present on screen – the history of Hollywood, is the history of the body – so intimate is our relationship with the screen it can be considered an extension and outgrowth of our own biology. The screen becomes a projection of our desires, obsessions and perversions.

Ian Haig’s recent work has largely focused on the confrontation of the body and its relationship to the contemporary media landscape. Haig works in an interdisciplinary fashion, evolving his practice at times to include sculptural elements in his time-based works, particularly sculptural works of bodily materiality which explore a visceral aesthetic. During his Residency at MOMENTUM, Haig will continue his research on how the video screen and technology can be considered as extensions of our own biology – the body as a screen, and the screen as bodily material – and furthermore, how bodily confrontation can be activated through time-based media. Haig will research, develop, and produce a major new video work exploring visceral simulation of the human body in his multi-screen video work Untitled Syndrome.


Meat Friends on the Internet (2014)

The icon for a blank Facebook profile is re-configured to appear as a head consisting of visceral meat, layers of fat and tissue. This newly imagined Facebook profile is grounded not in the non body of a virtual place marker but the individual profile as bodily materiality.While Facebook results in the over sharing of personal information, such a notion is perversely represented here as the skinned human body – the veneer of our exterior selves broken down and our interiors revealed, left on display within the network of social media.

Organphilia:
A Lover of Organs
(2017)

Organphilia depicts a new kind of internal human organ: a mutation that is part liver, colon, heart, kidneys and adrenal glands. Organphilia depicts the impossible fantasy of the internal body. An organ that has new kinds of untapped uses and functions while reconfiguring the bodies’ biology.

Automated Tongues
(Good Taste)
(2016)

The work consists of electronically automated tongues: Good taste as a culturally programmed and automated/mechanical response.


Blood Brain Barrier (2015)

The body without a body…The body as parts, broken down, dis-organised and re-assembled. The real body, the abject body, the unreal body.

 

Human Test Pattern (2015)

The mediated body: New human biology in a state of progress, waiting to begin. The new DNA program will commence shortly.

Fleshify the World: Planet of the Inner Body (2014)

Framed as a series of oversized endoscope or colonoscopy videos – The inner body is represented as an alien planet, unexplored as an unknowable zone of otherness. The inner space of the body as alien terrain.
The inner body is often unseen, off limits and hidden from view: the inverse to the over visibility of our exterior selves. Fleshify the World: Planet of the Inner Body is a work that revels in the strangeness of our messy and wet interiors.
My view of the interior body here is not only alien, but potentially post human, an endoscope onto the future body, that is part human and part something else…
Three video projectors project the work in a space onto 3 different walls, surrounding the viewer in visceral body interiors. Normally endoscopes and colonoscopy videos are used for clinical and diagnostic purposes, however my work explores such terrain for its visceral aesthetic potential. The work is accompanied by a soundtrack.

Skin Freak (2012)

The video screen as a portal to visceral bodily material and matter is played out in Skin Freak. The screen as an extension of our own viscera, a new biological/technological outgrowth of our corporeal bodies. Skin Freak offers a textural exploration of the surface and skin of some kind of creature. Slowly breathing, the skin appears closer to raw exposed meat, opposed to the smooth perfection of the idealized texture of the flesh. In Darwinian terms we are just chunks of meat and we don’t look like evolving anytime soon. A short video excursion into the abject bodily surface of flesh, meat and screen.


 

Li Zhenhua

Website

Li Zhenhua has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly concerning curation, art creation and project management. He is also a professional chef with an ongoing program of food art events. Amongst many other accomplishments, 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”, at the Barbican Centre, London, in 2014. In 2014 he also co-curated MOMENTUM’s exhibition “PANDAMONIUM: Video Art from Shanghai”. Since 2014, Li Zhenha has been the Film Curator for Art Basel Hong Kong. In 2016, he was the Artistic Director of the “First New New Media Festival” in Guandong, China, and in 2017 he was the Artistic Director of the opening exhibition of the A4 Art Museum in Chengdu, China. 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

Us

2 eggs, honey, sugar, oil, soya sauce
dimension variable
2017

Honey, lets have some soya sauce.
Sugar, lets just wait for the sunset.

Its just a morning, another morning, the sunlight is bright, hope no ants will come to us, its ticklish and dirty, hope mouses shall stay away, they shall take us apart, hope birds only sing for us, its a beautiful day.


 

Goat Head Soup (2009):

This early video work by Mariana Hahn was made while she was a student in London. Having visited the meat market in Covent Garden at dawn, she returns to her studio with the head of goat, which she proceeds to make into an artwork.

BIO

Berlin-based German performance and multi-media artist Mariana Hahn is currently showing in the 57th Venice Biennale collateral event An Ocean Archive. Hahn studied theater at ETI in Berlin and has a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London (2012). Along with many international exhibitions, following her performance of I Sweat You in MOMENTUM’s emerging artist series About Face (2012), Hahn has twice more exhibited in the gallery: Burn My Love, Burn, which was shown as part of the exhibition Missing Link (2013), and Empress of Sorrow, commissioned and performed during MOMENTUM’s month-long performance series Works on Paper (2013).


 

Jan Svankmajer

Website

One of the great Czech filmmakers, Jan Svankmajer was born in 1934 in Prague where he still lives. He trained at the Institute of Applied Arts from 1950 to 1954 and then at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (Department of Puppetry). He soon became involved in the Theatre of Masks and the famous Black Theatre, before entering the Laterna Magika Puppet Theatre where he first encountered film. In 1970 he met his wife, the surrealist painter Eva Svankmajerova, and the late Vratislav Effenberger, the leading theoretician of the Czech Surrealist Group, which Svankmajer joined and of which he still remains a member. Svankmajer made his first film in 1964 and for over thirty years has made some of the most memorable and unique animated films ever made, gaining a reputation as one of the world’s foremost animators, and influencing filmmakers from Tim Burton to The Brothers Quay.

His brilliant use of claymation reached its apotheosis with the stunning 1982 film Dimensions of Dialogue. In 1987 Svankmajer completed his first feature film, Alice, a characteristically witty and subversive adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, and with the ensuing feature films Faust, Conspirators of Pleasure, Little Otik, and Lunacy in 2005 Svankmajer has moved further away from his roots in animation towards live-action filmmaking, though his vision remains as strikingly surreal and uncannily inventive as ever. He has also exhibited his drawings, collages and ‘tactile sculptures’, many of which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned from film-making by the Czech authorities. His films are shown in major museums worldwide, including at the 54th Biennale of Venice.

Meat Love (1989)

A knife chops two slices off a chunk of fresh meat. The first slice, using a nearby spoon as a hand mirror, admires itself. Similar admiration is expressed by the second slice, which slaps the first slice on its ‘rear’, causing it to cry out and retreat coyly behind a tea-towel. The second slice switches on the radio, and persuades its companion to dance ‘cheek to cheek’ to the sound of an old 1920s recording.

One slice jumps into a plate of flour and teasingly ‘splashes’ the other. Soon, the two slices are writhing ecstatically in the flour. Their passion is short-lived, however, as almost immediately afterwards they are skewered and fried.


 


BEATING THE MEAT ARTIST TALK AND CONCEPTUAL COOKING:
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/237906325 [/fve]

 

INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 

OPENING VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 
 

IN COOPERATION WITH

 


WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

07/06/2017
Comments Off on Cécile Guédon

Cécile Guédon

 

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Cécile Guédon

CVWebsite

Curatorial Residency

May 2017

 

Cécile Guédon is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, Department of Comparative Literature (July 2015-June 2018).
She was previously a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Romance Languages and Literatures /Visual and Environmental Studies Departments at Harvard University (August 2014-June 2015) and a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Intermediality at the University of Groningen (Sept. 2012-July 2014). She was awarded her PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies in July 2014 (London Consortium, Birkbeck College, under the supervision of Daniel Albright, Harvard University and Steven Connor, Cambridge University). Prior to this, she has completed an M.A. ès Lettres Modernes (Nanterre-Paris X, 2004, Very High Hons) followed by a DEA in Comparative Literature (La Sorbonne-Paris-IV, 2005, Very High Hons) and an M.A. in European Culture on a Marie Curie Fellowship awarded by the European Commission (UCL, London, 2007, Distinction).

Her doctoral dissertation is mainly concerned with modernist aesthetics, the notion of gesture and the phenomenon of abstraction across the arts. She has published papers for journals such as the ‘International Journal for the Humanities’ (2007), ‘Quaderni di Synapsis’ (2008), ‘Static’ (2009), and a number of entries in the ‘Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism’ (2013). Various chapters in edited volumes are forthcoming in 2016 (Routledge, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, de Gruyter). Her monograph ‘Abstraction in Motion: A Choreographic Approach to Modernism’ is currently under review (2015).

During the academic year 2009-2010, she has held a Visiting Scholar position at the CRAL (EHESS, Paris) under Georges Didi-Huberman’s supervision; she has then collaborated in 2010-2011 with the International Research Training Group Interart at the Institut für Theater- und Tanzwissenschaft (FU, Berlin) under the supervision of Gabriele Brandstetter–on a DAAD Research Scholarship.

Between 2007 and 2015, she has presented papers at some 35 conferences in the UK, USA, Canada, and Europe; among other prizes she has received three awards for the best paper delivered by a post-graduate student (Harvard, ACLA, 2009; Stanford, SDHS, 2009; Berlin Academy for the Arts and Sciences, 2010).

She is member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journal Evental Aesthetics (UCLA/University of Southern California).


29/03/2017
Comments Off on There’s No Place Like Time

There’s No Place Like Time

 
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There’s No Place Like Time:
 

A Novel You Walk Through
 
 


 

 

A restropective of video artist Alana Olsen

//

A multimodal installation by Andi and Lance Olsen

 
 

27 May – 25 June 2017

 
 

OPENING:
 
Saturday 27 May 2017 @ 7 – 10pm
 
 

ARTIST TALK:

Sunday 28 May @ 3 – 4pm


The Intermedial Moment: Andi & Lance Olsen in conversation with
Cécile Guédon, Lecturer in Intermediality at the Faculty of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

 

Watch here the video of the talk >>
 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

There’s No Place Like Time is a novel you walk through. It takes the form of a real retrospective of videos dedicated to the career of Alana Olsen, one of America’s most overlooked experimental video artists who never existed. An interplay of videos, texts, objects, and interventions, There’s No Place Like Time forms a multimodal installation that translates Alana’s life (which began as a fictional character in Lance’s novel, Theories of Forgetting [2014], based on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty) into a three-dimensional reality. Andi and Lance Olsen’s collaboration explores the relationship between the visual and the verbal as it redefines the page, novel and gallery space. As well, There’s No Place Like Time thematically investigates the problematics of identity construction and historical knowledge.

 

CLICK FOR MORE INFO: www.zweifelundzweifel.org > >
 
 
 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Andi Olsen is an assemblage, computer-generated collage, and experimental video artist. Her videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad. Her ongoing solo project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay.

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge. In 2015-2016 he was a guest of the D.A.A.D. Berlin Artists Program. In 2013 he served as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize in Fiction Fellow at the American Academy also in Berlin. A Guggenheim and N.E.A. fellowship recipient, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence from 1996-1998, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he is professor of innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.


 

ANDI & LANCE OLSEN – ARTIST STATEMENT

 

There’s No Place Like Time is a three-dimensional “novel” you can walk through. It takes the form of a real retrospective of videos, texts, objects and interventions dedicated to the career of Alana Olsen, one of America’s most overlooked experimental video artists who never existed, who also happens to be Lance’s protagonist from his novel, Theories of Forgetting (2014).

Alana’s experimental short videos (set in Berlin, Jordan, the U.S. Southwest, and elsewhere) span about 40 years: from her first forays into video-making as a child, through her investigations of the form in college, to her fully imagined works as an adult. During her later years, the videos reveal her attempt to explore various modes of innovation — employing a greater and greater use, for example, of text in her undertakings by way of erasures; the deployment of dubbed narratives at odds with the grammar of the visual pieces; and the investigation of words as another kind of image. Alana’s daughter, Aila, an art-critic and conceptual artist living in Berlin, curates the exhibition of her mother’s videos and provides a catalogue, biographical information and plaques describing her mother’s evolving aesthetics/obsessions and how each work fits into her development as an innovative video artist.

This collaborative project grows out of Lance’s novel, Theories of Forgetting, composed of three narratives. The first involves the story of Alana, a middle-aged video artist struggling to complete a short experimental documentary about Robert Smithson’s famous earthwork, The Spiral Jetty, located where the Great Salt Lake meets remote desert about a 100-mile drive northwest of Salt Lake City in Utah. The second involves the story of Alana’s husband, Hugh, owner of a rare-and-used bookstore in Salt Lake City, and his slow disappearance in Jordan’s Wadi Rum while on a trip there both to remember and to forget in the aftermath of Alana’s unexpected death. The third involves footnotes added to Hugh’s section by his daughter, Aila, an art critic and conceptual artist living in Berlin who discovers her father’s manuscript after his disappearance.

Theories of Forgetting and There’s No Place Like Time partake, then, in a larger project: a conversation with the conventional codex and the relatively recent flourishing of the book-art movement — namely, with works that consciously or unconsciously form a reaction against corporate mass reproduction and textual disembodiment in our digital age.

There’s No Place Like Time, the word “novel” is placed between quotation marks, then, because this project is not embodied in a traditional codex. Rather, it becomes a text one can walk through in a gallery space, and Alana’s character is developed through the videos, objects, plaques, novel and fictional catalogue.

The deep-structure thematics of both Theories of Forgetting and There’s No Place Like Time partake in Robert Smithson’s notion of “entropology,” a neologism the earthwork artist borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss that contains within itself both the words entropy and anthropology. Entropology, Lévi-Strauss writes in World on Wane, “should be the word for the discipline that devotes itself to the study of [the] process of disintegration in its most highly evolved forms.” For Smithson, entropology embodied “structures in a state of disintegration” — but not, provocatively, in a negative sense, not with a sense of sadness and loss. Rather, for Smithson entropology embodied the astonishing beauty inherent in the process of wearing down, wearing out, undoing, of continuous de-creative metamorphosis at the level, not only of geology and thermodynamics, but also of entire civilizations, and, ultimately, of the individuals living within them — like dying Alana, like forgetting and unforgetting Hugh, like Aila’s increasingly unfurling attempts to make sense of her father’s narrative, like me, like you.

In There’s No Place Like Time, we are interested at the level of character in Alana’s evolution as a human being as evinced through her art — through those short experimental videos she makes over the course of some four decades — and in how her daughter reads/constructs her mother through them, how that reading/construction reveals who Aila is behind the faux-authoritative voice she must by convention adopt in the catalogue and plaques she composes as curator of the exhibition of her mother’s videos. In other words, our supposition is that all writing, whether “critical,” “scientific,” or “creative,” is a form of spiritual autobiography. And to that extent we’re interested as well in how all biographies are, at the end of the day, not about the subject at hand so much as they are autobiographies about the problematics of historical knowledge and the fraught use of the third-person pronoun. We’re interested thematically in the realization such an exhibition invites of the entropologic processes at play within us all at a cellular level; how those processes are so present to us that they have become virtually impossible to see; how our cultures have taught us, by and large, to view them as a kind of subgenre of the horror film when in fact (as Smithson has it) they are simply (and perhaps even wonderfully) documentaries about who we are; in a very real way, after all, as Samuel Beckett maintained, “My mistakes are my life.”

Aesthetically, we’re interested, ultimately, in questions concerning intersemioticity — in the relationship, that is, between the visual and the verbal, in how one might begin to trouble such an easy binary. How does a specific medium (if we think not only of the codex or a website, but also, say, of the grammar of the gallery, as different sorts of media) affect the message it attempts to convey? Or, to put it another way, how do various technologies affect how various arts are expressed and experienced? How does one in 2016 write the contemporary — by our lights the essential task of any artist in any field at any point in history — and how does that writing (in the word’s most encompassing sense) help us re-imagine what a page is, what a novel, a gallery, what a narrative is as we navigate these concepts in a hypermedial format, or as we stroll through them in the shape of a three-dimensional novel? And how do such questions help us to think about what constitutes that always-already troubled and troubling term the experimental here, now?


ABOUT THE WORKS

 

 

Dreamlives of Debris

(Date unknown; 22:45.)

Dreamlives of Debris is a retelling of the minotaur myth. In Dreamlives of Debris however, the minotaur isn’t a monster with bull’s head and human’s body, but rather a deformed girl whose parents hide her away in the labyrinth below Knossos She calls herself Debris, and possesses the ability to hear, see, and feel the thoughts, memories, desires, pasts and futures of others throughout history.
This video/sound/text collaboration imagines the labyrinth, not just as a structure, but as a way of knowing, a way of being, an extended and dense metaphor for our current sense of presentness, of always being awash in massive, contradictory, networked, centerless data fields that may lead everywhere and nowhere at once.

 


 

Where the Smiling Ends

(1984; 7:20 min.)

Anthropology of loneliness capturing the moment, not when a photograph is taken, but just after, when one returns once again from the public to the private.

[ audio: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, op. 11 ]


 

Scarred

(1986; 17:33 min.)

The world continuously writes upon us, reminds us where we’ve been, that that place is real. Children treat their scars like badges of honor.
Lovers treat them like miraculous secrets. Old married couples treat them like familiar road signs. I don’t want to die without any scars, a character in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club declares at one point. There is never any worry of that.



 

There’s no Place Like Time

(1988; 2:19 min.)

Avant-Pop appropriation & manipulation of one of the most famous
Merrie Melodies cartoons, Duck Amuck, & the existential moment:
the long-distance call, the stutter step, the instant where nothing happens—where Nothing happens—again & again.

[Audio manipulation: Judy Garland’s voice as Dorothy, from The Wizard of Oz]


 

Trace

(1991; 1:42 min.)
(excerpt from damaged film; original length 22 min.; no shot is longer
than 20 frames)

Olsen surreptitiously films performance artist Tehching Hsieh on the streets of New York during his non-performance performance during which he made art, but didn’t exhibit it. She reverses & complicates the
clichéd dynamics of the male gaze by becoming the female voyeur, Hsieh the subject made object, then complicates the complication by adopting the role of visual colonizer, Hsieh the Asian unwittingly colonized, thereby pointing to the fact that we are all complicit in the construction & enactment of unequal & multivalent networks of power. No one is ever innocent.



 

Self-portrait

(2000)

Enter & you find your vision crammed with people staring at you. Audio is 100% absent. Almost nothing changes while you stand there except
almost imperceptible shifts in postures, facial muscles. You are simply being noted: perceived, briefly marked down, acknowledged, studied, assessed, judged. You sense you areparticipating in one sort of event even as it sneaks up on you that you are actually participating in another.


 

Denkmal

(2006; 4:33 min.)

1213 photos of the Wannsee Conference Center outside Berlin, where the Final Solution was announced, transformed into a film accompanied
by an undoing of Adolf Eichmann’s testimony during his 1961 trial in Israel.
The aural manipulation consists of the phrases:
Zufriedenheit; das Ergebnis der Wannsee Conference; and zum Ergebnis der Wannsee Conference



 

[[ there. ]]

(2010; 5:40 min.)

Shot at various music concerts in Berlin, [[ there. ]]celebrates musicians giving themselves over to presence—a being there that paradoxically removes the musician from the seat, the room, the quotidian world in which he or she ostensibly resides. By being fully there, in other words, the player finds him or herself somewhere else.


 

Theories of Forgetting

(2016; 6 min.)

Olsen’s final film: a montage obsessed with Robert Smithson’s famous earthwork, Spiral Jetty, whose incongruous narration recounts the story
of a man standing in front of a video monitor in the Istanbul Modern, popping pills, until that narration is erased.



 

Family film and Alana’s 1st childhood film

Family footage (1:30 min.)
Alana’s childhood film (56 sec.)

One minute & thirty seconds of family footage my brother found among
my mother’s belongings. Here she is learning you can run across your
front yard with your eyes closed, playing a game with the neighborhood kids, for no reason at all. Here she is learning we don’t have to be anywhere.


 

Zweifel & Zweifel Galerie

www.zweifelundzweifel.org

Learn more about Alana Olsen at Zweifel & Zweifel Galerie, the first to host a retrospective of her work.

[design by Rotem of qiryat gat]



 

Opening Photos

Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni


 

Installation Photos

Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

29/03/2017
Comments Off on In Process: Amir Fattal and Clark Beaumont

In Process: Amir Fattal and Clark Beaumont

 
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For Berlin Gallery Weekend 2017
 

MOMENTUM AiR Presents Our New BERLIN & BEYOND Series:
 

IN PROCESS:

Two Parallel Solo Exhibitions by Amir Fattal & Clark Beaumont
Amir Fattal: Tristan Resurrected
&
Clark Beaumont: The O Zone

21 April – 21 May 2017

OPENING
Friday 21 April @ 6 – 10pm

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

Live Performance: Premiere of The O Zone by Clark Beaumont

Sunday 30 April @ 6 – 7pm

 

@ Studio 2
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/218154038 [/fve]
 

The two parallel exhibitions Tristan Resurrected and The O Zone bring together Berlin-based Israeli artist Amir Fattal with the Australian artist duo Clark Beaumont to address the process of artistic production. In Process showcases two new works still in development: Amir Fattal’s Tristan Resurrected, and Clark Beaumont’s The O Zone. In production for over three years, Tristan Resurrected is a work of many parts and iterations, having been publicly screened since 2014 in a variety of versions. To their audiences at the time, each iteration was a completed artwork. And yet the work continues to evolve to this day: re-edited, re-shot, re-imagined. Clark Beaumont are also presenting a new performance piece in a stage somewhere prior to completion. Co-mingling two great issues of our time, Climate Change and Sex, The O Zone is the new work Clark Beaumont have been developing during their Artist Residency at MOMENTUM. Re-writing, rehearsing, re-imagining are also integral steps to their process. But what sparks the moment when these works will finally be finished? How do the artists know when they’re really truly done? These parallel exhibitions delve into the process of production to ask what is a finished artwork? At which point does the process overtake the product? The artists will address these and other questions at the Artist Talk marking the Opening of the exhibitions on 30 April 2017. And The O Zone will be premiered as a live performance on Gallery Weekend, Sunday 30 April at 6-7pm.

 
 
 

AMIR FATTAL

Tristan Resurrected
 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

In production for over three years, Amir Fattal’s Tristan Resurrected is a work of many parts and iterations. The first work in Fattal’s Wagner cycle was shown as a live performance in the Kunstquartier Bethanien in 2014, and was later re-staged as a video work From the End to the Beginning, which was shown in MOMENTUM’s exhibition Fragments of Empires in 2014-15. The next part of the cycle, ATARA, was screened at MOMENTUM in 2016, only to be re-shot, re-edited, and re-presented here by the artist in an entirely new version which manifests as a development of all these pieces.

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 and the Palast der Republik. The video follows a ceremony that takes place in the Palace during a moment when one building is being resurrected and another building is transcending into a ghost. It deals with the collective memory of architecture and its symbolic representation in public space. The music is based on the Liebestod song from the opera Tristan and Isolde, sung by Isolde after Tristan’s death. The score was made by copying the last note as the first note and proceeding in this way until a new ‘mirrored’ piece was formed. The live recording of this piece forms the soundtrack to Fattal’s From the End to the Beginning (2014). This recording was then reversed backwards digitally, to become the soundtrack to ATARA, and forming another play on the idea of resurrection.

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

Amir Fattal (b. in Tel Avivi in 1978) was distinguished with the GASAG Art Prize in 2008 and graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009. Based in Berlin to this day, 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 problematised by its history.

Fattal 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). Fattal was curator of Tape Modern Berlin, an acclaimed series of group exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists.

 
 

With thanks to the generous support of:

CLARK BEAUMONT

The O Zone
 


 

CVWEBSITE

 

Developed during their Artist Residency at MOMENTUM (29 Jan – 30 April 2017), Clark Beaumont’s The O Zone unpacks two of the greatest issues of our time – Climate Change, and Sex – simultaneously. Climate Change is a controversial topic that is too big for everyday folks to understand & actively care about for a sustained period of time; our eyes fog over. Yet our planet needs collective action now, so what can we do? What keeps people’s attention? SEX! Sex sells, but sex is mostly only used & discussed in our culture in a one-dimensional way; one that’s objectifying, glossy, patriarchal. The O Zone will playfully weave between the two topics, using each subject to disarm the other, and open up the complex issues and perspectives surrounding both. Clark Beaumont will use these topics to question and analyse ourselves, our behaviour, ethics and values. They will examine the power that emotions have over logic on our brains; how we are hardwired to value short-term over long-term rewards and thinking; and how both of these attributes stop us from being able to see ourselves and our world clearly. The work will mash up written and found text – including facts, estimations, intimate thoughts, and personal stories – as well as organic and austere choreography made in collaboration with Berlin choreographer, Mirjam Soegner. Building on their recent work, also shown in this exhibition, Clark Beaumont use MOMENTUM’s facilities within the historic Kunstquartier Bethanien as a rich resource to experiment, develop and refine their use of theatrical elements within their practice. The O Zone will also be shown at the Australian Center for Contemporary Art (Victoria) group exhibition, Greater Together, later in 2017.

 

ALSO SHOWN IN THIS EXHIBITION:
 

Missing One Another (2016)
Excerpts of live performance, performed at Brisbane Festival, 7″
Written, performed, produced, and directed by Clark Beaumont
Choreographer: Grayson Millwood
Sound Composer: Denis Altschul
Script Editor: Alex Brinkworth
Lighting Designer: Alex Brinkworth

Missing One Another is a one hour live performance that takes aim at the greatest obstacle in our quest for authentic connection and mutual understanding – the assumption that we are all on the same page and that we’re experiencing the same thing. Deconstructing previous lived experiences throughout the performance, the artists delve into the murkiness of memory and multiplicity of reality; They dismantle their assured perspectives, unravel into chaos and dissolve into one-ness.

 
Now and Then (2016)
Performance-Video, 6″34′
Performed, produced, and directed by Clark Beaumont

Now and Then is a performance-video installation that wrestles with the largely private, and complex spaces of lived experience. In the work, the artists float in a dark bed of water, their bodies continuously drifting towards and apart from one another, as though caught in a strange orbit. Accompanied by an eerie soundtrack, their tango manically jolts between smooth, inevitable pulls, and disjointed, random collisions. Through the work, the artists’ question the belief that any relationship is predestined rather than formed through proximity, chance and circumstance; and explore the transient states of connection and disconnection.

 
Stay Up (2015)
Video, 22″ on loop

Stay Up shows a close-up of one of the artist’s attempting to hold a fixed smile. It is the smile that film actors are taught to develop—unnaturally wide, that shows both teeth and gums— a mimicry of joy which is achingly uncomfortable to sustain. This work wrestles with the public and private spaces of emotion and perception; the duplicity between states of welcome and discomfort, connection and disconnection, reality and pretence.
 
 

BIOGRAPHY

 

Sarah Clark (b. 1991 in Brisbane, Australia) and Nicole Beaumont (b. 1990 in Sydney, Australia), are the Australian artistic collaboration, Clark Beaumont. Using performance, video and installation, their practice explores ideas and constructs surrounding identity, interpersonal relationships, intimacy and female subjectivity. Their collaboration focuses on their individual and intersubjective experiences, using themselves as the subjects of their work and, their collaboration, as a proxy for relationships in general. Their works often explore the intersection between performativity and authenticity, as well as the shifting dynamic between performer and viewer.

Clark Beaumont have presented live performances, videos and installations, nationally and internationally since 2010. Notably, in 2013, the collaboration exhibited work in Kaldor Public Art Project’s 13 Rooms, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Klaus Biesenbach. In 2014, they held a solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, and were selected as the QAGOMA Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship recipient. Recently, they have presented live performances at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide), Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne) and Queensland University of Technology Art Museum as part of Performance Now, curated by Roselee Goldberg. In 2015, the duo participated in Marina Abramovic’s Australian artist residency and exhibited in QAGoMA’s survey exhibition ‘GOMA Q: Queensland Contemporary Art’. They are currently undertaking a series of residencies in Berlin, a project that is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.

 

MORE ABOUT CLARK BEAUMONT’S ARTIST RESIDENCY @ MOMENTUM AiR >>
 
 

With thanks to the generous support of:



OPENING VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni


INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni


PERFORMANCE BY CLARK BEAUMONT
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

10/03/2017
Comments Off on Ian Haig

Ian Haig

 

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Ian Haig

CVWebsite

 

MOMENTUM AiR

1 July – 23 August 2017

 
 

Ian Haig is an Australian artist who, since 1994, has worked as a Senior Lecturer in Media Art and Expanded Studio Practice at the School of Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). His work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world, including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Museum of China, Beijing; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany. In addition his video work has screened in over 120 Festivals internationally. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council and in 2013 he curated the video art show Unco at The Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.

Ian Haig works across media, from video, sculpture, drawing, technology-based media and installation. Haig’s practice refuses to accept that the low and the base level are devoid of value and cultural meaning. His body-obsessed themes can be seen throughout a large body of work over the last twenty years. Previous works have looked to the contemporary media sphere and its relationship to the visceral body, the degenerative aspects of pervasive new technologies, to cultural forms of fanaticism and cults, to ideas of attraction and repulsion, body horror, the defamiliarisation of the human body and cartoon abjection.

The mutating conditions of the body overwhelm our screens; from television, cinema, the mobile phone and computer screen. The materiality of the body is ever present on screen – the history of Hollywood, is the history of the body – so intimate is our relationship with the screen it can be considered an extension and outgrowth of our own biology. The screen becomes a projection of our desires, obsessions and perversions.

Ian Haig’s recent work has largely focused on the confrontation of the body and its relationship to the contemporary media landscape. Haig works in an interdisciplinary fashion, evolving his practice at times to include sculptural elements in his time-based works, particularly sculptural works of bodily materiality which explore a visceral aesthetic. During his Residency at MOMENTUM, Haig will continue his research on how the video screen and technology can be considered as extensions of our own biology – the body as a screen, and the screen as bodily material – and furthermore, how bodily confrontation can be activated through time-based media. Haig will research, develop, and produce a major new video work exploring visceral simulation of the human body in his multi-screen video work Untitled Syndrome.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

UNTITLED SYNDROME:
Ian Haig, 4 screen video work, 2017
Created at MOMENTUM AiR

 

One preoccupation of 20th century modernism was the the deformation of the human body and face. Depicted in a variety of different paintings and sculpture the face was consistently altered, cut up, and distorted. This reconfiguration and mutation of the face is now echoed in contemporary culture and notions of body dysmorphia (or digitised dysmorphic disorder). Amplified by selfie culture and social media and a growing perception that one’s body is thought to look wrong and doesn’t adhere to ‘normal’ images of the ‘standard’ body. Untitled Syndrome brings together the modernist white cube gallery with the mediated, monstrous visualisations of digitised dysmorphia and the disfigured contemporary face.

Using images of contemporary art galleries and museums in Berlin, the work considers the gallery as a site of purity, taste and sanctification which separates itself from the real world outside. Untitled Syndrome considers how the traditional boundaries of the art gallery and life are Increasingly eroding through the new authority of the internet and social media.

 

Artist Statement – Research Focus:

Hal Foster spoke of the return of the real and the return to the body in art in the 1990s, it is my position that twenty years later in 2017 we see the return to the body, but unlike 1990s’ abject art’ the contemporary media environment has amplified an awareness of our own bodily abjection. Foster too talks how increasingly ones own subjecthood is affirmed by the destruction of other bodies on screen. The body has returned, but in a very different way to 1990s abject art or earlier incarnations of body art in the 1960s. The explosion of the current contemporary media sphere and our relationship to technology puts the corporeal body back onto the cultural radar where we are often confronted and forced to re-familarise ourselves with our own bodies, their fragility and biological corporeality all amplified by the omnipresence of its aesthetic opposite: the rational and logical technological media landscape. However in direct contrast to the digital screen and technology’s perfection, speed, resolution, rationality our bodies are primitive, irrational, messy and abject. I plan to research how screen based media can be explored to extend such an area of inquiry.

Proposed Residency Project:

Untitled Syndrome is a new body of work that will depict a series of contemporary manipulated artificial bodies. These bodies have no place in the world, born of software, their manufactured reality presenting a new kind of naturalism. They are possibly representations of computer generated avatars gone wrong, bodily simulations that have failed. As such, they are the inverse of computer simulations that depict the idealized state of the body, (for example, in PlaySation games or superhero movies) populated by well-formed and normative computer simulations of the human form. Untitled Syndrome on the other hand will present the broken body, the mutant, and rejected simulations of the human body.

 
 


 

A selection of 7 video works by Ian Haig was included in:
 

FLESH on FLESH

An Exhibition of Artists
from the MOMENTUM Collection and Residency Program

Featuring:
Nezaket Ekici, Mariana Hahn, Ian Haig, Sarah Lüdemann, Li Zhenhua
and guest starring Jan Svankmajer

 

OPENING
6 July 2017 @ 7-10pm

 

EXHIBITION
7 July – 6 August 2017

 

PERFORMANCES & ARTIST TALK
13 July @ 7-10pm

ARTIST DIALOGUE Beating the Meat with Ian Haig and Sarah Lüdemann
PERFORMANCE & CONCEPTUAL COOKING by Mariana Hahn & Li Zhenhua

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

FOR MORE INFO CLICK HERE >>

 

10/03/2017
Comments Off on Emily Geen

Emily Geen

 

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Emily Geen

 

CVWebsite

 

1 May – 30 June 2017

 

Emily Geen is a Canadian visual artist currently based in Victoria BC on Canada’s west coast. Originally from Lake Country, BC, Emily completed her BFA at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (2012), followed by her MFA at the University of Victoria (2015). Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout BC & Alberta. She has recently been included in several group shows in Vancouver, including INDEX 2016 at Gallery 295 and the inaugural Lind Prize Exhibition curated by Presentation House Gallery as a part of Capture Photography Festival. In 2016 Emily attended the Banff Centre for a residency exploring notions of new materiality. In 2017 her work will be shown at Toronto’s Gallery 44 in their annual emerging artist feature, Proof 24. She currently teaches photography sessionally at the University of Victoria.

 

RESIDENCY PROJECT

In her art practice, she works between recorded images and materials, investigating the perceptual conditions of looking and memory, as they exist across time and space. She explores these notions with images both still and moving. Some are found images from salvaged family archives, while others are captured digitally in our present condition. The recorded images she chooses to work with comment on our human inclination to delineate and preserve lived experience. They often involve subject matter such as human or vehicle activity within the landscape, architecture and horizon lines. The subjects and their framing often suggest a desire to add structure and containment to the groundlessness of experience, but the ways in which the subjects are filtered through her artistic process results in abstraction and an affirmation of this groundlessness instead. The subjectivity of perception is facilitated.

During her residency at MOMENTUM, Emily Geen aims to further develop the methodologies of her practice, in particular for her work in video installation. She is interested in expanding the possibilities for how she navigates between the gesture of recording, the accumulation of imagery, and physical experience in her work. Some past works have subtly referred to tourism, or perhaps more specifically, the way in which the camera can facilitate engagement with new surroundings and experiences. As a newcomer to Berlin, Emily will seek to observe how her position as a foreigner influences the way she develops imagery in her work. Thematics of architecture and human activity within the urban landscape will continue to play important roles in her work to be developed while in residence. She is interested in folding architectural materiality into her installation practice, and plans to utilize custom built structures and/or unconventional surfaces into her projection sites.


ON GOING RESEARCH AT MOMENTUM AIR

During her time in residence with MOMENTUM so far, Emily’s work has evolved in response to her encounters with the architectural history of Berlin, as well as to the character of its urban (and digital) landscape. This has taken several forms.

As intended, she began her residency by using her existing methodology of recording video through panes of semi reflective glass. This process creates a translucent, spatially contingent layering of imagery. Using her glass/camera recording device, she created a new work shot from the windows of the residency apartment. The piece consists of three channels lined up in a panoramic format. Emily uses a loose narrative structure for this piece, in which she pictures herself between tasks (opening/closing windows, working at a desk, etc). Amongst these activities are shots where the camera/glass device pans from one side of the room to the other, including views through the apartment windows and out onto the street below. At moments the narrative imagery dissolves into abstraction, as out of focus window frames and sections of wall and sky appear to become a series of moving colour fields. Parallel notions of the self, interiority, and exteriority are explored.

Alongside the development of this video work, Emily has also revisited her interest in analogue photography by shooting multiple exposure 35mm images of Berlin using a plastic toy camera. The amateur quality of the camera produces soft focus images and unpredictable results. She has been using it to photograph one of the first things she noticed upon arriving in Berlin: the towering exposed firewalls of many apartment buildings. Her interest in these was at first mainly an aesthetic one – she finds these voids of flatness amongst the otherwise richly layered urban landscape to be abrupt phenomenological pauses. However, she later learned that often these windowless walls are now visible due to bombing that occurred during WWII. Their potential as visual residue of Berlin’s volatile history is very compelling to Emily. She began using the toy camera to create multiple exposures that specifically aimed to layer two of these blank facades on top of one another, as if to draw attention to them by comparison. While the layering of firewalls remains the central strategy for exposing her rolls of film, the unpredictability of working with this camera has encouraged her to expand the scope of what she records. The series situates the firewalls amongst the broader vernacular of urban surfaces that comprise Berlin. Other motifs such as the glassy canals, windows on the S-bahn, and remaining sections of the Berlin wall have found their way into her images.

In addition to these projects, Emily has begun implementing processes new to her practice which use Google Street View as a point of departure. It surprised Emily to find that while scrolling along the streets of Berlin on this virtual platform, that many of the homes and businesses are blurred out. Google Street View automatically blurs out faces and license plates, but individuals must request any further blurring. This option was introduced in response to privacy concerns that arose when the platform was introduced in Germany in 2009. Emily is interested in drawing aesthetic and conceptual parallels between the swaths of blurry self-censorship that pepper the streets of Berlin and the blank quality of the exposed firewalls. To do to this, Emily has been using screen recordings and screen shots to highlight these relationships. Most recently, Emily created several screen prints using a Google Street View image where she isolates the forms of both an exposed firewall and a blurred out building facade, replacing them with painterly gradients.


EMILY GEEN – ARTIST STATEMENT

The impulse to capture lived experience through the camera is always accompanied by the problems of framing and fixing. It becomes an effort in translating corporeally understood space, and emotionally understood events, into pictures. We want to contend with lived experience, and containing it pictorially seems like a plausible way to do this. However, reducing our perceptions to flattened photographic fragments leaves out much of what we aspire to preserve. With that said, my studio practice recognizes a certain futility inherent in the photographic, and instead seeks to decompress, regenerate and offer new perceptual relationships to pictures.

To achieve this, I work through several forms of artistic inquiry. Some of my practice involves found snapshots salvaged from recent history, while other projects use images I record in our present condition, both still and moving. My work with found family snapshots is focused on creating sculptural assemblages and installations. I purposefully work with images that appear amateur and naïve: ones that are exemplary of the photographer’s struggle to capture their experience. I then extrapolate upon the photographic gestures and subject matter found in these recorded moments by involving physical objects and materials. Within these sculptural scenarios, I find that propping, folding, pinning, reflecting, scanning, re-photographing, and re-printing are some of the ways that I am able to interact with the pictures.

In my recent projects involving video, I have made durational recordings of the landscape by means of a self-invented recording device. This device consists of a video camera and a pane of semi-reflective glass erected upon a wooden platform that is supported by a tripod. The tinting of the glass is about 50% reflective, allowing the camera to see through the glass, but also receive a reflection of anything adjacent. This results in a simultaneous superimposition of the surroundings on each side of the glass. The angle of the camera in relation to the glass determines the scope of view. I have experimented with duplicating the set up to involve two cameras, each recording through their own piece of glass simultaneously, as well as allowing the camera to see past the edge of the glass, creating vertical delineations in the resulting recordings. The videos are often presented on an immersive scale, and seem to oscillate between recognition and abstraction.

Both bodies of work tend to involve subject matter that highlights notions of spatial delineation and containment, such as roadways, doorways, balconies, yards, and horizon lines. My aesthetic responses to these subjects often include strategies layering and stacking that acknowledge the reality of the image as a surface, drawing attention to textures and edges. These choices in content and form comment on the human inclination to add structure and containment to the groundlessness of experience. Yet, the abstraction inherent in the resulting works affirms this groundlessness instead. The viewer is presented with familiar things tinted with beauty and nostalgia, but their familiarity is rearranged in such a way that we are asked to reconsider the nature of the image, and the role of the picture. The subjectivity of perception is facilitated as viewers navigate their own memories and associations against the phenomenological and unfamiliar presence of the work itself.


 
 

 
 


[fve] https://vimeo.com/227424937 [/fve]

 
 

With thanks to the generous support of:

10/03/2017
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Janet Laurence

 

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Janet Laurence

CVWebsite

20 March – 30 April 2017

 

Janet Laurence’s Residency at MOMENTUM takes place in parallel with her participation in the prestigious IGA show, for which she is creating a public art installation in the form of a garden of medicinal plants. Along with creating the new work for her IGA installation, Janet Laurence will exhibit work at MOMENTUM. Janet Laurence is a leading Australian artist whose multi-disciplinary practice is a direct response to contemporary ecological catastrophes. Laurence creates metaphoric propositions based on scientific knowledge and her own first-hand experience of threatened environments. She sees her role as an artist not as one of didacticism or activism, but as an interpreter of the natural world and the devastation it is facing in the Anthropocene – our current epoch of human-induced environmental change.

 

Inside the Flower

13 April 2017- 15th October 2017 pm

@ IGA Berlin
 
Inside the Flower (2017), Janet Laurence, IGA Pavillion:

An experiential contemporary medicinal garden that immerses one into the historical, spiritual and mythological relationship with psychotropic plants. The total work forms a living and museological Wunderkammer. Artwork elements form a link between historical folklore and our current use of medicinal plants, all centered around their natural toxicity. These elements within form both a botanical display and a laboratory-like performative space.

 

IGA Berlin: https://iga-berlin-2017.de/en

The IGA berlin 2017 is a festival celebrating international garden design and green lifestyles in the city. It is a showcase of contemporary garden and landscape design, a place of learning and experimentation, a platform for intercultural dialogue and a laboratory for innovation. Beyond the diverse horticultural exhibitions, the state-owned grün berlin gmbh is using the iga berlin 2017 to initiate pioneering projects and showcase exhibits on sustainable lifestyles. Under the motto ‘an ocean of colours’ it seizes on the diversity and fascinating contradictions in the city of Berlin, surprises visitors with modern ideas and generates new ideas for contemporary garden exhibitions. With the IGA, Berlin is presenting itself to international guests as a sustainable, green city that is setting the course for a pleasant urban future in a cosmopolitan and innovative way.

Views of a Landscape – Art at the IGA:

At the invitation of the iga berlin 2017, internationally renowned artists and creative people have developed location-specific works within a curated process under the direction of Katja Aßmann. they play with our conventional way of seeing things, tell stories, reflect and challenge. they invite guests visiting the iga berlin 2017 to spend time looking and listening closely. the accessible ‘mirror labyrinth’ by the well-known danish artist jeppe hein (dk), the artificial ‘los angeles garden’ by martin kaltwasser (de) and artist gorch wenske’s fairy tale figures ‘brought to life’ by anna rispoli (it) in the gardens of the world will all remain as permanent attractions in the gardens of the world once the exhibition has ended.

IGA also includes temporary artworks by:

Seraphina Lenz (DE), Erik Göngrich (DE), Jeanne von Heeswijk (NL), Janet Laurence (A) and Michael Sailstorfer (DE)

 


Inside the Flower

22/01/2017
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Clark Beaumont

 

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MOMETUM AiR

 

Clark Beaumont

Studio Residency

 

CVWEBSITE

 

29 January – 30 April 2017

 
 
 

EXHIBITION & PERFORMANCE

 

Clark Beaumont: The O Zone

 

21 April – 21 May 2017

 

OPENING
Friday 21 April @ 6 – 10pm

 

Artist Talk
7 – 8pm

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

PERFORMANCE:
Premiere of The O Zone by Clark Beaumont

 

Sunday 30 April @ 6 – 7pm

 

@ Studio 2
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 
 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO > >
 
 

Sarah Clark and Nicole Beaumont, are the Australian artistic collaboration, Clark Beaumont. Using performance, video and installation, their practice explores ideas and constructs surrounding identity, interpersonal relationships, intimacy and female subjectivity. Their collaboration focuses on their individual and intersubjective experiences, using themselves as the subjects of their work and, their collaboration, as a proxy for relationships in general. Their works often explore the intersection between performativity and authenticity, as well as the shifting dynamic between performer and viewer.

Clark Beaumont have presented live performances, videos and installations, nationally and internationally since 2010. Notably, in 2013, the collaboration exhibited work in Kaldor Public Art Project’s 13 Rooms, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Klaus Biesenbach. In 2014, they held a solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, and were selected as the QAGOMA Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship recipient. Recently, they have presented live performances at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide), Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne) and Queensland University of Technology Art Museum as part of Performance Now, curated by Roselee Goldberg. In 2015, the duo participated in Marina Abramovic’s Australian artist residency and exhibited in QAGoMA’s survey exhibition ‘GOMA Q: Queensland Contemporary Art’. They are currently undertaking a series of residencies in Berlin, a project that is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During their residency with MOMENTUM, Clark Beaumont will develop a new one-hour live performance work, The O Zone, which will unpack two of the greatest issues of our time – Climate Change, and Sex – simultaneously. In the artists’ own words:

“Climate Change is a controversial topic that is too big for everyday folks to understand & actively care about for a sustained period of time; our eyes fog over. Yet our planet needs collective action now, so what can we do? What keeps people’s attention? Sex! Sex sells, but sex is mostly only used & discussed in our culture in a one-dimensional way, one that’s objectifying, glossy & patriarchal. The work will playfully weave between the two topics, using each subject to disarm the other & open up the complex issues & perspectives surrounding both.

We will use these topics to question & analyse ourselves, our behaviour, ethics & values. We will examine the power that emotions have over logic on our brains, how we are hardwired to value short-term over long-term rewards & thinking, & how both of these attributes stop us from being able to see ourselves & our world clearly. The work will mash up written & found text – including facts, estimations, intimate thoughts & personal stories – as well as organic & austere choreography.

Following on from our Abramovic residency in 2015, our performance practice has naturally expanded to include a cross-disciplinary approach between Theatre and Visual Art. The residency broadened our understanding of Contemporary Performance Art & provoked us to consider the medium’s relevance now, as well as moving forward. This development has been excelled by our time in Berlin, arguably the epicentre of contemporary performing arts, where we have experienced ground-breaking performances & engaged in fruitful artistic dialogues with practitioners from diverse backgrounds.We will develop this project in Berlin during our MOMENTUM residency, under the mentorship of curator Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch, and in collaboration with Berlin choreographer, Mirjam Soegner.”

[Clark Beaumont, 2017]
 

Building on their most recent work, Clark Beaumont will use MOMENTUM’s facilities within the historic Kunstquartier Bethanien as a rich resource to experiment, develop and refine their use of theatrical elements within their practice. The O Zone will also be shown at the ACCA (Victoria) group exhibition, Greater Together later in 2017.
 
 
 

With thanks to the generous support of:








PERFORMANCE BY CLARK BEAUMONT
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

13/01/2017
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(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

 
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[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

An Exhibition from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar MFA Program
“Public Art and New Artistic Strategies”

 

 

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD
 

Angelica Baron // Vincent Brière // Vienne Chan // Rafaella Constantinou // Sophie Foster // Kathryn Gohmert // Anke Hannemann // Yihui Liu // Matthew Lloyd // Nasir Malekijoo // Mila Panić // YunJu Park // Mariya Pavlenko // Denise Rosero Bermudez // Feng Runze // Malak Yacout Saleh // Saša Tatić // Sze Ting Wong // Yi Weihua // Ina Weise
 

(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD is an artistic research project
by the MFA-Program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies / Kunst im öffentlichen Raum und neue künstlerische Strategien”,
Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
resulting in two exhibitions in Weimar/Buchenwald and in Berlin.

 

Curated by: Bojan Vuletić, Anke Hannemann, Ina Weise

Coordinated by: Jirka Reichmann

In cooperation with Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

EXHIBITION:
 

20 – 24 January 2017 | Opening 20 January @ 3:00pm

@ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Former Disinfection Hall

Weimar Opening Hours 10:00 am – 4:00 pm (closed on Monday)
 
 

27 – 29 January 2017 | Opening 27 January @ 7:00pm

With Live Performance by Vienne Chan

@ MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

Opening Hours: Sat & Sun: 1:00 – 7:00 pm
 

MASTERCLASS:

29 January 2017 @ 1:00 – 6:00pm
 

In Cooperation with Atsuko Mochida‘s BETHANIA Installation
@ Tokyo Wondersite, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

 

Artist & Curator Talks:

Clark Beaumont >> Artists
Marek Claasen >> Director, ArtFacts.Net
Amir Fattal >> Artist
Mark Gisbourne: Writer, Curator, Art Historian
Sharon Horodi >> Artist & Curator of Musraramix Festival and Art-ID Festival in Jerusaem
Elana Katz >> Artist
David Krippendorff >> Artist
Anne Maier >> Head of Press, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Angela Schneider >> Chief Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Retired)
Stephan von Wiese: Writer, Curator, Art Historian, Director of Contemporary Art, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (Retired)
Irina Yurna >> Trust for Mutual Understanding, Head of Berlin Office

 

WATCH HERE THE VIDEOS OF THE MASTERCLASS >>

 

Introduction:
 

(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD is a project of the Master of Fine Arts course of study Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar in cooperation with the Buchenwald Memorial. Between November 2016 and February 2017 an interdisciplinary art production facility has been established for the international students under the guidance of guest researcher Bojan Vuletić to artistically research the present-day significance of Buchenwald. Together with the artistic assistants Anke Hannemann and Ina Weise, MFA-program coordinator Jirka Reichmann, the cooperation partners, academic experts and the student body, an exhibition project within the Buchenwald Memorial has been devised which focuses on the presence and the absence of sound, language, and voice in relation to Buchenwald as a site. Composer, physicist and internationally renowned artist Bojan Vuletić, who takes great delight in experimenting between various fields of art and science, was invited as artistic director.

His broad scientific and musical education, his vast experience in leading interdisciplinary projects as well as his theatre work provides an excellent basis for this special project. Also outstanding is guest researcher Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch, who is responsible for the theory component of the course, and for the theoretical examination of this issue. As director of MOMENTUM – an internationally renowned platform for time-based-art, located within the Künstquartier Bethanien in Berlin – she made it possible for (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD to travel to Berlin after the initial exhibition in Weimar.

I want to express my gratitude to all the people and institutions who have been involved in making this exhibition project and publication possible. In particular, I would like to thank the Kreativfonds of Bauhaus University Weimar for their generous support.

Prof. Danica Dakić
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

Curatorial Statements:
 

Art does not stand apart from the world and its complicated histories. Art is always and inextricably of and about the world. There is no such thing as ‘pure’ art. To be a good artist, one must be a historian, a writer, a philosopher, an anthropologist, a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer, a detective, a poet, whose language is image and sound. The 18 works by 20 artists from 14 countries which comprise the exhibition (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD encompass an equal diversity of views built upon the personal experiences of a multiplicity of cultures by individuals who have come to the Bauhuas-Universität, Weimar, to continue their study of contemporary art in the MFA degree program Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. In coming to Weimar from Asia, the Middle East, North and South America, and across Europe, they encounter a living city built upon the most complex of paradoxes; the juxtaposition of some of the greatest minds and talents in the history of German art, culture, and politics – Goethe, Schiller, the founders of the Weimar Republic, and those of the Bauhuas – with the unspeakable legacy of the Holocaust in the form of the Buchenwald concentration camp within walking distance from the city center. Confronting these seemingly mutually exclusive layers of history, these artists are asked to address the universal truth of the Holocaust through the rarifying lens of personal understanding, through the breadth of their experiences, emotions, and senses – with a particular focus on the sense of sound, and its opposite, silence. The resulting works – encompassing video and audio installations, performance, photography, sculptural installation, sound sculpture, transcribed choreography, and conceptual works – all address the particular history of Buchenwald as a physical place alongside the communal history of the horrors it represents. These works address history through its echoes in the present; an auditory analogy which is used equally to express sound and memory.

Just as the artists in this exhibition translate their diversity of backgrounds and approaches into visual art, so too is the exhibition itself an act of translation. Opening first at a gallery in the former Disinfection Building in the Buchenwald Memorial, the exhibition subsequently travels to the MOMENTUM Gallery in Berlin, to be translated and re-formed within the context of another historic building: the Kunstquartier Bethanien. Originally a religious institution built as a hospital and school for nurses in 1847 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Bethanien remained an active hospital until 1970. Since that time, it fought off threats of demolition to turn itself into a cultural institution with a colorful history full of squatters and anarchists, punk concerts and citizens’ collectives, activists and artists who thrive there to the present day. Situated only a few meters away from the former path of the Berlin Wall, the Bethanien built around itself a cultural community at the apex of the divide between East and West. Divided no longer, Berlin nevertheless is inevitably defined by its paradoxical legacies of astounding cultural and scientific output alongside the horrors of the Third Reich and the repressive division which followed it.

Opening first at a gallery in the former Disinfection Building in the Buchenwald Memorial, the exhibition subsequently travels to the MOMENTUM Gallery in Berlin, to open on Holocaust Memorial Day. What will happen when we translate an exhibition made for the Buchenwald Memorial to the Kunstquartier Bethanien, a historic building perpetually reinventing itself? From former disinfection hall to former hospital; from a place of death to a locus of life; how will the works in the exhibition be altered through this new context?

This second iteration of (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD opens in parallel to the CTM Festival for Adventurous Music and Art in the Kunstquartier Bethanien. CTM is a major international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well to as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound culture. It takes place concurrently and cooperatively with the Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture. Together, the two festivals annually comprise one of the most important moments in Berlin’s art calendar. CTM 2017, entitled Fear Anger Love, is focused on a confrontation with emotion and sensation. Music and sound conjure emotions more intensely than most art forms, creating meaning while transcending language through felt physical experience. CTM 2017 opens with the words of Victor Hugo: “Music expresses that which cannot be said yet about which it is impossible to remain silent.” By the same token, (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD confronts the unspeakable legacy of the Holocaust, translating the impossibility of silence into works of sound art.

MOMENTUM is proud to present the second iteration of (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD, the translation of the exhibition from the Buchenwald Memorial in Weimar to Berlin’s Kunstquartier Bethanien and CTM Festival. MOMENTUM is a non-profit platform for time-based art, active worldwide since 2010, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM focuses on video, performance, new media, and sound, while continuously seeking innovative answers expanding an understanding of the question ‘What is time-based art?’. Through an active program of international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Initiative and Archive, and a growing Collection, MOMENTUM addresses the notion of time-based art in the context of both historical and technological development. Visual languages continue to evolve in concert with the technologies which drive them, and it is the role of visual artists to push the limits of these languages. As the world speeds up, and time itself seems to flow faster, MOMENTUM provides a program focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, by taking hold of the moment to explore how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change.

Having founded MOMENTUM in Australia as a parallel event to the 17 Biennale of Sydney, and built it up into a thriving international institution based in Berlin, it is my great privilege in 2016-17 to act as a Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. It has been a great pleasure to work with such a bright and talented group of artists on the realization of this exhibition. My thanks to all of them, and to the professors and staff of the MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies who have worked so hard to realize this far-reaching project.

 

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch
Founding Director, MOMENTUM
Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

THREADSUNS

Threadsuns
above the grayblack wastes.
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.

Paul Celan

Creating art in the context of the Holocaust seems impossible and futile. The genocide executed by Germany and its collaborators during the Third Reich leaves us devasted and speechless, and the systematic eradication and destruction of culture through facism and barbarism still echoes today. But these echoes need to be opposed by democratic means and rituals of commemoration – and art has always taken part in this struggle. The special project (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD within the postgraduate degree programme in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the BAUHAUS University in Weimar combines art works by 20 artists from 14 nations who are balancing between their subjective artistic ideas and the many responsabilities, rules and connotations that are involved when creating art in relation to the Buchenwald Memorial. It was essential to find different approaches to what has happened at the space of the former concentration camp: its perfidious system of oppression, human exploitation and destruction, its close ties to Weimar, its surroundings and the corruption of its humanistic cultural heritage.

The collective process started with a hike from the train station along the Blutstrasse of Weimar to Buchenwald. This was followed by a historical overview and a guided tour at the Buchenwald Memorial by Daniel Gaede. A week later historian Ronald Hirte conducted excavations at a war-era camp dump site together with the artists, who were finding relics such as remains of toothbrushes, shoe soles, crockery, barbed wire, tubes of tubepaste and a personal metal cross attached to fabric. With utmost sensitivity Daniel Gaede and Ronald Hirte managed to uncover political, historical and structural dimensions of the camp as well as traces of personal human tragedies. Guided tours and researches throughout Weimar and its Stadtarchiv opened views on how strongly the city was connected to Buchenwald.

Of course the lectures of this semester reflected the Shoah and art within its context. Within my lectures entitled SPEECHLESS AND UNHEARD I have focused on principles of silence and sound, correlated and uncorrelated noise, acoustics and architecture, the acts of speaking and listening in regards to artistic processes and the negative usage of sound.

Rachel Rits-Volloch covered in her theoretical lectures under the title EARS HAVE NO EYELIDS: ON THE SPECTATORSHIP OF SOUND the construction of memory and remembrance, theories of spectatorship and languages of perception as they relate to the Shoah and the socio-cultural site-specificity of the locus of Buchenwald. Anke Hannemann and Ina Weise compiled background research as well as application-oriented guidence in their practical lecture series.

In collaboration with the contemporary ACC Gallerie Weimar Amnon Barzel (the founding director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin) and artists like Nate Wooley, Naomi T. Salmon and the art collektiv Projekt Kaufhaus Joske offered different views on the corresponding subjects.

In different steps the artists developped visions for their works for (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD which finally embodied into concrete pieces. Parallely, the group exhibited at the museum in the former Disinfection Building of Buchenwald Concentration Camp and the MOMENTUM Gallery at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin were planned and curated together with the artists, the main challenge was being that of the composition of 18 very different art pieces are to function for each individual art work and the exhibition in its entirety.

I deeply thank Dr. Sonja Staar and Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch for their openness and helpfulness in the actual realization of the exhibitions, Daniel Gaede and Ronald Hirte for showing us how to look at Buchenwald in the most human way, the staff members Jirka Reichmann, Ina Weise and Anke Hannemann for the beautiful collaboration and each participating artist for their enormous effort and contribution to (UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD.

 

Bojan Vuletić
Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

Featuring:
(Click on each artist’s name to see their bio and the work description below.)

 


 

 

 

WATCH HERE THE VIDEOS OF THE [UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD MASTERCLASS

Artist & Curator Talks:

Clark Beaumont >> Artists
Marek Claasen >> Director, ArtFacts.Net
Amir Fattal >> Artist
Mark Gisbourne: Writer, Curator, Art Historian
Sharon Horodi >> Artist & Curator of Musraramix Festival and Art-ID Festival in Jerusaem
Elana Katz >> Artist
David Krippendorff >> Artist
Anne Maier >> Head of Press, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Angela Schneider >> Chief Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Retired)
Stephan von Wiese: Writer, Curator, Art Historian, Director of Contemporary Art, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (Retired)
Irina Yurna >> Trust for Mutual Understanding, Head of Berlin Office

 


Clark Beaumont

Marek Claasen



Amir Fattal

Mark Gisbourne



Sharon Horodi

Elana Katz



David Krippendorff

Anne Meier



Angela Schneider

Stephan von Wiese



Irina Yurna

 
 

EXHIBITION PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Vincent Briere

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

 


18/11/2016
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Art Nomads

 
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ART NOMADS:
Made in The Emirates

 

9 – 22 December 2016

 

 

Khalid Al Banna // Ahmed Al Faresi // Reem Al Ghaith // Khalid Al Qasabi // Abdulqader Al Rais // Maisoon Al Saleh // Jamal Al Suwaidi // Maitha Demithan // Lamya Gargash // Dr. Najat Makki // Salama Nasib // Taqwa //
& The Sovereign MENA Art Prize Finalists:
Hazem Harb, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Walid Al Wawi

 

Curated by David Szauder, Zsuzsanna Petró & Rachel Rits-Volloch

In Partnership with the Etihad Modern Art Gallery
and Sovereign Art Foundation MENA Art Prize

 



 

Opening: 9 December @ 7 – 10pm
At Studio 1 & MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

 

Symposium
10 December 2016 @ 3 – 4.30pm
How Culture Builds Cities: Berlin and Abu Dhabi

SPEAKERS:

Janet Bellotto, Zayed University, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises
David Elliott, Art Historian, Curator, Writer, Museum Director, Judge of Sovereign Art Prize
Jeni Fulton, Editor-in-Chief of Sleek Magazine
Vanina Saracino, Curator

More info on the symposium here >

 
 

In the frame of the exhibition Art Nomads – Made in Berlin,
MOMENTUM in collaboration with the Sovereign Art Foundation presents
the finalists of the Sovereign Art Foundation MENA Art Prize from the UAE:

Hazem Harb // Nadia Kaabi-Linke // Walid Al Wawi

More info on the artists here >

To know more about the exhibition Art Nomads – Made in Berlin
visit the exhibition website here >
and the facebook page here >

 

Curatorial Statement
 

Berlin. Home to countless galleries and museums. Adoptive home to countless artists. Berlin has come to be known internationally as the art capitol of Europe, attracting artists from around the world. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin acts as a vortex, sucking in the cool young things of art, fashion, media, music, professionals and tourists, migrant laborers and refugees. Berlin is a city of nomads where everyone is always from elsewhere, somewhere anywhere but here. It is a city of mobile people and moving images. In willful defiance of its painful history, Berlin, the perpetually evolving city, welcomes everyone. In this age of displacement, Berlin is a city constantly rebuilding itself. On a mission to outgrow its legacy of war, Berlin redefines itself through art and culture.

Abu Dhabi. An oasis in the desert reinventing itself as the art capitol of the Middle East. A culture of pearl divers whose palaces until only fifty years ago were tents, today builds skyscrapers and museums. Adoptive home to the Louvre and the Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi is a city of nomads who build monuments to permanence designed by the world’s greatest architects. Living in a culture of incredibly rapid modernization, Emeraties are balanced on the precarious edge of maintaining their heritage while actively redefining itself through influences from abroad. A city of nomads no longer, Abu Dhabi instead opens itself to the phenomenon of art nomads, aiming to attract cultural tourism, and the ever mobile cultural producers which make it happen.

Art Nomads – Made in Berlin and Made in the Emirates are two sister exhibitions bridging two capitol cities redefining themselves through art; two radically different cultures following parallel trajectories; two places which voraciously ingest influences from abroad, yet produce cultural outputs inextricably linked to the identity of each city.

From Abu Dhabi comes an exhibition of art from the United Arab Emirates. A young art, new to figuration, it is unsullied by the overbearing preconceptions of western art history, in the most exciting stages of finding its own voice. Showcasing the work of 16 artists, 60% of whom are women, it is a co-curation by Zsuzsanna Petró of the Etihad Modern Art Gallery, David Szauder, and Rachel Rits-Volloch of MOMENTUM, who is responsible for the Sovereign MENA Art Prize program and the symposium accompanying the exhibition, taking place at Berlin’s Bethanien Art Center on 9-22 December 2016, in cooperation with the Etihad Modern Art Gallery. Sovereign Art Foundation MENA Art Prize program presents work by artists based in the UAE who were selected as finalists in this year’s inaugural prize. The exhibition is accompanied by a symposium on cultural capital: Abu Dhabi builds the Louvre and the Guggenheim with the world’s top architects, while Berlin rebuilds its Stadtschloss, re-homes its museums, and brings famous museum directors from London to run its theaters. Is this a parallel trajectory? Is Abu Dhabi going for the “Berlin Effect” of cultural capital? We invite art professionals working in and with the UAE to discuss this and other questions linking the two cities.

From Berlin, the city of art nomads, comes an exhibition of art from elsewhere, about otherness, on the move to somewhere else. Showcasing the work of approximately 30 artists, it is a co-curation by 3 Berlin-based curators – David Szauder, Rachel Rits-Volloch, and Constanze Kleiner. While the origins of these artists spans the entire world, Berlin is the unifying force which links them. Whether they came to study or teach or attend one of the city’s prestigious artist residencies or simply to soak up the vibe, this group of exceptional artists form the core of Berlin’s art nomads. The exhibition opens at the Etihad Modern Art Gallery in Abu Dhabi in February 2017.


 

Sovereign Art Foundation MENA Art Prize finalists from the UAE

 

Hazem Harb
The Everlasting Presence of an Excluded Memory, series 2016
1-Inkjet photo copy print, and collage on fine art paper on multiple canvases 100x120cm 2016
2-Inkjet photo copy print, and collage on fine art paper on multiple canvases 120x100cm 2016

 

Born in 1980 in Gaza, Palestinian artist Hazem Harb currently lives between Rome, Italy and Dubai, UAE. In 2004, Harb enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He graduated from the European Institute of Design in 2009. Harb deals with a number of core issues including war, loss, trauma, human vulnerability and global instability. He continues to explore his work across multiple mediums, using each and every tool at his disposal.

These are not photographs, their edges jut beyond the confines of the frame, nudging into the realm of the 3-dimensional. The implied structure instigates an encounter with the past, departing from the idea of the archival as an aide-memoire or even an assemblage. These are newly forged objects, displaced from the past through an engaged process of transformation. With the physicality of an encounter, one which exists and is shaped by time and space, these memories incongruously exist right now. The sense of encounter gives rise to an opportunity for dialogue. Yet, even in these moments in which memory is made current, the fragmented, faulty structures are revealed. Harb becomes an archaeologist and architect of the past, providing directions compiled with the meticulous and attentive care of an engineer. What is re-proposed here is a new process. Emphasising the durational, mutable quality of memory, Harb demonstrates the flux of remembering, creating a contemporary catalyst where he “gives birth to something, which gives birth to something else”.

In 2011, Harb was awarded a residency at The Delfina Foundation, supported by the A.M Qattan Foundation, which also awarded him the Young Artist of the Year Award in 2008. His series Beyond Memory was acquired by the British Museum in 2013. Harb has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally.

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

the-everlasting-presence-of-an-excluded-memory-series-2016_120x100_2

the-everlasting-presence-of-an-excluded-memory-series-2016_100x120_1-1

 

Nadia Kaabi-Linke
Black is the New White (2012)

Poster print on paper, 117x175cm

Nadia Kaabi-Linke was born in Tunis, Tunisia, 1978, and raised in Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. She graduated from the University of Fine Arts, Tunis, in 1999, and earned a PhD at Université Paris-Sorbonne in 2008. Growing up between Tunis, Kiev, and Dubai, and now residing in Berlin, Kaabi-Linke’s personal history of migration across cultures and borders has greatly influenced her work. With subtlety and concision, her works give physical presence to that which tends to remain invisible, be it people, structures, or the geopolitical forces that shape and control them. Kaabi-Linke takes inspiration from the forgotten or misused urban spaces around her.

Black is the New White consists in a poster displaying an advertisement, which promotes an imaginary clothing line of male Gulf Arab dress, consisting of a black kandoura and ghutra, under the imaginary brand “Joseph Van Helt”. Glossy photos in magazine or posters tell us what we should wear, even when the clothes or accessories advertised can be unflattering or even, in the case of high heels, painful. But if the way we dress is often dictated by persuasive advertising, it can also be the result of powerful traditions, such as the black abaya that women wear in the Gulf countries. For Kaabi-Linke the abaya is an instrument of control, preventing women from going outdoors, because of the inconvenience of wearing black clothing in hot weather. In Black is the New White, Nadia Kaabi-Linke aims to undermine tradition through the visual language of advertising, promoting an equivalent outfit for men, a black kandoura. For Kaabi-Linke, the question is simple: if women accept to wear black in the hot sun, why could not men do the same? The name of the imaginary brand is inspired by the story of Joseph, or Yûsuf, one of Jacob’s sons (Genesis 1:39 in The Bible and Sūrah 12 in the Qur’an). Joseph story is about a man of exceptional beauty. Envied by his brothers, he then became the victim of women’s passions. After being wrongly accused by women whose advances he rejected, he was sent to prison. For Kaabi- Linke, more than a story about a man, Joseph is a metaphor of women’s destiny. Just like Joseph was jailed because of his beauty, women in traditional Islamic countries veil their face and body in a black cloth, for the same reason.

Kaabi-Linke has had solo exhibitions at Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon and the Mosaic Rooms, London in 2014, as well as Dallas Contemporary, Texas in 2015. Selected group exhibition highlights include shows at Bahrain National Museum, Manama, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul and Museum of Modern Art, New York, all in 2013; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark in 2014; and Marta Herford Museum, Germany and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, both in 2016. She has participated in numerous biennales, including Venice Biennale 2011, Liverpool Biennial 2012 and Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala, India 2012.

   
 
 
 
 

nohmu

 

Walid Al Wawi
Portrait Patriot, 2013

Hand-manipulated print – 46 x 66 cm

Born 1988, Walid Al Wawi is a Jordanian Palestinian-native artist, working often in video and performance, concerned with the hybridisation of the modern Middle Eastern identity and the implication of what the artist calls “geo-political claustrophobia” upon cultural naturalisation.

Portrait Patriot consists of two A3 digital- colour prints of the artist’s passport photo, one of which is hand manipulated through constant rubber erasure and pencil drawing. The work attempts to deal with the contemporary image of the average Middle Eastern individual as he faces a form of “geo-political claustrophobia”, where borders of countries and geographical locations forcibly place him in a shallow and restricting dialogue. The work, a self- portrait of the artist, is a reprint of the artist’s “failed passport photo”, which he later hand-manipulated through forced erasure and pencil drawing, humorously but disparately trying to generate a peaceful and accepted image of himself.

In 2011, Walid was awarded The Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award. Since then he had collaborated on group exhibitions, and was put through a residential experience leading to his first solo show, later contributing to international and local art festivals. He made his first live performance in late 2014 at FIAC in Paris. Walid’s work has been added to many collections throughout his career thus far, including a recent acquisition by collection of his Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Recently. Walid went through the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artist Fellowship Programme to pursue his masters in the Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art, London, where he currently lives and studies.

   
 
walid-al-wawi_portrait-patriot-2bis

 
 
walid-al-wawi_portrait-patriot_bis

 
 

About The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF)

The Sovereign Art Foundation is a charity founded in 2003 in Hong Kong, which is now also registered in the UK, Singapore and South Africa. SAF runs the annual Sovereign Asian Art Prize with the purpose of raising money to help disadvantaged children. Since its inception, SAF has raised over US$5 million for charities and artists worldwide, while the Sovereign Asian Art Prize has become the largest award for the arts across Asia.

SAF funds projects using art as education, rehabilitation and therapy for disadvantaged children. The Sovereign Asian Art Prize is now in its 12th year and is the biggest, best known and most prestigious arts prize in the Asia region. In 2016, SAF launched its inaugural MENA Art Prize, for the Middle East & North Africa region.

More info on www.sovereignartfoundation.com


 

 

 
 
 

 


INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 


SYMPOSIUM
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 
 
 

With thanks for the generous support in realizing this exhibition:

18/11/2016
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Love, Actually…Talks, Actually…
 

Symposium & Performance
 


26 November @ 3 – 7pm
 
love-actually-poster_draft_web

 

The Symposium is part of the Exhibition

Love, Actually…

At MOMENTUM

9 October – 27 November 2016

MORE INFO HERE >>

 

PARTICIPANTS:

David Elliott, curator of The Pleasure of Love, the 56th October Salon
Bojana Pejić, curator of the 49th October Salon
Jasmina Petković, producer of the October Salon
Rachel Rits-Volloch, director of Momentum Worldwide

Artists:
Andreas Blank, Mariana Hahn, Leiko Ikemura, Aleksandar Jestrović, David Krippendorff,
Franziska Klotz, Johanna Kandl, Via Lewandowsky, Sarah Lüdemann,
Milovan Destil Marković, Bjørn Melhus, Kirsten Palz, Mariana Vassileva

 

SCHEDULE
Performance: 15:00 – 15:30
Sarah Lüdemann, Return of the chthonian – This Is My Land

PANELS:

Panel 1: 16:00-16:45
The October Salon: History of the Salon and The Pleasure of Love
Speakers: David Elliott, Bojana Pejić, Jasmina Petković

Panel 2: 16:45-15:30
From Salons to Biennales to Belgrade.
Moderator: David Elliott. Speakers: Leiko Ikemura, David Krippendorff, Franziska Klotz, Johanna Kandl, Via Lewandowsky, Milovan Destil Marković, Bjørn Melhus

Panel 3: 17:30-18:15
Building Collections out of Exhibitions. Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and the October Salon Collection in dialogue with their curators.
Moderator: Rachel Rits-Volloch. Speakers: Andreas Blank, Aleksander Jestrović, Mariana Hahn, Sarah Lüdemann, Kirsten Palz, Mariana Vassileva

Exhibition Viewing: 18:15-19:00

 

Title: Return of the Chthonian – This Is My Land
Artist: Sarah luedemann
Recording Date: 26/11/2016
Duration: 02 min 34 sec
Part of Love, Actually… Exhibition

 
 

PERFORMANCE @ 3:00 – 3:30pm

Return of the chthonian – This Is My Land

i am an anthropologist, an awkward surrealist, poetic road kill. i am the naked hunter, an Amazonian goddess, an oozing bitch. i am a magician, i am Alice. i am no feminist, my darlings!

let me make a mark, scratch the surface, scratch myself,

do not dislocate your body, dig in your brain for your animal ancestry – in order to sense the storm.

dynamite me! rip me apart and put me back together. blow my bones, sing for my flesh. make it all vibrate at higher frequencies, so I can reach for the stars.

that which built the cosmos was androgyne – total sex – without the bang there would have been no planet earth.

– Sarah Lüdemann


 

 
 
 

The October Salon: History of the Salon and The Pleasure of Love
Speakers: David Elliott, Bojana Pejić, Jasmina Petković


 

From Salons to Biennales to Belgrade
Moderator: David Elliott. Speakers: Leiko Ikemura, David Krippendorff, Franziska Klotz, Johanna Kandl, Via Lewandowsky, Milovan Destil Marković, Bjørn Melhus


 

Building Collections out of Exhibitions.
Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and the October Salon Collection in dialogue with their curators

Moderator: Rachel Rits-Volloch. Speakers: Andreas Blank, Aleksander Jestrović, Mariana Hahn, Sarah Lüdemann, Kirsten Palz, Mariana Vassileva


 

SPEAKERS

 

David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); 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 Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the 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. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.

Portrait - Bojana Pejic

Bojana Pejić

Bojana Pejić (born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia), is an art historian and curator, living in Berlin since 1991. Having studied History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Belgrade, from 1977 to 1991 she was curator at the Student Cultural Center of Belgrade University and organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. She started to write art criticism in 1971 and was editor of art theory journal “Moment, Belgrade” (1984 – 1991). She organized an international symposium “The Body in Communism” at the Literaturhaus in Berlin in 1995. She was Chief Curator of the exhibition After the Wall – Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe organized by David Elliott at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (1999), which was also presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Budapest (2000), and at HamburgerBahnhof, Berlin (2000-2001). She was one of the co-curators of the exhibition Aspects/Positions held in the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Vienna in 1999. Between 2002 and 2004, she was one of international advisers of the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto (Japan) where she also curated a retrospective of Marina Abramovic (2003), which also toured to Morigame (Japan). In 2003, she had the Rudolf Arnheim guest professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin (history of art). She was adviser of the project De/Construction of Monument organized by the Center for Contemporary Art in Sarajevo where she also held seminars at the Academy of Fine Arts dedicated to the “Communist Body.” (2004-2005) In May 2005 she has defended her Ph.D. “The Communist Body – An Archeology of Images: Politics of Representation and Spatialization of Power the SFR Yugoslavia (1945 -1991)”. She was a Maria Goeppert-Mayer guest professor for International Gender Research at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University in Oldenburg (2006-2007). Bojana Pejić is the chief curator of Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009-2010) at MUMOK, Vienna and the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. She is also the editor of the “Gender Check Reader”. Dr. Bojana Pejić teaches at the Bauhuas University in Weimar and works as an independent curator and writer.


jasmina-petkovic

JASMINA PETKOVIĆ

Jasmina Petrovic, based in Belgrade, graduated in 2002 from the Department of Serbian Language and Literature at the University of Belgrade. As a producer and organizer at the Belgrade Cultural Center, she curated exhibitions and organised projects since 2008, where she started with the exhibition Exposing\Underline memories in the Sentetjen-Museum of Modern Art. In 2009 she produced the visual program BELEF09, followed by the international project The Culture Lobby (an archive of cultural memory) in 2010. In 2013 Petrovic organized the International Film Artist, curated by Zorana Đaković Minniti, and in 2014, in cooperation with the White Chapel Gallery in London. In 2015 she initiated various projects, such as the Resonate Festival and Grey Matter together with Ivana Šijak in the Museum of Belgrade, as well as the Russian Avangard in the Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade. In 2008 Petrovic began to produce and organize her first October Salon, in cooperation with the curator Bojana Pejic, the 49th October Salon titled Artist-Citizen, a citizen of the artist. Subsequently she also organized the 50th October Salon in 2009, Circumstances, curated by Branilava Andjelkovic, as well as the 52th October Salon in 2011, Time to get acquainted, curated by Alenka Gregorič and Galit Eliat, and the 53th October Salon in 2012, Gud Lajf, curated by Branislav Dimitrijevic and Mika Hanula. Also under her supervision was the 55th October Salon in 2014, Things that disappear, curated by Nikolaus Schaffhausen and Vanessa Miller, in the City Museum Belgrade, and this year’s 56th October Salon, Salon Pleasure of love, curated by David Elliott, took place in the Museum of Belgrade and the Belgrade Cultural Center.

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. Having been a university lecturer in film studies and visual culture, her focus moved to contemporary art after she undertook a residency at A.R.T Tokyo. Rachel Rits-Volloch founded MOMENTUM in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011, and since that time has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin at the thriving art center, Kunstquartier Bethanien. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide.

In 2016-2017, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” and the PhD program in Artistic Research. Born in Riga, USSR, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney.



mariana-hahn

MARIANA HAHN

Born in 1985, Schwäbisch Hall, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin.
Mariana Hahn’s work interrogates the universal fallacy of human fate through the use of photography, per- formance and video. Believing that ‘weaving’ can be a metaphor for human autonomy, her practice is based on thinking of the body as a bearer of continuously woven narratives. She o en uses textiles to take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the narrative of a living archive. Her work feeds from sociological, mythological, folkloric and anthropologi- cal sources, as well as from experience of everyday life.

Selected solo exhibitions: Freunde von Freunden (Friends of Friends), Space, Berlin; Social Fabric, Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong (2016); VACANCY, Crone Berlin, Berlin; Works On Paper, MOMENTUM, Berlin; Distant le er, present now, Month of Performance Art, Berlin; Residency program, Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong (2015); Kolibri, Berlin; Torso no Torso, IV Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2014); 24h Ste in, Club Storrady, Szczecin; Burn My Love Burn, Trafo Station, Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin; Works on paper.

Selected group exhibitions:Missing Link, MOMENTUM, Berlin; Burn my love burn, Hayaka Arti, Istanbul (2013).

Selected performances: Social Fabric, Mill6, Hong Kong, AAA, HK, Art Basel HK2016, An Ocean Archive (2016); Distant Le er Present Now, MOMENTUM, Berlin, Performance Lecture, Mill6, Hong Kong (2015).

Selected collections: MILL6 Foundation, Hong Kong and MOMENTUM Worldwide, Berlin.

Leiko Ikemura

LEIKO IKEMURA

Born 1951 in Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Berlin and Cologne.

www.leiko.info

Leiko Ikemura studied foreign languages at the University of Osaka (1970–72). She moved to Europe 1972 and since that time has lived in Spain, Switzerland and Germany. Since 1991 she has worked as a professor at the Berlin University of Arts.

Selected solo exhibitions: Leiko Ikemura. …und plötzlich dreht der Wind, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2016); Leiko Ikemura. Retrospektive, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Cologne (2015); Leiko Ikemura. Pioon, The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Shizuoka, Sonderausstellung Preisträger Cologne Fine Art, Cologne (2014); Leiko Ikemura: i-migration, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2013); Korekara oder die Heiterkeit des fragilen Seins, Museum für Asiatische Kunst—Staatliche Museen Berlin (2012); Leiko Ikemura: Trans guration, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo / Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Tsu (2011); Leiko Ikemura, August-Macke-Preis Ausstellung, Sauerland-Museum Arnsberg (2010); Leiko Ikemura. Tag, Nacht und Halbmond, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Scha hausen (2008).

Selected group exhibitions:Macht. Wahn. Vision. Rapunzel & Co. Von Türmen und Menschen in der Kunst, Arp Museum, Remagen, Wild Heart: Art Exhibition of German Neo-Expressionism Since the 1960s, China Art Museum Shanghai (2014);Von Japonismus zu Zen. Paul Klee und der Ferne Osten“, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Back to Earth. Die Wiederentdeckung der Keramik in der Kunst, Gerisch- Sti ung Neumünster (2013); Beyond Memory, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem (2012); Fukushima and the consequences, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011); 100 Jahre Hetjens-Museum. Faszination des Fremden: China-Japan-Europa, Hetjens-Museum. Dusseldorf, Emotional Drawing—SOMA Museum of Art, Seoul (2009).


david-krippendorf

DAVID KRIPPENDROFF

Born 1967 in Berlin, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin. www.davidkrippendor.com
David Krippendor is a video and experimental lmmaker. He grew up in Rome and studied art at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin where he graduated with a Master’s degree in 1997.

Selected exhibitions and screenings: New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem).He has also participated in three Biennales (Prague Biennial, Mediation Biennial Poznań and the Video Biennial in Tel Aviv).

franziska-klotz

FRANZISKA KLOTZ

Born in 1979 in Dresden, Germany. Works and lives in Berlin.

www.franziska-klotz.de

Franziska Klotz’s increasingly abstract paintings still suggest landscapes, scenes, or objects that are derived from photographs or reports she has seen or read about.

Selected solo exhibitions: Franziska Klotz, Galerie Kornfeld Berlin (2016); H3P04 Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (2014); Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (2013); Klotz / Die Jagd, Galerie Wolfsen Aalborg (2012); Ka’aguy, Charim Ungar Contemporay Berlin (2011); Franziska Klotz, Charim Wien, Vienna; Nowhere Right Here!, Cerasoli Gallery, Los Angeles (2009); Klotz, Galerie Davide Di Maggio,Berlin (2006); New Painters: part one, Galerie Davide Di Maggio, Milano; Max Ernst Award Exhibition, Galerie am Schloss, Brühl (2005).

Selected group exhibitions: BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin (2015); IV. Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2014); SALONDERGEGENWART, Hamburg (2013); Tracing Paper, Charim Galerie, Vienna, Berlin/Budapest 20 Virag, Judit Gallery Budapest (2012); Budapest/Berlin 20, Hungarian Embassy Berlin (2011); MAL WAS DEUTSCHES, Hangar-7, Salzburg, Projekt 09, Charim Ungar Contemporary, Berlin, Fairytale of Berlin, Scion Installation, L.A., Culver City (2009)wasistdas, LOFT19, Paris (2008)


johanna-kandl

JOHANNA KANDL

Born 1954 in Vienna, Austria. Lives in Berlin and Vienna.

www.galerieandreasbinder.de

Johanna Kandl studied painting in Vienna and Belgrade. Although texts and image seems to be mutually exclusive in her work, they contradict each other in ways that are both critical and sardonic.She evokes the ‘blessings’ of the neo-liberal world in slogans, and marks their hollowness and mendacity in sketchily painted scenes that depict situations and people located at the economic and cultural margins of society: beggars, black marketeers, pe y traders, the denizens of spoil heaps and scrap yards.

Selected projects and exhibitions: The Turn, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Wien (2016), Politischer Populismus, Kunsthalle Wien, Konkrete Kunst, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Turning Points, Buda Palace, Budapest (2015); Zehntausend Täuschungen und hun- der ausend Tricks, 21er Haus, Wien, Glück, Kra werk Wolfsburg, (2014); Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, The Collection as a Character / The Character of a Collection, MUHKA, Antwerpen (2013); You only live twice, Camera Austria, Graz (2012); Wunder, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, other possible worlds, NGBK, Berlin, FAQ Serbia, ACF NY,Viel Glück und Erfolg, Kunstverein Nordhorn; Over the Counter, Műcsarnok, Budapest (2011).

Freedom&Independence_Still_150dpi (5 von 12)

BJØRN MELHUS

Born 1966 in Kirchheim unter Teck, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin.

www.melhus.de

Bjørn Melhus studied photography in Stuttgart from 1985 to 1987 and Fine Arts with a major in Film/Video at the Braunschweig University of Art from 1990 to 1997. In his short films and installations, Melhus focuses critically on mass media and how it represents global ideas and trends. He uses film and television footage as a basis from which, by means of exaggera- tion, to deconstruct stereotypical themes, figures and patterns of perception. At the same time, he disrupts the seemingly fixed relationship between media and audience to open up views on the essential nature of human interaction.

Selected Exhibitions: Bjørn Melhus has participated in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the 8th International Biennial of Istanbul, the FACT
in Liverpool, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Ludwig Museum
in Cologne, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Denver Art Museum, as well as others. Since 2003, he has been a professor of Fine Arts/Virtual Realities at the School of Art and Design, Kassel.


via-lewandowsky

VIA LEWANDOWSKY

Born 1963 in Dresden, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin.

www.vialewandowsky.de

Via Lewandowsky studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (1982–1987). Since moving from Dresden he travelled extensively and has lived for extended periods in New York (Fellowship at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center—today MoMA PS1,1991– 1992), Beijing (Fellowship Beijing Case, 2005), Los Angeles (Fellowship Villa Aurora, 2009) and Rome (Fellowship Villa Massimo, 2011).

Selected solo exhibitions: Hokuspokus, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (2016); Hokuspokus, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Es ist Zeit, Galerie Karin Sachs, Munich (2015); ab-surdus, MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Korrekturen/Correzioni, Casa di Goethe, Rome (2014); Welternährungs, Galerie Martina De erer, Frankfurt/Main (2013); Termin für eine Pointe, Andrae Kaufmann Gallery, Berlin (2012); e.g. 9, 42 etc., Galerie Charim, Vienna, Archäologie der Ähnlichkeit, Galerie Karin Sachs, Munich (2011).

Selected group exhibitions: Gegenstimmen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Ende vom Lied, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Passion.Fan Behaviour and Art, Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Über die Unmöglichkeit des Seins, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2016);Der Raum zwischen den Personen kann die Decke tragen. Sammlung IvoWessel, Weserburg—Museum für Moderne Kunst, Bremen, Dresden.?—Arbeiten mit der Stadt, Three art projects in public spaces, Dresden; Kunst für alle, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2015); Outer Space. Faszination Weltraum, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, In Furs—KB OUTSIDE / 40 Jahre Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014); Ausweitung der Kampfzone. 1968–2000. Die Sammlung Teil 3, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, La Grande Magia. Selected Works from the UniCredit Art Collection, MAMbo, Bologna (2013); The Last Analog Revolution. A Memory Box, Galerie8, London, Villa Massimo, Works of the servitors of the year 2011, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2012); Heimatkunde—30 Künstler blicken auf Deutschland, Jewish Museum Berlin, Art On Lake, City Park Lake, Budapest (2011).

SARAH LÜDEMANN

Born 1981,Cologne,Germany. Lives and works in Berlin.

www.sarahluedemann.com

Sarah Lüdemann studied Linguistics, Psychology and Fine Art at Cologne University (2001–2005). She was selected for a residency with Mona Hatoum at the Fundación Marcelino Botín in 2010 and later that year received a scholarship to study an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, which she completed with distinction in 2011.

Selected exhibitions: Sarah Lüdemann’s work has been exhibited widely and internationally,including at Printed Ma er, New York, the Goethe Institute Cairo,Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin, Hayaka Arti, Istanbul, Trafo, Szczecin, LYON, Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon and HDLU, Zagreb.

Selected collections: MOMENTUM Worldwide, Berlin; Collegium Polonicum collection, Słubic; Mutzen-bacher Restaurant, Berlin; Piracy Book Collection AND Publishing, London; To q House,Sao Paulo and in private collections in England, Germany, Portugal, Israel, Croatia, Hungary and Brazil.


milovan-destil-markovic

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ

Born 1957 in Čačak, Serbia. Lives and works in Berlin and Belgrade.

www.markovic.org

Milovan DeStil Marković (born 9 November 1957, in Čačak, Yugoslavia, today Serbia) is Serbian visual artist, who began his career in the early 1980s. Active for over two decades, he is recently described as father of Transfigurative Painting and the Text Portrait. Visiting Professor Art in Context at the University of Arts, Berlin.

Selected exhibitions: Drei-Häuser-Kunst-Pfad, Eifel; Daun-Steinborn; At the Bo om of the Poem, Lennox House, Australian National University, Canberra; Roundup, Bundanon Trust, Bundanon, NSW (2016);a rose is a rose, is a rose, Woelkpromenade, Berlin (2015); Lada 2014, Umetnički paviljon “Cvijeta Zuzorić”, Belgrade; 50 umetnika iz zbirke MSUB—Jugoslovenska umetnost od 1951 do 1989 godine, Kuća legata, Belgrade; Conjunction, GreenhouseBerlin, Berlin (2014); BrandSchutz / Mentalität der Intoleranz,Jener Kunstverein, Jena; Drei-HäuserKunst-Pfad, Eifel 2013; Daun-Steinborn, Vent Vidi Vici, Collection Vol.4; Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, Kumamoto (2013); Sichtwechsel, Werke aus der Sammlung des n.b.k. Video-Forums, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, Gelsenkirchen; Berliner Zimmer, HDLU Meštrović Paviljon, Zagreb (2012).

Kirsten-Palz-Works-On-Paper_Smaller

KIRSTEN PALZ

Kirsten Palz, born Copenhagen 1971. Lives and works 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.


mariana-vassileva

MARIANA VASSILEVA

Born 1964, Antonovo, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Berlin.
Vassileva studied pedagogy at Veliko Turnovo University, Theatre Art in Leipzig and Visual Arts at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin.

Selected solo exhibitions: Balance, So a Art Gallery, So a (2015); M V, Kunstverein Ruhr e.V., Essen, Fold & Break, DNA-Gallery, Berlin (2013); Solo Video 2002–2012, Holbeinhaus, Augsburg, Goethe-Institut, Lyon, Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca (2012); The Gentle Brutality of Simultanity, Starkwhite, Auckland (2011); Because I Dream, I Am Not, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney (2010); Just a Play, DNA-Gallery, Berlin (2009).

Selected group exhibitions: Walk the Line, Wolfsburg Museum, Wolfsburg (2015); Inhabiting the World, Busan Biennale 2014 (2014); I see you, Kunsthalle Detroit, Inner Journeys, Maison Particulière, Brussels, Painting and Contemporary Media, Paco das Artes, São Paulo (2013); Beyond Time—International Video Art Today, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Good Night, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, East is West, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Hors-pistes 2012, un autre mouvement des images, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (MNAC), XVIII. Rohkunstbau, Berlin (2012); Transitland, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina So a, Madrid, The Beauty of Distance. Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, 17. Biennaleof Sydney (2010).

Selected collections: La Caixa Caja de Ahorros de El Monte y Fundacion el Monte, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

Aleksandar  Jestrović

ALEKSANDAR JESTROVIĆ

Aleksandar Jestrović or Jamesdin was born on the 27th April 1972 in Zagreb, Croatia, ex-Yugoslavia.

jamesdin.wordpress.com

He obtained his master degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2000 in the class of Čedomir Vasić. Besides painting and multimedia art he is occupied in basketball. He has never been convicted and has served the army.In October 2011 in “Art in Kontext“ he did a master program at UDK Berlin with Professor Wolfgang Knapp. Since 2000, he has exhibited at various solo and group exhibitions in Belgrade and abroad. His art works, or rather his concepts, are a brutal social analysis of a society obsessed with its own representation in the contemporary media system. For his work he won the prize of the Veličković Fondation for drawing, the prize of Belgrade Cultural Center for Octobar salon and the Belgrade Faculty of Art ” Big prize for painting Rista i Beta Vukanović “. Lives and works in Berlin and Belgrade.

Solo exhibitions: 2015 –Bulky Luggage/ Sperrgepäck,Theater im Pfalzbau , Ludwigshafen Serbinale & Offene Welt Festivals, Ludwigshafen, Germany; 2014-„ Večiti student” (“Langzeitstudent”) Dom Kulture Studentski Grad, Belgrad, Serbia (curator: Maida Gruden)and “Monkey Bussines” Humboldt Mensa, Berlin, Germany (curator: Veronika Beckh);2012-ŠVERC KOMERC/Smuggle, Trade-City gallery Požega, Serbia and Preslišavanje 6, with Milena Putnik and Dragana Stevanović, Gallery Remont, Belgrade, Serbia; 2011-STOKA SA ISTOKA/ EASTERN HILLBILLIES, Exhibition of the recipient of the award at the 50th October Salon in 2009; -The Art Gallery The Cultural Centre оf Belgrade, Serbia; 2010- KO KOGA JEBE?/ WHO IS FUCKING WHO?, curator Jani Pirnat,Gallery of erotic art Račka, Celje, Slovenia; 2009–HURRY U ARE LATE, The White Tube project, curator Medeleine Park, Oslo, Norway; 2008-NH5-SZ1, gallery Remont, Belgrade, Serbia and Nova slika, Nenad Kostić, Nikola Marković i Jamesdin, gallery Vinko Perčić, Subotica, Serbia; 2007-Tunnel of Love, gallery Studenski grad, Belgrade, Serbia; -Nikola Markovic, Dragan Djordevic and Jamesdin, Nolit warehouses, Belgrade, Serbia; 2005-COLONIA 2001 gallery Remont, Belgrade, Serbia; 2004-CHAKRE/A4 gallery Remont, Belgrade, Serbia; 2002-FLIPER Gallery Dom Omladine, Belgrade, Serbia; 2001-120 pictures in 60 minutes video work with Isidora Ficovic,gallery SKC, Belgrade, Serbia; 2000-IZLOŽBA PASA/ DOG SHOW, gallery SULUJ, Belgrade, Serbia.



05/11/2016
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Residency Hale Ekinci

 

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Hale Ekinci

Website

1 – 31 July 2016

 

Hale Ekinci (b. 1984 in Karamursel, Turkey) is a Chicago-based Turkish interdisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor of Art at North Central College, teaching a variety of courses in the Digital Art field. She spent her childhood and much of her young adult years in Turkey, a homeland brought in and out of focus throughout her works. She completed her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. Focusing on narrative and intercultural connections, her works vary from illustration and mixed media collage to video and installation.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During her residency in Berlin and her international travels, Hale Ekinci photographs homes, habitats, architecture, statues, and people from all aspects of life and collages them into mixed-media drawings. Through the combination of illustration with digital collage transfers of these photos, she crafts colourful and symbolic pattern-based images on paper. Cultural traditions, political issues, mutated memories, idioms, and translations are the backbone of her work. Personal experiences and current social issues embellished with made-up Kafkaesque details along with old shamanistic rituals make the basis of the non-linear stories she tells in her work. She creates interconnected forms that combine the reality of daily life at different locales in a way that intertwines different people, architecture and sociopolitical issues, using mixed-media drawings that explore these relationships through visual metaphor. In a way she translates each culture’s narratives of the human condition into visual concoctions that together reimagine and guide a connected global human experience.

Applying similar techniques of collage to the moving image, Ekinci also worked on the video art project “Almanci (Germaner)” (see below) for her Residency work at MOMENTUM. Based on an original story she wrote during her time in Berlin, the video takes place at a Turkish traditional ceremony of “asking permission to marry”, and explores the stereotypes of Turkish immigrant identity as seen from both Turkish and German perspectives. Using a combination of field video, green screen, still images, and drawings, she crafts a magical realist world where family relations, identity stereotypes, rituals, and women’s issues result in a tense scene that reflects the universal bizarreness of traditions and stereotypes.



 

Almanci Bride (Germaner Gelin)
by Hale Ekinci

 
 

Open Studio

23 July 2016

At MOMENTUM

 

 

Open Studio

9 July 2016

At MOMENTUM

 
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22/10/2016
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IkonoTV Natural Habitats

 
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NATURAL HABITATS

MOMENTUM Collection Carte Blanche

for

‘ikonoTV’s special programming Art Speaks Out 2016’

 

love-actually-poster_draft_web

 

1 – 30 November 2016

 

Every Tuesday and Friday – Three Times per Day:

9pm Berlin / NY / Shanghai Time
[Berlin Time: 9pm, 3am, 3pm]

 

Stefano Cagol // Thomas Eller // James P. Graham // Janet Laurence // Kate McMillan

Selected Works from the MOMENTUM Collection

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

Watch the trailer:


 

Program:
Janet Laurence, The Other Side of Nature (Panda)
Kate McMillan, Paradise Falls I
Janet Laurence, Dingo
Kate McMillan, Paradise Falls II
Janet Laurence, Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef
Thomas Eller, THE White Male Complex, #5 (Lost)
Janet Laurence, Grace
Stefano Cagol, Evoke Provoke (the border)
James P. Graham, Chronos

 

Discussion about sustainability of the environment is intrinsically linked to the sustainability of basic human rights. Seeking to preserve the natural habitats of the animals and plants of the forests and oceans, also maintains our human natural habitat, prolonging access to clean air, clean water, the ability to grow food, and the hope to live peacefully.

The accelerating phenomenon of urbanization is fuelled by the multiple causes of migration: refugees fleeing war zones, economic migrants fleeing poverty, those escaping famines brought on by desertification and changing climates. As these migrants all gather together in megacities, the question of how to live in an urban context itself becomes an environmental issue. With our natural habitat shifting inexorably from the rural to the urban, we need to nurture the knowledge of how to live with nature in order to ensure that our natural surroundings do not become only memories for future generations.

Natural Habitats brings together 5 artists from the MOMENTUM Collection from countries as diverse as Australia, Italy, England, and Germany, all of whom have visited sites of environmental change and human disaster to create subtle works reflecting upon our changing planet. Janet Laurence’s films capture the tragic beauty of animals on the verge of extinction and the disappearing habitats of the Great Barrier Reef. Kate McMillan’s works revisit the sites of historical traumas, now forgotten, dwarfed by natural beauty. Thomas Eller’s perpetually drowning White Male is doing so in the very waters of Lampedusa where so many migrants lost their lives. Stefano Cagol confronts the ice caps of the Arctic Circle with the destructiveness of man. While James P. Graham presents a microcosm of mankind’s natural habitat.

MORE ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION > >

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Artists and Works:

 

STEFANO CAGOL

Stefano Cagol is an Italian-born artist. He participated in 55th Venice Biennale (Maldives National Pavilion), 2nd Xinjiang Biennale, 1st Singapore Biennale and presented his works and actions at Kunstmuseum Bochum, ZKM Karlsruhe, Folkwang Museum, Maxxi in Rome, Museion in Bozen, Laznia in Gdansk, Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, Kunstraum Innsbruck, MARTa Herford, among others. He is the recipient of the Terna 02 Prize for Contemporary Art, Rome, and of the VISIT #10 of the RWE Foundation, Essen. The RWE Foundation VISIT program supported Cagol’s Artist Residency at MOMENTUM and his year-long project culminated in an exhibition in berlin. In 2015 Cagol undertook an Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, in parallel with his solo show inaugurating the new venue CLB Collaboratorium Berlin. For his first solo show in Berlin he presented “The Body of Energy (of the mind)”, a year-long project the artist has developed as an expedition spanning  Europe’s northern-most to southernmost tips, on search for signs of energy, both physical and cultural energy, triggering a reflection on what is not visible, on resources, on relations. Stefano Cagol states “Symbols, metaphors, current topics, immediateness, stimulating, communicating, openness, multiple points of view. These are the key words to my relationship with the public. It couldn’t be any other way. The artwork is an opportunity to better understand our own time and future. It’s a sort of mission. In my account art is never closed in itself.”

READ MORE ABOUT STEFANO CAGOL’S ARTIST RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM HERE >>

Evoke Provoke (the border) (2011)

The love and hate that Cagol feels towards boundaries, both physical and mental, is at the root of this work created at Kirkenes, in the Arctic Circle, during one of the periods he spent abroad as an artist in residence. The artist staged a series of emblematic actions that he filmed with a video camera. In total solitude, immersed in a fascinating but hostile nature, in conditions bordering on the extreme, like the place where the actions were carried out. For Cagol in this case the border is precisely the one between himself, his body and his mind, and the nature that surrounds him. The setting seems to be cloaked in twilight, barely dispelling the darkness, and the temperature is 25 degrees below zero. In those frozen lands, he tries to communicate in one way or another, using different forms of signalling. He endeavours to modify the landscape, to light it up, to melt the snow with a flame, but every attempt at interaction is in vain. The video was shown at the solo exhibition Concilio in the church of San Gallo, as a collateral event at the 54th Venice Biennale.

[Excerpted from Stefano Cagol Works 1995 | 2015]

 

THOMAS ELLER

Thomas Eller (b. 1964, Coburg) started his studies in Fine Arts at the Hochschule der Künste of Berlin. After his forced dismission, he went on to graduate in Sciences of Religion, Philosophy and Art History from the Freie Universität, Berlin. He has worked as research assistant at the Science Center for Sociology in Berlin (WZB), is the founder of online art magazine artnet.de, where he served as editior-in-chief and was appointed managing director for the German branch of artnet AG, as well as executive director and artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin. Eller is a member of various institutions, including the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA) and the Steering Committee for Creative Industries at the Chamber of Commerce in Berlin (IHK). In his photos-sculptures, Eller manifests a desire to review our relationship with perception, through a confrontation between the viewer, the process of reception and the image, by deliberately destabilizing the picture. He has received various prizes, including the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff Prize (1996), the Villa-Romana Prize (2000), the Art Omi International Art Center (2002) and the Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize from the Akademie der Künste Berlin (2006). Recent exhibitions include his solo ‘The ego Show – A Group Exhibition’ at Autocenter, Berlin (2010) and group exhibitions ‘The Name, The Nose’ at MuseoLaboratorio Ex Manifatture, Tabacchi (2013). Eller is the co-curator of PANDAMONIUM’s partner-exhibition ‘The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing‘, opening at the Uferhallen in Berlin.

THE White Male Complex, #5 (Lost) (2014)

Shot on Lampedusa in 2014, on the beach infamous for its migrant traffic, Eller lives the plight of so many who wash up on that shore. 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 is surreal, thousands of African migrants are our reality. Like Isaac Julien’s 2010 work Ten Thousand Waves, on the deaths of Chinese migrant cockle pickers on the shores of the UK, Eller in his own language tackles the watery deaths of migrant workers as a sadly universal suffering, devoid of markers of place or time.

 

JAMES P. GRAHAM

James P. Graham has been working full-time as an artist for 10 years, most notably 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. His decision to pursue a career as a fine artist followed a two-year sabbatical, during which he refused all commercial work in order to concentrate on creating his first purposeful artworks in 2002-3. These were screen-based, experimental film works using Super 8 film and 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. By mainly using landscape and nature, his work often references the now disused term scientia sacra, permeating chosen locations and objects with a metaphysical and ontological significance. As well as interpreting and re-creating notions of “sacred space,” his work is infused with ideas that derive from intuitive and ritualistic sources. The results can be enticingly intangible, and in some cases, totally immersive. 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.

Chronos (1999)

Chronos 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. It was shot on location in Rajastan India between February and March 1999. Originally funded by Channel 4 Television UK in 1999, Chronos was selected by and later donated through co-curator James Putnam for screening in the MOMENTUM Sydney exhibition (2010).

JANET LAURENCE

Australian artist Janet Laurence‘s work explores a poetics of space and materiality through the creation of works that deal with our experiential and cultural relationship with the natural world. Her work echoes architecture while retaining organic qualities and a sense of instability and transience. It occupies the liminal zones and meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory. Laurence’s practice includes both ephemeral and permanent works as well as installations that extend from the museum/gallery into both urban and landscape domain. Her work, centered on living nature, bleeds between the architectural and the natural world, physically and metaphorically dissolving these boundaries. Her spaces are immersive and reflective, creating a play between perception and memory. Alchemical transformation, history and perception are underlying themes. Laurence’s work is represented in major Australian and international collections and has been included in many national survey exhibitions.

 

Grace (2012)

“This is one of 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 bubble of sensation. This notion is powerfully articulated by the biologist Jacob von Uexküll, who has enabled rare insight into the worlds animals inhabit. An organism’s umwelt is the unique world in which each species live, 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

 

Dingo (2013)

“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.” – Janet Laurence

 

The Other Side Of Nature / Panda (2014)

“These are the days of violent extinctions, of global dimming and moving dust bowls, of habitat fragmentation, ice melt, and plundered lives. Animals are experiencing all this loss, and if we could better hear the waves of their agony, we would know this and be tormented. We would know that for the rest of our lives we will hear a growing chorus of increasingly diverse voices…” – Debbie Bird Rose

 

Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef (2015)

Using the example of the Great Barrier Reef – inscribed as World Heritage since 1981 – and its symbolic weight, Janet Laurence invites the spectator to imagine the possibility of healing the marine world from the consequences of global warming and human activity: a space recalling a resuscitation unit reveals the plight of the coral reef and proposes a plan of action. With permission from the Australian Museum which will subsequently exhibit the work, in July 2015 the artist visited Lizard Island station where vital research for the future of coral are ongoing. The installation of which this video is an integral part is presented at the entrance of Grande Galerie de l’Evolution at the National Museum of Natural History which has loaned specimens for its realization. An accompanying video is projected at the Tropical Aquarium of Palais de la Porte Dorée. This project is part of the UN backed initiative for COP21.

 

KATE McMILLAN

Kate McMillan has exhibited throughout Australia and overseas since 1997. In 2013 she relocated to London from Australia, where she has spent much of her life, to undertake a number of projects, which include the filming of four ambitious new works funded in part by one of two Creative Development Fellowships awarded annually across all artforms by the Department for Culture and the Arts, Western Australia. The work will be presented by Performance Space, Australia in Sydney, Tasmania and the United Kingdom in 2014 and will include a major monograph on McMillan’s practice. >McMillan is a Phd candidate at Curtin University under the supervision of Dr Anna Haebich (author of Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000). She has been funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award to complete her Phd which examines the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island. She currently holds an Academic Post with Open University, Australia. Previous solo exhibitions include 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. She has been included in various group exhibitions over the last few years including at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Gertrude Street Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.

Paradise Falls I (2011/12)

Paradise Falls I is the philosophical culmination of the time McMillan spent in Switzerland in 2011 as well as her ongoing PhD project into the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, Western Australia. This significant body of work highlights a shift in her practice, evidenced by a dark and moody palette and the combination of figurative and abstract works that set up an interplay between landscape, memory, forgetting and history. Working across a diverse range of mediums including painting, collage, photography, film and sculpture, this exhibition examines the complex and sustaining residue of these overarching themes. The works cover a range of specific landscapes including Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, the Black Forest in Germany and the winter landscapes of Switzerland. With a focus on island sites and places that exist in isolation, the works attempt to draw parallels between physical landscapes and the psychological landscapes of the artist’s own memories, broader cultural histories and stories.

 

Paradise Falls II (2011/12)

Paradise Falls II follows a man as he rows towards the silhouette of a craggy island off the coast of Wadjemup/Rottnest. He too appears and disappears from sight, finally lost to the inky black of the ocean. These characters are stand-ins for fractured and partial histories that disappear from focus, yet continue in our collective psyche as dark and haunting traumas. The films are like moving paintings, heavily referencing the romantic tradition of Germanic landscape painting. Unsurprisingly then the work of artists such as Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901) and Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) become distant cousins to McMillan’s oeuvre. The artist acknowledges and even embraces these quotations but she also holds them in a critical eye as part of an enlightenment ideology that has helped us to forget. Through engaging with the viewing process we participate in a re-remembering, acknowledging the shady edges of things, but also baring witness to the beauty of sadness that is contrary to the horrors of forgetting history.


22/09/2016
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DaoJiao Art Festival

 
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Daojiao Logo grab
 

THE 1st DAOJIAO NEW NEW ART FESTIVAL >>
 

Artistic Director: Li Zhenhua

Curatorial Team: Rachel Rits-Volloch, ABI (Art Bureau of Investigation)

 

Media Facade Program:

Selected Works from the MOMENTUM Collection
 

Video Program Featuring:

Qiu Anxiong, Stefano Cagol, Theo Eshetu, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Janet Laurence, Kate McMillan, Tracey Moffatt, Varvara Shavrova, Sumugan Sivanesan
 

Read the E-Catalog of the Selection from the MOMENTUM Collection >>
 
 
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MORE ABOUT THE 1st DAOJIAO NEW NEW ART FESTIVAL >>

 
 

PHOTOS OF THE FESTIVAL

19/09/2016
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MOMENTUM Collection Hors Pistes

 
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MOMENTUM Collection

at

Hors Pistes Tokyo 2016

16 – 24 September 2016
 

 

Cake (2014)
by Qiu Anxiong


featured in the selection
Zing Zing Asia

Monday, September 19 @ 16:00
At UPLINK FACTORY, Totsune build. 1F, Udagaywacho, Shibuyaku, Tokyo

 

READ MORE ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION HERE > >

 

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

Hors Pistes[Off Tracks]is an moving image art Festival promoting experimentation of new forms of art, organized by the Centre Pompidou since 2006.

Well known for introducing international new talents, HORS PISTES showcases a selection of works, a mirror of the uniqueness of the Cinemas of Centre Pompidou, focusing on diversity.

Created to explore the most innovative and avant-garde trends of today’s interdisciplinary creation, HORS PISTES brings together art and moving images through screenings, live performances, installations and eventful workshops.

Every year HORS PISTES gives to diverse audiences the opportunity to be immersed in the off-beat universe of multidisciplinary art and media, to explore the breaks and shifts which emerge in contemporary forms of films and narrative and triggers new boundaries.

READ MORE ABOUT HORS PISTES TOKYO 2016 HERE >>

ABOUT CAKE

 

 

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.

Marked by the same quiet detachment and timelessness as his previous works, but now combining painting, drawing and clay in his animations, Cake offers an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two. This work was premiered in PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai, a co-production by MOMENTUM and Chronus Art Center, at MOMENTUM Berlin 2014.

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. 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.

READ MORE ABOUT CAKE HERE >>


10/09/2016
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Why Exhibition

 
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For Berlin Art Week
 

Opening: 13 September 2016 @ 7pm

Exhibition: 14 – 22 September 2016 @ 3 – 8pm
 

Y – Why?
 

Curated by Constanze Kleiner & Isabel Bernheimer

@ Ballhaus Secret Garden, Gartenstrasse 6, Berlin
 

 

Featuring Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection:

Janet Laurence, Sarah Lüdemann, Fiona Pardington

&

Andreas Blank, Jan Cuck, Via Lewandowsky, Viet Bang Pham, Hella Santarossa, Daniele Sigalot,
Alexandra Vogt, Gabriela Volanti, Johannes Vetter

 

Exhibition initiated by BC – Bernheimer Contemporary in cooperation with Constanze Kleiner, MOMENTUM, and Moritzgruppe

 

 

The world’s broadest question.

(Or why we find ourselves at a parting of the ways).

In English, the word “Why?” is homonymic with the letter Y, a beautiful character that can also be read as a sort of parting of ways, a fork in the road.

The question “why?” asks about cause, asks about the causative conditions of realities in the past. In response to a why question, one can immediately pose the next why question – as children do – until the chain of causality leading to the observed event is comprehensible, or one simply chooses to stop asking.

A gap always remains, however, in the answer to a why question, since the goal and purpose of a causal relationship – whether past or present – remain open and hidden. Why? is therefore a question about causes. Thus the word “why” is supplemented with the question “to what purpose?” – with a question about the future, with a question about “where to?” In art, this vision of the future may flash in an anticipatory way alongside the question of cause. In addition to “why?” art inquires “what for?” and, with it, “where is it heading”?

[Text by Constanze Kleiner]
 

MORE ABOUT Y – WHY >>
 
 

MOMENTUM Collection Artists Featured in Y – WHY:
 
 

JANET LAURENCE >>

www.janetlaurence.com
 
a4-test-london-8_800x1200
 

CORAL COLLAPSE
from Reef Resuscitation Project, Homeopathy [10 works in total] (2015).

Kodak metallic C type photographic paper, processed in RA-4 chemistry. 126 x 86cm.
Originally created for Artists 4 Paris Climate 2015 and FIAC 2015.

Janet Laurence is a leading Australian artist whose multidisciplinary practice is a direct response to contemporary ecological catastrophes. Laurence creates metaphoric propositions based on scientific knowledge and her own first-hand experience of threatened environments. She sees her role as an artist not as one of didacticism or activism, but as an interpreter of the natural world and the devastation it is facing in the Anthropocene – our current epoch of human-induced environmental change. 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 both site specific, gallery and museum works. Experimenting with and working in varying mediums, Laurence continues to create immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between all living forms. Her practice has sustained organic qualities and a sense of transience, occupying the liminal zones, or places where art, science, imagination and memory converge.

Janet Laurence lives and works in Sydney. She has been a recipient of both a Rockefeller and Churchill Fellowship an Australia Council Fellowship and the Alumni Award for Arts,University of UNSW. Laurence was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, a former Board Member of the VAB Board of the Australia Council and is currently a Visiting Fellow at COFA NSW University. Laurence exhibits nationally and internationally and has been represented in major curated and survey exhibitions worldwide. Her work is included in many museum, university, and corporate collections as well as within architectural and landscape public places.

 
 

SARAH LÜDEMANN >>

www.sarahluedemann.com
 
sarah-ludemann_hokeypokey_s

HOKEY POKEY PENNY LICK (2014).
Life-size Video Installation. 31.09 min, looped.

Snakes smell with their tongues and receive information they use to hunt their prey.

Humans taste with their tongues and engage in sexual activity.

Hokus Pokus.

Hokey pokey, slang for ice cream sold by street vendors, or “hokey-pokey” men. Penny lick, the accompanying small glass for serving the ice cream for one penny. Licked clean by the customer and returned for reuse.

Sarah Lüdemann grew up on a farm amongst an eclectic selection of animals and surrounded by the planes of the Northern German country side. She studied Linguistics, Psychology and Fine Art at Cologne University from 2001 until 2005, lived in Norway, Italy, England and Holland to learn four languages and was selected for an influential residency at Fundación Marcelino Botín, Villa Iris with Mona Hatoum in 2010. Later that year she received the South Square Trust Award to study an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, which she completed with distinction in 2011. Her work has been exhibited widely and internationally, including at Printed Matter, New York / Goethe Institute Cairo, Egypt / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin / MOMENTUM, Berlin / Hayaka Arti, Istanbul, Turkey / Trafo, Szczecin, Poland / LYON Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon, France / Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, Germany / HDLU, Zagreb, Croatia / October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia.
 
 

FIONA PARDINGTON >>

www.fionapardington.blogspot.rs
 
pardington_young-hawk-hag-stone-and-paper-nautilus_ripiro-beach-2014_viewing-copy_
 

YOUNG HAWK, HAG STONE AND PAPER NAUGHTILUS, RIPIRO BEACH (2014).

Photo printed on canvas with substrate. 150 x 100cm. From the EX VIVO Series.

MORE ABOUT EX VIVO >>

Pardington’s practice often draws upon personal history, recollections and mourning to breath new life into traditional and forgotten objects. Her work with still life formats in museum collections, which focuses on relics as diverse as taonga (Māori ancestral treasures), hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now-extinct buia bird, calls into question our contemporary relationship with a materialized past as well as the ineffable photographic image. Likewise, her series of still-lives using found objects, family relics, and detritus from New Zealand’s beaches, commingles art historical transitions with the questions facing our culture and our planet today.

Dr Fiona Pardington was born in Auckland. She is of Maori (Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Ngāti Kahungunu) and Scottish (Clan Cameron of Erracht) descent. She holds a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Auckland. Fiona has worked as a lecturer, tutor, assessor and moderator on many photography, design and fine arts programmes at New Zealand universities and polytechnics.

Fiona was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) in 2016. Other distinguished fellowships, residencies, awards and grants include the Moet & Chandon Fellow (France) in 1991-92, the Frances Hodgkins Fellow in both 1996 and 1997, the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic in 2006 and both a Quai Branly Laureate award; La Residence de Photoquai and the Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2011.

Her work has been included in several important group exhibitions and biennales including: lux et tenebris Momentum Worldwide, Berlin 2014; The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Ukraine Biennale Arsenale 2012; Ahua: A beautiful hesitation, 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010, Museum of Contemporary Art; Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography, 1989, Constructed Intimacies, 1989 and NowSeeHear 1990. Prospect 2001: New Art New Zealand, all at the City Art Gallery, Wellington, Slow Release: Recent Photography from New Zealand, Heide Museum of Modern Art Melbourne, Australia and the Adam Gallery, Wellington, 2002; Te Puawai O Ngai Tahu, Christchurch Art Gallery and Pressing Flesh, Skin, Touch Intimacy, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki in 2003 and Contemporary New Zealand Photographers, Pataka’s International Arts Festival, Porirua, 2006.
 
 

MORE ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION >>

 


PHOTOS OF THE EXHIBITION OPENING
Photo Credit: Foto: Maria Kossak © Berlin-Warszawa @rtpress / „Y – Warum“ / Berlin Art Week 2016 / Secret Garden Berlin / www.moritzgruppe.de

10/09/2016
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Love Actually

 
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8 October – 27 November 2016
 

Love, Actually…
 
love-actually-poster_draft_web
 

Nezaket Ekici, Mariana Hahn, Gülsün Karamustafa, Janet Laurence,
Sarah Lüdemann, Tracey Moffatt, Mariana Vassileva

 



 

Opening Performance by Mariana Hahn @ 6 – 8pm

Opening: 8 October @ 5 – 9pm

An Interactive Performance with the Artist Reading an Oracle from Clarice Lispector’s Stream of Life ‘Aqua Viva’
 

Exhibition: 9 October – 27 November 2016
 

Symposium Program: 26 November 2016 @ 3 – 7pm

 

PARTICIPANTS:

David Elliott, Curator of The Pleasure of Love, the 56th October Salon
Bojana Pejić, Curator of the 49th October Salon
Jasmina Petković, Producer of the October Salon
Rachel Rits-Volloch, Director of Momentum Worldwide

Artists:
Andreas Blank, Mariana Hahn, Leiko Ikemura, Aleksandar Jestrović, David Krippendorff,
Franziska Klotz, Johanna Kandl, Via Lewandowsky, Sarah Lüdemann,
Milovan Destil Marković, Bjørn Melhus, Kirsten Palz, Mariana Vassileva

 

SCHEDULE
Performance: 15:00 – 15:30
Sarah Lüdemann, Return of the chthonian – This Is My Land

PANELS:

Panel 1: 16:00-16:45
The October Salon: History of the Salon and The Pleasure of Love.
Speakers: David Elliott, Bojana Pejić, Jasmina Petković

Panel 2: 16:45-15:30
From Salons to Biennales to Belgrade.
Moderator: David Elliott. Speakers: Leiko Ikemura, David Krippendorff, Franziska Klotz, Johanna Kandl, Via Lewandowsky, Milovan Destil Marković, Bjørn Melhus

Panel 3: 17:30-18:15
Building Collections out of Exhibitions. Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and the October Salon Collection in dialogue with their curators.
Moderator: Rachel Rits-Volloch. Speakers: Andreas Blank, Aleksander Jestrović, Mariana Hahn, Sarah Lüdemann, Kirsten Palz, Mariana Vassileva

Exhibition Viewing: 18:15-19:00

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

MORE ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM HERE >>

 

Works from the MOMENTUM Collection by Artists Featured In

The Pleasure Of Love: the 56th October Salon in Belgrade

 
 
os56_tpol
 

Love, Actually… showcases works from the MOMENTUM Collection by 7 outstanding women artists who are also participating in the The Pleasure Of Love: the 56th Belgrade October Salon. Just as Belgrade’s Pleasure of Love focuses on emotion, on both the pleasure and pain which together constitute love, so too are the works in Love, Actually… tied together by the common thread of love, in its many forms. The love depicted by these works from the MOMENTUM Collection ranges from the literal acts of love and sex in Tracey Moffatt’s climactic video Other, to the accoutrements of love, as Nezaket Ekici (un)dresses herself in her video performance Veiling and Revealing; from the meat love of Sarah Lüdemann’s Schnitzelporno, to animal love in Mariana Vassileva’s Morning Mood, and love of animals in Janet Laurence’s Grace; from the love of childhood innocence in Gülsün Karamustafa’s Personal Time Quartet, to the frigidly self-tormenting love of Mariana Hahn’s video performance Burn My Love Burn. We are proud to bring together these treasures from the MOMENTUM Collection, and in this way to bring a small part of The Pleasure Of Love: Belgrade’s 56th October Salon, to Berlin.

 

ABOUT

The Pleasure Of Love: the 56th October Salon

Curated by David Elliott

23 September – 6 November 2016

@ The Belgrade City Museum

& The Cultural Center of Belgrade

Belgrade, Serbia
 

Plaisir d’amour ne reste qu’un moment, Le chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.

The pleasure of love lasts only a Moment. The grief of love lasts a lifetime.

– Jean-Paul-Égide Martini

 

‘The pleasure of love lasts only a moment – while – the grief of love lasts a whole life through.’ The opening lines of this 18th century French poem and love song sketch out a pathetic paradox within daily life that still reverberates in the present. Transposed here as the subject of the 56th Belgrade October Salon, ‘The Pleasure of Love: Transient Emotion in Contemporary Art’ examines art in its social and political contexts, contrasting its humane aesthetic values with far less benevolent forces of power and control… In an existential, materialist age of contemporary politics in which public life is characterised, with relatively few exceptions, by bureaucratic obfuscations of vested interests, greed, mendaciousness, stupidity and anger, the 56th Belgrade October Salon focuses on love, the exact opposite of such hateful characteristics, as both a subject and prism through which to view the world.

The first Autumn Salon was organized in Paris in 1903 as an antidote to the blindness of the art establishment by accepting artists who had no other place to show their work. Paintings were exhibited by, the as yet unknown, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, François Picabia, Paul Gauguin and many others. The 56th Belgrade October Salon, a distant relative of this initiative, pays homage to this illustrious past by showing a number of artists who do not yet have an international platform for their work alongside already established artists. It will also reflect on what transient pleasures, and its opposite, signify when expressed in art today.

In 1784 Jean-Paul-Égide Martini composed Plaisir d’Amour, a classic love song based on a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian who, one of many victims of the Terror of the French Revolution died in 1794. But Florian’s words have echoed across time to still speak in the present, both in Martini’s original arrangement and deformed into kitsch, at once eternal and fleeting. Fully aware of such historical vicissitudes and paradoxes, this October Salon concentrates on what role emotion plays in contemporary art and how it may be framed in ways that are neither banal nor kitsch. This may include the not-so-simple pleasures of love, humor, horror and any other perspectives that art may bring to bear on the fragility of human experience and life which, in itself, may have a transient or long-lasting impact.

The Pleasure of Love, the 56th October Salon, is composed of 60 artists from 27 countries, including Serbia, the Balkan region and the world at large. The Salon takes place in the Belgrade City Museum and in the Cultural Center of Belgrade from the September 23rd until the 6th of November.

– David Elliott

MORE ABOUT THE 56th OCTOBER SALON >>

 
 

Love, Actually…
 

Featuring:

 

NEZAKET EKICI

CVWebsite

Nezaket 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 suspensefully countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies 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. Born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970, Ekici studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramovic. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Veiling and Reveiling, 2010

Whether in Germany or in the artist’s native Turkey, the question of the Tschador’s meaning and effects remains controversial. How do streamlined notions of feminine beauty intersect with a headscarf’s political and religious references? For Ekici, stories of Turkish students donning wigs to conceal their forbidden headscarves at university, or methods of transporting beauty goods beneath the veil, have led her to question if women can ever truly wear head coverings out of free will. In the video performance Veiling and Reveiling, Ekici wears a Tschador in which various items are concealed: a wig, make-up, bag, bra, dress, tights, jewelry, shoes, artificial eyelashes. The video begins when the individual pieces are produced from the pockets of the Tschador and concludes when the veil has been fully redecorated, a willful inversion of public and private space.

The Tube, 2013

This performance, re-enacting her 2008 work, TUBE (duration 30 minutes), is based on the 1925 Otto Dix painting Anita Berber. Dix’s painting of Berber, a dancer and actress who was considered the embodiment of the 1920′s femme fatale, depicts her in a tight, red dress. Ekici, in turn, squirms and dances her way into a five meter long, red cloth tube with overly long arms. Behind Ekici, a projection depicts the artist in a snow-covered Canadian landscape, wearing the same red dress. The audience is thus confronted with two different yet corresponding worlds on the threshold of two mediums: the live performance, its projected mirror, and everything that happens in the space in between.

MARIANA HAHN

CVWebsite

Born in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany, Mariana Hahn studied theater at ETI in Berlin and has a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London (2012). Following her performance of I Sweat You in MOMENTUM’s emerging artist series About Face (2012), Hahn has twice more exhibited in the gallery: Burn My Love, Burn, which was shown as part of the exhibition Missing Link (2013), and Empress of Sorrow, commissioned and performed during MOMENTUM’s month-long performance series Works on Paper (2013).

Burn My Love, Burn, 2013

The work Burn My Love, Burn explores the body as the carrier of historical signature. By inscribing a poem on a shroud that once belonged to her recently passed grandmother – and then burning and consuming its remains – Hahn examines the relationship between text, memory making, and the human – particularly female – form. The work is composed of the remaining performance relics, video stills, and the video itself.

“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 it creates a new one, adding on to the net of connotations the figure has toward words. 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
 

Live Performance by Mariana Hahn

An Interactive Performance with the Artist Reading an Oracle from Clarice Lispector’s Stream of Life ‘Aqua Viva’

i will read peoples oracle, share this with them in an intimate fashion.
i read the oracle from Clarice Lispectors stream of life, all my art works have their name from this book.
basically the names of the art works are the oracle reading of/for the art works.
this performance is about giving, sharing a moment with people.
its affirmative to life and open. how love should be.

– Mariana Hahn

Previously performed at Social Fabric, curated by David Elliott at Mill 6 Foundation, Hong Kong

MORE INFO ON SOCIAL FABRIC >>


GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA

CVWebsite

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

Personal Time Quartet, 2000

The video and sound installation Personal Time Quartet 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 the work is turned on anew, the four channels never synchronize, instead producing each time a new quartet to accompany the looping images. The four-part video Personal Time Quartet is concerned with the point of in- tersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country. Having been invited to an exhibition of German domestic inte- riors from various periods in the twentieth century at the Historical Museum in Hanover, Karamustafa was inspired by what she saw there to take a closer look at the similarities between her own childhood reminiscences and these muse- ological German living spaces. The timeframe (or ‘personal time’) covered by these four video’s begins in the year of her father’s birth and ends in the early days of her own childhood. A video screen placed in each of the rooms shows the same young girl – the artist’s alter ego – engaged in various activities. We see her skipping with a skipping rope (dining room, 1906), sorting and folding laundry (kitchen, around 1913), opening cupboards and drawers (living room and parents’ bedroom, around 1930) and painting her nails (room from the 1950s). The films themselves, however, were not shot inside the museum, but rather in her apartment in Istanbul. Viewing them therefore gives rise to the most diverse associations. The girl skipping suggests a carefree childhood, the nail-painting a concern with the artist’s own femininity, the folding of laundry could be read as preparation for her future role of housewife, while 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, therefore, Karamustafa not only debunks the local or national specificity of certain styles, but at the same time exposes just how similar the evolution of (female) identity can be, even in very disparate cultures.

– Barbara Heinrich,from Gülsün Karamustafa. My Roses My Reveries,Yapi Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık A.Ş, Istanbul, 2007.

JANET LAURENCE

CVWebsite

Australian artist Janet Laurence‘s work explores a poetics of space and materiality through the creation of works that deal with our experiential and cultural relationship with the natural world. Her work echoes architecture while retaining organic qualities and a sense of instability and transience. It occupies the liminal zones and meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory. Laurence’s practice includes both ephemeral and permanent works as well as installations that extend from the museum/gallery into both urban and landscape domain. Her work, centered on living nature, bleeds between the architectural and the natural world, physically and metaphorically dissolving these boundaries. Her spaces are immersive and reflective, creating a play between perception and memory. Alchemical transformation, history and perception are underlying themes. Laurence’s work is represented in major Australian and international collections and has been included in many national survey exhibitions.

Grace, 2012

Donated by the artist to the MOMENTUM collection in 2013, “Grace” can be considered a meditation on the relation between energy sources and their visualization, the origins of material, ethics and interconnected, environmental networks.

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. This is one of a series of videos made during my research in wildlife sanctuaries, using hidden cameras specialized for zoology research. In projection, the videos are 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 bubble of sensation. This notion is powerfully articulated by the biologist Jacob von Uexküll, who has enabled rare insight into the worlds animals inhabit. An organism’s umwelt is the unique world in which each species live, 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

These are the days of violent extinctions, of global dimming and moving dust bowls, of habitat fragmentation, ice melt, and plundered lives. Animals are experiencing all this loss, and if we could better hear the waves of their agony, we would know this and be tormented. We would know that for the rest of our lives we will hear a growing chorus of increasingly diverse voices…

– Debbie Bird Rose


SARAH LÜDEMANN

CVWebsite

Repetition and the act of looking are strong features in Sarah Lüdemann’s work. Her non-narrative video installations and performances can simultaneously take on epic form and repeat a single gesture or action until it looses its original purpose and gains a new, underlying meaning. Lüdemann’s work demands concentration and the willingness to look beyond surfaces, a practice that requires both the artist’s and the viewer’s engagement over time. This extended period of visual reflection and subsequent delayering of identity mirrors the process of psychological examinations of self, social and gender roles, religious beliefs, rituals and modes of perception and (re)presentation. Usually quiet but gently and cunningly persistent, Lüdemann’s works insist on an authorial presence that forcefully and consistently questions power structures within hierarchical systems. Through her works, she examines the nature of communication, language, movement and ideologies. At the same time conceptual and sensual, her pieces embrace both mind and body, effectively inviting a holistic engagement with dislocated meanings. Lüdemann finished an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins/Byam Shaw in 2011. In 2009 she was selected for an influential residency with Mona Hatoum. She has additionally been awarded the South Square Trust Award and was shortlisted for the Arts & Humanities Research Council BGP Award in 2010.

Schnitzelporno, 2012

Commissioned for MOMENTUM’s first emerging artist series, About Face, held in Berlin (2012) and London, Schnitzelporno is a durational performance-for-video in which an unidentifiable Lüdemann beats a piece of meat for a total of 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
 

Installation & Performance: return of the chthonian – this is my land

sarah-ludemann_pussy-print_image

i am an anthropologist, an awkward surrealist, poetic road kill. i am the naked hunter, an Amazonian goddess, an oozing bitch. i am a magician, i am Alice. i am no feminist, my darlings!

let me make a mark, scratch the surface, scratch myself,

do not dislocate your body, dig in your brain for your animal ancestry – in order to sense the storm.

dynamite me! rip me apart and put me back together. blow my bones, sing for my flesh. make it all vibrate at higher frequencies, so I can reach for the stars.

that which built the cosmos was androgyne – total sex – without the bang there would have been no planet earth.

– Sarah Lüdemann

TRACEY MOFFATT

CVWebsite

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists of international renown. Since her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1989, she has had numerous exhibitions in major museums around the world. Working in photography, film and video, Moffatt first gained significant critical acclaim when her short film “Night Cries” was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, “Bedevil,” was also selected for Cannes in 1993. In 1997, she was invited to exhibit in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale, and a major exhibition of Moffatt’s work was held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1997/98, which consolidated her international reputation.

Having begun her career as an experimental filmmaker and as a producer of music videos, Moffatt eventually focused on filmmaking and cross-media practices after gaining acclaim as a photographer. Her investigation of power relations, which by the late 1990s often revolved around the relationship between Australian Aborigines and white colonial settlers, more recently engages contemporary media and the nature of celebrity. Known for her non-realist narratives reconstructed from pre-existing sources, Moffatt uses experimental cinema devices such as audio field recordings and low tones to provide playfully ironic commentary on the subjects of her found footage.

In the span of her 25 year career, Moffatt has held more than 100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, the United States and Australia, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; the Hasselblad Centre in Goteburg, Sweden; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. Tracey Moffatt was the recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for art by the International Center of Photography, New York. In 2017, Tracey Moffatt will become the first indigenous artist to represent Australia in the Venice Biennale.

Other, 2009

As one of the founding collection donations following MOMENTUM’s first benefit exhibition, “Other” incorporates film techniques – splicing film clips, combining chronologies, creating and dissolving narratives – that parallel MOMENTUM’s questioning of time-based art.

“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


MARIANA VASSILEVA

CVWebsite

Mariana Vassileva was born in Bulgaria in 1964. Since graduating from the Universität der Künste in 2000, Vassileva continues to live and work in Berlin. 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.As her artist’s statement asserts, she “transforms objects, situations and manners, and presents them in another reference on a lyrical level. … In this process, one is animated toward a heightened sensibility of daily variations.”

Morning Mood, 2010

Morning Mood (2010) was shot in the Sydney Botanical Gardens after Vassileva’s participation in the 17th Sydney Biennale, Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (2010). The early morning routines of these bats as they resist the onset of the day and squabble with each other evoke the viewer’s potential for both differentiation and identification. Turning her camera to a creature perhaps more frequently associated with darker themes like blood and night, Vassileva captures the uncanny warmth of their morning moods. A single bat burrowing his face in his wings and reluctantly stretching his neck is eminently relatable, as are the sounds and rhythms of many bats gathering on the branches of a tree. As the three and a half minute long video loops over and over, we confront not just the strange humanity of these bats’ morning routine, but also perhaps the very animalistic qualities of our human routines. – Jenny Tang

The Color of the Wind, 2014

The Color of the Wind (2014) was made during Mariana Vassileva’s residency at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in St. Petersburgh / Kronstadt, Russia, in March, 2014. In this video-performance, Vassileva con- joins the motif of a blank canvas and her own, human figure, traversing the urban and natural landscapes of Kronstadt – St. Petersburgh’s main sea- port and century-old army-town. As a historical site for political struggle, to which Kronstadt’s famous fortifications unrelentingly attest, we now won- der what it is that is being fought for in Vassileva’s act of silent protest. “Why did you not write anything on the banner?”, people on the street asked her. Be it an act of empathy and concern within the context of Russia’s current cultural climate of censorship and infringement of freedom of expression, or an invitation for people to consider for themselves what it is that should be written on it, Vassileva’s poetic visual language captivates the viewer, as we are addressed in a narrative mode, while never granting us the comfort to passively sit back and read.


 


Watch the performance
“Return of the chthonian – This Is My Land”
by Sarah Lüdemann



 


INSTALLATION VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

 


PHOTOS OF THE OPENING
Photo Credit: Réka Horváth

04/09/2016
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MOMENTUM Collection

at

NonStopMedia Festival

2 – 9 September 2016

Kharkiv Municipal Gallery

Kharkiv, Ukraine
 
WEB poster-nonstop-fin-page-2
 

5 September 2016

Video Program Featuring:

Qiu Anxiong, Stefano Cagol, Thomas Eller, Theo Eshetu, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Janet Laurence, Map Office, Kate McMillan, Tracey Moffatt, Martin Sexton, Varvara Shavrova, Sumugan Sivanesan, Mariana Vassileva, Li Zhenhua

 

 

READ MORE ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION HERE > >

 

NonStopMedia is a Biennale international festival held in Kharkiv since 2003. The Festival includes a competition program for young artists, an educational platform in the field of contemporary art and a broad programme of satellite events.

READ MORE ABOUT NonStopMedia Festival HERE >>

Daily updates on the NonStopMedia Festival VIII 2016 HERE >>

 


 

MOMENTUM’s Director, Rachel Rits-Volloch, sits on the jury of NonStopMedia Festival VIII.

This year’s Festival Winner is:
Oleksii Tovpyha, Yolka (The Christmas Tree)

 


A 5-channel synchronised installation of monitors placed around a christmas tree, each presenting, in sequence, excerpts from the New Year’s addresses of all of Ukraine’s Presidents since independence. The presidential speeches, taken from the first or last years in office of each Ukranian President, are edited in such a way as to create humorous narratives reflecting on the question, what has changed in Ukranian society – especially in its representation of power and political rhetoric – since independence?

Oleksii Tovpyha Bio:
Born 1990 in Kharkiv. Educated as a mathematician.

 

And the Runner-Up is:
Alekseienko Mykhailo, The Road Home

 


Artist Text:

This work doesn’t need description. The viewer is given complete freedom in interpretation. The project “The Road Home” consists of two parts: 1. The main video (the artist’s return home); 2. Additional three-channel video (Homecoming stranger observed by 3 artists, documenting the process).

Alekseienko Mykhailo Bio:

Born 1989 in Kiev. 2013 graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Kiev). Member and one of the founders of group «JOD» (2013) and art squat “Hayat” (2011). Member KYIV AIR (artist-in-residence in 2013) the first Kyiv residence for young artists. Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (2015). Gaude Polonia scholarship holder (2016). Lives and work in Kiev.

Solo Exhibitions:
2015 «Endless project» Mala Galereya (Small Gallery) of Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine.
2013 «Freebiel» art squat “Hayat”, Kiev.

Selected Group Exhibitions:
2016 «Art Under Fire» Silent Barn Gallery, New York, United States.
2015 «Shelter» The Window, Paris, France. 2015 «Rock Paper Scissors» Le Générateur, Paris, France.
2014 «COLLECTIVE MEMORY TRACES» [.BOX] Videoart project space, Milan, Italy. «IX ART-KYIV Contemporary 2014» ” Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine. «GogolFest 2014», Kiev, Ukraine. «Postcards from Maidan» Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland. International Video Art Festival “NOW&AFTER’14”, “MEMORY MIGRATION”, State Museum of GULAG, Moscow, Russia. «View of the Crimea», Karas Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine. «THE SHOW WITHIN THE SHOW» Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine. «NEW UKRAINIAN DREAM» Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine. «Solving the problem» Mala Galereya (Small Gallery), Kyiv, Ukraine.
2013 «M. N. P.» (Museum of nonexistent objects), Odessa, Ukraine. «Book Arsenal» Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine.
2012 «Urban SHIT» Kiev, Ukraine. «Book Arsenal» Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine.
2010 All-Ukrainian Biennial of Graphic IM. G. Yakutovych, CHA, Kiev, Ukraine.
2009 Triennial Graphics, CHA, Kiev, Ukraine.
2008 All-Ukrainian Biennial of Graphic IM. G. Yakutovych, CHA, Kiev, Ukraine.

Awards:
2014 International Festival of Video Art “NOW & AFTER ’14” (Special Prize).
2011 Academic drawing competition in Kharkiv (III place).
2010 Picture contest Eleva (III place)
 

 


 

For NonStopMedia Festival VIII Education program, Rachel Rits-Volloch delivered a lecture entitled:

Hero Mother, Hero Artists, and Heroic Curators:
Building an Independent Art Space, A Case Study

ABSTRACT:

MOMENTUM is a non-profit platform for time-based art, active worldwide since 2010, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. Working on a model of international partnerships and cooperations, MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Archive, and a growing Collection.

HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism is the ironic title of MOMENTUM’s most recent show, an international exhibition of 30 women artists from 20 countries, focusing on the role of gender, citizenship, nationalism, migration and personal freedom, as well as relations between artists and state structures. The scale and impact of this show, like so many other major international projects leading up to it, makes it difficult to imagine that MOMENTUM is not a Kunsthalle, but rather an independent art space with a permanent staff of only two people and no institutional funding or steady sponsorship.

So how do we do it all? Looking back at the 6 years of MOMENTUM’s existence, this talk is a tribute to the many artists, curators, and institutions which have enabled great art to happen against all odds by heroically sharing time, resources, and ideas. This talk is an acknowledgement of the power of cooperation in an age of competition for scarce resources. It is a recognition of what can be achieved through naiveté, inspiration, and a little bit of insanity.

THANKS TO:
 

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PHOTOS OF THE FESTIVAL

03/09/2016
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30/08/2016
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STEFANO CAGOL

 

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

 

Stefano Cagol (Trento, 1969) graduated from the Accademia di Brera in Milan and received a post-doctoral fellowship at Ryerson University in Toronto. 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).

The RWE Foundation VISIT program supported Cagol’s Artist Residency at MOMENTUM in 2015 and his year-long project culminated in his first solo show in Berlin inaugurating the new exhibition space CLB Collaboratorium Berlin. Stefano Cagol presented “The Body of Energy (of the mind)”, a year-long project the artist has developed as an expedition spanning  Europe’s northern-most to southernmost tips, on search for signs of energy, both physical and cultural energy, triggering a reflection on what is not visible, on resources, on relations. In 2014-2015 Cagol’s solo project “The Body of Energy (of the mind)” was also presented at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, at Madre in Naples, at Maga in Gallarate, at Museion in Bolzano, at Kunsthalle St. Gallen, at ZKM in Karlsruhe and at Museum Folkwang in Essen.

READ MORE ABOUT STEFANO CAGOL’S 2015 ARTIST RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM HERE > >

 

In 2019 Stefano Cagol was awarded the prestigious Italian Council grant for The Time of the Flood: Beyond the Myth through Climate Change. Cagol began his year-long international artistic research initiative in Berlin with a Residency at MOMENTUM on 1 November 2019 – 10 February 2020, producing three new video works, a number of performative interventions throughout the city, countless photographs, several Art Salon presentations, and a symposium at the Italian Cultural Institute, Berlin. The overall project, The Time of the Flood (2020-21), is composed of 7 video performances realized by Stefano Cagol throughout a series of international artist residencies and exhibitions in Berlin, Venice, Rome, Vienna, and Tel-Aviv. Seeing art, science and myth in continuous dialogue, Cagol re-contextualizes the biblical story of The Flood within our current climate emergency and the devastating impacts we humans have upon our planet.

READ MORE ABOUT STEFANO CAGOL’S 2019-20 ARTIST RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM HERE > >


“Symbols, metaphors, current topics, immediateness, stimulating, communicating, openness, multiple points of view. These are the key words to my relationship with the public. It couldn’t be any other way. The artwork is an opportunity to better understand our own time and future. It’s a sort of mission. In my account art is never closed in itself.”

[Stefano Cagol]

 

EVOKE PROVOKE (THE BORDER)

2011, Video, 17 min 35 sec

 

 

The love and hate that Cagol feels towards boundaries, both physical and mental, is at the root of this work created at Kirkenes, in the Arctic Circle, during one of the periods he spent abroad as an artist in residence.

The artist staged a series of emblematic actions that he filmed with a video camera. In total solitude, immersed in a fascinating but hostile nature, in conditions bordering on the extreme, like the place where the actions were carried out. For Cagol in this case the border is precisely the one between himself, his body and his mind, and the nature that surrounds him.

The setting seems to be cloaked in twilight, barely dispelling the darkness, and the temperature is 25 degrees below zero. In those frozen lands, he tries to communicate in one way or another, using different forms of signalling. He endeavours to modify the landscape, to light it up, to melt the snow with a flame, but every attempt at interaction is in vain.

The video was shown at the solo exhibition Concilio in the church of San Gallo, as a collateral event at the 54th Venice Biennale.

[Excerpted from Stefano Cagol Works 1995 | 2015]


23/08/2016
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More Talented AiRs Coming Soon…

STAY TUNED!!!

22/06/2016
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Alysha Creighton

Website

27 June – 24 July 2016

 

Alysha Claire Creighton (b. 1986 Vancouver, Canada) is an intermedia artist from Vancouver, BC. She holds a BA in Visual Art from Trinity Western University and an MFA in Drawing and Intermedia from the University of Alberta. Her performance-based practice draws on her background in dance and movement, exploring moments of physical, social and psychological tension between people though drawing, photography and video.
Recent projects include her site-specific project Waiting Room at the Bleeding Heart Art Space, her solo exhibition Proximities at the Art Gallery of St. Albert, and a video installation as part of the 2013 Alberta Biennial. She teaches Drawing and Intermedia courses at the University of Alberta and also works as a lead artist at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts where she assists artists with developmental disabilities in bringing their ideas to life through digital animation.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During her Residency in Berlin, she plans to move into new territory, as she further develops her practice to include performance explicitly. Through her work she investigates the emerging quality of connection as it is formed and informed by the technologies that we use and which also use us. Asking questions such as: What is the texture of nearness? Is a table not a technology that connects us? She seeks to unravel the qualities of nearness – ways of being and becoming together. In so doing, she creates space for a subtle ethics of proximity to emerge; one that acknowledges our enmeshment with our technologies and one another. Her work is very driven by viewer interaction and experience, and so for this specific project she will by the use of screens, video and performance open a space to consider the ways that technologies intervene in our lives.



 

Mask
by Alysha Creighton

Performance held on 23rd July 2016 at MOMENTUM, Berlin

[fve] http://vimeo.com/191641261 [/fve]

 
 

Open Studio

23 July 2016

At MOMENTUM

 

 

Open Studio

9 July 2016

At MOMENTUM

 
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08/06/2016
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Let’s Conclude
 

The HERO MOTHER Symposium & Finissage
 


12 June @ 1 – 9pm
 

 

The Symposium is part of the Exhibition


HERO MOTHER
Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism

Curated by Bojana Pejić and Rachel Rits-Volloch

14 May – 12 June 2016

MORE INFO HERE >>

 

 

Guided Tour with Bojana Pejić and Rachel Rits-Volloch:

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/181466329 [/fve]

 

Symposium Videos:

RESISTING THE LIMITS OF NOW
By Bojana Pejić

ARTIST PANEL
With Nguyen Trin Thi, Sasha Pirogova, Mariana Vassileva,
Marina Belikova, moderated by David Elliott


BACK TO BALAGAN!!!
By David Elliott

MOTHERS, HEROES AND HISTORY’S PLAYGROUND
By Laima Kreivyte


FEMEN ACTIVISM
Bojana Pejić in discussion with
two members of FEMEN Germany

ARTIST PANEL
with Else Twin Gabriel, Nezaket Ekici and Selma Selman,
moderated by Bojana Pejić


 

Closing Performance You Have No Idea by Selma Selman:

 

Speakers:

Marina Belikova

Marina Belikova is an artist, born in Moscow, Russia. Between 2005-2011 she studied Graphical web-design & E-commerce in the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and then in 2011 moved to the Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (Technical University) and graduated with an honours degree. In 2012-2013 she did an M.A. in Communication Design: Graphic Design in Kingston University London. In 2013 she started her degree at Bauhaus University Weimar, where she is currently doing an M.F.A. in Media Art and Design.

Nezaket Ekici

Nezaket Ekici’s video, installations and performances are often process-based and ask viewers to derive their own emotional and intellectual interpretations. Activated by the audience, the use of her body as a means of expression becomes a vital material in her work, where complex, often controversial topics are countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies 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.

Born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970, Ekici studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramović. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.


David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); 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 Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the 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. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.

else (Twin) Gabriel

Else Gabriel came to prominence within circles of the GDR art scene during her time at the Dresden Art Academy in the mid 1980s. After becoming a member of the notorious group Autoperforationsartisten, Gabriel began collaborating with artists such as Michael Brendel, Volker (Via) Lewandowsky and Rainer Görß. Their performative works became synonymous with challenging GDR ideology, using shocking techniques such as self-mutilation to question the repressive teaching methods used within schools and universities. After meeting Ulf Wrede (now her partner and father to their two children) in the late 1980s, they began their long term collaborative project under the name else Twin Gabriel in 1991. Their work spans across digital and performative mediums, with themes ranging from social/political repression, late capitalism, the family system and reconfiguring German identity (post-Wall), whilst introducing humour and the absurd into everyday situations. Else Gabriel has been a professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee since 2009.


FEMEN

FEMEN is an international women’s movement of brave topless female activists painted with the slogans and crowned with flowers. FEMEN female activists are the women with special training, physically and psychologically ready to implement the humanitarian tasks of any degree of complexity and level of provocation. FEMEN activists are ready to withstand repressions against them and are propelled by the ideological cause alone. FEMEN is the special force of feminism, its spearhead militant unit, modern incarnation of fearless and free Amazons. We live in the world of male economic, cultural and ideological occupation. In this world, a woman is a slave, she is stripped of the right to any property but above all she is stripped of ownership of her own body. All functions of the female body are harshly controlled and regulated by patriarchy. Separated from the woman, her body is an object to monstrous patriarchal exploitation, animated by production of heirs, surplus profits, sexual pleasures and pornographic shows. Complete control over the woman’s body is the key instrument of her suppression; the woman’s sexual demarche is the key to her liberation. Manifestation of the right to her body by the woman is the first and the most important step to her liberation. Female nudity, free of patriarchal system, is a grave-digger of the system, militant manifesto and sacral symbol of women’s liberation. FEMEN’s naked attacks is a naked nerve of the historic woman-system conflict, its most visual and appropriate illustration. Activist’s naked body is the undisguised hatred toward the patriarchal order and new aesthetics of women’s revolution.
(More information here: http://femen.org/about-us/)

Laima Kreivytė

Laima Kreivytė is an art critic, curator and lecturer at Vilnius Academy of Arts and European Humanities University. She participates in feminist art and research projects and works with artists group Cooltūristės. Exhibitions she has curated include Lithuanian pavilion in 53rd Venice Biennale, Baltic Mythologies in 3 Prague Biennale, Woman’s Time in National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Space Travellers in AR/GE Kunst Gallery Museum, Bolzano among others.


Nguyen Thrin Thi

Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based independent filmmaker and video/media artist. Her diverse practice has consistently investigated the role of memory in the necessary unveiling of hidden, displaced or misinterpreted histories and examined the position of artists in the Vietnamese society. Nguyen studied journalism, photography, international relations and ethnographic film in the United States. Her films and video art works have been shown at festivals and art exhibitions including Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; the Lyon Biennale 2015; Asian Art Biennial 2015, Taiwan; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2014; and Singapore Biennale 2013. Nguyen is founder and director of Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent centre for documentary film and the moving image art in Hanoi since 2009. She’s also a member of NhaSan Collective, the longest-running alternative art space in Hanoi.  

Bojana Pejić

Bojana Pejić (born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia), is an art historian and curator, living in Berlin since 1991. Having studied History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Belgrade, from 1977 to 1991 she was curator at the Student Cultural Center of Belgrade University and organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. She started to write art criticism in 1971 and was editor of art theory journal “Moment, Belgrade” (1984 – 1991). She organized an international symposium “The Body in Communism” at the Literaturhaus in Berlin in 1995. She was Chief Curator of the exhibition After the Wall – Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe organized by David Elliott at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (1999), which was also presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Budapest (2000), and at HamburgerBahnhof, Berlin (2000-2001). She was one of the co-curators of the exhibition Aspects/Positions held in the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Vienna in 1999. Between 2002 and 2004, she was one of international advisers of the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto (Japan) where she also curated a retrospective of Marina Abramovic (2003), which also toured to Morigame (Japan). In 2003, she had the Rudolf Arnheim guest professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin (history of art). She was adviser of the project De/Construction of Monument organized by the Center for Contemporary Art in Sarajevo where she also held seminars at the Academy of Fine Arts dedicated to the “Communist Body.” (2004-2005) In May 2005 she has defended her Ph.D. “The Communist Body – An Archeology of Images: Politics of Representation and Spatialization of Power the SFR Yugoslavia (1945 -1991)”. She was a Maria Goeppert-Mayer guest professor for International Gender Research at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University in Oldenburg (2006-2007). Bojana Pejić is the chief curator of Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009-2010) at MUMOK, Vienna and the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. She is also the editor of the “Gender Check Reader”. Dr. Bojana Pejić teaches at the Bauhuas University in Weimar and works as an independent curator and writer.


Sasha Pirogova

Pirogova is a performance and video artist, for her the two disciplines are inter-connected. The people in Pirogova’s work adapt automatically to the mechanics of their physical environments, relinquishing their autonomy to the rhythm and structure of the work. Her video-performance BIBLIMLEN (2013) is a behind-the-scenes look at Moscow’s Russian State Library (the former Lenin Library), in which the interior architecture of the building becomes an active co-author of the piece. An earlier video-performance, QUEUE (2011), based on Vladimir Sorokin’s novel of the same name (1983), is a nervous but ‘bizarrely funny saga of a quintessential Russian institution, the interminably long line’ (NYT, 2011). Creating an absurdist choreography of hysterics, dependence and clanship, Pirogova takes pains to replay the text through dance to identify the queue as not a physical but a psycho-social contemporary condition. After graduating from the Physics Department at Moscow State University in 2010, she received a degree in 2014 from the Rodchenko Art School in Video and New Media in Moscow. She has been awarded prizes at the Extra Short Film Festival, ESF (2012) as well as the Innovation Prize in the ‘New Generation’ category (2014). She has participated in various exhibitions, such as Burning News, Hayward Gallery, London (2014), I saw lightning, Udarnik, Moscow (2014) and in the Manifesta 10, parallel program, St. Petersburg (2014). Working with performance, she has also participated in different festivals, including: the 6th International Festival of Video, Performance and Technology, Lisbon (2014), VIII Andrei Tarkovsky International Film Festival, Ivanovo (2014), Cinedans Dance on Screen Festival, Amsterdam (2014) and Now & After International Video Art Festival, The State Museum of GULAG, Moscow (2014).

Selma Selman

Selma Selman is an artist of Romani origins. Her work is representative of her life struggles and the struggles of her community. Selman utilizes a multiplicity of art mediums, ranging from performance, painting, and photography to video installations, in order to express herself as an individual, a woman, and an artist. Her work, though personal, is also political. Selman defines herself as an artist of Roma origins, and not a Romani artist. The difference is subtle, but critical: through her work, Selman seeks to speak to the universal human condition, utilizing her background as a lens through which she can understand the entirety of the human experience. In her work, she wishes to break down prejudices that stereotype her community as a collective, robbing members of their right to individual expression. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2014 from Banja Luka University’s Department of Painting, where she studied under the supervision of Veso Sovilj, and worked with renowned Bosnian performance artist Mladen Miljanović, who represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013. Selman participated in Tania Brugera’s International Summer Academy in Salzburg, “Arte Util” (Useful Arts) in 2013. She was a fellow for the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary the following year. That year, Selman was also the recipient of the prestigious “Zvono Award”, given to the best young artist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, winning her a residency in New York City. Her work has been shown at numerous international festivals and exhibitions, including the Luxembourg City Film Festival, Sarajevo’s PichWise Festival, Slam Fest in Osijek, the Summer Academy is Salzburg, BL-art festival in Banja Luka, and the Perforation Festival: A Week of Live Art in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Thus far, she has had several solo exhibitions, with “Me postojisarav – Postojim – I exist” being her first solo show in the United States, exhibited at Dreamland Gallery. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Syracuse University, where she also works as a teaching assistant.


Mariana Vassileva

Vassileva’s work looks at how boundaries are tacitly implied. She is interested mainly in experiencing ‘the boundary’, the fine line between the known and unknown, the accepted and unaccepted, in a manner that is resonant with a sense of balance. It comes back to her own personal experiences and her movement between places, leaving the communist regime and her beloved family in Bulgaria behind. Vassileva’s home was and is always Bulgaria, in the northern part of the country where her mother still lives. From this perspective, her work has always reflected another world, a world outside or beyond where she is. This sense of otherness inspires Vassileva, introducing an autobiographical and biographical approach, between the self and the other, between personal and social needs, between needs and dreams, are recurrent themes spreading throughout her work. Mariana Vassileva moved to Berlin in 1989. She has studied pedagogy and psychology at Veliko Turnovo University. After this, she wanted to study art in the Academy of Art in Sofia, but instead worked as one of the artist-professors. She first went to Leipzig to study theatre and to prepare herself for art school, where two years later, she was accepted into the Universität der Künste in Berlin. After her studies, she worked for about three years in scenography for a film company, drawing large-format mountain- and cityscapes for film backdrops. Then, by virtue of some sales of her early work, Vassileva was able to devote herself to being an artist full-time.


 


PHOTOS OF THE SYMPOSIUM AND FINISSAGE
Photo Credit: Camille Blake

04/05/2016
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Hero Mother

 
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Beyond BALAGAN ! ! !

HERO MOTHER:

Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women
Rethinking Heroism

 

Hero Mother - Logo_Balagan

 


Marina Abramović // Maja Bajević // Yael Bartana // Marina Belikova // Tania Bruguera // Anetta Mona Chișa & Lucia Tkačova // Danica Dakić // Nezaket Ekici // Fang Lu // else (Twin) Gabriel // Gluklya/Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya // Stefanie Gromes & Katrin Hafemann // Sanja Iveković // Elżbieta Jabłońska // Zuzanna Janin // Adela Jušić // Elena Kovylina // Katarzyna Kozyra // Almagul Menlibayeva // Tanja Muravskaja // Hajnal Németh // Ilona Németh // Nguyen Trinh Thi // Sasha Pirogova // Selma Selman // Milica Tomić // Anna-Stina Treumund // Mariana Vassileva // Anastasia Vepreva

 


CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ARTISTS & WORKS >>

 
 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch and Bojana Pejic

 

HERO MOTHER Exhibition opening
at Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

[fve] http://vimeo.com/169308367 [/fve]

Guided tour of the exhibition with
Bojana Pejić & Rachel Rits-Volloch

[fve] http://vimeo.com/181466329 [/fve]


Exhibition Opening Performance
On the Way Safety and Luck
By Nezaket Ekici

[fve] http://vimeo.com/169343220 [/fve]

Exhibition Closing Performance
You Have No Idea
By Selma Selman

[fve] http://vimeo.com/170964709 [/fve]


 

 

14 May – 12 June 2016
 

@ Studio 1 & MOMENTUM Gallery

Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin Kreuzberg

 

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12 pm – 7 pm

 

Opening 13 May @ 7 – 11 pm
 

Opening Performance @ 7 – 8:30 pm

NEZAKET EKICI: On The Way Safety And Luck

 

Symposium @ 12 June 2016

Closing Performance: SELMA SELMAN, You Have No Idea
 

MORE INFO ON THE SYMPOSIUM HERE >>

 

Curated by
Bojana Pejić & Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

Production: Olga Wiedemann
Production Assistants: Karen Andersen, Maddy Martin, Laura Sanguineti, Elle Sinclair
Design: Emilio Rapanà

 
 

Funded By
Haupstadtkulturfonds_Logo

 

HERO MOTHER is an international exhibition of 30 women artists from 20 countries. It is part of MOMENTUM’s program for 2016, consisting of a series of events, residencies and exhibitions called BEYOND BALAGAN, which inquires into contemporary art and its relation to life. HERO MOTHER follows on from the major exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places curated by David Elliott, which was held in three venues in Berlin from 14 November till 23 December 2015. “Balagan” is a popular and much used exclamation in contemporary Russia and the places Russian culture has spread to, that describes, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a mess, the most unholy of cock-ups, and at the same time the most joyful of celebrations, the most unrestrained debauchery, the ‘functional dysfunctional’.

The title of the exhibition HERO MOTHER is derived from Soviet, or rather Stalinist practice. The honorary title “Hero Mother” and the medal bestowed with it, established on 8 July 1944 by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was awarded to Soviet women who raised at least ten living children. Before it was abolished in 1991, upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, more than 430,000 women had received this state honor. In 2008, the Russian Federation replaced this award with the “Order of Parental Glory”, downscaling the honor to celebrate the smaller accomplishment of only seven children. This award is also still given to mothers in some post-communist states, such as Belarus or Kazakhstan. What was originally conceived as an incentive to repopulate a country ravaged by war and to encourage women in their patriotic duty to their motherland, today sounds like an absurd punch-line of a Soviet joke.

Or rather not? What has changed for women since the communist era? Did women who in state socialism used to be “working mothers” become today something “else”? Have they become women-citizens? How are we to define heroism in a democratic setting? Could we say it is social disobedience and resistance? Having in mind the new “familiarism” ideologies and the ideal of stay-at-home mothers, which were promoted by the post-communist governments already in the early 1990s, and which are today aggressively endorsed by nationalist parties all over Eastern Europe (and not only there), the figure of the ‘Mother’ or the ‘Mother of the Nation’ occupies the central role. It is indicative that as soon as the Eastern European democratic parliaments had been established around 1990, the very first law most of them tried to pass was the law controlling women’s bodies, namely, the anti-abortion bill. (The “nationalization of women’s bodies” succeed only in Poland where abortion became illegal in 1992). Yet the conservative agenda which exhumes such an exaggeration of ‘family values’ at the cost of personal freedoms to choose alternative lifestyles is only one of many indications of a turning back of the clock to a time before the hard-won victories of feminism and gay rights struggled across Europe.

HERO MOTHER focuses on the role of gender, citizenship, nationalism, migration and personal freedom, as well as the relation between the artists and institutions, such as the state structures. Some of the artists in this exhibition who address serious social issues use the old feminist strategy based on the Bachtenian “power of laughter” showing their civil disobedience and taking the role of “unruly” citizens, while others treat these topics with seriousness and even melancholy. Some works deal with personal, familial and collective women’s memories and female heritage, which are usually lost in the course of the grand narrative of (national) history. Other artists, dealing with the issue of (their own) motherhood, do not deny the condition of motherhood per se; they question the manners in which “being-mother” becomes manipulated by threatening nationalist ideologies – ideologies which, in linking motherhood and nation, are today being exhumed by controlling power.

HERO MOTHER looks at the ramifications of traditionalist political forces, as they are unleashed upon women, the queer community and other minorities at a time of increasingly resurgent conservative values. The limitless possibilities of contemporary art, along with its capacity to turn the world on its head through parody and laughter, have invested it with a socio-political edge, unrecognized since the historical avant-garde, that has become part of a growing worldwide movement for non-violent action. This exhibition and discursive program will look beyond feminist and queer critiques to address how contemporary art can act as a mirror to a world turned on its head, and specifically how humor, farce, and parody can form the strongest tools of social engagement and change.

The artists invited to take part in MOMENTUM’s exhibition HERO MOTHER are contemporary women who are either born in, or are based in, the states that used to (or still) practice state socialism. It will present the work of women artists from places with communist legacies – including Germany – whose work addresses and defies, through a variety of media, the frighteningly regressive political agendas in many Eastern European countries today, and out this in the context of broader developments worldwide.

Because MOMENTUM’s focus is time-based art, the works shown in this exhibition will integrate time into their form and their content, including – but not limited to – video, performance, installation, public art, situationist action, interactive works and social engagement, sound, photography, text, and web-based work. This exhibition accordingly invokes time-based art practices to explore the legacies of cultural histories that have constantly changed over time. As Berlin’s only platform focusing exclusively on time- based art, MOMENTUM focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural perspectives re-frame different historical moments.


 


< < CLICK HERE TO READ THE CURATORIAL TEXT BY BOJANA PEJIĆ > >
“RESISTING THE LIMITS OF NOW”

 

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


 

 

 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

Haupstadtkulturfonds_Logo

 

INSTALLATION PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Marina Belikova

 


PHOTOS OF THE PERFORMANCE
Photo Credit: Petra Fantozzi

 

PHOTOS OF THE OPENING
Photo Credit: Petra Fantozzi

 


PHOTOS OF THE SYMPOSIUM AND FINISSAGE
Photo Credit: Camille Blake

03/04/2016
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MOMENTUM BOX EXHIBITIONS

 

5 March – 30 April 2016

 

Featuring a Selection of Videos Presented at
GANZ GROSSES KINO for KIK EIGHT>>

Hannu Karjalainen // Bjørn Melhus
Theo Eshetu // David Krippendorff // Varvara Shavrova

 
 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

5 – 20 March 2016
Hannu Karjalainen
The House Protects the Dreamer (2014)

16 mm film scanned to HD Video, sound, 14’8″

THE HOUSE PROTECTS THE DREAMER is an experimental narrative film about a fictive modern architect’s creative process. The dreamlike film follows the architect and her assistant producing experiments that verge on the absurd. It is a film about faith, disillusionment and renewal. The film was shot in and around a 1960 Aulis Blomstedt villa in Helsinki and features Heli Haltia and Dwayne Strike. Music composed by Infinite Livez and Hannu Karjalainen.

 

23 March – 3 April 2016
Bjørn Melhus
Freedom & Independence (2014)

4K Video, sound, 15′

FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE confronts neoliberal elitist thinking using generic media fragments of religious prophecies about the end of time in the setting of a privatized habitat marked by architectures of megalomania. It is a tour de force using elements of fairy tales, musicals, comedy and horror films to scour our global psyche for ingrained promises of salvation, childhood traumas and the work ethic as it is affected by our desire for self-improvement.

 

6 – 10 April 2016
Theo Eshetu
The Festival of Sacrifice (2012/2016)

Single-channel version of a 6-channel video installation, sound, 16′

THE FESTIVAL OF SACRIFICE depicts the ritual slaughter of a goat at the end of Ramadan, filmed by Eshetu on the Kenyan island of Lamu. 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 images. Music composed by Theo Eshetu. Shown here in a single-channel version of a ten-channel installation, MOMENTUM celebrates the addition of this phenomenal work to the MOMENTUM Collection.

 

13 – 17 April 2016
David Krippendorff
Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015)

HD, color, stereo, 13’43”

NOTHING ESCAPES MY EYES (2015) is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being. Inspired by the texts of Edward W. Said, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Verdi’s opera Aida, the film depicts in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. With no dialogues, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from 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.

 

20 April – 30 April 2016
Varvara Shavrova
The Opera (2010)

HD Video, sound, single-channel version of a 6-channel installation, sound, 21’23”

THE OPERA was originally commissioned (2010) as a multi-channel video projection for the Espacio Cultural El Tanque, an empty oil tank in Tenerife, and subsequently shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014. This work is an insight into the fragile world as well as social and human aspects of the Peking Opera, one of China’s most revered aspects of cultural heritage. The Opera focuses on the transformation of the Peking Opera artists from male to female, and from female to male. Shavrova investigates issues of personal identity, sexuality and gender bending as they are manifested by both traditional and contemporary culture in modern day China. 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. MORE INFO HERE >>

 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

03/04/2016
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THEO ESHETU

 

(b. 1958 in London. Lives and works in Berlin.)

 

Ethiopian artist 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, Theo 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 numerous prestigious international awards, Theo Eshetu is a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, USA, and was Artist in Residence at Tarabya Cultural Academy, Turkey, between 2016 and 2018, where he completed 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 DAAD Gallery in 2014.

Theo Eshetu’s installation Till Death Us Do Part (1980s) has become part of the permanent collection of MoMa, New York. His work has been shown at major museums worldwide, including: 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; Tate Britain, London; the Venice Film Festival; Roma Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art in Rome; the American Academy in Rome; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, France; the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels; the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, among many others. Eshetu has participated in major international Biennials, including: the Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2020), Shanghai Biennale, China (2017), Documenta14 in Athens and Kassel (2017), Dak’Art (2016), the Kochi Muziris Biennial, India (2014-15); the Italian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); the 10th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2011); amongst others.



 

FESTIVAL OF SACRIFICE

2012, Video, 18 min

 

 

The celebration of Sacrifice harks back to the very origins of religious thought. All religions begin with a sacrifice. Festival of Sacrifice is a pattern made up of a composition of repetitions which recalls the traditions of Islamic art. This work 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]

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 images. The emotional and aesthetic aspects of ritual religious practices are here heightened by the musical soundtrack of the work.

The Festival of Sacrifice was made while Eshetu was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program in Berlin in 2012, and shown in Eshetu’s solo exhibition, The Return of the Axum Obelisk, at the DAAD Gallery, Berlin, in 2014.


03/04/2016
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Luana Perilli Residency 2016

 

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Terna Prize Artist Residency at MOMENTUM


with

Luana Wojaczek Perilli

CV – Website

4 April – 19 May 2016

 

Luana Wojaczek Perilli (b.1981, Roma) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 2010, where she currently lives and works in Rome. She was awarded with several residency grants: Pan Studios Program, Pan Museum, Napoli (supervised by Daniel Buren) in 2010; Art Omi, New York, grant by Dena Foundation in 2008 and Cité Internationale des Arts, grant by Incontri Internazionali D’Arte, Paris, in 2008 and 2004. Recent shows include: ‘Q.I vedo’, Napoli (), ‘Solitary shelters’ at The Gallery Apart, Roma, IT; ‘All for one’ at Medium Galerie, Bratislava, SK; ‘Roommates-Coinquilini Luana Perilli /Carola Bonfili’, MACRO, Roma, IT. Perilli has contributed to numerous group shows, including the 2014-15 Kochi Muziris Biennale in MOG Goa Museum, India; Internaturalità in PAV, Torino; Patria Interiore-interior homeland Golden thread Gallery, Project Space, Belfast; ITALIENISCHE KUNST HEUTE, Stadtgalerie, Kiel; Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen; RE-generation, MACRO, Roma; Omaggio a Graziella Lonardi Buontempo , PAN, Napoli; An intimate story – Cotroneo Collection, MAMM Multimedia Art Museumof Moscow, Moscow.Perilli is currently professor of Multimedia Installation at Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and professor of Art Sudio and Drawing at Cornell University in Rome.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During her Residency in Berlin, Luana Wojaczek Perilli will further deepen her investigation into post-critical collective awareness and the perception of nature.

The history of the city itself provides a great range of provoking issues and locations that recently changed paths of use and meaning, as they became taken over by necessity, as well as by a will to activate a new awareness in the interpretation of spaces.

These locations are a large field for Perilli’s artistic investigation, alongside her interest in the idea of shelters, leftovers and post-failure perception of the environment.

During her first part of the residency in spring last year, Perilli encountered one of the lost places in Berlin, a former bunker, a former place for protection and safety, now a playground, a climbing park, a place where people endanger themselves was created on top of it. This juxtaposition in post-war monuments, their randomly chosen new usage was part of Perilli’s investigation in Berlin. In a Kunst Salon her new ideas and research so far was presented.

The critical shift and the ecological issues related to urban beekeeping and urban crops will inspire a new corpus of works made of videos, drawings and sculptural installations. She will continue her research into this, in the second part of her Residency with MOMENTUM. Perilli will dedicate special attention to issues around collective intelligence.


________________________

 

Song of Olimpia


Luana Wojaczek Perilli

6 May 2016

 

@ 19.00 – 20.00

 
perilli_olimpia song 2
 

Song of Olimpia is a performative open ended introduction to Luana Wojaczek Perilli’s project LEOPOLD-O, with sound design by Alberto Picciau.  LEOPOLD-O is a project that deals with community identities while undergoing crisis – starting from communal life of eusocial insects to difficult heritage appropriation.  The full project will be informed by video, performances and a refugees puppet theatre. This is a work in progress undertaken for the MOMENTUM Artist Residency.

Song of Olimpia is inspired by Aldo Leopold’s writings against the ‘Boostering spirt’ of the 1920’s – his criticism of capitalism, written before capitalism came to be defined as such – and by the anti-bourgeoise tale “der Sandmann” by E.T.A. Hoffmann. The event will take the form of a performance-lecture blending with fictional storytelling, sound, dance, video, and puppet play.  The audience will be invited to engage with the puppets and with the artist after the piece. 


________________________

 

Luana Wojaczek Perilli’s Kunst Salon:

Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker,
A Tale on Free Climbing Society

Luana Wojaczek Perilli in conversation with Sumugan Sivanesan

 
[fve] https://vimeo.com/133138552 [/fve]
 

With the generous support of Premio Terna.

17/03/2016
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In Cooperation With


P R E S E N T

 

Acentered:
Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image

@ Art Basel Hong Kong

Crowdfunding Lab, Level 3 Concourse,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

 

22 – 26 March 2016

During Art Basel Hong Kong Opening Hours
 

SELECTED WORKS FROM THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION

 

Featuring:
Qiu Anxiong // Thomas Eller
Janet Laurence // Kate McMillan
Tracey Moffatt // Sumugan Sivanesan
Li Zhenhua
(Click on artists’ names for more info.)

 

Curatorial Statement

MOMENTUM will take part in Acentered: Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image during Art Basel Hong Kong. Presented by the Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative, Acentered is part of the Crowdfunding Lab and curated by Videotage.

The 21st century defines an emerging set of complex relationships between creativity, knowledge, capitalism, and innovative technologies. Today, we live in a world that revolves around networks and necessitates a belief in a future that is powered by the connection of people – a culture that embraces fluidity, collaboration, and creative mobility.

During Art Basel Hong Kong, the Crowdfunding Lab features video art works from the Videotage Media Art Collection, the MOMENTUM Collection, and from other international partners including: Casa Asia (Barcelona & Madrid), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art/University of Salford Art Collection (Manchester), The Chinese University of Hong Kong/Department of Fine Arts, City University of Hong Kong/School of Creative Media, Connecting Spaces (Hong Kong-Zurich)/Zurich University of the Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University/Academy of Visual Arts, The Hong Kong Institute of Education/Department of Cultural and Creative Arts, and videoclub (London). Videotage also presents a series of roundtable discussions at the booth on a variety of relevant topics in the art world today.

 

 

DISCUSSION PROGRAM

 

Swapped!
Exchange Artists On Exchange

Mar 24, 15:00 – 16:00
@ Crowdfunding Lab, Level 3 Concourse,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Speakers:
Rachel Rits-Volloch, Founding Director, MOMENTUM, Berlin
Morgan Wong, Artist, Hong Kong
Moderator:
Kevin Lam, Assistant Curator, Videotage, Hong Kong

A roundtable discussion between artists from Videotage’s Kickstarter campaign, selected by the Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative to be endorsed on their curated page. This campaign supports a trans-national project to raise the awareness on the experiences of immigrants in the epicenters of Asia and Europe – Hong Kong and Berlin – through an artist exchange program. A presentation will be held by Morgan Wong and Rachel Rits-Volloch to discuss the concepts behind the campaign.’

 

Salon Program:
Collaborative Network – Curating in the 21st Century

25 March, 14:00 – 15:00
@ Auditorium, Entrance Hall 1A, Level 1,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

How should curating be in the 21st century? By bringing together veteran curators across the globe, this discussion contemplates different views regarding contemporary curating, with a focus on new networking channels.

Speakers:
David Elliott, Freelance Curator, Writer and Art Historian, Berlin
Menene Gras Balaguer, Culture and Exhibitions Director, Casa Asia, Barcelona & Madrid
Isaac Leung, Artist, Curator and Chairperson, Videotage, Hong Kong
Jamie Wyld, Director, Videoclub, London
Moderator:
Adrian George, Deputy Director and Senior Curator, UK Government Art Collection, London

 

The Dying Institutions:
Museums and Art Schools in the 21st Century

25 March, 16:00 – 17:00
@ Crowdfunding Lab, Level 3 Concourse,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Speakers:
Rachel Rits-Volloch, Founding Director, MOMENTUM, Berlin
Louis Ho, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities & Creative Writing, HKBU, Hong Kong
Jonathan P. Harris, Head of School of Art, Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University, Birmingham
Ying Tan, Curator, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art; Curatorial Faculty, Liverpool Biennial
Chantal Wong, Strategy & Special Projects, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Moderator:
Iven Cheung, Assistant Curator, Videotage, Hong Kong

Roundtable discussion with curators, art historians, and educators from universities and art institutions across the globe will discuss the future of curatorial and educational practices.

 

Roundtable Discussion:
Inside Out: The Rise and Rise of the Youtube Generation

26 March, 14:00-15:00
@ Crowdfunding Lab, Level 3 Concourse,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Speakers:
Susie Au, Film Director, Installation Artist, Handmade Films, Hong Kong; Chan Ka Ming, Angus Kwok & Yeung Chun Yin, One Letter Horse, Hong Kong; Jan Cho, General Manager, TBWA\ Hong Kong, Head Of Digital, Hong Kong; Ben Tang, Programme Manager in Arts Programme, TV and Advertising Director, Hong Kong; Jamie Wyld, Director, videoclub, London.
Moderator:
Ellen Pau, Founding Director, Videotage, Hong Kong.

Practicing video artists, famous local YouTubers, and film directors host a roundtable discussion exploring the impact of new channels and the rise of artists with non-conventional training, and how that is changing the art-making environment in Hong Kong.

 

Performance: Startup!

26 March, 16:00-17:30
@ Crowdfunding Lab, Level 3 Concourse,
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Speakers:
Enoch Cheng, Artist, Hong Kong; Andrew Luk, Artist, Hong Kong; Tang Kwok Hin, Artist, Hong Kong; Mak Ying Tung, Artist, Hong Kong;
Moderator:
Christopher Lee, General Manager, Videotage, Hong Kong.

Local and international artists present their ‘Art Startup,’ an ambition to develop innovative projects in the age of information technology. Visitors are welcome to participate in this art startup event.

 

 

Migrating Images:
Strangers In A Strange Place

An Artist Residency Exchange between MOMENTUM Berlin & Videotage Hong Kong

 

Amir Fattal & Morgan Wong

SUPPORTED BY



MAKE IT HAPPEN!
SUPPORT THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN >>

“…trying to start a life in a strange land is an artistic feat of the highest order, one that ranks with (or perhaps above) our greatest cultural achievements…”

Joe Fassler, “All Immigrants Are Artists,” the Atlantic (August 2013)



 

MAKE IT HAPPEN!
SUPPORT THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN >>

Videotage (Hong Kong) and MOMENTUM (Berlin) invite you to support Migrating Images, our research-based artist exchange program that aims to capture, explore, and redefine the ephemeral experience of two cities – Hong Kong and Berlin – with video art.

Your contribution will support two artists (one based in Hong Kong and one Berlin) to engage and research the impact of immigrant societies in these two multicultural epicenters, and their research will become the basis of their video art projects to explore the multiple aspects of migration on the community.

Besides exploring issues related to migration, the exchange artists will participate in a series of workshops and lectures in the local art scene during their residencies. After they have returned, they will also play the role of the curator for a show in their home base featuring selection from the collections of Videotage and MOMENTUM respectively. Migrating Images is conceptualized to be a multi-dimensional exchange project that involves the local art communities of the two cities.

 

Tales of Two Migrating Cities

Both Hong Kong and Berlin are “migrating” in multiple sense of the word. In their histories, both Hong Kong and Berlin have emerged as epicenters of Asia and Europe under continuous waves of immigration. In recent years this movement of people is happening even in a faster pace. In the last decade Hong Kong suddenly finds herself opening its doors to large numbers of new immigrants from mainland China and Southeast Asia, while the demographics of Berlin have also changed dramatically due to newcomers of non-German descent. The current Syrian refugee is an even more pressing issue – especially in the world after the Paris attacks.

Besides the movement of people, both Hong Kong and Berlin are also home to migrating objects. As a former British colony, Hong Kong is still laden with artefacts from its colonial past. This has become an issue of hot debate under Chinese rule – are these objects to be retained or replaced by those that bear marks of the current Chinese regime? On the other hand Berlin’s ethnographic museums are full of objects that remind viewers of their origin and their “migration” during the colonial era. With these commonalities, one might ask: how has this “migrating” experience shaped these cities? How have the culture, religion, and social customs of the immigrant communities impacted these epicenters in Asia and Europe respectively? How has the flow of people changed the city fabric in a visible – or invisible – manner?

 
ABOUT AMIR FATTAL:

Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Coming himself from a migration background, Fattal is concerned throughout his practice with connections between cultures – through their history, memory, architecture, and geographical diaspora which transposes cultures to new and different nations. Working in a variety of media ranging from sculpture, installation, photography, video, 3D printing, musical composition, and more, Fattal makes contemporary art which always subtly political, reflecting conceptually upon the history of art, architecture, minimalism, and modernism.

ABOUT MORGAN WONG:

Morgan Wong was born in Hong Kong in 1984, and is currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Wong graduated from the Slade School of Fine Arts in London in 2013. Wong’s interest in durational performances investigates the irrepressibility of time as a predicament, to recuperate a new consciousness of physicality, time and space. Such a practice follows the vein of phenomenology, and specifically how to become more aware of the relationship between one’s volition and action. The pursuit of timelessness is not only a humanistic quest; its social and political connotations question the fundamental value of an individual as an agency for change.

 

 

 

ABOUT Videotage

Videotage is a leading Hong Kong-based non-profit organization specializing in the promotion, presentation, creation and preservation of new media art across all languages, shapes and forms.

Founded in 1986, Videotage has evolved from an artist-run collective to an influential network, supporting creative use of media art to explore, investigate and connect with issues that are of significant social, cultural and historical value.

Videotage is dedicated to nurturing emerging media artists and developing the local media arts community. It has organized numerous events and programs since 1986, including exhibitions, presentations (Dorkbot), festivals (Wikitopia), workshops, performances, residency program (FUSE) and cultural exchange programs, as well as continually distributing artworks through its networks and publications; and developing an extensive offline and online video art archive (VMAC).

New initiative Acentered – Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image is a project umbrella that interlinks extensive media art institutions in China and Europe. Videotage is planning to further initiate exchanges between Europe and China looking at the future of experimental moving image.

 

ABOUT Art Basel

Art Basel stages the world’s premier art shows for Modern and contemporary works, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. In addition to ambitious stands featuring leading galleries from around the globe, each show’s singular exhibition sectors spotlight the latest developments in the visual arts, offering visitors new ideas and new inspiration. For further information please visit artbasel.com

 

ABOUT the MOMENTUM COLLECTION

The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists who’s work was shown at MOMENTUM | Sydney in May 2010. The donations of their works constituted their investment in MOMENTUM’s then-nascent model as a global and mobile platform for showing time-based art. Five years later, the MOMENTUM Collection has expanded from its original roster of 10 to 32 exceptional international artists. The Collection represents a cross-section of 120 outstanding artworks in a diversity of media: video, performance, photography, painting, collage, and text. It ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists representing 18 countries worldwide: Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Korea, China and Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, Ethiopia, Poland, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the US, the UK, Canada. The growth of the Collection reflects the growth of MOMENTUM itself. While we develop and nurture our relationships with these artists, we continually endeavor to bring their work to new audiences worldwide – both through our web archive, and through cooperations with partners such as LOOP and IkonoTV, as traveling exhibitions, and through educational initiatives such as the Time_Art_Impact Dialogues with Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
[click HERE for more information].
 

To view the MOMENTUM Collection CLICK HERE >>

READ HERE THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION CATALOGUE

Exhibition:
Migrating Images

@ Videotage

Cattle Depot Artist Village,
63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Hong Kong
 

24 – 31 March 2016 @ 12:00 – 19:00

 

Featuring:
Lutz Becker // Theo Eshetu
Amir Fattal // Gülsün Karamustafa
Morgan Wong // Zheng Bo
Dorotea Etzler

 
 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch and Isaac Leung

 

Curatorial Statement

Today, most of us live lives of perpetual motion from one piece of information to the next, from one opportunity to the next, and 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. Historically having expelled millions, Berlin is still making up for it, reinventing itself as the go-to capital of the mobility age. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin acts as a vortex, sucking in the cool young things of art, fashion, media, music; professionals and tourists, migrant laborers and refugees. Berlin is a city of migrants where everyone is always from elsewhere. It is a city of mobile people and moving images.

Migrating Images addresses issues of memory, identity and the impact of migration. Throughout the exhibition ‘migrating images’ are revealed through the notion of ‘object memories’ as artists examine how objects, and associations related to them, have been transferred and re-imprinted through historical processes of colonization and migration, moving in this way from one culture to another. The work made by the artists in the exhibition shows different ways in which these ‘migrating images’ have been woven into new lives or realities to establish other meanings and identities in the present. Migrating Images is thus a reflection on the hybridization of cultural practices, and the fact that not only in Berlin, but everywhere in the world, we can all find roots somewhere else; and we all need dreams, stories, legacies and nightmares from somewhere else.

Migrating Images brings together artists who have dissected the historical legacies of their particular cultures to rebuild them into contemporary statements about how cultures, by absorbing one another, defy established borders and concepts of nationhood that have been drawn and re- drawn by political force throughout history. This exhibition focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural backgrounds also re-frame different historical moments.

The work by the artists in the exhibition – Lutz Becker, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, and Gülsün Karamustafa – encapsulates a wide range of different approaches to experiences of empire, migration, cultural transformation and appropriation. All strongly reflect the viral, diasporic symbolisms of contemporary culture across the world and the different contexts within which they are perceived.

The works selected from Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC), including Dorotea Etzler’s Film 2 HK 1995 (1997) and Morgan Wong’s Plus-Minus-Zero (2010), they explore the relationship with our surrounding world in the contemporary urban landscape, and how our sense of time and space can be dislocated by artistic interruptions through performance, videography and cinematic language. While Zheng Bo’s Welcome to Hong Kong (2004) still resonates with Hong Kong people’s anxiety and unease in face of the changing social environment and urban landscape a decade later. The three artists from this VMAC’s selection come from different cultural and artistic background, but they all share a common interest in creating new collective and dynamic urban experiences through experimental videography.

 

Artists and Works

Lutz Becker, After The Wall, 2000

CVWebsite

Lutz Becker was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany and now lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001).

Lutz Becker’s sound piece After the Wall (1999/2014) was originally produced for an exhibition of the same title, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Becker, Berlin-born but living for over forty years in London, recorded five different soundscapes of tapping and hammering as the wall was slowly demolished across Berlin. In the process it was transformed from a monumental symbol of oppression into a commodity to be sold in small plastic packs and a destination for tourism. Both the heroism of hope and the banality of commerce can be heard in this beating against the wall as solidarity syncopates into nothingness and the sound of freedom resounds in a void.

Theo Eshetu, ROMA, 2010

CVWebsite

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. Coming from a background in experimental film and music, Eshetu forges a hybrid language to merge practices of video art and documentary filmmaking, exploring perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. Eshetu has won numerous awards and has shown worldwide. He is currently developing new work for Documenta14 in 2017.

In ROMA (2010), a three-channel video projection of almost an hour long, Theo Eshetu presents a kaleidoscopic view of the former Roman imperial capital that displays its grandiosity, street life, ritual, theatricality, modernity and sleaziness. Partly in homage to Federico Fellini, the film cuts restlessly between the intimate and the monumental, silence and noise, the banal and the baroque, as different fragments of being imply the paradox of an almost inhumanly overwhelming force. The sensuality of the body is a recurring motif: its sexuality, movement, and discrepancies with the idealised form of ancient Roman power. An epigraph quoting Carl Gustav Jung’s fear of visiting the city strikes a note of neurotic unpredictability. But this is overlaid by a vision of the city as Wunderkammer, an impression mirrored in the eyes of its visitors (or the viewers of this film), as they are induced to marvel, and at times smile, at the absurdity of the range and grandeur of its image.

Amir Fattal, From the End to the Beginning, 2014

CVWebsite

Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Working in a variety of media ranging from sculpture, installation, photography, video, 3D printing, musical composition, and more, Fattal makes contemporary art which is always subtly political, reflecting conceptually upon the history of art, architecture, minimalism, and modernism.

Israeli artist Amir Fattal’s single-channel video From the End to the Beginning (2014) is based on a live performance of Richard Wagner’s Vorspiel und Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (premiered in 1865). The notes, however, are played in reverse order, disrupting the drama while retaining the music’s lush chromaticism. Through this strategy the artist creates another kind of sense, reversing time, perhaps to start anew by bringing the dead back to life. The piece extends into a consideration of the relationship between the national histories of Germany and Israel, the latter in a sense growing out of the Holocaust. Wagner’s music is still never played there. Fattal implies, as do other artists shown here, that modernity has its own conflicted histories in which conformity has often been enforced under the pretext of freedom.

Gülsün Karamustafa, Personal Time Quartet, 2000

CVWebsite

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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.

Gülsün Karamustafa’s work presents migrating images by juxtaposing objects or documented facts with personal, intimate, emotional reactions that may or may not be consonant with them. Personal Time Quartet (2000), a four-channel video installation, re-enacts the artist’s childhood through the eyes of a young girl as she discovers the glassware and elegantly embroidered table linen and bed sheets that once belonged to the artist’s grandparents, or skips crazily amongst the ancient furniture in the family dining room, folds laundry in the kitchen, or, like her alter ego – the artist – once did, paints her nails, obviously for the first time. Through this surrogate family history of memory, furniture and objects stretching back over a century, the artist also refers to times of displacement, migration and unhappiness that have followed her family from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the present.

Zheng Bo, Welcome to Hong Kong, 2014

Website

Zheng Bo grew up in Beijing, China, and studied Fine Arts and Computer Science in the US. His works situate between video art and documentary, and are usually infused with strong social and political messages. Welcome to Hong Kong is a tour guide introduces major sites on Hong Kong island to travelers from Mainland China. She is not an ordinary tour guide – she speaks with two voices, offering different and sometimes conflicting “facts”.

Dorotea Etzler, Film 2 HK 1995, 1997

Website

Dorotea Etzler studied architecture and practiced as an architect in Berlin and London. She participated in several international festivals and numerous exhibitions, including 25 hrs at the VideoArtFoundation in Barcelona and the MOOV Festival in New York. Film 2 HK is part of Etzler’s series Nature Cut, which investigates the architectural space in feature films. The architectural space of the original film has been carefully (de)constructed to serve the story and the tension. This deconstruction allows a shift in meaning and provides a strong portrait of the given places.

Morgan Wong, Plus-Minus-Zero, 2010

Website

In Plus-Minus-Zero, Morgan Wong’s exploration is a time performance reminiscent of Back To The Future scientific logics. As video is frequently categorized as time based media, this work connects time, distance, technology and travel. Whilst this work is related to a fax work that was commissioned for the exhibition FAX, and shown at Para/Site Art Space, it is also a perfectly autonomous work through the discourse it holds.


 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS PROGRAM




05/03/2016
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Talk Ma Li Elana Katz

 
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ARTIST TALK

 

Migrating artists – How does it impact their practice?

A dialogue between Ma Li & Elana Katz

Moderated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

In cooperation with USArtBerlin

 


 

Monday February 29 @ 18.00 – 20.00

At Momentum Worldwide, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

 

Due to the increased globalisation of the art world and the rising opportunities for Artist Residencies all around the world, artists are compelled to be mobile and flexible. Moving to evolve their art has become a crucial part for most artist’s practice. However everyone grew up somewhere and carries their cultural heritage. How do the two things work together? What can be gained? Is the artwork changing due to the setting in which it is created or exhibited?

Ma Li a Chinese born artist, living in San Francisco and currently completing her Residency here in Berlin with MOMENTUM will discuss with artist Elana Katz, an American artist based in Berlin, whose recent work is concentrated in the Balkans. Katz is a board member of the organisation USArtBerlin, working with artists emigrated to Berlin. Both share the experience of migrating to different places for their art practice and their work. In the dialogue they will talk about these experiences and reflect on how they are influenced by their cultural heritage, their migration background but also the possibilities inherent in a mobile lifestyle.

Elana Katz is a conceptual artist working primarily in the medium of performance art. Katz’s work confronts cultural conventions, critically examines the complexity that lies within contradictions, and thus aims to create an experience of unlearning the assumed. Her grants have included the DAAD Graduate Studies Grant for Germany (2010), Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2011), and her ongoing work Spaced Memory (2011-present), has been realized in cooperation with the U.S. Embassy of Kosovo, the Embassy of Israel in Serbia, and the Goethe Institute of Bucharest. Katz has exhibited/performed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (2011), Diehl CUBE Berlin (2013), P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York (2013), Gallery 12 HUB, Belgrade (2014), Kunstwechsel, Aachen (2015), and DNA Berlin (2015). She studied in New York at the Parsons School of Design and earned a Meisterschülerin title from the Universität der Künste Berlin (Klasse Katharina Sieverding) in 2010. Katz has been based in Berlin since 2008.


28/02/2016
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Balagan David’s lecture

 
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BALAGAN!!! LECTURE

 

The Old Woman Who…?
BALAGAN and the Russian/Soviet Avant-Garde 1906-1953

 

By David Elliott

 

At Brandenburger Tor Stiftung am Max Liebermann Haus

Pariser Platz 7, 10117, Berlin

 

Watch the video (excerpt):

 

28/02/2016
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Balagan ICI Lectures

 
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BALAGAN!!! LECTURE SERIES

At ICI Institut for Berlin Cultural Inquiry Berlin

Christinenstr. 18-19, Haus 8, 10119, Berlin

 

Trickster Art: Celebrating Chaos, Challenging Misrule
With David Elliott, Preciosa De Joya,
Hillel Schwartz & Hans Scheuer
19th November 2015

What is to be Undone? Trickery as Political Resistance
With Rosa Barotsi, Katarzyna Kozyra,
Via Lewandowski & Helena Bassil-Morozow
26th November 2015


 

Tricksters are folkloric figures found in numerous cultures, seeming- ly dreamed up – or springing out of nowhere – to provide ways of un- dermining, ridiculing or resisting everything that is wrong, fucked up, unfair in the world, from the tyranny of gods and sovereigns, to social inequality, to the existential injustice of mortality and suffering. As “the creative idiot, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby” (Lewis Hyde), trickster crosses every boundary and confuses every distinction. Michel Serres took the tricksy god Hermes – patron of communication, but also of theft, interruption and secrets – as his guiding figure and alter ego, in order to weave together and traverse disparate cultural spheres with randoneés, “expeditions filled with random discoveries.” Trickster circumvents the logic and techniques of power through a mixture of cunning and naivety, discovering new possibilities as much through foolishness and error as through devious shifts of identity and perspective.

The exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places – taking its name from a popular ex- clamation used in contemporary Russian to indicate a farce, a mess, chaos – features works that in one way or another engage with such unruly states. Might it be that today’s tricksters are to be found in the creative political activity of artists and cultural practitioners attempt- ing to respond to the oppressive mess they find all around them? Could the disarming, oblique ways in which the trickster takes on states of misrule that cannot be challenged face-on be a particularly apt strategy for resistance in times of turbo-capitalism: embracing chaos to turn it against itself? Are hegemonic oppressive forces a necessary condition for the emergence of tricksters – in fact, do the tricks and machinations of power themselves form the prototype and genesis of the trickster? As opposed to its traditionally embodied and most often male form, is the trickster of today more a mode than a figure, fragmenting and multiplying into an array of inanimate and collective forms?


Two connected events at the ICI Berlin will follow these and other leads. This first event looks for tricksters and their traces, both human and nonhuman, in contemporary art and culture. The second considers the concept of trickery in artistic and mediatic practice, and the ways it may open up alternative possibilities for resistance and deflection of power.

20/02/2016
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Fang Lu Kunst Salon

 
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Fang Lu
in conversation with
Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

15 October 2015

At Sammlung Hoffmann


 

Chinese Video Artist Fang Lu was in Berlin as the Artist-in-Residence of the BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAM, initiated by GEKA e.V. – Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesischen Kulturellen Austausch Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange – and BMW, on this occasion coordinated by MOMENTUM, with the support of Sammlung Hoffmann.

Fang Lu (b. 1981 in Guangzhou China) received her BFA from Graphic Design department at the School of Visual Art in New York in 2005, and MFA from the New Genres department at the San Francisco Arts Institute in 2007. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing (2013); Pekin Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2013), Arrow Factory, Beijing (2012), Space Station, Beijing (2010), Borges Libreria Institute of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou (2011); and in group exhibitions such as The 8 of Paths, Uferhallen Berlin (2014), My Generation in Tampa Museum (2014), 28 Chinese in Rubell Family Collection Miami (2013/14), On/Off in Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2012), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (2012), CAFAM Future Exhibition (2012), We Remember the Sun in Walter & McBean Gallery in San Francisco (2008). She lives and works in Beijing.

Fang Lu is also the Co-Founder of Video BureauVideo Bureau, a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform to exhibit, organize and archive video art. It has two spaces: one in Beijing and the other one in Guangzhou. The mission of Video Bureau is to collect and organize artworks of video artists in order to build a video archive that welcomes research and viewing. As an institute open to the public, every two months Video Bureau features a new artist added to the archive, and hosts related events.

 

MORE INFO ON
FANG LU RESIDENCY
AT MOMENTUM
HERE >>


20/02/2016
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KIK Eight

 
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MOMENTUM and Kunst-im-Kino

 

present

 

GANZ GROSSES KINO

 
 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch, Constanze Kleiner, David Szauder

 

4 March 2016 @ 9pm – late

At Kino International

Karl-Marx-Allee 33, 10178 Berlin

 

 

 

Featuring:

Qiu Anxiong, Lutz Becker, Andreas Blank, Ronald de Bloeme, Nicky Broekhuysen, Sarah Choo,
Nezaket Ekici, Thomas Eller, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Annika Glass / Miguel Wysocki,
Paula Godínez, Mariana Hahn, Constantin Hartenstein, Bart Hess, Olaf Holzapfel,
Jarik Jongman, Yuan Goan-Ming, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hannu Karjalainen, Ola Kolehmainen,
David Krippendorff, Jan Kuck, Via Lewandowsky, Joep van Liefland, Sarah Lüdemann,
Bjorn Melhus, Tracey Moffatt, David Mozny, Timea Oravecz, Reynold Reynolds,
Stefan Rinck, Maik Schierloh, Gary Schlingheider, Martin Sexton, Varvara Shavrova,
Roman Soroko, Amanda Szabo, David Szauder & Anna Reka Baktay, Mariana Vassileva,
Alexandra Vogt, Gabriela Volanti, Wiebke Maria Wachmann, Clemens Wilhelm, Clara Winter

 

Ikono.TV presents
in three film-playlists works from:

Botticelli, Böcklin, Bruegel, Caravaggio, Courbet, Delacroix,
Dürer, C. D. Friedrich, Gericault, van Gogh, Goltzius, Goya,
Hiroshige, Hokusai, Mayakowsky, Mondrian, Piranesi

 

Ganz Grosses Kino is a common expression in German slang – a description of any dramatic event, on or off the screen, often used ironically as a mockery of the theater of daily life. Cinema has always been a way of traveling without traveling – moving images move us.

In an era of unprecedented mobility, life is becoming increasingly cinematic, as the fictions of the big screen blur into the realities of the daily news. Disaster scenarios with wars, bombs, disease, natural catastrophe, irrevocably rising sea levels. Is it Hollywood or CNN? Is art mirroring life or vise versa?

While many struggle to survive, we, the fortunate, surf. We surf the web, the slipstream, the information age. We are constantly connected via smartphones iPads and apps; inundated with images, texts, and tweets; relentlessly bombarded with events, invitations, and offers. We live lives of perpetual motion from one piece of information to the next, from one opportunity to the next, and 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. But as more and more people relocate, our open borders can sadly result in closing minds.

Throughout Europe, nationalism is on the rise; otherness exacerbated by openness. Borders increasingly open to the right few still snap shut to the many others. Historically having expelled millions, Berlin is still making up for it, reinventing itself as the go-to capital of the mobility age.

At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin acts as a vortex, sucking in the cool young things of art, fashion, media, music; professionals and tourists, migrant laborers and refugees. Berlin is a city of migrants where everyone is always from elsewhere, somewhere anywhere but here. It is a city of mobile people and moving images.

Berlin is a pit-stop in the race of upward mobility; a place in-between; an ideal stage for acting out the stories of otherness; a screen onto which to project our lives as we zoom past onto the next bright distraction in this era of impermanence.

Ganz Grosses Kino is an exhibition of art from elsewhere, about otherness, on the move to somewhere else. It is a co-curation by 3 Berlin-based curators – Rachel Rits-Volloch of MOMENTUM, Constanze Kleiner, and David Szauder, with contributions from ikonoTV, and students of Bjørn Melhus’s Virtual Realities class at Kassel University. It is a timeless exhibition of time-based art, placing the human dramas of the Old Masters alongside the digital dramas of our age.

From Caravaggio to the present, human dramas remain the same throughout the ages: war and disease, love and beauty, religious turmoil. These are the realities of life, the subject of art, and in this era of mass information and weapons of mass destruction, our global political context is the greatest Grosses Kino of all: Kino International!

Using the setting of this iconic movie theater to reflect on the theater of life and art in Berlin, ‘Ganz Grosses Kino’ is our response to living in an age of displacement and distraction in a city perpetually rebuilding itself, ever evolving into somewhere else.

 

QIU ANXIONG

Website

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 that 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. 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.

‘Cake’ (2012)

Year Produced: 2014
Medium: Video
Duration: 6 min 2 sec

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.
Marked by the same quiet detachment and timelessness as his previous works, but now combining painting, drawing and clay in his animations, Cake offers an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relationship between the two.


LUTZ BECKER

Lutz Becker is a filmmaker, artist and curator from Berlin who lives and works in London. He is of a generation still affected by the aftermath of the WW2, the rebuilding of Germany and the student’s revolt of the late 60s. His films, videos and curatorial projects have been shown internationally. His paintings are in institutional and private collections.
As a student in London he embraced the forward looking spirit of abstraction and artistic internationalism. This led him towards the painterly procedures of informel. He got interested in the synthetic sound structures of electronic music which lead him towards the making of experimental abstract films at the BBC. His preoccupation with movement and time influenced much of his film and video work.
Becker is a director/producer of political and art documentaries such as Double Headed Eagle, Lion of Judah and Vita Futurista to name a few as well as TV productions, such as Nuremberg
in History. He participated as a guest artist at the First Kiev Biennale in 2012 with the video installation, The Scream and is currently preparing the reconstruction of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Que viva Mexico!.
Besides the work as artist and film maker he is an expert on Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism. He curated for Tate Modern the Moscow section of Century City 2001 and for the State Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki, Construction: Tatlin and After 2002, for the Estorick Collection, London, a survey of European photomontage Cut & Paste 2008, for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, a show of 20th Century drawings Modern Times: Responding to Chaos 2010. Most recently he co-curated Solomon Nikritin – George Grosz, Political Terror and Social Decadence in Europe between the Wars at the State Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki.

After the Wall (2012)

Sound piece

A sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall 26 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of Communism. It was a moment in history that promised to the people of Germany and other Europeans a new beginning.


ANDREAS BLANK

Website

Andreas Blank was born in Ansbach, Germany in 1976. He attended the Karlsruhe State Academy of Art (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste) and studied in the class of Harald Klingelhöller. He has been accredited with a German National Academic Foundation scholarship, and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. Blank lives and works in London and Berlin.

What seems casual and random in Andreas Blank´s sculptures, cold and distant, are rather rare stones from quarries around the world, processed and carved in a tedious working process. Utilizing classical sculptural technique, Blank creates marble, alabaster, sandstone and limestone sculptures resembling everyday objects. In the discourse of image and likeness, they lose their functional purpose, transcending into pure, formalistic objects. Historically intended primarily for political representation or religious devotion, Andreas Blank’s stone sculptures question a (post) modernist nihilism.

Still Life (2012)


RONALD DE BLOEME

Website

In an era in which imagery is increasingly superseding language, Ronald de Bloeme (NL,*1971) analyses the origin of signals and the components of their persuasiveness. How do producers of visual language manage to manipulate neutral form and colour in a way that they induce a subconscious process of identification for the largest possible number of individuals of a specifically defined target group? To what extent does red next to white evoke a flag or the packaging of a chocolate bar?
Through appropriation, deconstruction and manipulation using a computer Ronald de Bloeme transforms image templates of our consumer society. He censors existing text and eliminates any figurative references, creating a pure geometric language, which he again combines and distorts into arresting compositions. These are then transferred to canvas with competing colourful layers of high-gloss and matt enamel paint. The resultant expansive surfaces capture our attention through the combination of colour and use of various techniques, with a suggestive impact analogous to the original advertising medium’s intention.

Slips serie 6 (2012)


 


NEZAKET EKICI

Website

Nezaket 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 suspensefully countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies 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.
Born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970, Ekici studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramovic. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Veilling and Reveilling

Year Produced: 2009
Medium: Video Performance on DVD PAL
Duration: 24 min 17 sec (on loop)

Whether in Germany or in the artist’s native Turkey, the question of the Tschador’s meaning and effects remains controversial. How do streamlined notions of feminine beauty intersect with a headscarf’s political and religious references? For Ekici, stories of Turkish students donning wigs to conceal their forbidden headscarves at university, or methods of transporting beauty goods beneath the veil, have led her to question if women can ever truly wear head coverings out of free will. In the video performance Veiling and Reveiling, Ekici wears a Tschador in which various items are concealed: a wig, make-up, bag, bra, dress, tights, jewelry, shoes, artificial eyelashes.
The video begins when the individual pieces are produced from the pockets of the Tschador and concludes when the veil has been fully redecorated, a willful inversion of public and private space.


THOMAS ELLER

Website

Thomas Eller (b. 1964, Coburg) started his studies in Fine Arts at the Hochschule der Künste of Berlin. After his forced dismission, he went on to graduate in Sciences of Religion, Philosophy and Art History from the Freie Universität, Berlin. He has worked as research assistant at the Science Center for Sociology in Berlin (WZB), is the founder of online art magazine artnet.de, where he served as editior-in-chief and was appointed managing director for the German branch of artnet AG, as well as executive director and artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin. Eller is a member of various institutions, including the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA) and the Steering Committee for Creative Industries at the Chamber of Commerce in Berlin (IHK). In his photo-sculptures, Eller manifests a desire to review our relationship with perception, through a confrontation between the viewer, the process of reception and the image, by deliberately destabilizing the picture. He has received various prizes, including the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff Prize (1996), the Villa-Romana Prize (2000), the Art Omi International Art Center (2002) and the Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize from the Akademie der Künste Berlin (2006). Recent exhibitions include his solo ‘The ego Show – A Group Exhibition’ at Autocenter, Berlin (2010) and group exhibitions ‘The Name, The Nose’ at MuseoLaboratorio Ex Manifatture, Tabacchi (2013). Eller is the co-curator of ‘The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing‘, opening at the Uferhallen in Berlin (2014).

THE White Male Complex #5[Lost]

Year Produced: 2014
Medium: HD Video
Duration: 11 min 25 sec

Shot on Lampedusa in 2014, on the beach infamous for its migrant traffic, Eller lives the plight of so many who wash up on that shore. 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 is surreal, thousands of African migrants are our reality. Like Isaac Julien’s 2010 work Ten Thousand Waves, on the deaths of Chinese migrant cockle pickers on the shores of the UK, Eller in his own language tackles the watery deaths


AMIR FATTAL

Website

Amir Fattal (b. in Tel Avivi in 1978) was distinguished with the GASAG Art Prize in 2008 and graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009. Based in Berlin to this day, 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 problematised by its history.
Fattal 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). Fattal was curator of Tape Modern Berlin, an acclaimed series of group exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists.

Frieze

Frieze (2015), a series of 3D printed reliefs that were generated digitally out of photographs, taken from the Internet, of historical buildings in varying states of dila- pidation. Sculptural meditations on loss and memory, these reliefs are accompanied by storyboards that, stylistically echoing the triumphalist narratives of the friezes of ancient Assyria, Sumeria, Babylon, Greece or Rome, expose how victory is currently expressed by destruction and why these historical monuments have become ideological battlegrounds.

Two Colomns

The series of column installations are a hybrid of plinths with a modernistic/minimalist form and the museum vitrine, a structure that protects valuable objects.
Inside the vitrines are lamps from the ‘60s and ‘70s both from East and West Germany that Fattal collected over the course of four years from flea markets in Berlin. By placing these lamps inside the glass vitrines, these ‘cheap’ second-hand lamps become precious historical objects.
The style of the lamps is both rooted in ‘20s German design related to ideas of the ‘Crystal Palace’ as well as to the era of Germany’s division when production systems were separated into east and west.
The use of light evokes reflections about memorial objects and feelings of nostalgia.


ANNIKA GLASS / PAULA GODÍNEZ

Website

High Speed running in a top university’s gym. looking great. Being fit, beautiful, smart, feminin and strong at the same time, at any time. Maintaining the images as uploaded on social media. In fact impossible but day-to-day reality. From September 2014 to August 2015 Annika Glass was studying Chinese at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei.  NTU is generally considered to be one of the best universities in Taiwan.  The videos were shot in the NTU gym, which is not only used for exercising, but also for taking selfies or performing any other kind of self-portrayal and self-staging activities.

Split Time


MARIANA HAHN

Website

Mariana Hahn was born in Schwäbisch Hall and lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She received a Fine Arts degree from the University of the Arts, London in 2012. Hahn poetically questions human fate as a universal condition through photography, performance and video. Hahn’s 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. Hahn often uses textiles that take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the carrier of the living narrative. Conceptually her work feeds from sociological and anthropological theories, as well as from the every day. In all of Hahn’s works one finds a story line, which does not follow chronological order but instead can be followed at any point in the narrative. Hahn has exhibited her work internationally, at museums, galleries and festivals.

Burn My Love

The work Burn My Love, Burn explores the body as the carrier of historical signature. By inscribing a poem on a shroud that once belonged to her recently passed grandmother – and then burning and consuming its remains – Hahn examines the relationship between text, memory making, and the human – particularly female – form. Split between the remaining performance relics, video stills, and the video itself.
“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 it creates a new one, adding on to the net of connotations the figure has toward words. 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.”


CONSTANTIN HARTENSTEIN

Website

Constantin Hartenstein is an artist based in Berlin and New York. He studied “Art and Media” at University of the Arts Berlin; and graduated with honors in 2009. In 2010, he was awarded the Meisterschüler degree (post-graduate M.F.A.) at Braunschweig University of Art studying “Fine Arts“ with Candice Breitz
Hartenstein participated in several artist in residency programs such as Lower East Side Artists Alliance Inc. New York, Geumcheon Art Space Seoul (KR), Triangle Arts Association New York (USA), Grand Central Art Center Santa Ana (USA), Flux Factory New York (USA) and Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (GER). He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards such as Kraft Prize for New Media (USA), LOOP Discovery Award (shortlist), Kunstpreis Haus am Kleistpark (shortlist), IFA Künstlerkontakte project grant (GER/CN), Kunststiftung NRW grant (GER), video art prize BRAWO (GER), project grant Stichting Stokroos (NL) and the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft studio grant (GER). In 2012, he was selected to participate in the “VISIO emerging video artists” program in Florence, Italy.
His works are included in public and private collections; and have been exhibited and screened at international galleries and institutions.

Alpha

Medium: HD video projection (via HDMI signal)
Duration: 11:22 min (loop)
Codecs: ProRes HQ or H.264

The first letter of the Greek alphabet, Alpha has come to denote “the first of
anything.” Animal researchers use the word to signify dominance, applying it to the leader of the pack, who is first in power and importance. Among humans, an Alpha-Male is defined as “a man tending to assume a dominant role in social or professional situations, or thought to possess the qualities and confidence for leadership.”
This project is based on a subliminal soundtrack called ‘Be the Alpha Male’. The narration is re-enacted by three muscular men. The resulting multi-layered video is presented as a larger than life projection.


JARIK JONGMAN

Website

A former assistant of Anselm Kiefer, Jarik Jongman uses both his own photographs and anonymous pictures found in flea markets, books, magazines and on the Internet as a starting point for his engagement with archetypal imagery.
Dutch born, he studied in Arnhem and has had numerous exhibitions in London, Berlin, Switzerland, Amsterdam and at the 53rd (2009) and 54th (2011) Venice Biennale in collateral events. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam.

Facing Revolt

Year Produced: 2012
Series: (de)facing revolt: ten- thirty individual paintings, portraits
Medium: Oil on canvas with water-soluble marker, pen and egg
Duration: 2 min 22 sec
Size: 80 x 80 cm

Jongman’s (de)facing revolt is a series of painted portraits of icons of the contemporary art world: some of the richest and most influential players of our time, which he subsequently, with the help of the audience, defaced. The result of this interactive performance is a series of mutilated, paint bombed and blowtorched images, reminiscent of the damaged murals and toppled statues of ousted dictators across the world.
As a political comment claimed within the safety of a gallery’s walls, Jongman’s work self-consciously reflects on the purposelessness of art in the art world today – a symbolic statement without risk, a salon revolution without victims, but a system in which the artist must still abide in order to survive.


GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA

Website

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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.

Personal Time Quartet

Year Produced: 2000
Medium: 4-Channel Video Installation
Duration: 2 min 33 sec

The video and sound installation Personal Time Quartet 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 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 the work is turned on anew, the four channels never synchronize, instead producing each time a new quartet to accompany the looping images. The four-part video is concerned with the point of intersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country.


HANNU KARJALAINEN

Website

Hannu Karjalainen was born in 1978 in Haapavesi, Finland. He graduated from The University of Arts (now Aalto University) in 2005 with an MA in Photographic Arts. Karjalainen was awarded the Young Artist of the Year prize in 2009 in Tampere Art Museum in Finland and he received the Turku Biennale Prize in 2007. His work – comprising mostly of video and photography – has been shown in galleries and museum shows around the world, most recently in the International Biennale of Photography in Bogota, Colombia as well as in solo shows in Oulu Art Museum in Finland and Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Personal Time Quartet

Medium: 16mm film scanned to digital, 5.1 surround sound,
Duration: 14 minutes 08 seconds

The House Protects the Dreamer is an experimental narrative film about a fictive modern architect’s creative process. The dreamlike film follows the architect and her assistant producing experiments that verge on the absurd. It is a film about faith, disillusionment and renewal.
The film was shot in and around a 1960 Aulis Blomstedt villa in Helsinki and features Heli Haltia and Dwayne Strike. Music composed by Infinite Livez and Hannu Karjalainen.
The full version of the film premiered in gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki, in september 2014.


OLA KOLEHMAINEN

Website

Ola Kolehmainen, artist (M.A.), was born in Helsinki Finland. He studied four years of Journalism at the Helsinki University, before entering to the University of Art and Design Helsinki (UIAH) to study photography. During his study years he also worked as freelance pictures editor in the national TV-news graphic department. Since spring 2005 Kolehmainen has lived and worked in Berlin.
His 1st solo exhibition in 1995 as a student at University of Art and Design photography department was shortlisted for Photograph Finlandia Award in Helsinki and for European Photography Award in Bad Homburg, Germany. Since 1995 Kolehmainen has had over 30 solo shows in galleries and museums. Also his work has been shown globally in over 90 group shows. He has published 4 monographs. Kolehmainen works appear in various Public, Company and Private collection in five continents. The Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Kolehmainen the RIBA honorary Fellowship (Hon FRIBA) 2015.

Statement on works 1923 and Geometric Light I:
Artist Ola Kolehmainen’s works are about space, light and color. Recently time has been added as the 4th element. Photography is his medium. And architecture is starting point for the works. The selection of the photographed edifices is based on research and studies of the architects and their ideologies and thinking. Interlinks and influences between the architects creates an additional interesting dimension for the buildings.

Building called Workers’ Club

A theater designed by Alvar Aalto 1925 in Finland. Aalto was famous for denying his own influences. Worker´s Club was an exception. In 1923 Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino visited Stockholm and Gunnar Asplund, who was Aalto´s idol. Asplund’s design for the Stockholm city library had a huge impact for Aalto’s workers’ club building. Ironically Asplund’s library was erected two years after the Workers’ Club was finished. The legacy of Aalto is immense. His concepts are still very valid and interpreted to language of contemporary architecture.

Geometric light 1

Work origins from a social housing building by Richard Bofill’s Taller de Arquitectura. Bofill´s architect office conceived this complex construction called La Muralla Roja in 1973. Workgroup extended the idea of Le Corbusier’s Modulor. Le Corbusier used the Modulor system in scaling the architectural proportion. It was a continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Vitruvian Man” and the work of Leon Battista Alberti.


DAVID KRIPPENDORFF

Website

David Krippendorff is a US/German artist, video- and experimental film maker born in Berlin in 1967.
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, a.o. at New Museum (New York), ICA (London), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem). He has participated in three Biennials (Prague, Poznan and Tel Aviv). He lives and works in Berlin.

Building called Workers’ Club

Year Produced: 2015
Medium: HD, color, stereo
Duration: 13min 43sec

Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015) is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being. Inspired by the texts of Edward W. Said, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Verdi’s opera Aida, the film depicts in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. With no dialogues, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from 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.


JAN KUCK

Website

Born in Hannover in 1978, lives in Berlin since 2004.
His focus lies on conceptional and performance art. This can be expressed through criticism of the unreflected awkward decadency of our nowadays society or even by playful constructions of reality. His ideas and conceptual art is expressed through all different kinds of media: sculptures, installations, video works, performances and design.
In contrast to conventional conceptual art he attaches great importance to the philosophical foundation of his work as well as their aesthetically immaculate design. In October 2013 he presented his design – the T.TABLE – at JR Gallery Berlin to a selected audience and therefore received considerable national and international press attention. Since June 2014 Jan Kuck has been represented by Bernheimer Contemporary. Currently he is preparing national and international solo- & group-exhibitions.

T.TABLE

Year: 2013-2016
Medium: Sculpture
Technic: mixed media (stainless steel, wood veneer, glass, leather)
Edition: open
Dimensions: 275 x 152 x 76 cm

The interactive room sculpture T.TABLE has the ability to morph from an elegant office or dining room table to a unique Ping-Pong table.
The characteristic lines that mark every Ping-Pong table are illuminated by LEDs underneath the surface of the wood. When the LEDs are turned off no lines are visible, showing only the normal tabletop to the viewers.
All metal pieces consist of hand polished steel and retain their mirroring sheen without any use of chrome.
A shatterproof glass net sits in a specially fitted recess underneath the tabletop, alongside four magnetically attached leather-bound paddles. Finally, the base and the tabletop together resemble a large T shape, connecting the name of the object with its form.


VIA LEWANDOWSKY

Website

Via Lewandowsky studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden from 1982 until 1987. Starting in 1985, he organised subversive performances together with the avant-guarde group, Autoperforationsartisten, that undermined the Communist art authorities of Eastern Germany (GDR). In 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall, he left the GDR and subsequently moved to West Berlin. Since then, he has travelled extensively and has lived for extended periods in New York, Rome, Peking and Canada. He now resides in Berlin.
Via Lewandowsky works in diverse artistic media. He is most familiar for his sculptural-installation works and exhibition scenographies with architectonic influences such as Gehirn und Denken: Kosmos im Kopf [Brain and Thinking: Cosmos in Mind: 2000] displayed at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. By the 1990s his work had already begun to incorporate elements of Sound Art; this has since become an important and integral part of much of his performance work. (e.g., Oh tu nove verde [Oh You Green Nine: 2011]; Applaus [Applause: 2008]).

Via Lewandowsky

When an abstract form becomes an attitude or where function does change form does change we are in the mind of someone thinking..
Listening to the sound of an organic shape forced to be square raises the question: who knows a damm thing about temptation.


JOEP VAN LIEFLAND

Website

Joep van Liefland (born 1966 in Utrecht) is a contemporary conceptual artist from Netherlands. He lives and works in Berlin.
His work focuses on the phenomenology of media and their transformation. He is particularly interested in the matter of impermanence and disappearance that are closely connected to the technological progress. Using the example of technology, Joep van Liefland addresses the process of alteration and transformation as well as the universal concepts that underlie the transition from old to new.
For his art pieces, Joep van Liefland uses various outdated distribution and storage devices. He arranges them into space-filling installations, as in the work series „VIDEO PALACE“, or uses them to create sculptures, wall objects, screen prints, and collages.
Since 2001, Joep van Liefland runs, together with Maik Schierloh, the art space AUTOCENTER in Berlin where international art positions are presented regularly.

2013-1 (Information 4)

Year: 2013
Medium: Bronze Sculpture (Unique)
Dimensions: 67,5x20x12,5cm

The artistic practice of Joep van Liefland is distinguished by a precise, almost archaeological investigation of video technology. He works with a great number of forms of expression and media at the intersection between the analog and the digital and at the same time, persistently, stringently–nearly monomaniacally–insists on continually examining the assembled artifacts anew from different perspectives.These artifacts belong to a continually growing collection of more than 50,000 video cassettes, boxes of remote controls and instructions, piles of used televisions as well as early computers and assorted information technology. In his installation Video Palace, which has been shown in different versions since the early 2000s, van Liefland mixes and remixes all of these elements. In this way, a number of groups of work have developed, which the artist has combined in various contexts: silkscreen printing, assemblage, sculpture and installation elements.


SARAH LÜDEMANN

Website

Lüdemann’s works are generally on the cusp between seductive sensuality and utter brutality, serenity and irritation. She is moving on a psychological plane – an emotional, yet highly analytical landscape – that is informed by personal emotions, Greek mythology, spirituality, religion, pornography and gender studies. Lüdemann studied Fine Art, English linguistics, psychology, philosophy and education at Cologne University and then moved to Norway, Italy, England and Holland to learn four languages and provoke her alter-egos. In 2010 she was selected for an influential residency in Spain with Mona Hatoum and later that year received a scholarship to study in the MA Fine Art Course at Central Saint Martins, which she completed with distinction in 2011. Her work has been exhibited widely and internationally, including at Printed Matter, New York / Goethe Institute Cairo, Egypt / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin / Hayaka Arti – Istanbul, Turkey / Trafo – Szczecin, Poland / LYON Biennale de la Danse – La lavoir public, Lyon, France / HDLU, Zagreb, Croatia.

Schnitzelporno

Year: 2012/2016
Medium: video, tenderizer (used), beef, sound (loop)

“It’s a peculiar apparatus,” said the Officer to the Traveller, gazing with a certain admiration at the device […] As you see, it consists of three parts. With the passage of time certain popular names have been developed for each of these parts. The one underneath is called the Bed, the upper one is called the Inscriber, and here in the middle, this moving part is called the Harrow. […] The name fits. The needles are arranged as in a harrow, and the whole thing is driven like a harrow. […] There in the Inscriber is the mechanism which determines the movement of the Harrow, and this mechanism is arranged according to the diagram on which the sentence is set down. […] Do you understand the process? The Harrow is starting to write. […] In this way it keeps making the inscription deeper for twelve hours. […] But how quiet the man becomes around the sixth hour! The most stupid of them begin to understand. It starts around the eyes and spreads out from there. A look that could tempt one to lie down under the Harrow. Nothing else happens. The man simply begins to decipher the inscription. He purses his lips, as if he is listening. You’ve seen that it’s not easy to figure out the inscription with your eyes, but our man deciphers it with his wounds.”
Excerpts from The the Penal Colony, Kafka, 1919

Gold

Year: 2016
Medium: print with pubic hair and golden acrylic, found paper and wooden frame
Dimensions: 47 x 37,5 cm

I print with my pubic hair and golden acrylic onto paper. A gesture, so primitive and lumpen, like a dog that pisses on lampposts to mark its territory. It is like that we place ourselves in the world. The mark in itself golden, delicate, fine, discreet. Pussy riot deluxe? Seduction and dominance? Expression of female powers? Gold always the color of the gods, enlightenment, nirvana and the vagina a symbol of the Great Mother, the Origin of the World (Corbet), the beginning of it all.


BJØRN MELHUS

Website

Bjørn Melhus, born 1966, is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew.
Originally rooted in an experimental film context, Bjørn Melhus’s work has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals. He has held screenings at Tate Modern and the LUX in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MediaScope) in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others. His work has been exhibited in shows like The American Effect at the Whitney Museum New York, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, solo and group shows at FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery London, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Museum Ludwig Cologne, ZKM Karlsruhe, Denver Art Museum among others.

Freedom & Independence

Year: 2012/2016
Medium: video, tenderizer (used), beef, sound (loop)

FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE confronts neoliberal elitist thinking using generic media fragments of religious prophecies about the end of time in the setting of a privatized habitat marked by architectures of megalomania. It is a tour de force using elements of fairy tales, musicals, comedy and horror films to scour our global psyche for ingrained promises of salvation, childhood traumas and the work ethic as it is affected by our desire for self-improvement.


TRACEY MOFFATT

Website

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists of international renown. Since her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1989, she has had numerous exhibitions in major museums around the world. Working in photography, film and video, Moffatt first gained significant critical acclaim when her short film “Night Cries” was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, “Bedevil,” was also selected for Cannes in 1993. In 1997, she was invited to exhibit in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale, and a major exhibition of Moffatt’s work was held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1997/98, which consolidated her international reputation.

Other

Year: 2009
Artist: Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hilberg video collaboration
Duration: 7 min

“Other” incorporates film techniques – splicing film clips, combining chronologies, creating and dissolving narratives. “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.”


TIMEA ANITA ORAVECZ

Website

Timea Anita Oravecz, born in Budapest 1975, graduated in 2007 with BFA from Accademia di Belle Arti, Department of Sculpture, Venice and then an MA under Professor Olafur Eliasson at Institut fur Raumexperimente (2009-2011). She now lives and works in Berlin.
She has won several grants including: MOSTYN Open Award, UK, Fellowship Residency Program Kamov, (Croatia), Fellowship Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt art IT, (Berlin), New York Prize at the Triangle Arts Association (New York), DAAD Fellowship Awarded Artist, UDK Berlin, and more.
Timea Anita Oravecz’s works have been shown internationally, Solo shows include: Camping Europa, Spor Klubu, Berlin (2014), Nothing that Exists or Happens is Symmetrical, CHB Berlin (2013) and Transparent rooms – nach hause, Galerie M, Berlin (2010) – Group Exhibitions: MOSTYN Open 19, curated by Adam Carr, Mostyn Gallery, UK (2015), Future Nows, curated by Olafur Eliasson, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2014), Exuberant Politics, Iowa City and Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids, USA (2014), Drifting, curated by Valerie Smith, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2013), In other words, NGBK and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2012), in addition to showing in Krakow, Hungary, New York, Vienna, United Kingdom and more.

Time Lost

Year: 2007
Medium: Hand embroidered on textile, framed, series I – III
Dimension: each 70 × 60 cm

Taking the shape of embroideries, Time Lost presents the administrative
documents for which the artist had to apply during the nine years she spent travelling in a presumably borderless and united Europe as an art student and scholarship holder from Central Europe. Oravecz tried to
meet the bureaucratic requirements as best as she could. Accordingly, she embroidered every letter, code, stamp and signature on the »forms«, even though the task proved time-consuming, senseless and, due to the countless details, simply impossible – not to mention that she occasionally hurt herself with the needle. (BH)

Instant Bag

Year: 2006
Medium: object, mixed media, series VIII – XIII

Inside the young Hungarian artist Tímea Anita Oravecz’s Instant Bags, one finds accurately stored personal objects and various clothing items: what at a first seem to be simple suitcases at a second glance reveal their true nature: that of various wooden compartments, cardboard boxes and used materials of a modest value. These “small boxes”, with their strong symbolism, enclose the identity of a person to whom those objects belong: a traveller or an emigrant, and starting from simple towels, shirts or shoes everything we observe transforms into emotional tension. This tension evokes and suggests a consideration of problems that come together with migration – whether permanent or not, that will take the migrant away from his nation of origin, into a new one, unknown and of uncertain reception. In moving what imposes crossing of geographical and cultural boundaries the objects that one decides to take with oneself become the story of one’s life, one’s history and in a way, it represents that what one is leaving behind. A survival kit becomes in that way a tangible sign of the painful selection one had to make at the moment of departure, lived through without a certainty of a future return. In this way, other objects are added to the ones that represent physical needs of everyday life, maybe even useless, but still symbols of attachment to everything that is familiar, a memory, and from which one does not whish to separate. These extremely emotionally charged works originate from the starting enquiry, that is, from the questionnaires that the artists wants the public to fulfil involving them thus in her project. The suitcases become representations of an identity, an archive of personal memories that unites the present and the past: by observing these instant bags we are asked to compare ourselves with the typical human condition of wandering, of migration, the everlasting symbol of a painful separation, searching, change, reconstruction.
(Giulia Camin)


STEFAN RINCK

Website

Stefan Rinck is a German visual artist who was born in 1973 in Homburg/Saar. He studied Art History and Philosophy at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken and Sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe.
Stefan Rinck has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at Sorry We`re Closed (Brussels), Vilma Gold (London) and Patricia Low Contemporary (Gstaad, St. Moritz) , de Hallen (Haarlem),Gallery Rüdiger Schöttle (Munich), The Breeder (Athens), Galeria Alegria (Madrid), Cruise&Callas and Klara Wallner Gallery (both in Berlin). He participated at the Busan Biennale in South Corea and at the Vent des Foret in France where he realized permanent public sculptures.

Behemoth

Year: 2014
Medium: Sculture Dolorit (Diabas)
Dimension: H 55 cm x B 25 cm x L 20 cm

My sculptures are not pretending to look like modern art. They look more like primitive art out of an ethnological museum, gargoyles from gothic cathedrals and reliefs from medieval Romanesque church’s. One of my role models is Picasso because he too had used primitive elements in his work. Even though I admire Michelangelo and the sculptors of the baroque I am not interested in refinement and virtuosity. Accordingly brutal I carve the figures out of quadratic stone blocks. The iconographical figures I carve out of stone are findings from old medieval pattern books, forgotten cellar figures from Greek mythology, shady characters from the literature from Bulgakow to Zola and gods out of old codecs. The appeal of these stone figures is shifty and ambivalent. On the one hand they are physically present on the other hand representatives from a spiritual world. For me they seem to be guards of a parallel world, of a secret sanctuary. They warn us not to come too close to them.


MAIK SCHIERLOH

Website

Maik Schierloh was born in 1968 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. He is a professional organ- and harmonium builder and studied fine arts painting at the FH Ottersberg (until 1996). From 1993 to 1996 he collected first artistic experiences in the art group ARTiV. Since 1997, he has been living as an artist in Berlin and has, besides various solo and group exhibitions, run the cultural project Lovelite. Since 2003, he has also run the bar Kosmetiksalon Babette.

Behemoth


GARY SCHLINGHEIDER

Website

Gary Schlingheider was born in the early 1980s in Detmold, Germany, a little town located in the northwest of Germany. Detmold was his home throughout his childhood and early adolescence. After finishing school and an apprenticeship in geriatric nursing in 2006, Gary moved to Düsseldorf where he passed his A-level examinations. Shortly after, Gary enrolled in the Nursing Science program at the University of Bochum, a field of study he remains highly interested in. Since his early childhood, Gary has always interpreted the nature, people, and culture surrounding him in a creative way, composing sketches, sculptures, drawings, and paintings to this end. In 2008 Gary decided to focus on his artistic career and moved to Bielefeld to work at Künstlerhaus Lydda as an instructor and assistant for sculpture. This deeper involvement with art, both organising and participating in expositions, prompted Gary to assume an even deeper focus on his own creative efforts. He enrolled in the Fine Arts program at UDK(University of Arts) Berlin in 2010, where he was a student in the classes of both Pia Fries and Gregory Cumins. Gary Schlingheider is a student in the class of Christine Streuli and preparing his Master’s Thesis to finish University and graduate in the summer 2016.

Behemoth


MARTIN SEXTON

Website

Martin Sexton is a London-based artist and writer who began his career as a science-fiction writer. Without a formal background in fine art, Sexton considers his point of view to be more akin to that of a writer. Or as John-Paul Pryor of DAZED Digital has described, Sexton is “a raconteur of both constructed and real mythologies.” Sexton calls his works ‘futiques,’ a portmanteau alternatively evoking the terms future, critique, and antique. Sexton’s futiques are filmed in the past, screened in the present, and bear portents from the future. The layering of multiple temporalities in Sexton’s videos along with his narrative strategies, (primarily scrolling first-person text) lend them an ambivalent presence: who, or what, exactly can we consider the author?

Futiques


VARVARA SHAVROVA

Website

Born in a family of artists and educated in Moscow Polygraphic Institute, Varvara Shavrova lived and worked in Moscow, London, Beijing and Dublin where she is currently based.
Shavrova’s projects include over 20 solo exhibitions and curatorial projects in London, Dublin, Los Angeles, Berlin, Frankfurt, Moscow, St.Petersburgh, Shanghai and Beijing. Shavrova received a number of awards, including Fellowship from Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland, British Council Visual Artist’s Award, Dublin City Council Visual Arts Award and Culture Ireland Awards for individual artists.
Shavrova’s solo projects include ‘The Opera’, a multi-media six screen projected installation commissioned by Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, in 2011. ‘The Opera’ explores complexities of life and work of traditional Peking opera actors and gender fluidity associated with this art form, juxtaposed with harsh reality of living in modern day China. In 2012 ‘The Opera’ project was shown at the Gallery of Photography Ireland, touring to Limerick City Art Gallery, Ballina Arts Centre, and Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, in 2012. In 2014 ‘The Opera’ was presented at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and at The First Biennale of Photography and Video Art in Chongqing, China.

The Opera

Year: 2010
Medium: Video
Duration: 21:23

Originally commissioned (2010) as a multi-channel video projection for the Espacio Cultural El Tanque, an empty oil tank in Tenerife, and subsequently shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014, 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 Berlin premiere of The Opera in “Ganz Grosses Kino”p resents the single-channel version of the work.
The Opera 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.


ROMAN SOROKO

Roman Soroko (Poland), lives and works in Berlin.
Collecting 16 mm and S8 mm films. Working on film installations, mostly 16 mm.  

Dirty Cinema Talkies

Year: 2016
Medium: Film installation
Dimension: 3 x 16 mm projection on loop

This work searching for visual and sound correlation. Film tape gives a possibility to playwith its structure. I´m focusing on tricky transition between the motion pictures into the sound.An abstract pictures play the role, and they are turning to be use also as an optical track. In thismatter, I´m looking for such a mixing of the original destiny of the pictures and I´m decomposing them, putting them into the new context. Working on found footages, I´m exploring a different layers of the cinematic background. Triple projection guide us in the cinema sculpture situation.Each pictures is related to each others, sound is mechanically synced to the picture from another projection.


MARIANA VASSILEVA

Website

MARIANA VASSILEVA was born in Bulgaria in 1964. Since graduating from the Universität der Künste in 2000, Vassileva continues to live and work in Berlin. 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.
As her artist’s statement asserts, she “transforms objects, situations and manners, and presents them in another reference on a lyrical level. … In this process, one is animated toward a heightened sensibility of daily variations.”

From the Series Treasure is Everywhere

Year: 2008
Medium: Fabric, metal, synthetic material, wood, 2 light bulbs
Dimension: 200 x 120 x 50 cm 

From treasured moments to treasured objects, our existence is encapsulated by the search for treasures, or for things to treasure. The installation, “Treasure is Everywhere”, speaks of the motive force within us all, the energy and enthusiasm which motivates us, and which can also spread to illuminate other things. Rachel Wolloch

Just a Game

Year: 2016
Medium: Neon, Barbwire, Wood
Dimension: 110×65 cm 

Borderlines are inside and outside our bodies and mind – visible and invisible.
To be loved, to be free…to have enough for living and developing yourself and the people you love.
Is this possible?


PARTNERS:


PHOTOS OF THE EVENT
(photos by Oliver Watersheid, Varvara Shavrova & Via Lewandowsky)

18/02/2016
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Ma Li

 

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Ma Li

Artist WebsiteCV

1 January – 29 February 2016

 

Bio

Ma Li (b. Fuzhou, China) is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Using both traditional and nontraditional media, Ma Li formulates dreamlike worlds influenced in part by her background in choreography and upbringing in a collectivist society. Originally from Fuzhou, China, She has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Shanghai Dong Hua University, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (2014). She has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Knight Foundation; a fellowship from La Napoule Art Foundation; and the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. She has been a resident artist at Recology San Francisco, Vermont Studio Center, Elsewhere Museum, among others. Ma Li has exhibited her work in a range of museums and galleries, including solo shows such as Gathering Among Stars, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2015); and Seeing, Peeping, and Scrying, Alter Space, Peephole Gallery, San Francisco (2015). Group shows include Zhong Gallery (Berlin), A.I.R Gallery (Brooklyn), Gallery 825 (Los Angeles), SOMArts (San Francisco), and Root Division (San Francisco), amongst others. Of note is inclusion of her work in the Nion Mcevoy Art Collection and reviews of her work in China Daily, VOA, KQED, and other leading publications.

Project Description

During her residency at MOMENTUM Ma Li will explore the possibilities of combining time-based materials in her projects. Having previous worked primarily with interactive performance and installation, her research at MOMENTUM will focus on how time-based materials can support and provide an additional level of experience for participatory projects. In experimenting with ways of using the element of video in her practice, Ma Li is planning to film footage with selected participants at various historical and monumental locations in Berlin. From the resulting footage, she will produce a video based on the choreography of connection between the participants in the video performance. In addition, Ma Li will execute a live performance, which will include the screening of her video work. The entire performance / installation will be documented. Ma Li is especially interested in exploring if and how the incorporation of video into live performance can add to the participatory experience of the spectators.


still of The Ascent of Azure Dragon

Ma Li, “The Ascent of Azure Dragon”, Video Still (2014)

 

Prinivethao: Space Salutation

Sasha Pirogova & Ma Li

Performance on the Opening night of the Exhibition
Sasha Pirogova: A Retrospective

More Info HERE >>

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/158640830 [/fve]

 

 

MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li draw on their upbringing in the collectivist societies of Russia and China in their interactive performance work. Coming to contemporary art through a background in physics and chemical engineering, respectively, and having both trained in contemporary dance, the choreography of bodies moving through space is integral to their ways of working. Brought together for the first time through MOMENTUM AiR, Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li are here also making their first cooperative project.

Thinking about the macro scale of space and its projection to the micro level of human beings, Ma Li and Sasha Pirogova team up for a “play game” and invite the audience to take part in a ceremony which enacts a supernova explosion triggered by the merging of two white dwarfs. Please join us in imagining a new geographical landscape without borders and separations on the occasion of the opening of the CTM Festival 2016 “New Geographies”.

 


EXHIBITION OPENING
(photos by Tiare Maldonado Hucke)

18/02/2016
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Ma Li Exhibition

 
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Artist-In-Residence Exhibition

Ma Li

BITS EN ROUTE

 

26 February – 27 March 2016

Opening 25 February @ 19.00

 

OPENING PERFORMANCE @ 19.00 – 21.00

Private Screening

By Ma Li

 

ARTIST TALK

Migrating artists – How does it impact their practice?

A dialogue between Ma Li & Elana Katz

Monday February 29 @ 18.00-20.00

At Momentum Worldwide, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

>More Info Here<

 

Curated By Olga Wiedemann

 

 

Time based art is interwoven with the digital revolution as no other contemporary art field. Therefore MOMENTUM is very proud to present Bits en Route, an exhibition by MOMENTUM Artist-in-Residence Ma Li (1 Jan – 29 Feb 2016) People of Ma Li’s generation were born into a digital age, growing up and living with technology, often learning its language before learning the alphabet.

The digital age and, with it, pervasive technology have entered our lives almost entirely. Technology is integral to most jobs and most of our leisure time,. But what is our relationship to technology, and how does it change the interactions between human beings?

Ma Li is reflecting on these issues through her works. Technology changes our perception of various things, sometimes on a small scale, other times immensely. Therefore Ma Li raises the question: If technology dramatically changes our perception of distance, time and intimacy, what have we been missing? Or what do we gain? Urban life without technology through media, phones, apps etc. is almost impossible now. Every step of the way our personalized technology gadgets accompany us. Without them one might even be lost. Where is our destination?

Ma Li, living in the hub of technological inventions, the “tech city” of San Francisco, was inspired for this exhibition by her work as an Uber driver: a connection between two people made possible through the Uber app and creating a rather intimate atmosphere in the car. For a brief moment, Ma Li was part of the life of a complete stranger, who was chatting with her, talking with loved ones on the phone or having a conversation with another passenger. These interactions sounds created in this short intervention mirrorconvey so much, about the busy, fast and hectic urban environment we now live in.

These recordings and experiences are the basis for her 13 channel video installation. Having intimate moments created through these technologies, the piece also questions what makes us human by comparing the emotionless google voice of the navigation system to the authentic self-expression through movements by the traffic police. In this exhibition Ma Li continues her ongoing interest in creating an architectural language through a system of choreography. This 13-channel work includes elements of video, projection and sound, to create a completely capturing experience for the viewer.

For the opening night at MOMENTUM Ma Li will present Private Screening – a one-on-one performance – questioning the possibility of creating intimacy through technology. Join the artist for this unique experience!


 

 

Artist Bio

WebsiteCV

Ma Li (b. Fuzhou, China) is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Using both traditional and nontraditional media, Ma Li formulates dreamlike worlds influenced in part by her background in choreography and upbringing in a collectivist society. Originally from Fuzhou, China, She has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Shanghai Dong Hua University, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (2014). She has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Knight Foundation; a fellowship from La Napoule Art Foundation; and the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award.

She has been a resident artist at Recology San Francisco, Vermont Studio Center, Elsewhere Museum, among others. Ma Li has exhibited her work in a range of museums and galleries, including solo shows such as Gathering Among Stars, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2015); and Seeing, Peeping, and Scrying, Alter Space, Peephole Gallery, San Francisco (2015). Group shows include Zhong Gallery (Berlin), A.I.R Gallery (Brooklyn), Gallery 825 (Los Angeles), SOMArts (San Francisco), and Root Division (San Francisco), amongst others. Of note is inclusion of her work in the Nion Mcevoy Art Collection and reviews of her work in China Daily, VOA, KQED, and other leading publications.


MORE INFO HERE ON MA LI’S RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM >>

 

Artist-In-Residence: Ma Li – Bits en Route (Video of installation)

[fve] https://vimeo.com/momentumworldwide/review/492464818/6096ad6ba7 [/fve]


 

“Migrating artists – How does it impact their practice?” A dialogue between Ma Li & Elana Katz

[fve] https://vimeo.com/158640710 [/fve]

OPENING PERFORMANCE

 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

11/02/2016
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Sasha Pirogova

 

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Sasha Pirogova

CV

13 November 2015 – 1 February 2016

 

Bio

Sasha Pirogova is a performance and video artist, for her the two disciplines are inter-connected. After graduating from the Physics Department at Moscow State University in 2010, she received a degree in 2014 from the Rodchenko Art School in Video and New Media in Moscow. She has been awarded prizes at the Extra Short Film Festival, ESF (2012) as well as the Innovation Prize in the ‘New Generation’ category (2014). She has participated in various exhibitions, such as Burning News, Hayward Gallery, London (2014), I saw lightning, Udarnik, Moscow (2014) and in the Manifesta 10, parallel program, St. Petersburg (2014). Working with performance, she has also participated in different festivals, including: the 6th International Festival of Video, Performance and Technology, Lisbon (2014), VIII Andrei Tarkovsky International Film Festival, Ivanovo (2014), Cinedans Dance on Screen Festival, Amsterdam (2014) and Now & After International Video Art Festival, The State Museum of GULAG, Moscow (2014).

Project Description

Life imposes some rules that occasionally we have to follow. Sometimes unexpectedly they change. Sasha Pirogova investigates the system in which we live in a playful mode, using the rules of Russian outdoor games that are based on active and passive, controlling and resisting roles.

Recently a huge amount of prohibitions were again re-introduced in Russia which influence the private life of a person. Through her staged performances, Sasha Pirogova aims to capture movements and gestures that could disappear forever under these circumstances.

Winner of the New Generation Award, Sasha Pirogova is acclaimed for both her videos and performances, both of which are shown in BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, curated by David Elliott.


More Info on BALAGAN!!! Exhibition HERE >>

 

“BIBLIMLEN”, Video Still (2013)

“House 20, Apartment 17”, Video Still (2014)


 

Prinivethao: Space Salutation

Sasha Pirogova & Ma Li

Performance on the Opening night of the Exhibition
Sasha Pirogova: A Retrospective

More Info HERE >>

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/158640830 [/fve]

 

 

MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li draw on their upbringing in the collectivist societies of Russia and China in their interactive performance work. Coming to contemporary art through a background in physics and chemical engineering, respectively, and having both trained in contemporary dance, the choreography of bodies moving through space is integral to their ways of working. Brought together for the first time through MOMENTUM AiR, Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li are here also making their first cooperative project.

Thinking about the macro scale of space and its projection to the micro level of human beings, Ma Li and Sasha Pirogova team up for a “play game” and invite the audience to take part in a ceremony which enacts a supernova explosion triggered by the merging of two white dwarfs. Please join us in imagining a new geographical landscape without borders and separations on the occasion of the opening of the CTM Festival 2016 “New Geographies”.

 


EXHIBITION OPENING
(photos by Tiare Maldonado Hucke)

20/01/2016
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Balagan Follow Up

 
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BEYOND BALAGAN!!!

 

BALAGAN!!! Artist-In-Residence

SASHA PIROGOVA: A Retrospective

Also featuring the BALAGAN!!! Performances,
Symposium and Lecture Videos.

29 January – 21 February 2016

Curated By Rachel Rits-Volloch and Olga Wiedemann

 

Sasha Pirogova - Webflyer

 

BALAGAN!!! Artist-in-Residence, Sasha Pirogova’s videos Queue and BIBLIMLEN, awarded with the Innovation Prize in the Category New Generation, were shown in MOMENTUM’s BALAGAN!!! Exhibition (MOMENTUM 14 November – 23 December 2015). MOMENTUM is now proud to present a Retrospective of Pirogova’s young but coherent oeuvre, which evolves from her background in dance and the physics of motion.

Pirogova’s videos show the poetry of movement, a world where bodies speak without words. Interior and exterior spaces trigger these sometimes choreographed, sometimes spontaneous, sequences of dance always linked to spaces and objects. In City Practices the protagonists act on impulses induced by the structure of the Constructivist style House of Culture in Moscow and its refurbishment, setting free new energies in an old, traditional and static space. Her videos interact in a particularly sensitive way to the iconic architecture.

You sleep all night and then you don’t… is set in a kitchen, playing on the possibilities inherent in this domestic scenery. The kitchen, a place of fixed rituals – preparing food, enjoying dinner – a common space, where movements almost act independently. Pirogova and her dance partner, squeezed between kitchen furniture, smoothly glide through the room, creating a wonderfully absurd sequence.

With a keen sense of detecting absurdities in every day life, the artist interweaves the old with the new, history with the present, people’s stories with her own. Static becomes fluid, when The Russian State Library in Moscow is turned from a structured prison into a humorous playground in her award-winning work BIBLIMLEN. Pirogova’s spell unfolds through the narrow corridors and quiet reading halls, enchanting the visitors, the books and the monument itself. The subtle humour of out of dances between bookshelves and sounds interrupting the strict silence – unburden the books of their loneliness.

Having stumbled onto video art through a fascination with the body in motion, Pirogova has within a short period created an inspiring series of works. House 20, Apartment 17 enacts all of Pirogova’s stylistic ingredients – telling stories through the motion of bodies in space. Pirogova’s gift is to bring out the humour in mundane absurdities through the collision of choreography with chance. House 20, Apartment 17 is a former communal apartment turned pop-up art space where Pirogova was invited to a group show. It was also, coincidentally, the former residence of her grandfather. Re-enacting family tales from years ago, his mother putting up the curtains, him playing football, the architecture is again put under a spell, the spell of the past, which breathes life back into these old structures.

Accompanying Sasha Pirogova: A Retrospective, MOMENTUM presents the Videos of Performances, Lectures and the Symposium of BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places (Berlin, 13 Nov – 23 Dec 2015).


Sasha Pirogova is a performance and video artist. For her the two disciplines are inter-connected. After graduating from the Physics Department at Moscow State University in 2010, she received a degree in Video and New Media in 2014 from the Rodchenko Art School in Moscow. She has been awarded prizes at the Extra Short Film Festival, ESF (2012) as well as the Innovation Prize in the ‘New Generation’ category (2014). She has participated in various exhibitions, such as BALAGAN!!!, MOMENTUM, Berlin (2015); Burning News, Hayward Gallery, London (2014); I saw lightning, Udarnik, Moscow (2014) and in the Manifesta 10, parallel program, St. Petersburg (2014). Working with performance, she has also participated in different festivals, including: the 6th International Festival of Video, Performance and Technology, Lisbon (2014), VIII Andrei Tarkovsky International Film Festival, Ivanovo (2014), Cinedans Dance on Screen Festival, Amsterdam (2014) and Now & After International Video Art Festival, The State Museum of GULAG, Moscow (2014).

 


MORE INFO HERE ON SASHA PIROGOVA’S RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM >>

 

Prinivethao: Space Salutation

Sasha Pirogova & Ma Li

Performance on the Opening night of the Exhibition
Sasha Pirogova: A Retrospective

More Info HERE >>

 

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/158640830 [/fve]

 

 

MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li draw on their upbringing in the collectivist societies of Russia and China in their interactive performance work. Coming to contemporary art through a background in physics and chemical engineering, respectively, and having both trained in contemporary dance, the choreography of bodies moving through space is integral to their ways of working. Brought together for the first time through MOMENTUM AiR, Sasha Pirogova and Ma Li are here also making their first cooperative project.

Thinking about the macro scale of space and its projection to the micro level of human beings, Ma Li and Sasha Pirogova team up for a “play game” and invite the audience to take part in a ceremony which enacts a supernova explosion triggered by the merging of two white dwarfs. Please join us in imagining a new geographical landscape without borders and separations on the occasion of the opening of the CTM Festival 2016 “New Geographies”.

 

YOU SLEEP ALL NIGHT AND THEN YOU DON’T…, 2012, 4′

The starting point for the film was Russian musician Peter Mamonov’s composition “You Sleep All Night and Then You Don’t…”. The filmmaker was curious about providing it with a dialogue expressed in movement, limited by the framework of an everyday-life situation which everyone of us encounters sooner or later because sometimes our body is more eloquent than words.

CITY PRACTICES, 2012, 5’+3′

This set of videos illustrates the exploration of interior and exterior spaces of the great monument of constructivism – ZIL house of culture. The choreography is the result of spontaneous reactions to the particular environment or objects offered by ZIL.


BIBLIMLEN, 2013, 10′

The short film BIBLIMLEN interweaves performance, video, and interaction with the environment. The Russian State Library (formerly Lenin Library) acts as a co-author with its architecture and inner texture creating the characters who communicate with the ambiance and elements of the library structure.

QUEUE, 2014, 10′

This video is based on Vladimir Sorokin’s novel ‘The Queue’ (1983), “a bizarrely funny saga of a quintessential Russian institution, the interminably long line” (NYT, 2011). Creating an absurdist choreography of hysterics, dependence and clanship, Pirogova takes pains to replay the text through dance to identify the queue as not a physical but a contemporary psycho-social condition. [David Elliott]


HOUSE 20, APARTMENT 17, 2014, 9′

During an artists residency at PovArt in summer 2014, Pirogova was provided with the former communal apartment at Povarskaya street, house 20, apartment 17, where later the exhibition would be held. Pirogova writes “When you learn something about a space it comes to be filled with images. And if you know too much, then it is almost impossible to be in it, they follow you. If it was possible to get rid of the past and live only here and now, with each new event erasing the previous one… My grandfather used to live near Arbat street about 20 years before he married my grandmother. Only that summer I asked him about the address. It was Povarskaya street, house 20, apartement 17.

J’AI UNE QUESTION, 2015, 6′

Begun during Pirogova’s artist residency at the Cite des Artes in Paris, the work was completed in Moscow and Leipzig. Pirogova was fascinated to find unreal images in everyday life. Shot in three cities, the film becomes the artist’s investigation into the fine line between the real and the imagined.


Agon Color cor 11

AGON, 2015, 16′

This video was filmed on the production floor of a working brewery. Pirogova transforms this architecture into a stadium, a field for competition, the metaphysical arena where the confrontation of the most influential areas of human activity is held. Competition in this representation is not a process but an end in itself. Despite the fact that each competitor strives to bring on a change in the structure of the “machine”, to undermine the system from the inside, the expected response does not occur and the whole activity is converted into an endless routine. (Yuriy Yurkin)



Also featuring the BALAGAN!!! Performances,
Symposium and Lecture Videos.

PERFORMANCES

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/153596943 [/fve]

ZIP GROUP
PROTEST AEROBICS
(DISTRICT OF CIVIL RESISTANCE)
, 10′

At Brandenburger Tor Stiftung am Max Liebermann Haus,
13 November 2015

ZIP Group, an artist-collective from Krasnodar, provides the warm-up for BALAGAN!!! with their expert instruction in stretching and strength training routines guaranteed to improve your flexibility and cardio-vascular fitness in protest. Performed in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate for the Opening of the BALAGAN!!! Exhibition.

Under the collective name of ZIP (an acronym that denotes the name of Krasnodar’s main art space, situated in the former premises of a factory manufacturing measuring instruments, Zavod Izmeritelnykh Priborov) the group has created a small autonomous zone of contemporary art in the city. The summer of 2011 saw them found the self-proclaimed Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art (KICA), the city’s first independent and experimental art space, and a new intellectual/art milieu for the younger generation has started forming around it. Reversing the party-inspired unanimity of the Soviet avant-garde’s ‘agitational’ propaganda of the 1920s and ‘30s, ZIP have designed an environment that actively encourages dissent. Their Civil Resistance District, comprising B. O. P. s (Booths for One-man Pickets), bunkers, control platforms, ‘plumbic fists’ and information stands, has been deployed in actual demonstrations.

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/148475710 [/fve]

SASHA FROLOVA
AQUAAEROBIKA, 25’ 24”

At Kühlhaus Berlin,
13 November 2015

Moscow-based artist and current holder of Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World award, Sasha Frolova kicks off BALAGAN!!! with her renowned Aquaaerobika performance for the opening night of the exhibition. Frolova uses her body to work in different media – sculpture, inflatables, dance, music and performance – in which the different kinds of movement, colour and energy it generates are the dominating elements. A hybrid between the puppet-like figures of Oscar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Triadisches Ballet (1922), whirling dervishes and Lady Gaga on acid, she employs outlandish costumes, electronic music and dance to melt into the abstract forms of her colourful inflatable sculptures and to create a sense of awe and wonder in the viewer – a cyber-beauty of latex, speed and sound. AQUAAEROBIKA, a collective performance project that she both directs and performs, was first presented in Saint Petersburg and Venice in 2013, and has since toured widely.

Frolova graduated in 2002 from the Art School of the Stroganov Moscow Higher College of Art and Industry in Moscow and extended her studies in Graphic Design at the National Institute of Design (2004-08) and on the New Art Strategies (Contemporary Art) course at the Institute of Contemporary Art Problems (2006) under the tutorship of Joseph Backstein. For ten years she was assistant to the eminent performance artist and objectmaker Andrey Bartenev. She was finalist of the Arte Laguna Special Prize for a solo show in Venice in 2013 and took part in the finalists’ group exhibition in the Arsenale where she was awarded a special exhibition prize. She was a finalist of the Kandinsky Prize (Young Artist Project of the Year nomination) in Moscow, 2009. Her solo shows include the Frederica Ghizzoni Gallery, Milan (2014); FRBR, in the parallel programme of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011); Albinism, Aidan Gallery, Moscow (2010); and Cyber Princess, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2009). She has also presented her work: in London at the Whitechapel Gallery, Riflemaker Gallery, and at the Russian Winter Festival in Trafalgar Square; in Kyiv at Gogolfest; in Hamburg at Kampnagel; and in Moscow at the Shushev State Museum of Architecture and the National Centre of Contemporary Art (NCCA).


[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/147395948 [/fve]

YERBOSSYN MELDIBEKOV
SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, 25’ 24”

At Kühlhaus Berlin,
14 November 2015

Meldibekov’s work has focused on the ‘collapse of culture’ in post-Soviet Central Asia: its political and social disarray, with rival political and commercial ‘tribes’ clashing over distribution of power and wealth. Focusing on political and social change, Meldibekov works across a variety of media that includes installation, sculpture, photography video and performance. Dramatising the absurd paradoxes of the contemporary art world, his performance September – October – November. Asian Prisoner, made specially for BALAGAN!!! reprises an action made in Berlin seventeen years previously. Then, as now, the Kazhak artist is a prisoner, bound by the culture in which he finds himself, a punishing kangue around his neck as an antiquated, stereotypical symbol. Yet he is not alone. Is not the art world itself also a kind of prison?

Meldibekov graduated from the State Institute of Theatre and Fine Arts, Almaty in 1992. He has exhibited internationally with various solo shows, including: Mountains of Revolution, Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong (2014), The Revolution in the Mountains, Jozsa Gallery, Brussels (2013) and Peak of Lenin, Galleria Nina Lumer, Milan (2013). He has also participated in the Central Asian Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, (2013), the 1st Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2012) and Between Heaven and Earth – Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia, London, Calvert 22 (2011).

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/148475709 [/fve]

LEONID TISHKOV
THE ANATOMY LESSON OF THE DABLOID, 27’ 25”

At Kühlhaus Berlin,
14 November 2015

Tishkov is widely known for his DABLOIDS, a social and artistic project initiated in the early 1990s directly after the fall of the Soviet Union. These bright red, kidney-shaped creatures, consisting of little heads on large feet, may be understood as emblems of the burden of personal experience, views and prejudices within a transformed ‘democratic’ world. They spawn their own culture with clothes, flags and banners in an ironical artistic representation of symbols and opinions that refer to homeland, nationality and religion. As such, DABLOIDS become child-like, but potentially vicious, expressions of familiar ideologies, languages, histories and social identities. As well as making a special DABLOID installation for BALAGAN!!!, Tishkov revisits both his early medical training and the famous painting. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) by Rembrandt in his performance of The Anatomy Lesson of the DABLOID.

Tishkov initially trained as a doctor, graduating in 1979 from the I.M. Sechenov Medical University in Moscow but, from the early 1980s, began to work as an artist, making cartoon-like books and paintings that commented in an absurd way on ideology and social change. Since that time his work has expanded to include installation, video, theatre and performance. His solo shows include The Arctic Diary, Krokin Gallery, Moscow (2011); In Search of the Miraculous (Selected works, 1980-2010), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010); Looking Homeward, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2007). His work has also been exhibited in the 11th Krasnoyarsk Biennale (2015), the Moscow Biennale (2009) and the Singapore Biennale (2008) as well as in the museum shows Eye on Europe – 1960 to Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Berlin – Moscow/ Moscow- Berlin 1950-2000, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2002).


[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/149487008 [/fve]

OLYA KROYTOR
CUBE, 66’ 23”

At Kühlhaus Berlin,
18 November 2015

Kroytor’s work moves between durational performance and the production of drawings and collages. Cube (2015), a new work made specially for BALAGAN!!!, brings all aspects of her work into play. Kroytor confines herself within a life-sized cube, its surfaces covered by paper. Hidden from view, she sketches on the inside of the cube until the surface of the paper is worn away. Once there is room for her to escape, she leaves. The marks of her ‘imprisonment’ remain.

Kroytor attended the Moscow Museum of Modern Art Free Workshops in 2007 and graduated in art from the Moscow State Pedagogical University in 2008, the following year she gained a diploma from the Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2012 she was a Kandinsky Prize nominee in the ‘Young Artist’ category and in 2014 was shortlisted for the Kuryokhin Award the ‘Art in Public Spaces’ category. Her solo shows include Time That Exists, SRC Dawn, Vladivostok (2015), 8 Situations, ArtWin Gallery, Moscow (2015), Extra, Gallery Room, Moscow (2014), ChtoNichto, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011) and Split Personality, Regina Gallery, (2011).

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/155298800 [/fve]

SASHA PIROGOVA
LET’S PLAY, WHY NOT?, 33’ 02”

At Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin,
16 December 2015

Life imposes some rules that occasionally we have to follow. Sometimes unexpectedly they change. Sasha Pirogova investigates the system in which we live in a playful mode, using the rules of Russian outdoor games that are based on active and passive, controlling and resisting roles.

Recently a huge amount of prohibitions were again re-introduced in Russia which influence the private life of a person. Through her staged performances, Sasha Pirogova aims to capture movements and gestures that could disappear forever under these circumstances.

Winner of Moscow’s New Generation Award, Sasha Pirogova is acclaimed for both her videos and performances. An amalgam of two performances premiered during the opening week of BALAGAN!!!, the performance Let’s Play, Why Not? was staged at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart as part of MOMENTUM’s exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, curated by David Elliott.


LECTURES

The Old Woman Who…? BALAGAN and the Russian/Soviet Avant-Garde 1906-1953
By David Elliott
At Brandenburger Tor Stiftung am Max Liebermann Haus

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/156073838 [/fve]

Trickster Art: Celebrating Chaos, Challenging Misrule
With David Elliott, Preciosa De Joya,
Hillel Schwartz & Hans Scheuer
At ICI Berlin, Institute for Cultural Inquiry

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/156073839 [/fve]

What is to be Undone? Trickery as Political Resistance
With Rosa Barotsi, Katarzyna Kozyra,
Via Lewandowski & Helena Bassil-Morozow
At ICI Berlin, Institute for Cultural Inquiry


 

SYMPOSIUM
The Russians Have a Word For It: BALAGAN and the World Outside

With Kathrin Becker, Ekaterina Degot, Volker Diehl, David Elliott,
Gabriele Knapstein, Bojana Pejić, Asia Żak Persons
At Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/154418321 [/fve]

BALAGAN: AN INTRODUCTION
By David Elliott

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/153992871 [/fve]

BALAGAN IN LENINGRAD AND ST. PETERSBURG
By Kathrin Becker


[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/153992872 [/fve]

SEXING-UP “EASTERN EUROPE”
AFTER THE WALL, GENDER CHECK, BALAGAN

By Bojana Pejić

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/155296355 [/fve]

BEFORE, INSIDE, AND BEYOND BALAGAN
By Ekaterina Degot


[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/154417908 [/fve]

BEYOND BALAGAN
With Bojana Pejić, Katya Degot, Volker Diehl, David Elliott,
Gabriele Knapstein, Asia Żak Persons




 

 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

10/12/2015
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Balagan Symposium Hamburger Bahnhof

 
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SYMPOSIUM


The Russians Have A Word For It:
BALAGAN and the World Outside

Wednesday 16 December @ 14:00 – 20:00

At Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

Invalidenstraße 50-51, 10557

 

Balagan - Flyer for HB2

 

Symposium Videos:

BALAGAN: AN INTRODUCTION
By David Elliott

BALAGAN IN LENINGRAD AND ST. PETERSBURG
By Kathrin Becker


SEXING-UP “EASTERN EUROPE”
AFTER THE WALL, GENDER CHECK, BALAGAN

By Bojana Pejić

BEFORE, INSIDE, AND BEYOND BALAGAN
By Ekaterina Degot


BEYOND BALAGAN
With Bojana Pejić, Katya Degot, Volker Diehl, David Elliott,
Gabriele Knapstein, Asia Żak Persons


 

The Symposium was part of


BALAGAN!!!
Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union
and Other Mythical Places

Curated by David Elliott

14 November – 23 December 2015

More info here >

 

Speakers:

Kathrin Becker

Kathrin Becker is a Berlin based curator and writer who currently works as the head of the Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). Having studied art history and Slavic languages in Bochum, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, she made her first experiences as a curator in the field of cultural exchange between Russia and the West. From the late 1990s, Becker developed an international curatorial profile and worked in the field of the interference of popular and high cultures, global visual languages, and institutional practice as a method of cultural foreign policies between Western, East European and Middle Eastern societies.

Kathrin Becker has curated numerous exhibitions in institutions such as Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin; National Centre For Contemporary Art, Moscow; P.S. 1 Museum / The Institute of Contemporary Art, New York; National Museum for Contemporary Art, Oslo; Fotomuseum Winterthur; Mies van der Rohe Pavillon, Barcelona; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius; Gallery of the Capital Prague; Kunst-Werke Berlin / KW Institute for Contemporary Art; Moscow House of Photography. She has curated solo shows including artists such as Nairy Baghramian, Ursula Biemann, Louise Bourgeois, Kajsa Dahlberg, Maryam Jafri, Laura Horelli, Allan Kaprow, Takuji Kogo / John Miller, Christiane Möbus, Andrei Monastyrski, Matthias Müller, Hajnal Németh, Dmitri A. Prigov, Laure Prouvost, Oliver Ressler, Ira Schneider, Anatoly Shuravlev, Ming Wong, Yevgeny Yufit, Vadim Zakharov / Niklas Nitschke, David Zink Yi, and Artur Zmijewski and group shows such as Stalin’s Choice – Soviet Socialist Realism 1932-1956; Flight – Departure – Disappearance. Moscow Conceptual Art; Can you hear me? 2nd Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art; Remake Berlin; No more bad girls? and Feminismen. In 2012, Kathrin Becker worked as the curator of the 3rd Moscow International Biennial For Young Art (MIBYA). In 2014, she realized the International Symposium Video Trajectories that looked at contemporary video art practice from the perspectives of presentation, technological change, production and the public. Kathrin Becker has published widely in exhibition catalogues and magazines and served on numerous curatorial teams, advisory boards and juries.

Ekaterina Degot

Ekaterina Degot is a Moscow-born art historian, writer, and curator, Artistic Director at the Academy of Arts of the World, Cologne, and professor at the Alexander Rodchenko Moscow School of New Media and Photography in Moscow. Her recent curatorial projects include: What Did the Artist Mean by That?, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2014 (with Yuri Albert), Monday Begins on Saturday, First Bergen Assembly, Bergen, Norway, 2013 (with David Riff). She co-edited Post-Post-Soviet?: Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade (Chicago University press, 2013). Degot is laureate of the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory (2014).

Degot’s work focuses on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia and Eastern Europe, predominantly in the post-Soviet era. She has worked as a senior curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery. In 2001, she curated the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennial. Shows she has co-curated include Body Memory: Underwear of the Soviet Era (with Julia Demidenko; City History Museum, St Petersburg, 2000, City Museum, Helsinki, Volkskundemuseum, Vienna, a.o.); Berlin-Moskau / Moskau-Berlin 1950-2000 (with Juergen Harten a.o., Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, and the History Museum, Moscow, 2003-04), and European Atelier (Central House of Artists, 2009), Soviet Idealism (Musée de l’art wallon, Liège, 2005) and If. Ukrainian Art in Transition (PERMM art museum, Perm, 2010). Together with Cosmin Costinas and David Riff, she curated the First Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg under the title Shockworkers of the Mobile Image (2010). In 2011 she presented (with Joanna Mytkovska and David Riff) Auditorium Moscow – a self-educational initiative, a place for meeting and discussion, and an international exhibition. In 2012, she curated Art After the End of the World, the discussion platform of the First Kiev Biennial of Contemporary Art Arsenale, and Time/Food in Stella Art Foundation in Moscow, with Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda. Together with David Riff she curated the first Bergen Assembly under the title Monday begins on Saturday in 2013. She has worked as art columnist for the newspaper Kommersant, and from 2008 until 2012 she was senior editor of www.openspace.ru/art, an independent online magazine of art news, art criticism and cultural analysis. She regularly contributes to Artforum, Frieze and e-flux magazine. Her books include: Terroristic Naturalism (1998), Russian 20th-Century Art (2000) and Moscow Conceptualism (with Vadim Zakharov, 2005). She recently co-edited Post-Post-Soviet?: Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade (with Ilya Budraitskis and Marta Dziewanska, 2013).


Volker Diehl

Volker Diehl, born in Neheim-Hüsten (now Arnsberg), is a gallerist and curator. Having studied art history in Münster and at the Free University of Berlin, he subsequently worked as assistant to the curators Christos Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal on the international art exhibition “Zeitgeist” at Martin Gropius Bau Berlin in 1982. After seven years of working at Berlin’s gallery Folker Skulima, in 1990 he took over the gallery and re-named it Volker Diehl. In 1996 – 2002 Diehl became the co-funder and director of the international art fair Art Forum Berlin. From 2000, gallery Volker Diehl expanded with several branches in Berlin, and 2008 marked the opening of DIEHL + GALLERY ONE in Moscow, which ran for two years. In 2013 Diehl opened a project space in Berlin called Diehl CUBE.

David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); 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 Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the 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. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.


Gabriele Knapstein

Dr.Gabriele Knapstein (b. 1963) is an art historian, living in Berlin. Her PhD thesis on the event scores by Fluxus artist George Brecht was published in 1999. Since 1994, she is working as a curator for the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and other institutions. In 2001 together with Hou Hanru and Fan Di’an, Knapstein curated the exhibition Living in time. 29 contemporary artists from China at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Since 2003, she has worked as curator at Hamburger Bahnhof, becoming Head of Exhibitions in 2012. Since 1999, Knapstein has been working on the realization of the ongoing series Works of Music by Visual Artists. Selected recent exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof: Susan Philips. Part File Score (2014), Wall Works (2013-2014), Ryoji Ikeda. db (2012), Architektonika. Art, Architecture and the City (2011-2012), Bruce Nauman. Dream Passage (2010). She was involved in organizing the exhibition After the Wall. Art and culture in post-Communist Europe (2000–2001), curated by David Elliott and Bojana Pejić, which took place at Hamburger Bahnhof and Max Liebermann Haus.

Bojana Pejić

Bojana Pejić (born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia), is an art historian and curator, living in Berlin since 1991. Having studied History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Belgrade, from 1977 to 1991 she was curator at the Student Cultural Center of Belgrade University and organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. She started to write art criticism in 1971 and was editor of art theory journal “Moment, Belgrade” (1984 – 1991). She organized an international symposium “The Body in Communism” at the Literaturhaus in Berlin in 1995. She was Chief Curator of the exhibition After the Wall – Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe organized by David Elliott at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (1999), which was also presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Budapest (2000), and at HamburgerBahnhof, Berlin (2000-2001). She was one of the co-curators of the exhibition Aspects/Positions held in the Museum of Contemporary Art – Foundation Ludwig, Vienna in 1999. Between 2002 and 2004, she was one of international advisers of the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto (Japan) where she also curated a retrospective of Marina Abramovic (2003), which also toured to Morigame (Japan). In 2003, she had the Rudolf Arnheim guest professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin (history of art). She was adviser of the project De/Construction of Monument organized by the Center for Contemporary Art in Sarajevo where she also held seminars at the Academy of Fine Arts dedicated to the “Communist Body.” (2004-2005) In May 2005 she has defended her Ph.D. “The Communist Body – An Archeology of Images: Politics of Representation and Spatialization of Power the SFR Yugoslavia (1945 -1991)”. She was a Maria Goeppert-Mayer guest professor for International Gender Research at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University in Oldenburg (2006-2007). Bojana Pejić is the chief curator of Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009-2010) at MUMOK, Vienna and the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. She is also the editor of the “Gender Check Reader”. Dr. Bojana Pejić teaches at the Bauhuas University in Weimar and works as an independent curator and writer. She is co-curator together with Rachel Rits-Volloch of the upcoming follow-up exhibition to BALAGAN!!!, entitled Beyond BALAGAN – Hero Mother – Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016).


Asia Żak Persons

A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Asia Żak Persons (b. in 1971 in Krakow, Poland) initially organised the Month of Photography before opening in 2008, together with Monika Branicka, ŻAK | BRANICKA gallery in Berlin, where artists from different generations with strong ties to Eastern Europe and Conceptual and Avant Garde Art are represented. Also in 2008, together with Monika Branicka, she co-founded the ŻAK BRANICKA Foundation in Krakow, Poland, that strives to help those artists by supporting projects outside the gallery as well as with publications. Asia Żak Persons was a board member of ViennaFair for many years and is a regular contributor for catalogues and books of contemporary art.


 

In collaboration with:

Made possible by the generous support of:



BALAGAN!!! SYMPOSIUM
AND PERFORMANCE BY SASHA PIROGOVA

 

03/12/2015
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Stefano Cagol

 

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Stefano Cagol

CVWebsite

1 November – 31 December 2015

 

Stefano Cagol is an Italian-born artist. He participated in 55th Venice Biennale (Maldives National Pavilion), 2nd Xinjiang Biennale, 1st Singapore Biennale and presented his works and actions at Kunstmuseum Bochum, ZKM Karlsruhe, Folkwang Museum, Maxxi in Rome, Museion in Bozen, Laznia in Gdansk, Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, Kunstraum Innsbruck, MARTa Herford, among others. He is the recipient of the Terna 02 Prize for Contemporary Art, Rome, and of the VISIT #10 of the RWE Foundation, Essen.

During his Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, the brand new venue CLB Collaboratorium Berlin will devote its first exhibition to Stefano Cagol. For his first solo show in Berlin he will present “The Body of Energy (of the mind)”, a year-long project the artist has developed as a European expedition on search for signs of energy, both physical and cultural energy, triggering a reflection on what is not visible, on resources, on relations.

Stefano Cagol states “Symbols, metaphors, current topics, immediateness, stimulating, communicating, openness, multiple points of view. These are the key words to my relationship with the public. It couldn’t be any other way. The artwork is an opportunity to better understand our own time and future. It’s a sort of mission. In my account art is never closed in itself.”

 

“The Body of Energy (of the mind)” at CLB Berlin

Opening 6 November @ 7:00pm

Exhibition 7 November – 12 December 2015

The exhibition at CLB Collaboratorium Berlin opening on 6 November features the launch of the book “The Body of Energy (of the mind)” by Stefano Cagol, produced by Revolver Publishing.

Supported by VISIT Programme of the RWE Stiftung für Energie und Gesellschaft gGmbH, the exhibition “The Body of Energy (of the mind)” at CLB Collaboratorium Berlin and the MOMENTUM Residency is the culmination of a year-long project the artist has developed as a European expedition from Norway to Gibraltar on search for signs of energy, both physical and cultural energy, triggering a reflection on what is not visible, on resources, on relations. The show spans from the experience of the travelling project, through video, photo and installation, to new artworks created in Berlin.

Stefano Cagol states “Symbols, metaphors, current topics, immediateness, stimulating, communicating, openness, multiple points of view. These are the key words to my relationship with the public. It couldn’t be any other way. The artwork is an opportunity to better understand our own time and future. It’s a sort of mission. In my account art is never closed in itself.”

During the travelling project the artist enacted his symbolic survey of energy using an infrared camera and involving the public, the architecture and the environment. Involved institutions that hosted the project from October 2014 to March 2015 are, among others, Bergen Kunsthall Landmark, Bergen (NO); Museo MA*GA, Gallarate (IT); Museum Folkwang, Essen (DE); Listen to the Sirenes, Gibraltar (UK); Madre, Naples (IT); MAXXI, Rome (IT); Museion, Bozen (IT); Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH); ZKM, Karlsruhe (DE); Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice (IT).

 


MOMENTUM InsideOut at Bar Babette Presents:

plakat_CAGOL_babette

 

Stefano Cagol’s residency is generously supported by the VISIT programme of RWE Stiftung für Energie und Gesellschaft gGmbH. Stefano Cagol is recipient of VISIT #10.

 

TBOE_SALERNO_UNIVERSITY_CAGOL_2.jpg

 

INSTALLATION SHOTS

 
THE OPENING PHOTO GALLERY

 
THE BAR BABETTE EVENT

03/12/2015
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Geraldine Ondrizek residency

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 
 

Geraldine Ondrizek

CV – Website

 

15 August – 15 December 2015

 

Geraldine Ondrizek is an artist and professor of art at Reed College in Portland Oregon working at the intersection of art and biological science for the last twenty years. She earned her MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, and her BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Since 2001 she has worked with geneticists and biologists to gather and compose images of human cellular tissue and genetic tests that relate to ethnic identity and disease. The architectural-scaled works she creates house medical information. They have been shown widely in galleries, museums and research hospitals, including 34 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows.

She is the recipient of the 2014 Hallie Ford Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ford Family Foundation; two Oregon Arts Commission and Hallie Ford Career Development Grants; a Houston Foundation Grant; four Culture Grant, Levine Fund and Mellon Foundation Faculty Research Awards; and an Oregon Council on the Arts Fellowship. She has been an artist in residence at France, England, New York, Germany, Pennsylviana, Colorado, and Germany. Ondrizek has lectured at various universities. Her work has been shown at NASA, The University of Houston, FIU Gallery, the Detroit Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum, The Sheldon Museum, The Western Washington University Gallery, The Shenman Gallery, The IMSS in Chicago, The Miller Gallery at Carnegie–Mellon University, as well as other places, including ZKM | Center for Art and Media during her stay in Germany.

 

Gerri Ondrizek_Cellular_Still

Geraldine Ondrizek, “Cellular”, Video Still (2012)

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
 

Revisiting Eugenics in the Age of Genetics:

Geraldine Ondrizek will continue the research on the history of eugenics practices she began with the exhibition ‘Shades of White’ opening at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon this September. Whereas Shades of White focused on race and skin color, she will now focus on eugenics and mental illness. Eugenicists were convinced that conditions such as insanity, feeblemindedness, epilepsy, pauperism, alcoholism, and other forms of social deviance were fundamentally hereditary. She will visit the most significant archives on eugenics at the Freie University in Berlin that holds the archives of The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.

This research and visual investigation will result in an installation that will be composed of several projections of cellular formations and malformations, genetic sequences that show physical and metal differences, historical, personal and statistical information as well as new and significantly positive research on mental ability. She will make the space a fully interactive, theatrical and space that has a many moveable silk panels that capture projected images when moved by the viewers/participatory audience. This work will enable the viewer to be surrounded by the voices of many and she hopes that they will get a new perspective on racial categorization. She has been invited to show this work at Central Bookings’ Haber Space, A Gallery of Art and Science in New York City in 2016.

 

studio 2

Research and Studio Work based on findings from the Max Plank Archive at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Dr. Georg Geipel’s hand and fingerprint studies (1930-1960). Installation by Geraldine Ondrizek for her Berlin Open Studio on 29 Nov 2015.

 

OPEN STUDIO with GERALDINE ONDRIZEK
29 November 2015
@ Reinickendorfer Strasse 15, 13347 Berlin
6:00 – 19:00

The installation will continue through 15 December 2015 and can be seen by appointment at: ondrizeg@reed.edu

During her Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, Ondrizek’s research at the archives of the Max Planck Institute focus on the work of Dr. Georg Geipel, an anthropologist and statistician who worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin from 1930 -1960. Geipel used methods of dermatoglyphics and dactyloscopy for the study of fingerprints and handprints to link these patterns to inheritance. This sytem was not new, in fact Widler used it beginning in 1904. However Geipel rigorously assigned mathematical coordinates to the lines, curves, breaks, negative spaces and intersections in the hand and fingerprint. Through these measurements he was able to identify inherited hand lines, similarities in identical twins based on embryology and racial difference. Although his ability to identify genetic inheritance was significant, his evaluation and conclusions based on racial difference and mental ability done for the KWI during the war were both incorrect and seriously problematic.(1) However, he did continue to refine his mathematical identification systems after the war and was able to mathematically prove that these marks are unique for each of us and that they are carried within family lines. His system, which primarily measures the breaks and intersections of the lines in the fingerprint and handprint, is used in biometric data scanners today.

The history of biometric data skips the 1930’s-50’s because of the negative associations. However, the effects of taking biometric data then, and the effects of taking it now, as a method of surveillance and identity codes for each human being, is hauntingly similar.

Ondrizek has had the privilege to look at thousands of Geipel’s handprint studies, and has focused on those of identical twins from the 1950’s-60’s. Twin studies have continued to be of vital importance to genetics as they show the subtle difference in the genetic make up of each human being based on embryology. By making a project with these prints, Ondrizek aims to honor those who unknowingly offered their identity markers for science. It is highly unlikely that they would have known how their personal mark would have been used to establish the system we use now. However, the knowledge gained, for better or worse, is part of a system of biometric data collection that begins at birth with the taking of a child’s hand prints and has become the standard measure of our identify worldwide.

The research and art work Ondrizek is doing here in Berlin during the MOMENTUM residency manifests in a series of studio projects to be shown at an Open Studio event on 29 November 2015, and will be comprised of a set of books of the handprints and the geometric patterns used, a video of the archive as well as experiments and proposals for works to be done in the US in 2016-2017. The research done in Berlin will be further developed once Ondrizek returns to the US and will include her own biometric and genetic profile.

 

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE OPEN STUDIO ARTIST TALK WITH GERALDINE ONDRIZEK:


 

STUDIO PHOTOS
01/12/2015
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MOMENTUM_InsideOut Together With Bar Babette
Present
The MOMENTUM AiR Exhibition
Linda Carrara, Fang Lu, Gerri Ondrizek

22-23 October 2015 @ 8pm – Late
At Bar Babette
Karl-Marx-Allee 36

 
MORE ABOUT MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence >>

 

Linda Carrara
I’m a Still-Life (2014)

12 min.

CVWebsite

The objects represented by Linda Carrara come from everyday life, but are here utilised as primary forms rather than mundane objects. They assemble into a metastructure and reassemble in forever changing compositions while questioning the visible world. This still-life no longer refers to inanimate everyday objects. This is the painting itself that becomes the object; of unknown origin, ageless, and endlessly processable. The painting itself is made into a malleable thing prone to a long questioning gaze. The object of representation has always been a mediator of thought.

I’m a Still-Life is a documented action shot in a single sequence. If it can be defined technically as a video, it has neither beginning nor end, nor duration and it is not unique. Every movement causes a break, generates a new scene and involves the future whose potential is yet infinite. These interactions become the tool of a mental dialogue between the neutral presence of the material object and the evocative potential it inspires.


 

Fang Lu
Lovers Are Artists [Part One]
(2012)

18 min (originally shown as 4 channel installation on TVs), silent

CVWebsite

Casting: Guan Xiao
Camera: Hai Li
Installation Photos: Wang Wei

A stop-motion video composed out of thousands of images shot in the traditional hutongs of Beijing. The images depict a lone female figure going about her daily activities of buying vegetables and eating yoghurt; but before long these mundane tasks turn towards the kooky and nonsensical as the items become immersed in fictional games and scenarios that yield no discernible outcome nor serve any functional purpose. Not unlike the artistic process, these apparently meaningless gestures are founded upon internal imbalances that inform an individual’s perspective on the world and impact their encounters with reality…

[Text by Pauline Yao, Read More on Amorous Acts at Arrow Factory >>]


Gerri Ondrizek
Cellular (2012)

12 min.

CV – Website

Digital Film made with Atonics Micro fire digital cameras mounted on Olympus stereomicroscopes
Sound made with AMF, atomic force microscope

Cellular is a film of a blast pore, or a multiple cell embryo.  More than 200 hours of still images of each embryo were made with Atonics Micro fire digital cameras mounted on Olympus stereomicroscopes and made into a film using Astor IIDC imaging software. My colleague at Reed College, Steve Black, professor of developmental Biology and Zoology., provided me with a lab space to make the films of the blast pore. I worked with his lab assistant Allison Egar to make a film of development which was used for the still images.  To make my film, I edited 10 film sections to overlap and repeat the phases of development just before a recognizable body is evident. Each segment represents the different eggs in the process of development. Each is edited prior to full gestation, creating a loop of endless potential.

The film Cellular is overlayed with the recording of The Sound of Cells Dividing.

The Sounds of Cells Dividing

Since 2003, nanotechnology and the AMF (atomic force microscope) pioneered by James Giminski, Professor of Chemistry at UCLA  and Andrew Pelling Associate Professor of Biophysics at the University of Ottawa, enables researchers to also touch a cell. Like the blind reading brail or a hand touching the pulse, the needle of the AMF can touch cells which are less than half the diameter of a human hair. This touch can also record the sound the cell emits when dividing or dieing. Through touching and hearing rather than only seeing, an entirely new knowledge base has emerged, one that artists have known, that of multiple sensory knowledge.  What we can now listen to within a cell has revolutionized our knowledge of cellular gestation, division and the relationships within the interior architecture of our body.

The sounds one is hearing in the film Cellular is five tracks of healthy to damaged cells diving and dieing. I accessed these recordings from James Gimzewski Professor of Chemistry at UCLA and Andrew Pelling Associate Professor of Biophysics at the University of Ottawa. The recorded cells vibrating at the nanoscale, with amplified vibration (or oscillation) of the cells, bring them into the range of human hearing. This new area of study is called “sonocrology”. The main tool for learning about cell sounds is the atomic force microscope (AFM). Instead of using optics to show an image, the AFM uses a very fine tip to feel a cell in the same way a needle is used to feel the pattern of vibrations pressed into vinyl records. Gimzewski and Pelling have found that cells with cancer or other diseases give off very low and strained frequencies while healthy cells give a more pleasant sound. Sonocytology has proven to be a noninvasive way to detect disease.  In 2007, Gimzenwski used nanotechnology to demonstrate that metastatic cancer cells are softer than healthy cells. The study represented one of the first times researchers have been able to take living cells from human cancer patients and use nanotechnology to determine which were cancerous through touch.

 


PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

23/11/2015
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Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency

(initiad by GEKA e.V. & BMW)

 

Fang Lu

CVWebsite

17 August – 1 November 2015

 

Fang Lu at MOMENTUM_InsideOut Screening >>

 

The BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAM, initiated by GEKA e.V. – Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesischen Kulturellen Austausch * Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange – and BMW, this year features an Artist Residency with FANG LU, a chinese Video Artist, coordinated by MOMENTUM, with the support of the Sammlung Hoffmann.

 

Fang Lu (b. 1981, Guangzhou China) is a Chinese video artist. She received her BFA from Graphic Design department at School of Visual Art in New York in 2005, and MFA from the New Genres department at the San Francisco Arts Institute in 2007. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Boers-li Gallery, Beijing (2013); Pekin Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2013), Arrow Factory, Beijing (2012), Space Station, Beijing (2010), Borges Libreria Institute of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou (2011); and in group exhibitions such as the 28 Chinese in Rubell Family Collection Museum in Miami, My Generation in Tampa Museum (2014), On/Off in Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2012), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (2012), CAFAM Future Exhibition (2012), We Remember the Sun in Walter & McBean Gallery in San Francisco (2008). She lives and works in Beijing.

Fang Lu is also the Co-Founder of Video Bureau, a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform to exhibit, organize and archive video art. It has two spaces: one in Beijing and the other one in Guangzhou. The mission of Video Bureau is to collect and organize artworks of video artists in order to build a video archive that welcomes research and viewing. As an institute opens to the public, every two months Video Bureau features a new artist added to the archive, and hosts related events.


Still from ‘Sea of Silence’
A video By Fang Lu
PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Sea of Silence is centered on the idea of speaking about love as a form of action. Part I of the work was developed and produced by Fang Lu during her stay at the Artport residency program in Israel. Three woman protagonists, as three very distinctive, unrelated individuals, talk to the camera of their experiences when they encountered love. They are situated in deserts. The untamed environment is a new habitat for them to pursue a new form of living.​

 

Still from ‘Sea of Silence’
A video By Fang Lu

During her artist residency at MOMENTUM with the BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAMME, ​Fang Lu creates the sequel of Sea of Silence​. If Sea of Silence​, Part I is about how one understands oneself, through the construction of a relationship, ​Fang Lu focuses the second part of this project on how one understands the other.​  The project invit​e​s women to describe in front of the camera one of their previous lovers: the physicality (such as height, hair, skin, color of the eyes); characteristics (personality); everyday habit​s;​ all the qualities that construct the subject as a human being. The descriptions should not include any names nor subjects’ social status.  The narrators can speak in their native language.


 

The production of the sequel to “Sea of Silence” in Berlin is made possible by the generous support of the Sammlung Hoffmann.

Erika and Rolf Hoffmann began collecting contemporary art in 1968 for the inspiration and stimulation of living with it. Today, Erika Hoffmann opens her home to the public on Saturdays to share this experience with others. Sammlung Hoffmann is a private collection of contemporary art in all media. The collection is on display in Erika Hoffmann’s living and work spaces, which have been open to the public since 1997, upon appointment.

TOURS

Visitors are invited to join guided tours on Saturdays, in groups of up to ten. For approximately 90 minutes, a guide will serve as a moderator of sorts, hoping to spark conversation rather than simply presenting facts or accepted art-historical truths. Because a single visit could only provide an overview of the current selection, the guides decide which rooms to enter—based on their guests’ interests. The selection of works is installed in an associative manner. It is meant to offer a personal encounter with art that may impart a more lasting impression in this private setting than it would leave in a museum. There are no wall texts or captions that provide the artist’s name, the work’s title, or its year of production. The idea is to allow visitors a more immediate and emotional access to the works, while guides can provide additional information.

CURATOR

Erika Hoffmann updates the selection of works and rearranges the installation every July. Some pieces return to storage, others are moved to new locations. Works from storage often end up next to recent acquisitions. In this, Erika Hoffmann creates new relationships, explores the strengths of works in unexpected contexts, and sets out to uncover additional meanings.

 

About Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency

The Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency was initiated by GeKA e.V., the Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange, and BMW. The residency supports the artistic development and international careers of Chinese and German artists. It enables emerging talents to live and work in novel cultural contexts for a defined time-period. This Residency Program, active 2014 – 2016, enables each year two young artists (one Chinese, one German, ideally with at least one female artist) to spend two months working either in Berlin or Beijing. The artists are selected by a jury of established art world professionals. At the end of the residency period (2016), it is planned that all the residency artists are invited to exhibit their new works in Berlin, to acquaint a larger audience with their work.

 

 

 

With the generous support of

 

WATCH
FANG LU CONVERSATION WITH RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH
AT SAMMLUNG HOFFMANN
HERE >>


 
The shooting of the work
(Photos by Marina Belikova)

23/11/2015
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Terna Prize Artist Residency
at MOMENTUM

with

Linda Carrara

CVWebsite

10 September – 25 November 2015

 

Linda Carrara at MOMENTUM_InsideOut Screening >>

 

Linda Carrara (b. 1984, Bergamo, Italy) is a visual artist. She graduated from ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI DI BRERA in 2007 with a Bachelor in Contemporary art. She completed her Master at KASK SCHOOL GENT in 2015 at the Multi-media department, and did her internship with Michael Borremans.

Between 2006 and 2012 she worked as assistant for Vincenzo Ferrari, Conceptual and poetry visual Italian artist. Since 2010 she has exhibited her work in several private galleries and Italian Museums. She participated in a group show in Moscow in Fabric space, in the collective exhibition “ma patience a des limited” in Dubois Friedland Gallery in Bruxelles, and in the exhibition of the Benetton collection in the Foundation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, Italy. Her works are in several private collections, such as the Benetton, Terna, Fondazione Rivoli2, Borroni, and Ceres Collections. She works and lives between Gent-Bruxelles and Milano.

 
 


VACUUM STATE
acrylic on canvas and projection of light, 2013

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Linda Carrara’s painting is made of simple shapes and structures. That is to say, objects, insofar as they correspond to those features. Their representation mainly emphasizes spatial dimensions, volumes and lines, with an economy of means that makes the interaction they have with each other sensitive, rather than their own constitution or appearance. In this, the main interest is not the object as a material thing, but the object as a taut space, connected to the related objects. This is a dynamic ecosystem, an organization of fullness and emptiness that offers the mind ways to perceive the world, without the world. Life without life. (Herve Ic, 2015)

During her Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, Linda Carrara continues her research on architecture as the abstract space of thinking. She will go deeper into the question of projection of light on canvas, and she will analyze the relationship between the shadow and light of the canvas, the relation with the space that surrounds it and the enigma between the projection of light and light of the painting.

 

P1040428



OPEN STUDIO with LINDA CARRARA
7 November 2015
@ CENTRUM, Reuterstraße 7, 12053 Berlin
6:00 – 10:00pm

www.lindacarrara.com

With the generous support of Premio Terna.
 

 
Open studio event

 
Installation shots

19/10/2015
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I SEE logo web

4 & 5 November 2015

8:00 – 10:30pm

Video Screenings with Q&A
 

FESTIVAL WEBSITE > >
 

 

Ulu Braun // Wojtek Doroszuk // Thomas Eller // Amir Fattal // Niklas Goldbach // James P Graham // Constantin Hartenstein // Mark Karasick // Yuan Keru // Map Office // Bjørn Melhus // Tracey Moffatt & Gary Hillberg // Neozoon // Erkka Nissinen // Li Ran // Franz Reimer // Julia Charlotte Richter // OQ Rizki Utama // Clemens Wilhelm // Lu Yang // Li Zhenhua
 

MOMENTUM is proud to host the launch of the I SEE International Video Art Festival, including a selection of works from the MOMENTUM Collection.

“The more that I see the less that I know for sure” – John Lennon

The I SEE International Video Art Festival is an initiative of the artists Constantin Hartenstein and Clemens Wilhelm, launched in 2013. In 2015, the second edition of the I SEE International Video Art Festival will once again reveal the latest developments in contemporary video art. The festival will be launched in Berlin (Germany) at MOMENTUM, and then travel to Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen (China) to connect these four vibrant video art scenes.

Focusing on four main curatorial themes, the presented videos will give a fascinating insight into how artists deal with the current challenges and opportunities of the digitalized world we live in. The festival sets out to present ground-breaking video art works by emerging and well-known international artists who examine the impact of technological and aesthetic inventions. Three screening programs – “THE END OF THE IMAGE AS WE KNOW IT”, “POST EVERYTHING”, “THE ANIMAL WITHIN” – present unique artistic approaches to animalistic instincts, the omnipresent influence of technology on society and concepts of post-futures. In addition, the program „AUTO ANALYSIS“ will present a selection of seven works from the Momentum Collection that explore the relationship between a subject and its self-perception towards transformative environments.

 
poster_web_okt29
 

PROGRAM 1: THE END OF THE IMAGE AS WE KNOW IT

Li Ran // Constantin Hartenstein // Julia Charlotte Richter // Bjørn Melhus // Lu Yang // OQ Rizki Utama

THE END OF THE IMAGE AS WE KNOW IT examines constructed digital entities and re-values social norms. It bends the boundaries of original content and newly created context in a consumer-driven reality. In treating the frame as a space to break apart filmic forms and narratives, the works in the program look at ways to juxtapose diverse ranges of assembling narratives and stylistic elements. How are the images of the past reassembled in the present? Would you like to become an alpha-male overnight? Is the image of an old white male ruling class still adequate? How does the experience of war change the image of home? What if there was a superhero with the special forces of a uterus? How can your family appear more happy in photos?

 

PROGRAM 2: POST EVERYTHING

Niklas Goldbach // Franz Reimer // Clemens Wilhelm // Erkka Nissinen

The POST EVERYTHING program points out the relationship between innovative aesthetics which transform cultural output and the past as a resource for the construction of the present and the future. It shows a world which fetishizes the new as a surplus value. The program brings together works by artists who attempt to paint a picture of the making of future through the constant transformation of the past and present. A small step forward can already mean shaking up all definitions. Can you turn a desert into a utopian city? How do we relate to world-changing media events? Are we happy with simulacra instead of the real things? And how to be an artist in a hyperreal world?

 

PROGRAM 3: THE ANIMAL WITHIN

Neozoon // Ulu Braun // Yuan Keru // Wojtek Doroszuk

THE ANIMAL WITHIN combines videos which deal with a new kind of wild behaviour and creative expression – either within ourselves or as a reaction to a vanishing fauna. Inspired by 17th century painting, hunting videos on youtube or Hitchcockian scenarios, this program presents works that elaborate upon spiritualism, emotional tension between mankind and the wilderness, as well as facing death as a reminder to the animalistic nature of our being. What do we feel after we shoot an animal? Why do birds look at us with disinterest? What happens to the soul in the forest? What is the difference between humans and dogs?

 

PROGRAM 4: AUTO ANALYSIS

(Program Curated from the MOMENTUM Collection)

Mark Karasick // Tracey Moffatt // Thomas Eller // Li Zhenua // Map Office // James P. Graham // Amir Fattal

The MOMENTUM Collection represents a cross-section of 120 outstanding artworks in a diversity of media: video, performance, photography, painting, collage, and text. It ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists representing 17 countries worldwide. This program shows seven video art works that explore the relationship between a subject and its self-perception towards transformative environments. What is going on in a child‘s mind? Do we need „others“ to define our self? How lost is the white male? Are dogs the better humans? Can you run away from your self? How much time is a beard? How romantic are ruins?

ORGANIZERS

I SEE International Video Art Festival
MOMENTUM Berlin
Times Museum

CO-ORGANIZERS
OCT Art and Design Gallery
Institute for Provocation Beijing

PARTNERS / SPONSORS
Goethe-Institut
Stiftung Mercator
AG Kurzfilm
The PhotoPhore

SPECIAL THANKS TO
Times Property
China Residencies
Basics09

I SEE_logoleiste_FINAL_web

 

Photo Gallery, MOMENTUM Berlin

Photo Gallery, Insitute for Provocation (Beijing)

Photo Gallery, OCT Art and Design Gallery (Shenzhen)

Photo Gallery, Times Museum (Guangzhou)

Photo Gallery, LP Art Space (Chongqing)

Photo Gallery, Organhaus (Chongqing)

15/10/2015
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WATER(PROOF)

At Federation Square

 

Shaarbek Amankul // Stefano Cagol // Nezaket Ekici
Janet Laurence // Shahar Marcus // Almagul Menlibayeva
Nina E. Schönefeld // Shingo Yoshida

 


 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch & Tainá Guedes

 
 

PUBLIC SCREENING:
1 – 30 September 2019

 

@ Federation Square, Melbourne

 

Food Art Week, created by artist/chef Tainá Guedes in 2015, is a non-profit project, whose mission is to promote positive change in our environment and society by asking how ‘what we eat and how we eat it’ is irrevocably affecting our environment. With a new thematic focus each year, the topic of Food Art Week 2019 is WATER. Life on our planet started in the water. Like our planet, we ourselves are 70% water. Yet many living beings have no access to clean water. Plastic pollution, nanoparticles, pesticides and antibiotics are damaging our freshwater and oceans. Only 2% of the total water on our planet is clean.

MOMENTUM is Berlin’s platform for Time-Based Art: Video, Performance, New Media, Sound, and in our cooperation with Food Art Week, also Food. To address the crucial issues raised by Food Art Week 2019: WATER, we present a video program by renowned international artists engaged in a broader dialogue on the deterioration of our environment. Shaarbek Amankul’s (Kyrgystan) video New Society, documents the devastating ironies of economic privation in his native Kyrgystan, where poor villagers drain the contents of water bottles into the arid earth, preferring the quick cash from recycling to the water itself. Environmental artist Janet Laurence (Australia) addresses the fragility of our oceans in her video Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef, created for the UN Climate Conference, COP21, in Paris. This work envisions a hospital for the Reef’s threatened corals and other marine species in this time of ecological crisis, making visible the otherwise invisible devastation beneath the surface of the sea. Stefano Cagol’s (Italy) video performance amidst the ice of the Arctic Circle, Evoke, Provoke [the border], raises issues of mankind’s unrelenting impact upon even the harshest of environments. Almagul Menlibayeva’s (Kazakhstan) film, Transoxiana Dreams, documents the desertification of the Aral Sea, poetically following the plight of fishermen who now have to drive for hours from their village to reach the rapidly shrinking sea. Nezaket Ekici (Turkey) and Shahar Marcus’s (Israel) video performance Salt Dinner is set within another shrinking sea, Israel’s Dead Sea. What looks like an absurd aquatic picnic is in truth a brutal endurance test for both artists; the excess of salt they are consuming with the sea water being as lethally dehydrating as the midday sun.

Nina E. Schönefeld’s (Germany) video Dark Waters takes place in another poison sea. Set in a dystopian future where the oceans are poisoned with plastic and only jellyfish can survive in their waters, this film sadly bears more resemblance to truth than science fiction. Shingo Yoshida’s (Japan) video Réprouvé is striking for its very absence of water; turning a garbage strewn wasteland in Chile into a beautiful sound installation, it is nevertheless a frightening glimpse of what our planet may soon look like if we do not take better care of it, and if we do not curb overproduction of waste. Nezaket Ekici’s Water To Water, the documentation of her performance at Berlin’s Haus Am Waldsee museum, poses a beautifully impractical solution to a future of impending water shortages. Over the course of several laborious hours she manually filters five pitchers of lake water, drunk with varying degrees of reluctance by her audience.

These video works in our program for Food Art Week may be only tangentially about food, and yet each work illustrates in its own way the vast diversity in which water impacts upon the cycle of life on our planet. From the desertification of climate change to the predicted floods of melting glaciers, water is as deadly in its scarcity as it is in excess. And yet, life cannot exist without it. WATER(PROOF) is about such paradoxes. In our utter dependence on water, we nevertheless contrive to poison and squander it. Nothing is waterproof, in the sense of being impervious to water, when water is perceived as integral to most every industry which sustains our lifestyles and quality of life. Yet our lifestyles are poisoning our planet. WATER(PROOF) assembles the positions and experiences of eight international artists, each proving, in their own way, the precarious paradoxes of the cycles of water consumption and production, integrally linked to what we eat and how we eat it.


ARTISTS

 

Shaarbek Amankul

New Society
2017, digital video, 2’40” (long version 7′)

The video New Society shows poor villagers on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, emptying aid packages of bottled water onto the arid ground so they can recycle the plastic for cash. The devastating irony by which the normally environmentally sound practice of recycling results in the wastage of water is a reflection upon the economic privation and shortsightedness wherein a population comes to prefer the quick cash from recycling to the water itself. This twisted take on the water economy is devoted to the search for social identity on the part of thousands of residents of the suburbs of Bishkek, (the so called “circle of self-builders”). This work looks at the population who left their villages after the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to remain marginalized to this day by the city infrastructure through unemployment and poverty.

Shaarbek Amankul – BIO

Shaarbek Amankul (b. 1959 in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, lives and works in Bishkek) is one of the leading artists and curators driving the emergence of Central Asian contemporary art. In his art practice he has shown work throughout Europe, Central, Asia, and the US. Through his curatorial practice, he strives to build a dialogue with other artists and audiences by organizing international artist retreats and exhibitions in Europe and in his native Kyrgyzstan. Since 2011, he has been running the Nomadic Art Camp, an annual international platform for young artists, providing much needed opportunities for artists from the region. Amankul is also the founder and director of the B’Art Art Center in Kyrgyzstan, which he founded in 2006.

Stefano Cagol

Evoke Provoke [the border]
2011, HD video, 12’30”

The impact which mankind has upon the natural environment is at the root of this work created at Kirkenes, in the Norwegian Arctic Circle, during one of the periods Cagol spent abroad as an artist-in-residence. Cagol staged a series of emblematic actions that he filmed with a video camera, in total solitude, immersed in a fascinating but hostile natural environment, in extreme climactic conditions. The setting seems to be cloaked in twilight, barely dispelling the darkness, and the temperature is 25 degrees below zero. In those frozen lands, Cagol tries to communicate in one way or another, using different forms of signaling. He endeavours to modify the landscape, to light it up, to melt the snow with a flame, but every attempt at interaction with this harsh environment is in vain. The irony here is not lost. While one man cannot make a visible impact upon this frozen landscape, the impact of mankind as a whole is all too devastating. For Cagol in this case the border is precisely the one between himself, his body and his mind, the extreme nature that surrounds him, and the impact which mankind has upon this natural environment. Evoke Provoke (The Border) was shown at the solo exhibition Concilio in the church of San Gallo, as a collateral event at the 54th Venice Biennale, and is held in the MOMENTUM Collection.

Stefano Cagol – BIO

Stefano Cagol (b. 1969 in Trento, Italy) received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, after having graduated from the Accademia di Brera in Milan. He participated in Manifesta 11 and Manifesta 7; at the 55th Venice Biennale, invited by the Maldives Pavilion; at the 54th Venice Biennale with a solo collateral event; and at the 1st Singapore Biennale. In 2017 a still from Evoke Provoke [the border] becomes part of the Collection of the German Ministry of Environment (Sammlung Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Deutschland), and he is part of the grand inaugural exhibition curated by Veit Loers at Haus Mödrath – Räume für Kunst in Cologne. In 2014-2015 his solo project “The Body of Energy (of the mind)” was presented at a series of European museums, such as the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Madre Museum in Naples, Maga Museum in Gallarate, Museion in Bolzano, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Museum Folkwang in Essen, Landmark / Bergen Kunsthall. Among grants and awards he won the Visit prize of Innogy Foundation in 2014 (Germany) and the Terna Prize for Contemporary Art in 2009 (Italy). He has been selected for many artist in residence programs including: Ruhr Residence 2016; Cambridge Sustainability Residency 2016; Air Bergen; BAR International in Kirkenes; International Studio and Curatorial Program ISCP in New York; ICP-International Center of Photography in New York. Stefano Cagol Lives and works in Trento.


Nezaket Ekici

Water To Water
2015, video documentation of live performance

Having participated in FAW2017, we are proud to invite Nezaket Ekici back to Water(Proof) for FAW2019 with documentation of her performance Water To Water (2015), and her video performance together with Israeli performance artist and filmmaker Shahar Marcus, Salt Dinner (2012).

In her performance Water To Water (2015), commissioned for her solo exhibition at Berlin’s Haus am Waldsee, Nezaket Ekici transforms the dirty water of the lake into drinkable water which her assistants offer to the spectators. With a performance practice indebted in equal measure to the visual opulence of the theatrical and the physical excesses of the durational, Ekici here embodies the spectacle of our water cycle. Seemingly floating above the lake in a voluminous red gown which also forms her water delivery system, Ekici laboriously pulls water up from the lake, bucket by bucket, and operates a hand-pumped water filter to channel the clean water through her dress into pitchers held by her assistants below. The performance, lasting several hours, results in five pitchers of water, drunk with varying degrees of reluctance by the audience. Ekici embodies through her own labor and sweat a metaphor for the invisible process delivering clean water to our taps. This most essential of resources is what we most often take for granted. Ekici’s performance subtly asks the questions at the back of all our minds: How clean is our water, really? And how much longer will we have clean water on tap?

Nezaket Ekici – BIO

Nezaket Ekici (b. 1970 in Kırşehir, Turkey) studied art pedagogy, art history, and sculpture at Ludwig Maximilian University and the Fine Arts Academy, Munich, and received her MA degree in art pedagogy (1994–2000). Thereafter, she studied performance art with Marina Abramovic at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig, where she received her BFA and MFA (2001–04). Nezaket Ekici recently participated in the prestigious International Artist Residency Programs of the German Academy in Rome at the Villa Massimo (2016-2017), and the German Foreign Ministry Residency in Tarabia, Istanbul (2015-2016). Recent group exhibitions include: 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2015); The Pleasure of Love, 56th October Salon, Belgrade (2016); The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi (2016); MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakau (2016); Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden (2016); Tel Aviv Museum (2016/2017); Gabriele Münter Preis, Akademie der Künste, Berlin & Frauenmuseum, Bonn (2017); Oslo Museum (2017); Tiroler Landesmuseum Innsbruck (2018); Sanatorium Istanbul (2018); The Gallery for Israeli Art at the Tivon Memorial Center (2018); Seoul Museum, Seoul (2018); Großen Kunstschau, Worpswede (2018/19); Museum of Islamic Art and Near East Culture Be‘er Sheva (2019). Nezaket Ekici lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Janet Laurence

Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), HD video 32’58”

Janet Laurence’s video Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef (2015), and accompanying photo series Corral Collapse Homeopathy (2015) were created for the UN Climate Conference,COP21, in Paris. Shot in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – a World Heritage site which is the planet’s largest living, and rapidly dying, structure – this series of works envisions a hospital for the Reef’s threatened corals and other marine species, making visible the otherwise invisible devastation beneath the surface of the sea, and offering hope for the healing of the marine world from the consequences of global warming and human impact. If we can care for marine life in the same way that we care for our own species, there is a chance of deflecting environmental catastrophe. Laurence’s work is an emergency response: a hospital for the Reef in this time of ecological crisis, intended to aid survival and effect transformation.

Janet Laurence – BIO

Janet Laurence (b. 1947 in Sydney, Australia) is among Australia’s most established artists. In 2015 she was the Australian representative for the COP21/FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate Exhibition for the UN Climate Conference in Paris, for which she created Deep Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef and Coral Collapse Homeopathy, both shown in this exhibition. Further selected recent international projects and exhibitions include: the 57th Biennale of Venice (2017); Veiling Medical Glass, A Medicinal Maze, Novartis Campus, Sydney (2017); The Treelines Track, Bundanon, Australia (2017); GASP: Parliament, Hobart, Tasmania (2017); Inside the Flower, IGA Berlin (2017); Schloss Biesdorf, Centre for Art and Public Space, Berlin (2017); Fellowship at the Hanse-WissenschaftKolleg (HWK), Germany (2016-2017); H2O Water Bar, Paddington Water Reservoir, Sydney (2016); Deep Breathing (Resuscitation for the Reef), Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Cuenca Bienal, Cuenca, Ecuador (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (2015); The Skullbone Experiment: A Paradigm of Art and Nature, Queen Victoria Museum, Tasmania (2014); Animate/Inanimate, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healsville, Victoria, Australia (2013); 1⁄2 Scene, Australia China Art Foundation Shanghai (2013); SCANZ: 3rd Nature, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2013); After Eden, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney (2012); The Alchemical Garden of Desire, McClelland Gallery, Victoria, Australia (2012). Janet Laurence is a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill, and Australia Council Fellowships, and the Alumni Award for Arts, University of New South Wales. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a former Board Member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and is a Visiting Fellow at the New South Wales University Art and Design. Janet Laurence lives and works in Sydney.


Shahar Marcus

Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus Salt Dinner
2012, video performance, 3’19”

Turkish/German artist Nezaket Ekici and Israeli artist Shahar Marcus together address geopolitical and environmental forces through the medium of performance in their video Salt Dinner (2012). Shot in the scorching heat of Israel’s Dead Sea, their performance ironically confronts human endurance with the extremes of nature and culture. In this actual and political hotbed, Muslim and Jew share an opulent feast. Whether a wedding or a wake remains unclear, but what looks like an absurd aquatic picnic is in truth a brutal endurance test for both artists. The excess of salt they are consuming with the sea water is as lethally dehydrating as the midday sun. Shot in a rapidly shrinking ocean in a part of the world fought over for millennia, this international summit offers no solutions for political and environmental stability.

Nezaket Ekici and Shahar Marcus both work separately as artists but started to collaborate on projects in 2012. Their ongoing project In Relation revolves around an exploration of time, space, culture, religion, and the often absurd ways in which people interact with the environment. In this, as a German-based Muslim and an Israeli-based Jew, they collaborate on performances and videos that bridge cultures and religions as well as the long distances between Berlin and Tel Aviv. Focusing on the origin of the latin word relatio (relation), meaning ‘bringing back’, they set out to bring back a knowledge that has been forgotten by most of us: a relation with ourselves and our environment. Since 2012 they have produced ten video works together: Salt Dinner, Sand Clock, Floating Ourselves, Clean Coal, Fossils, Fields of Breath and Lublin Beach, TBQ, all concentrating on the Ancient Greek aphorism γνῶθι σεαυτὸν: know thyself.

Shahar Marcus – BIO

Shahar Marcus (b. 1971 in Petach Tikva, Israel) studied Linguistics and History of Art at the University of Tel Aviv. 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. Food is also a major theme in Marcus’s works. For instance, his recurrent use of bread as a symbol of essentiality and survival is juxtaposed with military symbols. By 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. Shahar Marcus is an active artist for over a decade and has exhibited at various art institutions, both in Israel and around the world, including: The Tate Modern; The Israel Museum; 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, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, as well as intuitions in Poland and Italy. Shahar Marcus lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Almagul Menlibayeva

Transoxania Dreams
2011, HD video

Almagul Menlibayeva has been commissioned to create a series of works for the FAW2019 campaign. We are also proud to screen her video Transoxania Dreams (2011). Menlibayeva  films mythological narratives placed and staged in the vast landscape of her native Kazakhstan, ravaged by 60 years of Soviet occupation. She leads her audience to 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 politics.

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 quadruped, part person part animal, fearing their savage and magical powers. In Transoxiana Dreams Menlibayeva, a pictorial sorceress herself, breeds an eccentric storyline and fantastical imagery extracted deeply from her own atavistic repertoire; leading us visually through an existing, yet unimaginable, landscape in a distant and hypnagogic world.

Almagul Menlibayeva – BIO

Video artist and photographer Almagul Menlibayeva (b. 1969 in Almaty, Kazakh SSR) 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. She was also 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 lives and works in Almaty and Berlin.


Nina E. Schönefeld

Dark Waters
2018, 4K video, 15’55”

Dark Waters is set in the year 2029. All the oceans are so contaminated with plastic waste that they have become death zones. The only creatures still able to live there are poisonous jellyfish. The government is trying to keep this eco-disaster secret. The film narrates the risky quest for the truth by helicopter pilot Silver Ocean. The movie deals with the social, environmental and political climate of today and our future world. It questions the contemporary roles of female characters and heroes, exploring the relationship between art and the present digital age. The movie story imagines a world where, due to drastic environmental changes, we need to fight for our democratic rights and survival.

Nina E. Schönefeld – BIO

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. Together with Marina Wilde she founded “Last Night In Berlin” a cultural project/blog that documents art openings in Berlin. 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).

Shingo Yoshida

Réprouvé
2018, 4K video, 3’37”

Photographer and video artist Shingo Yoshida finds inspiration in travelling, myths, traditions and the overwhelming beauty of nature. 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, as well as his sense of wonder at encountering new cultures and ways of living. Shot in Calama, Chile, Shingo Yoshida’s film Réprouvé takes us through a garbage-strewn wasteland at the edge of the city, where the artist creates an oasis of beauty, turning discarded bear bottles into a sound installation. In an exhibition about water, Réprouvé is striking for its very absence of water. Creating beauty in the most unlikely of places, it is nevertheless a frightening glimpse of what our planet may soon look like if we do not take better care of our most necessary natural resource – water.

Shingo Yoshida – BIO

Shingo Yoshida, born in 1974 in Tokyo, and currently lives and works in Berlin. 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. in 2013 Yoshida completed the prestigious international artist residencies at Villa Arson Nice France – Centre National d’Art Contemporain, and was awarded the Fellowship of Overseas Study Programme for Artists by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government. Yoshida’s work has been shown in many international exhibitions, including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007, 2012); the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Santiago, Chile (2012); the 60th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, (2014); Videoart at Midnight #67: Shingo Yoshida, BABYLON, Berlin (2015); POLARIZED! Vision Competition Winner, Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland (2015); Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma, Japan (2016); 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); IkonoTV (2017). In 2016 Shingo Yoshida’s works entered into the following Collections in Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, Akademie der Künste, and Fluentum.


 

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Initiated by Tainá Guedes and

 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT

 

WITH THANKS TO OUR MEDIA PARTNERS

07/08/2015
Comments Off on Anxiety and Artificial Intelligence

Anxiety and Artificial Intelligence

 

 

On Autopilot: Anxiety and Artificial Intelligence

Transmediale 2016 Proposal

Curated by Jeni Fulton and Rachel Rits-Volloch, with Aaajiao

Part of:

The Chronus Art Center Residency in Artificial Intelligence at MOMENTUM

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

 

MOMENTUM and Chronus Art Center (CAC), two non-profit art institutions from Berlin and Shanghai respectively, with a shared focus on Time-Based Art and New Media, here join forces to address a topic which is increasingly prevalent in the anxieties of popular culture: Artificial Intelligence (AI). While AI is beginning to be increasingly addressed as both a subject and a medium by artists in the West, in China this is still a new and virtually unexplored artistic field. Taking this unique historical moment as a starting point, MOMENTUM and CAC will build on the success of previous cooperations, such as our 2014 exhibition PANDAMONIUM: Media Art From Shanghai, to look at China’s role in this newly emerging field. With MOMENTUM’s role as a bridge between international art communities with a mission to explore how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change, and CAC’s stated mission being to bring to the public awareness of the impending post-human reality and the resulting social and political implications by accentuating the dynamic synergy of art and science as a response to the challenges and opportunities that contemporary media society has given rise to – the topic of AI, and the position of Chinese media artists within an international context will be explored through an involved engagement with the Berlin art community and with audiences at Transmediale.

The talks, workshops, and presentations proposed will be created specifically for Transmediale 2016, but are part of a long-term cooperation between MOMENTUM and Chronus Art Center involving an Artist Residency Exchange in Artificial Intelligence. The participating Chinese artists will be selected from a shortlist of the leading artists working in the field. The jury for the final selection has not yet convened. We will inform Transmediale as soon as the selection is made. The presentations made for Transmediale 2016 will form a part of our Residency research, while the works produced as a result of this Residency and documentation of presentations and events at Transmediale will be shown in an exhibition on Artificial Intelligence at MOMENTUM, in parallel with Transmediale 2017.

 

 

The Chronus Art Center Residency in Artificial Intelligence at MOMENTUM

 

MOMENTUM will host 2 Chinese artists, selected by CAC, working with Artificial Intelligence to participate in a Research Residency beginning with participation in workshops/presentations at Transmediale in January 2016, and resulting in the creation of new work to be shown in a group exhibition on Artificial Intelligence – ‘On Autopilot’: Art and Artificial Intelligence – at MOMENTUM in parallel with Transmediale in January-February 2017. The other artists participating in this group show will be selected by a jury of MOMENTUM curators and external experts in the field. This jury has not yet convened. This exhibition will include documentation of all work and events done for this project at Transmediale. These workshops and presentations will form the basis for the artistic research for the creation of new works for the exhibition. The aim is for the exhibition to travel to Chronus Art Center in 2017, including the Transmediale material.

 

 

On Autopilot: Anxiety and Artificial Intelligence

 

Google’s head of technology, Ray Kurzweil, recently predicted that we will achieve human-level artificial intelligence (AI) by 2029. Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, has warned repeatedly and urgently that we require robot ethics, else we are in serious danger of computers that will obliterate their human creators. AI is both utopic and destructive, and this duality has fascinated writers from Karel Capek who coined the term ‘Robot’ in 1920, to Stanislew Lem and Isaac Asimov. Its fascination has endured in popular culture, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis via Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to I, Robot and Ex Machina. Recently, artists such as Ian Cheng, Lars TCF Holdhus, Yuri Pattinson, Cecile B. Evans and Harm van den Dorpel have programmed chatbots, created virtual tour guides, and breathed life into primitive animated communities. All works address a situation where the computer is treated as a “metaphor for an organism, not as a mere calculator.” Artistic interest in AI is thriving, and it is creating new forms of art.

With the theme of the 2016 edition of the Transmediale being that of the anxieties surrounding cultural production and life under digital capitalism, out of the four main strands, two lend themselves to artists working with themes of AI: Anxious to Make and Anxious to Share. The first stream looks at cybernetic automation, DIY culture and industrial production. What are the functions of production and creation under this aegis? In terms of AI, this can be understood as the intersection between machine intelligence, machine creation and human participation. The second stream, Anxious to Share, examines how information sharing is happening, both large scale through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, but also on smaller, more localised platforms, such as private WeChat or WhatsApp groups. One of the questions posed is ‘from a non-human perspective, are new scales of sharing emerging?’ In 2014, Twitter estimated that 8.5% of its users were bots. Twitter (and other social media) can be seen as large-scale experiments for the interaction between (primitive) AI and human agents. This opens up many avenues for artistic intervention, which can lead to workshops and participatory events, such as Pecha Kucha sessions.

MOMENTUM curators Rachel Rits-Volloch and Jeni Fulton will work closely with Shanghai-Based groundbreaking media artist and curator Aaajiao and the curatorial team of CAC to select 2 Chinese artists working in the fields of AI or machine intelligence and its interaction with human life and society, to come to Berlin for a 5-month Residency in Artificial Intelligence in January – May 2016. For Transediale 2016, these artists will present their work and artistic research as performance-lectures, with interactive installations open to audience participation. The curatorial team, including Aaajiao working from Berlin and networked with his extensive studio in Shanghai, will furthermore curate the presentation of related work by Chinese artists with participatory workshops to discuss and assess the artistic work being done in AI around the world and how China can emerge into this field. These workshops will be framed around the format of Pecha Kucha, with a presenation by all participants followed by an open discussion moderated by the curator of each section. We propose to hold daily Pecha Kucha events throughout the duration of Transmediale with topics selected by the curators and an open call to participants.

Because our juries have not yet convened to select the Chinese artists participating in the Residency, nor the other artists in the resulting group exhibition ‘On Autopilot’: Art and Artificial Intelligence, it is not possible to list all the participants at this time. This is very much a process-based project, which will unfold as participating artists are selected (by October 2015). Works presented as simple installations on monitors or laptops will be chosen from the shortlist of candidates for the CAC Residency in Artificial Intelligence and the On Autopilot Exhibition. The artists and curators will propose topics for each Pecha Kucha session and a shortlist of invited participants, with the rest being invited through an open call through our combined networks. MOMENTUM will document all these events and presentations for public display in our online Archive, and for inclusion in later iterations of the exhibition.

AI is, by its very nature, a cross-disciplinary field involving media art, computer programming, mediated interfaces, participatory and performative projects, just for a start. Transmediale audiences will be engaged on multiple levels through hybrid formats which at once exhibit and create, teach and learn. As traditionally Transmediale has attracted a mainly Western/US/European audience, it would be of significant benefit to involve artists working outside this geographical field of discourse, especially at this crucial moment when, in China, artistic work with AI is a newly emerging field.

 

 

Project Curators: Rachel Rits-Volloch & Jeni Fulton

Co-Curator, Participant: Xu Wenkai (Aaajiao)

 

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH, PhD – Founding Director, MOMENTUM

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. Having lectured in film studies and visual culture, her focus moved to contemporary art after she undertook a residency at A.R.T Tokyo. Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney. nRachel Rits-Volloch founded MOMENTUM in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. Since that time, MOMENTUM has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin at the thriving art center, Kunstquartier Bethanien.

 

JENI FULTON, PhD – Associate Director, MOMENTUM

Jeni Fulton is Associate Director at MOMENTUM. She is also the Art and Commissioning Editor for Sleek Magazine, a Berlin-based print publication covering all aspects of contemporary visual culture. She obtained an M.A. (Hons) in philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and is currently completing her PhD Thesis on “Value and Evaluation in Contemporary Art” at the Faculty for Cultural Theory at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung Berlin. Her PhD thesis examines how different systems of art evaluation (economic, symbolic and institutional) interact in the field of contemporary art to create a concept of contemporary artistic value. She has written catalogue texts for artists including Christian Jankowski. She is bilingual in German and English and is fluent in French.

 

XU WENKAI (AAAJIAO):
http://www.eventstructure.com
http://cornersound.com

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). He participated in Transmediale (2010) and in PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai at MOMENTUM (2014).

 

RELATED MATERIAL:

 

Article on Artificial Intelligence in Contemporary Art published by Jeni Fulton:

https://www.academia.edu/14461469/Artificial_Intelligence_in_Contemporary_Art

 

About Pecha Kucha >>

(A presentation format now expanded to a global network founded by Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003):

 

Previous cooperations between MOMENTUM and CAC:

PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai (2014) >>

The PANDAMONIUM Artist Residency >>

The Best of Times the Worst of Times Revisited (2014) >>

 

 

About MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence Program

MOMENTUM is a Gallery, a Project Space, a Collection, an Archive, a Residency, a Public Art Initiative, a Salon, and a Network active worldwide since 2010. MOMENTUM is a non-profit and non-commercial platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien. Through our program of Exhibitions, Education, Public Video Art Initiatives, Residencies, and the Collection and Performance Archive, we are dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists working with time-based practices. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, always seeking innovative answers to the question, ‘What is time-based art?’. As the world speeds up, and time itself seems to flow faster, MOMENTUM seeks to explore how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change. By enabling Exhibition, Discussion, Research, Creation, Collection, and Exchange, MOMENTUM is a platform which challenges the notion of time-based art in the context of both historical and technological development. Positioned as both a local and global platform with a vast international network, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. The long-term Goals of MOMENTUM are: Building Knowledge, Building Audiences, Supporting Artists and Artistic Innovation, bringing to Berlin work by international artists that would not otherwise have been seen here, and ensuring an international audience for exceptional local artists. The key ideas driving MOMENTUM are: Collaboration, Exchange, Education, Innovation, and Inspiration. With a non-exclusive and non-elitist view, MOMENTUM believes ART IS FOR EVERYONE.

The MOMENTUM Residency, dedicated to artistic research into time and temporality, houses up to 3 artists or curators at a time. With weekly supervision by the Residency Coordinator, and with the daily support of the curatorial team, MOMENTUM offers a process-based Residency, wherein artists are given individual guidance and support with the research and development of their work. Drawing on MOMENTUM’s extensive network of contacts in both the visual arts and the broader cultural field, the Residency arranges talks, workshops, studio and gallery visits, and other events in order to connect art professionals who mutually benefit from collaboration and exchange. As a platform active globally, MOMENTUM is committed to documenting its activities and making these available as educational resources for both art professionals and the general public.

ABOUT CAC

Established in 2013, Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives, creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.

Since its founding by the entrepreneur Dillion ZHANG, independent curator LI Zhenhua, and artist HU Jieming, CAC has organized a series of solo and group exhibitions, among them “Extra Time” by the Indian artist collective Raqs Media, and “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times” curated by David Elliott. In 2014 CAC presented Jeffrey Shaw and HU Jieming, an exhibition featuring two noted media artists, and “Pandamonium” in partnership with MOMENTUM, Berlin, and co-curated by David Elliott and LI Zhenhua. CAC also launched educational and fellowship programs in collaboration with a number of art institutions including the China Academy of Arts (Hangzhou), V2_Institute for Unstable Media (Rotterdam), and the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, among others. Located in the M50 Creative Park near the Suzhou River in Shanghai and occupying a multifunctional space of 800 square meters, CAC provides the public with a year-round exhibition calendar, lecture and workshop series and other special programs.

Beginning in 2015, under the artistic direction of ZHANG Ga, a curator and professor of media art, and with the support of a newly established international advisory board consisted of leading scholars, artists and museum professionals, CAC has restructured its programming by launching a series of interdisciplinary projects, including an ambitious research / creation–oriented fellowship and commissions project, thematic exhibitions and educational programs that contextualize historical and present day media art conditions, expanded global collaboration and exchange. CAC brings to the public awareness of the impending post-human reality and the resulting social and political implications by accentuating the dynamic synergy of art and science as a response to the challenges and opportunities that contemporary media society has given rise to.


07/08/2015
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Varvara Shavrova

 
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The Opera


by Varvara Shavrova

20 – 30 April 2016

 

Finissage 30 April @ 13.00

Gallery Weekend Brunch & Artist Talk

Varvara Shavrova in dialogue with Li Zhenhua

 

Matryoshka: Layers of Transformation in Peking Opera:

How Contemporary Artists Look at Traditional Chinese Opera

 
 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

 

 

The Opera

Originally commissioned as a multi-channel video projection for the Espacio Cultural El Tanque, an empty oil tank in Tenerife, and subsequently shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014, 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
WebsiteCVVimeo Channel

Varvara Shavrova was born in Moscow and studied fine art at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. After 15 years in London, she moved to Beijing, where she lived and worked for over five years. Now based in Dublin, Shavrova has shown in numerous public institutions and has curated significant exhibitions in Russia, China, Ireland and the UK. Her work is in many important public and private collections worldwide.  The Opera projection in Berlin is supported by Culture Ireland.

 

Li Zhenhua
Website

Li Zhenhua is a Beijing/Zurich-based multi-media artist, curator, writer and producer for international and Chinese contemporary culture. 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” at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014, received as member of the international advisory board for Videotage and Symbiotica in 2015. 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. He is the founding-director of Beijing Art Lab, a virtual and physical platform for art, research, and exchange, as well as of co-founder of Chronus Art Center, Shanghai. He is currently head-curator of Art Basel Hong Kong’s Film section (2015-16) and many other international initiatives.


PREVIEW – The Opera Trailer:

PREVIEW – Time Lapses:


 

Previous exhibitions
(Click on the images to see more detailed info)


 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION


WATCH THE ARTIST TALK

[fve] http://player.vimeo.com/video/217852431 [/fve]

 

PHOTOS OF THE TALK
Photo Credit: Kirill McGowan

31/07/2015
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Keegan Luttrell

 

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Keegan Luttrell

CV – Website

10 June – 12 August 2015

 

Keegan Luttrell is a multi-media artist living and working in Leysin, Switzerland. She completed her MFA in sculpture at Mills College in Oakland, California in 2013. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 with a BFA in Art History, Theory and Criticism and a concentration in Photography. She has shown works in San Francisco, Oakland, Brooklyn, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Aix-en-Provence, France, Geneva Switzerland and Athens and Santorini, Greece. She is a recipient of the Murphy and Cadogan fellowship award and the Betsy Worden Memorial Fund Scholarship. In Leysin, she teaches visual art at an international boarding school.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

““Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state …”

– The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

During her residency, Keegan Luttrell investigates the affects of institutionalization and the nature of time in an isolated state. Drawing inspiration from where she currently lives, a small mountain town in Switzerland that famously housed patients in Sanatoriums throughout the early 1900s, her research revolves around one’s relationship to time when removed from the outside world. Through creating various simulated lenses to these imagined worlds, a shift of what is real and what is perceived is depicted through portals and slivers of built and simulated environments. Through video, sculpture and performance, Luttrell has used her art practice and studio space to channel the behaviors of the isolated and the means and ways one builds a relationship to the awareness of time.

http://www.keeganluttrell.com/


PHOTOS OF THE OPEN STUDIO
(photos by Marina Belikova)

31/07/2015
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Sara Alavi Residency 2015

 

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Terna Prize Artist Residency at MOMENTUM


with

Sara Alavi

CV

1 May – 24 July 2015

 

Sara Alavi (b.1979, Tehran) is an Iranian artist based in Milan. She studied painting at the Art Department of Alzahra University in Tehran, concluding her studies in 2002. She moved to Rome in 2006 to continue her studies in multimedia projects at La Sapienza University, which she completed in 2010. Since 2011 she lives and works in Milan where she received her second level Degree in Painting at Accademia Di Belle Arti di Brera.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

We are sure that the shadows exist because we can see them. Existence concerns what can be defined, yet the only thing definable in case of a shadow is what creates it: light and a barrier.
Shadow is where the light does not exist. To talk about a shadow, we point out to the barrier that obstructs the light. The Shadow leads us to the barrier. It is our anticipation of the barrier obstructing the light that helps us recognize this undefinable thing — an undefinable thing that has the power of refreshing us in hot summer days.

It seems paradoxical that something undefinable can produce tangible feelings. Shadow persists in existing through our definitions.
As a matter of experience, for every material object, there corresponds the possibility of its shadow; but when we turn off the light, Shadow ceases to exist. So relying on our senses, its existence is not monumental but ephemeral.
Rather than a solid material, Shadow is a contradictory possibility. It is an elusive being between a déjà vu or a prediction.
Shadow resembles the possibilities like hope and despair. For every material object (or every event with material consequences), there corresponds the possibility of hope and despair. Hope indicates a barrier that gives rise to it. In a city destroyed in war, or in a living creature in a mortal condition, hope and despair coexist. Despair is the endless doubt that the shadow is merely an illusion.


PHOTOS OF THE OPEN STUDIO
(photos by Marina Belikova)


With the generous support of Premio Terna.

29/07/2015
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BALAGAN!!!

 
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EXHIBITIONS
 


BALAGAN!!!

CONTEMPORARY ART FROM THE FORMER
SOVIET UNION AND OTHER MYTHICAL PLACES

 

Opening 13 November

14 November — 23 December 2015

 

75 Artists from 14 Countries from the Former “East”

 

Curated by David Elliott

Produced by MOMENTUM

Part Of The
NORDWIND Festival >
 
[fve] http://vimeo.com/145039902 [/fve]

 



 

EXHIBITION at:

MOMENTUM
Mariannenplatz 2
10997 Berlin

Kühlhaus am Gleisdreieck
Luckenwalder Str. 3
10963 Berlin


OPENING HOURS – ALL VENUES:

 

Frid & Sat @ 12 – 8pm
Mon, Wed, Thurs, Sun @ 12 – 6pm
Closed Tuesdays

 



 

16 December 2015 at 2 – 8pm

BALAGAN!!! Symposium

@ Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

The Russians Have A Word For It: BALAGAN and the World Outside

Speakers:

Kathrin Becker // Ekaterina Degot // Volker Diehl // David Elliott //
Gabriele Knapstein // Olaf Kühl // Bojana Pejic // Asia Zak Persons

FOR MORE INFO CLICK HERE > >

 



 

 

— by David Elliott

 

 

Curatorial text

 

Balagan knows no borders. Although the contemporary condition of the world is almost impossible to categorise, the Russians have a single word for it that describes, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a mess, a SNAFU, the most unholy of cock-ups. What existentialism was for war-ravaged Europe, or ‘normality’ for the Cold War, balagan is for the whole world today.

BALAGAN!!! is therefore the framework for an exhibition curated by David Elliott in Berlin, for MOMENTUM and the NORDWIND Festival 2015, that shows contemporary art from just one part of the world, those countries that comprised the former USSR and its allies. In 1999 Elliott conceived the travelling exhibition AFTER THE WALL. Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe, that measured cultural change one decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, twenty-five years after this momentous event, he shows a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are lovingly shown in art as artists struggle to digest and reconcile what they have experienced and integrate this with their dreams of a new and different way of life.

The exhibition will take place from 14 November to 23 December in three venues: the museum spaces of the Max Liebermann Haus in Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, the rough industrial interiors of Kühlhaus, a former refrigeration plant on Gleisdreiecke, and in MOMENTUM, part of the Bethanien Art District in Kreuzburg. At the same time works by some artists in the exhibition will be shown in Hellerau in Dresden and kampnagel in Hamburg. A lecture, symposium and performance programme will also be organised in co-operation with ICI and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.

The story of BALAGAN is strongly embedded within all the arts, particularly in the commedia dell’arte that underwent a revival in Russia immediately before and after the Revolution. Derived from the Turkic and Persian for ‘a wooden platform’, the original Russian word meant ‘fairground’, or the lightly constructed booths that characterised them. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked there: puppeteers, clowns and jesters who made fun of and satirised established order.

In 1906, writer and poet Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921) finished his play Balaganshchik (variously translated as The Fairground Booth or The Puppet Show), the St. Petersburg première of which was directed by the avant-garde theatre director and actor Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), who also played Pierrot, its lead role. The riotous events of the opening night proved to be the first salvo in a continuing volley of artistic coups that lasted until the repression of the early 1930s. Blok’s intent in presenting such a dysfunctional masquerade to the public was to explode the social pretensions of Realist and Symbolist theatre by exposing its melodramatic clichés yet, in doing this, he was exposed the pain and drama of his times as well as on his personal experience and relationships. The creative fusion between the political, social and the personal is the impetus for BALAGAN!!! today.

Even during the dark years of Stalinist repression BALAGAN continued underground. While Europe was torn apart by World War II, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) completed his critical masterwork Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In this he regarded the upside-down-world of carnival as both a safety valve and a vision of a better life that depended, amongst other things, on the subversive effect of exhibiting publicly the private functions of the human body.1 Cultural dichotomies such as spirit and body, ‘high’ and ‘low’, rich and poor, sacred and profane were revealed as methods of social control, the disruption of which he highlighted in the grotesque realism of Rabelais’ writings and time. In the face of oppression laughter was an uncontrollable, therapeutic, liberating force. The revolutionary politics of laughter and the cathartic release that it promises are a central subject of the BALAGAN!!! exhibition.


 



 

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



 

 

 



 

ABOUT DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott is a curator, writer and teacher who has worked as director of modern and contemporary art museums and related institutions in Oxford, Stockholm, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney, Kiev and Moscow. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of the Council of Europe exhibition Art and Power. Europe under the Dictators, 1930 to 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 1999-2000 was, with Bojana Pejić, Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London; in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art and, in 2014, Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Biennale of Young Art in Moscow. In 2016 he will be Artistic Director of Les Plaisirs d’Amour, the biennial 56th October Salon in Belgrade. He is a visiting professor in Curatorial Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong and chairman of the board of Triangle Arts Network/Gasworks, London.

ABOUT NORDWIND FESTIVAL >

NORDWIND is one of the largest festivals for the arts from the European north. NORDWIND presents the work of contemporary artists from the Nordic and Baltic countries in four European cities every two years: Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Bern. The aim is to promote new artistic impulses and to transmit them all over Europe. According to this mission the program is just as diverse in terms of represented aesthetics, content and artistic disciplines. Founded in 2006 in Berlin, NORDWIND has now grown into a sustainable operating platform. NORDWIND is co-producer, initiator and promoter. The platform consolidates a network of institutions, artists and sponsors and promotes a continuous international exchange. The results of this work are presented every two years in the NORDWIND festival and, since 2014, supplemented by smaller topics in the festival-free years.

The thematic focus of the sixth festival edition in 2015 is the relationship between Europe and Russia. Titled “BALAGAN!!!” the festival this year focuses on the eastern neighbors, on Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. The BALAGAN!!! Exhibition, curated by David Elliott, is realised in cooperation with the international platform for time-based media art, MOMENTUM.






 
 

PHOTOS OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE

 

PHOTOS OF THE OPENING

 

PHOTOS OF THE INSTALLATION AT MAX LIEBERMANN HAUS
Photo Credit: Marina Belikova

 

PHOTOS OF THE INSTALLATION AT KÜHLHAUS BERLIN
Photo Credit: Marina Belikova

 

PHOTOS OF THE INSTALLATION AT MOMENTUM
Photo Credit: Marina Belikova

22/07/2015
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Publishing

 
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Publishing

 



 

MOMENTUM Exhibition Catalogues

 






22/07/2015
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Scheiße • 夏色 Zhou Xiaohu Solo Exhibition & Video Bureau presenting Zhou Xiaohu

 
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Scheiße • 夏色
 
Zhou Xiaohu Solo Exhibition

& Video Bureau presenting Zhou Xiaohu

 

OPENING 12 September 2015 @ 18:00

13 September – 1 November 2015

Curated by David Elliott

 

 
 
 
 

With Live Performance at MOMENTUM Gallery

12 September (SAT) 18:00-21:00
13 September (SUN) 15:00-17:00

18 September (FRI) 18:00-20:00 (Berlin Art Week)
19 September (SAT) 18:00-20:00 (Berlin Art Week)

26 September (SAT)
  3 October (SAT)
10 October (SAT)
17 October (SAT)
24 October (SAT)
31 October (SAT)
  1 November (SUN)    
  15:00-17:00


 

MOMENTUM is proud to present the first solo show in Germany of the pioneering Chinese video and animation artist Zhou Xiaohu. It is curated by English-born curator and writer, David Elliott, who has worked extensively on contemporary Asian art.

Scheiße • 夏色, German slang for faeces and a popular expletive, the artist’s choice for the exhibition’s title, is intended to reflect not upon his view of art but on the conditions in which all work is made, including art. This idea is clearly expressed in Das Kapital No. 1 – Questionnaire Show, (2015), a new site-specific performance and installation Zhou has made for this exhibition which has developed out of concerns that have run as a decisive element throughout his previous work.

Here, Zhou invokes sleazy peep shows and the sultry, inviting glances of Amsterdam “window girls” as ready-mades for a performance. A scantily clad actor reclines in a glass booth, telephone in hand; how she speaks and the style of her presentation mimics the live phone-ins on the adult channels of German TV. But on entering this exhibition visitors are presented with a choice: either they stand and watch or, if they pick up the handset, they are thrust into a scripted exchange of a completely unexpected order.

Instead of revolving around titillation, or the recital of a price-list of future delights, the exchange consists of an ideological ‘discussion’ about a new economic system. This is driven by a complex set of questions developed by the artist that question the economic and social status and role of the performer in the context of wider questions about the Chinese and world economies.

The visitor may either respond or remain silent. The exchange evolves into a kind of questionnaire, bound by common causes and emotions, that are related to global questions that affect us all – about power, economy, statehood, aspiration, communication, interpretation and misunderstanding.

Zhou Xiaohu is a member of the Chinese generation that experienced in childhood the hysterical, random cruelties of the Cultural Revolution, as well as the wild elation of the country ‘opening itself to the world’ throughout the 1980s. Like many others, he has greeted the booms and busts of both ideology and economics since that time with a mixture of incredulity and scepticism. Conflicting ideas: power and weakness, love and harshness, beauty and ugliness, naivety and cynicism, oppression and freedom, run as leitmotifs throughout his films, animations, installations and performances. Yet he has always been careful to expose these by casting a humane but provocative perspective on the different processes, forms, and media he feels are appropriate for his subject.

Zhou’s whole body of work may be seen as part of a longstanding Chinese artistic tradition in which the inner reflections of an individual collide with the wider political contexts within which they find themselves. Yet it may also be placed within a more recent current of scepticism that focuses on the discrepancies between dominant ideology and economic policy. This he treats in a range of different media, using surreal, absurdist narratives and situations that may be understood as both parodies and allegories of what he sees before him.

Accompanying this new work, MOMENTUM is also showing two of Zhou’s early animated videos that reflect on the body – physical, gendered and political – in radically different ways: The Gooey Gentleman (2002) and Conspiracy (2004), show him making violent drawings on his own skin of the transforming bodies of others. These are accompanied by Secret (2012), an animated video projection on two painted aluminium panels, that seem to be depicting someone being shot….

During the exhibition, viewing access to an archive of all his films will also be made available through Video Bureau at MOMENTUM.


Zhou Xiaohu
WebsiteCV

Zhou Xiaohu (b. 1960 Changzhou, lives and works in Shanghai) was one of the first contemporary artists in China to work experimentally with sculptural ideas of video and animation. These works often reflect upon power, the role of the media, and the identity of the artist. Equally important are his social interventions that treat contemporary social paradoxes as ‘ready-mades’ that allow him to formulate art and society assemblages, or what he calls “collaborative installations”. The work of Zhou Xiaohu has been exhibited at MoMA, New York, USA; Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; Kunst Museum, Bern, Switzerland; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; and the International Center of Photography, New York, USA and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien, Austria.

Zhou Xiaohu has participated in such art exhibitions as the Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China (2002); Seville International Art Biennale, Seville, Spain, (2004); China Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2004); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (2006); The Real Thing, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2007); Not Soul For Sale, Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London, UK (2010); the 8th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju Art Museum, Korea (2010); and Pandamonium: Media Art from Shanghai at MOMENTUM, Berlin (2014). Zhou Xiaohu was awarded the CCAA Award in 2002 and 2006; and in 2014-2015 he is the recipient of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program award to live and work in Berlin for one year.

David Elliott
 

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He has been Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-96), Director of Moderna Museet 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), Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), and Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014). He is a visiting professor in curatorship at the Chinese University in Hong Kong and chairman of the board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London. In 2016 he will be Artistic Director of the biennial October Salon in Belgrade, Serbia.



资本论No.1—问卷秀
Das Kapital No.1—Questionnaire show

Installation with Performance: Questionnaire show, tunnel installation, interactive phone and questionnaire.

 

同谋 Conspiracy 2004
Two channel animation video projection:6 min 12 sec


秘密 Secret 2012
Animation video projection on painting: 3 min 20sec


蜜糖先生 The gooey gentleman 2002

Animation Video:4 min 20 sec

 
 
 


THE OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION
(photos by Marina Belikova)


THE ARTIST TALK
(photos by Marina Belikova)

Scheisse by Zhou Xiaohu – artist talk from Momentum Worldwide on Vimeo.

 

The exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the White Rabbit Collection


 

In parallel to the exhibition we present a comprehensive archive of Zhou Xiaohu’s video works presented by Video Bureau.


Video Bureau

In parallel with the opening of Scheisse at MOMENTUM, Video Bureau inducts Zhou Xiaohu into their archival holdings, with his video works and texts about his work available to view at the Video Bureau spaces in Beijing and Guangzhou, and at MOMENTUM concurrently with Zhou Xiaohu’s solo exhibition.

Video Bureau is a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform to exhibit, organize and archive video art. With two spaces in Beijing and Guangzhou, the mission of Video Bureau is to collect and organize artworks of video artists in order to build a video archive that welcomes research and viewing. As an institute opens to the public, every two months Video Bureau features one artist’s video works, and hosts related events.




17/07/2015
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LOOP Barcelona 2015

 
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Two MOMENTUM curated programmes

Presented at LOOP Barcelona 2015

@ Media Lounge

4 – 6 June 2015

 

 

Selected Works from the MOMENTUM Collection

Featuring:

Eric Bridgeman // Osvaldo Budet  // Nezaket Ekici // Thomas Eller
James P. Graham // Mariana Hahn // Zuzanna Janin
Gülsün Karamustafa // Mark Karasick // Hannu Karjalainen
Janet Laurence // Gabriele Leidloff // Sarah Lüdemann // MAP Office
Kate McMillan // Tracey Moffatt // Qiu Anxiong // Martin Sexton
Sumugan Sivanesan

 
ABOUT the MOMENTUM COLLECTION

The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists who’s work was shown at MOMENTUM | Sydney in May 2010. The donations of their works constituted their investment in MOMENTUM’s then-nascent model as a global and mobile platform for showing time-based art. Five years later, the MOMENTUM Collection has expanded from its original roster of 10 to 32 exceptional international artists. The Collection represents a cross-section of 120 outstanding artworks in a diversity of media: video, performance, photography, painting, collage, and text. It ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists representing 18 countries worldwide: Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Korea, China and Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, Ethiopia, Poland, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the US, the UK, Canada. The growth of the Collection reflects the growth of MOMENTUM itself. While we develop and nurture our relationships with these artists, we continually endeavor to bring their work to new audiences worldwide – both through our web archive, and through cooperations with partners such as LOOP and IkonoTV, as traveling exhibitions, and through educational initiatives such as the Time_Art_Impact Dialogues with Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
[click HERE for more information].
 

To view the MOMENTUM Collection CLICK HERE >>
 

READ HERE THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION CATALOGUE

BEYOND THE IMAGE: SOUND
MOMENTUM curated programm for Ikono TV

Featuring:

Lutz Becker // Amir Fattal // Gülsün Karamustafa // Hannu Karjalainen // Janet Laurence

 

Lutz Becker, After The Wall, 2000
Amir Fattal, From the End to the Beginning, 2014
Gülsün Karamustafa, Personal Time Quartet, 2000
Hannu Karjalainen, Nanjing Grand Theatre, 2012
Janet Laurence, Vanishing, 2009/10

Read the full info here >>

 


 

We are proud to lead a Professionals Meeting for LOOP Studies:
A Two-Way Street: Cultivating Collections Through Cooperation & Inquiry


Following the founding principle of casting light on the current trends in video art and presenting these to the general public, LOOP continues to focus on the advancement of aspiring young artists, while also presenting established positions of video art. LOOP teams up with an international community of gallerists, artists, curators, collectors and institution directors to develop projects worldwide which aim to explore critically the capacities of video and film in today’s contemporary art discourses and contribute to the exchange of ideas that drive the artworld forward. Every year, LOOP hosts LOOP Barcelona, the main meeting point and highlight for the international video art community that through its three sections -Fair, Festival & Studies-, brings together an accurate selection of contemporary video art works, premieres new productions, features exhibitions, specific projects and screenings, and displays a large programme of talks dealing with current discussions and positions of video art.

Throughout the year, LOOP undertakes a myriad of projects that develops in collaboration with leading international agents and that materialize in different formats and locations: from comissioned projects to touring exhibitions in leading venues, programmes of talks and screenings, among others. LOOP is also home to a living archive of video and film resources accessible online that includes vast documentation on relevant topics for the video studies: from papers, video recordings, interviews, publications and a growing cartography of the agents of the video art field.


17/07/2015
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Open studio

 
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MOMENTUM Artists-in-Residence OPEN STUDIO

featuring Keegan Luttrell and Sara Alavi

 

22nd of July
19:30

Hochstraße, 45 13357 Berlin
(Adjacent to the Humboldthain S-bahn)

 

How do we experience time in an isolated state? How do shadows produce vivid feelings? Sara through her installation will provoke our thinking and will make us doubt things we considered as given. She will attempt to make us ponder about what we expect and how we react when an outcome has turned out differently. Furthermore, she closely examines a so common object, the chair, and the numerous thoughts and situations with which it is connected, throughout the world. 

Keegan simulates circumstances of isolation and how they could affect a human mind, body or environment. Her multi-media installations make us rethink the lapse of time and the deviation from normal. How does our perception change when we are outside the social environment? How do we interact with the new elements around us? Could we feel isolated even within our safety net?


“Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state … Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.”

– The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

 

During her residency, Keegan Luttrell investigated the affects of institutionalization and the nature of time in an isolated state. Drawing inspiration from where she currently lives, a small mountain town in Switzerland that famously housed patients in Sanatoriums throughout the early 1900s, her research revolved around one’s relationship to time when removed from the outside world. Through creating various simulated lenses to these imagined worlds, a shift of what is real and what is perceived is depicted through portals and slivers of built and simulated environments. Through video, sculpture and performance, Luttrell has used her art practice and studio space to channel the behaviors of the isolated and the means and ways one builds a relationship to the awareness of time.

Sara Alavi makes us rethink our belief that shadows exist just because we can see them. Existence concerns what can be defined, yet the only thing definable in the case of a shadow is what creates it: light and a barrier.

Shadow is where the light does not exist. To talk about a shadow, we point out to the barrier that obstructs the light. It is our anticipation of the barrier obstructing the light that helps us recognize this undefinable thing. It seems paradoxical that something undefinable can produce tangible feelings. Shadow persists in existing through our definitions.

As a matter of experience, for every material object, there corresponds the possibility of its shadow; but when we turn off the light, Shadow ceases to exist. So relying on our senses, its existence is ephemeral. It is an elusive being between a déjà vu or a prediction.

Shadow resembles the possibilities like hope and despair. For every material object, there corresponds the possibility of hope and despair. Hope indicates a barrier that gives rise to it. In a city destroyed in war, or in a living creature in a mortal condition, hope and despair coexist. Despair is the endless doubt that the shadow is merely an illusion.


ABOUT KEEGAN LUTTRELL
CVWebsite

Keegan Luttrell is a multi-media artist living and working in Leysin, Switzerland. She completed her MFA in sculpture at Mills College in Oakland, California in 2013. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 with a BFA in Art History, Theory and Criticism and a concentration in Photography. She has shown works in San Francisco, Oakland, Brooklyn, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Aix-en-Provence, France, Geneva Switzerland and Athens and Santorini, Greece. She is a recipient of the Murphy and Cadogan fellowship award and the Betsy Worden Memorial Fund Scholarship. In Leysin, she teaches visual art at an international boarding school.

ABOUT SARA ALAVI
CV

Sara Alavi (b.1979, Tehran) is an Iranian artist based in Milan. She studied painting at the Art Department of Alzahra University in Tehran, concluding her studies in 2002. She moved to Rome in 2006 to continue her studies in multimedia projects at La Sapienza University, which she completed in 2010. Since 2011 she lives and works in Milan where she received her second level Degree in Painting at Accademia Di Belle Arti di Brera.She is the current recipient of the Terna Prize which awarded her a residency here in Berlin.



PHOTOS OF THE EVENT
(photos by Marina Belikova)

17/07/2015
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The Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker Kunstsalon

 
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The Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker,
A Tale on Free Climbing Society

 
Luana Perilli in conversation with Sumugan Sivanesan
 

27 June 2015


 

 

ABOUT LUANA PERILLI

CVWebsite

Luana Perilli (b.1981, Roma) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 2010, where she currently lives and works in Rome. She was awarded with several residency grants: Pan Studios Program, Pan Museum, Napoli (supervised by Daniel Buren) in 2010; Art Omi, New York, grant by Dena Foundation in 2008 and Cité Internationale des Arts, grant by Incontri Internazionali D’Arte, Paris, in 2008 and 2004. Recent shows include: ‘Q.I vedo’, Napoli (), ‘Solitary shelters’ at The Gallery Apart, Roma, IT; ‘All for one’ at Medium Galerie, Bratislava, SK; ‘Roommates-Coinquilini Luana Perilli /Carola Bonfili’, MACRO, Roma, IT. Perilli has contributed to numerous group shows, including the 2014-15 Kochi Muziris Biennale in MOG Goa Museum, India; Internaturalità in PAV, Torino; Patria Interiore-interior homeland Golden thread Gallery, Project Space, Belfast; ITALIENISCHE KUNST HEUTE, Stadtgalerie, Kiel; Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen; RE-generation, MACRO, Roma; Omaggio a Graziella Lonardi Buontempo , PAN, Napoli; An intimate story – Cotroneo Collection, MAMM Multimedia Art Museumof Moscow, Moscow.Perilli is currently professor of Multimedia Installation at Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and professor of Art Sudio and Drawing at Cornell University in Rome.

Learn more about Luana Perilli’s Terna Prize Artist Residency at MOMENTUM >>

ABOUT SMUGAN SIVANESAN

CVWebsite

Sumugan Sivanesan is a self-described ‘anti-disciplinary’ artist and a transcultural radical. His eclectic practice is concerned with the legacies of colonialism, the experience of cultural difference, and diaspora. Sivanesan often engages with the theory of ‘necropolitics’ coined by the Cameroonian philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe. Building upon and going beyond the Foucauldian notion of biopower, the domain of life over which power has taken control, ‘necropolitics’ asserts that contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death has reconfigured the relationships between resistance, sacrifice, and terror.


14/07/2015
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Beyond the Image Sound on IkonoTV

 
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BEYOND THE IMAGE: SOUND

MOMENTUM Carte Blanche program broadcast on

IkonoTV

3 June – 3 July 2015

IkonoTV Logo

Featuring:

Lutz Becker // Amir Fattal // Gülsün Karamustafa
Hannu Karjalainen // Janet Laurence

 

On screening also at LOOP Art Fair 2015 >>

 

Since the 70s, Berlin has attracted some of the most avant-garde musicians from around the globe, with a strong upsurge of experimental music in the 90s set within the rich atmosphere of possibility that marked the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, Berlin’s sound-scene continues to take a leading role on the international stage, with key yearly events such as Atonal, MaerzMuzik and CTM and permanent platforms such as N.K. Projekt, Ausland and Errant Bodies that stand at the forefront of their field. Sound in Berlin has maintained its status as a realm of emancipatory, political and artistic potential. Its current focus, however, has shifted from music to sound-art, though the line distinguishing these is thin and fluctuating. Increasingly, Berlin’s music venues offer installations and auditory experiments with space and new technologies, rather than what one might conventionally describe as a ‘concert’.

Within this backdrop and inspired by recent events in the city, as well as the rich discourse that they have engendered, for the past year MOMENTUM has been engaging more closely with sound. This has been marked by various new acquisitions to the Collection that redefine and expand our very understanding of time-based art. It has also entailed a revaluation of some of the older works in our Collection, in which the sonic elements have proven highly deserving of more focussed attention. In this sense, our explorations into sound are also exemplary of the way in which we engage with our collection; keeping it alive by continuously revisiting it from different perspectives and continuously questioning the nature and relevance of time-based art.

 

For LOOP 2015 and specifically within its strand Beyond the Image: Sound, MOMENTUM proposes a programme that represents 6 distinct artistic strategies is which sound takes on a decisive role. In them, the relationship of sound to the moving image is highly diverse, ranging from its imaginative or mnemonic potential in the absence of imagery, to sound as a powerful means to arouse empathy in direct relation to the moving image, to sound as the main content, superseding the primacy of that which is depicted on the screen. It is due to the rich diversity within its delimited focus that this programme is aimed to foment a critical reconsideration of the agency of sound within time-based art: an element that is often overseen or taken for granted, especially within the moving image, but that has immense emotive and even physical effects on the viewer/listener.


Artists and Works

 

Lutz Becker, After The Wall, 2000

CVWebsite

Lutz Becker was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany and now lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated under Thorold Dickinson and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001).

Becker re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999 and subsequently in Berlin in 2000 at the Hamburger Bahnof, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. MOMENTUM presents the sound sculpture After The Wall in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Wall 25 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of the idealogical empire of Communism.

Amir Fattal, From the End to the Beginning, 2014

CVWebsite

Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Fattal’s overarching concerns are the cultural connections between Germany and Israel – countries inexorably linked through their history, memory, culture, architecture, and the geographical diaspora which resulted in mass migrations, transposing cultures to new and different nations. The territory of Israel was once part of the Ottoman Empire, and then later administered by the British, yet the very creation of Israel is the legacy of the failed attempt to start the new Third Reich.

From the End to the Beginning is based on a live performance of Richard Wagner’s Vorspiel und Liebestod sequence played in reverse order. The video version of this performance was filmed in the big hall of the Berlin Funkhaus, built in the late 1950s as East Berlin’s new radio station, after musicians could no longer travel freely between the two sections of the city. Following the process of abstraction in music, theatre and light installation, this work is also a reflection on cultural taboos and historical memory. Wagner’s works remain banned from public performance in Israel and have become a symbol for the catastrophic ramifications that anti-Semitism can cause. Rewriting Richard Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ line by line, fragmenting it to copy the last note as the first note, much as the Hebrew alphabet is read, the performance creates a new conceptual work challenging contemporary perceptions of historical and cultural readings to illustrate how culture is always an assemblage of the fragments of others.


Gülsün Karamustafa, Personal Time Quartet, 2000

CVWebsite

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

The four-part video Personal Time Quartet is concerned with the point of in- tersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country. Having been invited to an exhibition of German domestic inte- riors from various periods in the twentieth century at the Historical Museum in Hanover, Karamustafa was inspired by what she saw there to take a closer look at the similarities between her own childhood reminiscences and these muse- ological German living spaces. The timeframe (or ‘personal time’) covered by these four video’s begins in the year of her father’s birth and ends in the early days of her own childhood. A video screen placed in each of the rooms shows the same young girl – the artist’s alter ego – engaged in various activities. We see her skipping with a skipping rope (dining room, 1906), sorting and folding laundry (kitchen, around 1913), opening cupboards and drawers (living room and parents’ bedroom, around 1930) and painting her nails (room from the 1950s).

Hannu Karjalainen, Nanjing Grand Theatre, 2012

CVWebsite

Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist Hannu Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School. Woman on the Beach is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. In subsequent work Karjalainen uses the medium of the moving image to reflect back upon painting and the material qualities of paint. Colour is an elusive subject matter. It is intangible and abstract as much as it is coded, branded and harnessed for different purposes. Hannu Karjalainen is particularly interested in how meaning is attributed to a colour, and how this mechanism can be exploited by re-contextualization, using colour and its supposed meaning as a critical tool to investigate the world around us. In an ongoing series of works that turn classical portrait photographs into moving color palets, Karjalainen again mobilizes the traditionally still image. Looking at painting through photography, its role becomes reversed.

Nanjing Grand Theatre explores the memory inherited in an architectonic site. The Nanjing Grand Thetre, a western classical style building designed by Chinese architects originally housed western cinema in the 1930s Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution the building was dedicated to Beijing Opera and temporarily called Revolution Concert Hall. Now renamed Shanghai Concert Hall, the building is a prime location for classical music concerts. The massive construction plans in the Shanghai city centre called for the demolition of the building several times, as it was both in the way of a highway and a metro line. Finally a different solution was found: in early 2000s the building was moved from it’s original location by lifting the whole 5650 ton building up 3.38 meters and dragging the building to a new location some 70 meters southeast. The video work is shot on the original site of the concert hall, where an elevated highway now passes through the city. Passing lights and shadows take human forms as we hear snippets from the soundtrack of the very first film screened in Nanjing Grand Theatre, Broadway (1929). The film adaptation of the musical is now deemed lost in its original form, with only an edited version made from separate silent and talkie versions existing.


Janet Laurence, Vanishing, 2009/10

CVWebsite

Australian artist Janet Laurence‘s work explores a poetics of space and materiality through the creation of works that deal with our experiential and cultural relationship with the natural world. Her work echoes architecture while retaining organic qualities and a sense of instability and transience. It occupies the liminal zones and meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory. Laurence’s practice includes both ephemeral and permanent works as well as installations that extend from the museum/gallery into both urban and landscape domain. Her work, centered on living nature, bleeds between the architectural and the natural world, physically and metaphorically dissolving these boundaries. Her spaces are immersive and reflective, creating a play between perception and memory. Alchemical transformation, history and perception are underlying themes. Laurence’s work is represented in major Australian and international collections and has been included in many national survey exhibitions.

Vanishing is Janet Laurence’s first video work, made during a residency at the Toranga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. After working primarily in photography and installation, Laurence began an ongoing filmic study of animals both in the wild and in nature reserves. She has developed a filming technique in which she uses infrared night cameras – similar to those used by naturalists, as many animals are primarily active at night – in order to achieve a negative effect and distorted, ghostly coloration. Originally shown as a two-screen installation, this single channel version was specially released for the MOMENTUM Collection following the artist’s involvement on a MOMENTUM panel on art and science.

About IkonoTV

Founded by Elizabeth Markevitch, IkonoTV is a unique television channel broadcasting art and only art 24/7 on HD. Offering a pure visual experience, an ever-changing playlist of art films is produced in close collaboration with more than 400 international artists, over 200 collections, archives and the most important museums of the world. All productions are free from additional sound or commentary, allowing an international audience to be exposed to a completely new approach to the arts of all epochs, from antiquity to contemporary art. Your television screen is transformed into a lively painting, a window straight into the worlds leading museums and galleries.  In the conviction that everyone should have access to art in their homes, IkonoTV is viewable in more than 30 countries worldwide (average technical HD reach: 37 million households) through IPTV’s in Germany and France, through IPTV and ArabSat in the MENASA region, and internationally on our HD web stream.

Watch IkonoTV: www.ikono.tv

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01/07/2015
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Luana Perilli Residency 2015

 

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Terna Prize Artist Residency at MOMENTUM


with

Luana Perilli

CV – Website

1 May – 26 June 2015

 

Luana Perilli (b.1981, Roma) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 2010, where she currently lives and works in Rome. She was awarded with several residency grants: Pan Studios Program, Pan Museum, Napoli (supervised by Daniel Buren) in 2010; Art Omi, New York, grant by Dena Foundation in 2008 and Cité Internationale des Arts, grant by Incontri Internazionali D’Arte, Paris, in 2008 and 2004. Recent shows include: ‘Q.I vedo’, Napoli (), ‘Solitary shelters’ at The Gallery Apart, Roma, IT; ‘All for one’ at Medium Galerie, Bratislava, SK; ‘Roommates-Coinquilini Luana Perilli /Carola Bonfili’, MACRO, Roma, IT. Perilli has contributed to numerous group shows, including the 2014-15 Kochi Muziris Biennale in MOG Goa Museum, India; Internaturalità in PAV, Torino; Patria Interiore-interior homeland Golden thread Gallery, Project Space, Belfast; ITALIENISCHE KUNST HEUTE, Stadtgalerie, Kiel; Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen; RE-generation, MACRO, Roma; Omaggio a Graziella Lonardi Buontempo , PAN, Napoli; An intimate story – Cotroneo Collection, MAMM Multimedia Art Museumof Moscow, Moscow.Perilli is currently professor of Multimedia Installation at Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and professor of Art Sudio and Drawing at Cornell University in Rome.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

During her Residency in Berlin, Luana Perilli will further deepen her investigation into post-critical collective awareness and the perception of nature.

The history of the city itself provides a great range of provoking issues and locations that recently changed paths of use and meaning, as they became taken over by necessity, aswell as by a will to activate a new awareness in the interpretation of spaces.

These locations are a large field for Perilli’s artistic investigation, alongside her interest in the idea of shelters, left overs and post-failure perception of the environment.

This critical shift and the ecological issues related to urban beekeeping and urban crops will inspire a new corpus of works made of videos, drawings and sculptural installations. Perilli will dedicate special attention to issues around collective intelligence.


Luana Perilli’s Kunst Salon:

Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker, A Tale on Free Climbing Society
Luana Perilli in conversation with Sumugan Sivanesan

Read more about the event >>

With the generous support of Premio Terna.

01/07/2015
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Unfamiliar Show at Millerntor Gallery

 
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UNFAMILIAR SHOW

Selected Works from the MOMENTUM Collection

 

2 – 5 July 2015

At Millerntor Gallery

Heiligengeistfeld 1, 20359, Hamburg

 

 

Featuring:

Eric Bridgeman // Nezaket Ekici // Theo Eshetu
Amir Fattal // Gülsün Karamufa // Tracey Moffatt
Martin Sexton // Sumugan Sivanesan

 

 

Artists and Works

ERIC BRIDGEMAN

CVWebsite

Eric Bridgeman is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Papua New Guinea and currently based in Brisbane, Australia. Bridgeman commenced his Bachelor of Photography at the Queensland College of Art in 2005, majoring in Art Practice under the guidance of Ray Cook, Marian Drew and Jay Younger. He spent his final year in 2008 experimenting in Interdisciplinary Sculpture, which saw the beginnings of his works for The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules (2008/09). In 2008, the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) selected this work for inclusion in The New Fresh Cut, giving Bridgeman the exposure and support to further the two-year long project. From this breakthrough opportunity, Bridgeman’s work attracted support and opportunities from organizations and institutions such as Next Wave Festival (Melbourne), Gallery 4A (Sydney), Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney) and the University of Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane).

The Fight, 2008

In 2009, Bridgeman traveled through remote parts of the Chimbu Province, his mother country, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. As he was born in Australia, he became increasingly conscious of his own “white” Australian presence. The Fight is based on ethnographic conventions, from National Geographic to Irving Penn, which once aided in the promotion and consumption of PNG as Australia’s next frontier. Bridgeman filmed two groups of men from his own clan, the Yuri. Through acting out Western stereotypes of tribal war, The Fight parodies the history of representation and the subsequent impact on the national and cultural identity of PNG.

NEZAKET EKICI

CVWebsite

Nezaket 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 suspensefully countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies 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. Born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970, Ekici studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramovic. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Veiling and Reveiling, 2010

Whether in Germany or in the artist’s native Turkey, the question of the Tschador’s meaning and effects remains controversial. How do streamlined notions of feminine beauty intersect with a headscarf’s political and religious references? For Ekici, stories of Turkish students donning wigs to conceal their forbidden headscarves at university, or methods of transporting beauty goods beneath the veil, have led her to question if women can ever truly wear head coverings out of free will. In the video performance Veiling and Reveiling, Ekici wears a Tschador in which various items are concealed: a wig, make-up, bag, bra, dress, tights, jewelry, shoes, artificial eyelashes. The video begins when the individual pieces are produced from the pockets of the Tschador and concludes when the veil has been fully redecorated, a willful inversion of public and private space.


THEO ESHETU

CVWebsite

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. 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, 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.

Questa è vita [That’s Life], 1986

Both Resignation and Affirmation, this early experimental video work by Theo Eshetu faces the inherently racist quality of television headon, transforming it into a celebratory Anthem of Black pride. Part biographic expression of interracial conflicts, the artist seeks an understanding of a video poetic through ritual, make-up, gestures, postures and dances, clothes, nudity and the blury pixels of the video signal. This work aims to both destroy and celebrate the possibilities of an a Art for Television : QUESTA E’ VITA (which synonymously in Italian sound like Questa e’ Video, This is Video,) explores new forms of video-making and the artist’s search for a new video language by going back to his African roots. Following the form of American Jazz musicians experimenting with new sound by going back to their African roots and the early cut-up method of hip Hop musicians, Questa e’ Vita is a Pop Video to Art Blakey’s drum solo in “Orgy in Rhythm”. [TE]

Whereas Theo Eshetu is a contributing artist to the MOMENTUM Collection, Questa è vita is not represented in the Collection.

AMIR FATTAL

CVWebsite

Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Fattal’s overarching concerns are the cultural connections between Germany and Israel – countries inexorably linked through their history, memory,
culture, architecture, and the geographical diaspora which resulted in mass migrations, transposing cultures to new and different nations.

Atara, 2015

The video installation Atara is dealing with different layers of the concept of resurrection in the context of German history. It combines together a reversed version of the Liebestod song from the opera “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner – that Fattal previously recorded together with an orchestra at the Berliner Funkhaus – together with a video taken at the workshop of the Berliner Stadtschloss in Spandau, where the new Baroque-style stone facade of the Stadtschloss is currently being rebuilt. The word Atara in Hebrew means crown, which is used in a famous Talmud expression meaning “restore to it’s former glory“. The video is dealing with a process that is taking place ‘out of time‘ or ‘out of space‘, in this case, breaking the historical narrative of creation and destruction in the context of two buildings that used to stand at the same place in Berlin: the Berliner Stadtschloss and the Palast der Republik. Their story brings together different epochs in the political history of Berlin and their aesthetics reflect the changing ideologies that they used to represent. It is asking the question: what does it mean to build a Baroque style palace in the year 2015 in a state with no monarchy? [AF]

Whereas Amir Fattal is a contributing artist to the MOMENTUM Collection, Atara is not represented in the Collection.


GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA

CVWebsite

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

Personal Time Quartet, 2000

The video and sound installation Personal Time Quartet 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 the work is turned on anew, the four channels never synchronize, instead producing each time a new quartet to accompany the looping images. The four-part video Personal Time Quartet is concerned with the point of in- tersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country. Having been invited to an exhibition of German domestic inte- riors from various periods in the twentieth century at the Historical Museum in Hanover, Karamustafa was inspired by what she saw there to take a closer look at the similarities between her own childhood reminiscences and these muse- ological German living spaces. The timeframe (or ‘personal time’) covered by these four video’s begins in the year of her father’s birth and ends in the early days of her own childhood. A video screen placed in each of the rooms shows the same young girl – the artist’s alter ego – engaged in various activities. We see her skipping with a skipping rope (dining room, 1906), sorting and folding laundry (kitchen, around 1913), opening cupboards and drawers (living room and parents’ bedroom, around 1930) and painting her nails (room from the 1950s). The films themselves, however, were not shot inside the museum, but rather in her apartment in Istanbul. Viewing them therefore gives rise to the most diverse associations. The girl skipping suggests a carefree childhood, the nail-painting a concern with the artist’s own femininity, the folding of laundry could be read as preparation for her future role of housewife, while 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, therefore, Karamustafa not only debunks the local or national specificity of certain styles, but at the same time exposes just how similar the evolution of (female) identity can be, even in very disparate cultures.

Barbara Heinrich,from Gülsün Karamustafa. My Roses My Reveries,Yapi Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık A.Ş, Istanbul, 2007.

TRACEY MOFFATT

CVWebsite

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). 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. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

Other, 2009

As one of the founding collection donations following MOMENTUM’s first benefit exhibition, “Other” incorporates film techniques – splicing film clips, combining chronologies, creating and dissolving narratives – that parallel MOMENTUM’s questioning of time-based art.

“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


MARTIN SEXTON

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Martin Sexton is a London-based artist and writer who began his career as a science-fiction writer. Without a formal background in fine art, Sexton considers his point of view to be more akin to that of a writer. Or as John-Paul Pryor of DAZED Digital has described, Sexton is “a raconteur of both constructed and real mythologies.” Sexton calls his works ‘futiques,’ a portmanteau alternatively evoking the terms future, critique, and antique. Sexton’s futiques are filmed in the past, screened in the present, and bear portents from the future. The layering of multiple temporalities in Sexton’s videos, along with his narrative strategies (primarily scrolling first-person text) lend them an ambivalent presence: who, or what, exactly can we consider the author? Sexton’s first encounter with MOMENTUM was at MOMENTUM Sydney in 2010, where curator James Putnam included “Bloodspell (Mexican UFO)” (1972-2012) as part of The Putnam Selection, a program of seven films by British artists. In 2012, Sexton donated “Bloodspell (Mexican UFO)” and “Indestructible Truth (Tibet UFO)” (1958-59) to the MOMENTUM Collection. When the MOMENTUM Collection was shown at the Musraramix Festival in Jerusalem in May 2012, Sexton traveled to Jerusalem to represent the artists in the collection.

Bloodspell (Mexican UFO), 1973 – 2012

With its low-fi analogue aesthetic and jerky zoom shots, “Bloodspell (Mexican UFO)” (1973-2012) begins like your parents’ home travel videos. Characteristically of Sexton’s videos, however, our cameraman himself does not appear. Instead, a scrolling first-person narrative describes a remote Mayan temple controlled by the cosmos. The lasting enigma of “Bloodspell” comes towards the video’s end, as the camera transitions from its documentary role into a tool of abstraction and mysticism. As the music swells and kaleidoscope-like patterns drift across the screen, we watch a flying saucer land on top of a Mayan temple. Without comment or guidance from the narrator, Sexton leaves us to probe our own potential for belief or disbelief.

SUMUGAN SIVANESAN

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Sumugan Sivanesan is a self-described ‘anti-disciplinary’ artist and a transcultural radical. His eclectic practice is concerned with the legacies of colonialism, the experience of cultural difference, and diaspora. Sivanesan often engages with the theory of ‘necropolitics’ coined by the Cameroonian philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe. Building upon and going beyond the Foucauldian notion of biopower, the domain of life over which power has taken control, ‘necropolitics’ asserts that contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death has reconfigured the relationships between resistance, sacrifice, and terror. Sivanesan’s first collaboration with MOMENTUM was during MOMENTUM Sydney in 2010, where he performed “What’s Eating Gilberto Gil” (2010), a performance/lecture exploring our common history of cannibalism and its contemporary legacies. In February 2012, Sivanesan proposed to perform a new work, “The Anticolonials” (2012) at MOMENTUM Berlin. “The Anticolonials” traced the past and present of anti-colonial politics. Along with his new performance/lecture, MOMENTUM exhibited a retrospective of Sivanesan’s video works.

A Children’s Book of War, 2010

A Children’s Book of War made its fortuitous entrance into the MOMENTUM Collection while curator Rachel Rits-Volloch was in the process of organizing Sivanesan’s video retrospective at MOMENTUM. After spending the day with Sivanesan reviewing his videos, Rits-Volloch asked him to play a neglected yellow icon on his desktop. While Sivanesan insisted that the work was merely a short animation, quite different from his other works, Rits-Volloch immediately registered the impact of the work. The immediate impact of A Children’s Book of War lies, perhaps, in its jarring conjunction of war, sovereignty, and violence with a format usually reserved for much more lighthearted topics. With its dominant color palette of black and bright yellow, A Children’s Book of War incorporates iconography as diverse as Julian Assange, the Sydney Opera House, and the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. In the accompanying text to the work, Sivanesan 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. With its haunting last paragraph, Sivanesan reminds 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 that are felt and suffered always elsewhere:
“When Captain Cook first made contact, 18 years before Governor Phillip and the First Fleet arrived an act of violence pre–empted the war that was to follow.
 It’s a war that a lack of recognition of Indigenous Sovereignty helps to perpetuate. 
A war that the civic revolt at Redfern revealed. A war not likely to end any time soon.”


About Millerntor Gallery

The Millerntor Gallery is the international urban arts, music and cul-ture festival for creative engagement. Initiated by Viva con Agua and the FC Sankt Pauli, it is both a social art gallery and a cultural festival in the Millerntor stadium. Various target groups are addressed and moti-vated to engage themselves socially, through the universal languages of art, music and football. For 5 days a year, the Millerntor stadium is transformed into a platform for dialogue and exchange, locally, inter-nationally as well as at an intercultural level.

By means of trans-genre art works, film presentations and a diverse musical, cultural and edu-cational programme, it aims to address the question of how a positive change to the world can be instigated. Thereby, opportunities of inter-action and participation turn the audience into participants, and cre-ate a meaningful community, even beyond the event itself. The profits generated by the art sales are donated to Viva con Agua e.V., in order to improve the worldwide water and sanitary supply.


INSTALLATION PHOTOS
19/05/2015
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Current Residency

 

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13/05/2015
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #12 with David Medalla

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #12

 

Physical Ghosts and other Tales:
A Virtual Impromptu by David Medalla

 


 

David Medalla in dialogue with Shi Handao

17th MAY 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

With work ranging from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance, David Medalla constantly shifts between situationist, surrealist and conceptualist tactics. Admitted to Columbia University at the age of 12, he studied and performed alongside some of the most preeminent scholars, artists and critics of the twentieth century, including Marcel Duchamp, who once honored him with a “medallic” object. Medalla’s work has been included in such exhibitions as Harald Szeemann’s Weiss auf Weiss (1966) and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969), as well as 1972’s DOCUMENTA 5. Medalla has a longstanding history as a founder and director of various projects, ranging from the Signals Gallery in London in 1964, which exhibited international kinetic art, to the Exploding Gallery in 1967, an international group of multi-media artists highly influential in counterculture circles. While much of his work is deeply rooted in the underground, avant-garde scene in London, he became increasingly known for his series “Cloud Canyons”: thick bubbles that form random shapes and patterns against the light. Medalla additionally founded the Mondrian Fan Club in New York in 1994 with Adam Nankervis, co-curator for MOMENTUM’s joint exhibition A Wake, and founded and directed the London Biennale in 1998, a makeshift free arts festival concocted through word-of-mouth invitation. Medalla has lectured at the Sorbonne, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, MoMA, the University of the Philippines, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Warwick and Southampton and the Slade School of Fine Art, St. Martin’s. In 1997 he was awarded the DAAD artist grant to work in Berlin, and he has recently exhibited at the New Museum in New York, where the curator hailed his “Cloud Canyons No. 14” as an iconic sculpture of contemporary art. He lives and works in New York, London and Paris.

Shi Handao holds an MA degree from SAIC and is currently artistic director at Ray Art Center, as well as curator and critic.

 

WATCH THE TALK:

24/04/2015
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Amir Fattal BuildingScape

 
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Atara_Still1

 

Premiering on Berlin Gallery Weekend!
1st & 2nd of May
9:00pm – midnight

Projected on the facade at Französische Straße 56-60, Berlin
(the future Palais Varnhagen)

Click HERE for more information and full program of events >>

 

Atara, 2015
Video installation by Amir Fattal

The video installation Atara is dealing with different layers of the concept of resurrection in the context of German history. It combines together a reversed version of the Liebestod aria from the opera Tristan Und Isolde by Richard Wagner and images taken at the workshop of the Berliner Stadtschloss in Spandau, where the new Baroque-style stone facade is being constructed for the rebuilding of the Stadtschloss. The word ‘Atara’ in Hebrew means crown, which is used in a famous Talmudic expression meaning “to restore to it’s former glory“.

The video Atara is dealing with a process that is taking place ‘out of time’ or ‘out of space’, in this case bringing the historical narrative of creation and destruction into the context of two buildings that used to stand at the same place in Berlin: the Berliner Stadtschloss and the DDR’s Palast der Republik. The parallel story of these two buildings brings together different epochs in the political history of Berlin, while their aesthetics reflect the changing ideologies that they used to represent. Atara is asking the question: what does it mean to build a Baroque style palace in the year 2015?

Atara transforms the artistisinal workshop in Berlin’s Spandau into a space station, and the artists who work there on the creation of the sculptural façade into astronauts. The video follows their technical process and the historical references that they are using in creating a place that was lost 70 years ago. It shows the combination of the old traditional stone carving technique together with the long process of creating the different elements and figures by using old photographs and some of the original remains of the original palace. The process combines sculptung in clay, making silicone molds, plaster positives and later stone carving. The process as a whole becomes a metaphor for the attempt to re-frame the historical events that took place in Germany during the 20th century, and the ongoing attempt to transcend into a new era.

 


 
 


Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Fattal’s overarching concerns are the cultural connections between Germany and Israel – countries inexorably linked through their history, memory, culture, architecture, and the geographical diaspora which resulted in mass migrations, transposing cultures to new and different nations. The territory of Israel was once part of the Ottoman Empire, and then later administered by the British, yet the very creation of Israel is the legacy of the failed attempt to start the new Third Reich.

 

BuildingScape is a Berlin-based company that develops artistic, architectonic and urban media interventions and concepts to accompany and promote the construction process of pivotal European building projects. The primary aim is to transform what is often perceived to be a social inconvenience in the form of major construction sites into living urban interventions that creatively address the process of urban transformation and development. With this frame of thinking, BuildingScape addresses the building of future architectural and cultural icons within their immediate and broader social context. To achieve these objectives, BuildingScape designs innovative artistic interventions within and upon the structures of construction sites, including large-scale video projections in public space, and the commissioning of site-specific works through artist residencies. By bringing contemporary art into direct contact with urban development in public space, BuildingScape transforms the process of construction into cultural and social experience that is as innovative and inspiring as it is entertaining and educational. BuildingScape was founded in 2014 by Can Togay (former Director of the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin), David Szauder (artist and curator), and Thomas Hölzel (collector and developer).

 


PHOTOS OF THE EVENT

10/04/2015
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11 with Zuzanna Janin

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11

 

Zuzanna Janin’s Poetics of Combat:
Beyond Victory and Defeat

 


 

Zuzanna Janin in dialogue with Lin Yu

19th APRIL 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Zuzanna Janin, born in 1961 in Poland, is a visual artist and former teen actor. Having at one time starred in the Polish serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron), Janin now uses her theatrical background to create sculpture, video, installation, photography and performances. Her work has been shown in a variety of spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Foundation Miro, Barcelona, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw, Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Jeu de Pomme, Paris, Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthalle, Bern, Hoffmann Sammlung, Berlin, and TT The THING, NY. Janin has also taken part in the Sydney Biennale, Istanbul Bienniale, Liverpool Biennale, and the 54th Venice Biennale.

Lin Yu is a writer and art critic, editor of ArtReview Asia. Since she starts to work with the British art magazine ArtReview in 2013, she has founded its sister magazine ArtReview Asia, a critical magazine distributed in pan-Asia area. Prior to this position, she was the founding editor of LEAP (2009-2012). Her practice ranges from writing, editing, art and culture criticism to curating. Her recent curatorial project ‘Timur Si-Qin: Biogenic Mineral’ is now on show at Magician Space, Beijing until 17 May 2015. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.

 

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19/03/2015
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Times of Passage: on the Decorative and its Rites

 
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Kunst Salon
 
Times of Passage:
on the Decorative and its Rites

22 March 2015
12.00-14.00

Guido Nosari

At the main dome of the Neue Synagoge,
Oranienburger Straße 28-30, 10117 Berlin

Only by invitation


 
The Kust Salon is a part of the artist’s residency at MOMENTUM,
more information here >>

 

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Guido Nosari (MADRE) (b. 1984, Bergamo) is a Berlin/Milan-based artist mainly working with textile. Originally a painter and draughtsman, after receiving his degree in Fine Arts from Brera Art Academy in 2010, his artistic production underwent a two-year long period of intermission. This was broken in 2012, when he resumed his practice by sewing fabrics and weaving threads onto his canvasses. For Nosari, the act of sewing manifests an enclosing and trapping of temporalities within the non-navigable chaos of unmediated time. This process holds a ritual quality that allows him to approach the otherwise inaccessible zones of his thought. Nosari has had various solo-exhibitions in galleries including Maria Cilena (2014-15) and Casa Testori (2011) and his work has been acquired by various museum and private collections in Italy. He has been selected for the 2015 Berlin Textile Biennale and is currently pursuing an Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, Berlin, in which he researches the implications of decontextualizing his practice.

The idea that we all share an emptiness that I do not know, unnerves me. My research is focused on following this absence that escapes me every time I try to grasp it. To understand how much is common amongst human beings. In sewing I feel safe, because it creates a space and a time that is determinate. A way to follow. My thoughts are wrapped and tied, close to my dead.


The chaos grinds silences.

– Guido Nosari


This project is made possible by the generous support of:
 

18/03/2015
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Lutz Becker

 

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Lutz Becker

 

Lutz Becker is a filmmaker, artist and curator. Born in Berlin, he has lived and worked in London for most of his adult life. He is of a generation still affected by the aftermath of the WW2, the rebuilding of Germany and the student’s revolt of the late 60s. His films, videos and curatorial projects have been shown internationally. His paintings are in institutional and private collections.

As a student in London, Lutz Becker embraced the forward looking spirit of abstraction and artistic internationalism. This led him towards the painterly procedures of informel. He got interested in the synthetic sound structures of electronic music which lead him towards the making of experimental abstract films at the BBC. His preoccupation with movement and time influenced much of his film and video work.

Becker is a director and producer of political and art documentaries such as Double Headed Eagle, Lion of Judah and Vita Futurista to name a few as well as TV productions, such as Nuremberg in History. He participated as an artist in the First Kiev Biennale in 2012 with the video installation, The Scream, and is currently preparing the reconstruction of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Que viva Mexico!.

In addition to Lutz Becker’s work as artist and film maker, he is also a curator, specialising in Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism. He curated for Tate Modern the Moscow section of Century City (2001); for the State Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki, Construction: Tatlin and After (2002); for the Estorick Collection, London, a survey of European photomontage Cut & Paste (2008); for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, a show of 20th Century drawings Modern Times: Responding to Chaos (2010). Most recently he co-curated Solomon Nikritin – George Grosz, Political Terror and Social Decadence in Europe between the Wars at the State Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki.



 

After the wall

1999/2014, Limited Edition Vinyl Record, 39 min 46 sec

1999/2014, Sound Sculpture on loop, 37 min 18 sec

 

Vinyl Cover_Lutz Becker

 

Lutz Becker’s sound sculpture, After the Wall, re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999, curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. After its installation in Stockholm it travelled subsequently to Budapest and Berlin. MOMENTUM originally presented the sound sculpture After the Wall in our exhibition Fragments of Empires in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2014. Together with The Vinyl Factory, we also produced a limited edition vinyl record of After the Wall. This work was subsequently acquired by the MOMENTUM Collection. The soundscapes captured in After the Wall – a discordant cacophony of hammering and banging – are derived from the recorded sounds of thousands of people across Berlin wielding hammers and chisels to break down the Wall.

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of Communism. It was a moment in history that promised to the people of Germany and other Europeans a new beginning. The significance of the Berlin Wall extended far beyond the city, beyond the borders of Germany. It epitomised the Cold War confrontation between the Warsaw Pact and the NATO alliance. The Wall separated the spheres of interest between Communism and Capitalism. On 13. August 1961 the government of East Germany, the GDR, began to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles. The underground and railway services of Greater Berlin were severed and West Berlin was turned into an island within GDR territory. A solid wall gradually replaced the provisional fence. It was made up of concrete segments of a height of 12 feet and was 165 miles long. A trench ran parallel to it to prevent vehicles from breaking through. There was a patrol corridor behind it, watch towers, bunkers and electric fences.

It appeared to the population of Germany that the split of their country and of Berlin would last forever. In 1989, as a reaction to Gorbachov’s reforms in the Soviet Union and massive unrest in their country, the government of the GDR decreed the opening of the Wall on 9. November 1989. In the following days and months demolition workers began with tearing it down. On 1. July 1990 the GDR gave up her statehood and merged with West Germany. For the Germans the demolition of the wall was an act of liberation. It gave hope for a future in which unhindered communication and freedom of movement would be everybody’s natural right. Within days of the ‘opening’ of the wall its terrifying symbolism lost its power. Millions of people came to Berlin to look at the now defunct wall and to take a piece of it with them to remember this moment of history. Hundreds of people attacked the graffiti covered surfaces of the Wall, eroding it bit by bit. The so called ‘Mauerspechte’, wall-peckers as opposed to woodpeckers, worked on the Wall day and night; their hammering, knocking and breaking sounds travelled along the many miles of Wall. The high-density concrete of the structure worked like a gigantic resonating body; its acoustic properties created eerie echoes driven by the random percussion of the hammering.

— Lutz Becker


 

  

AFTER THE WALL – Potsdamer Platz
Strong athmosphere. It is the basis of the installation. Hammering and distant voices.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Invalidenstrasse
Dramatic close-up percussion of hammers.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Checkpoint Charlie
Heavy percussion. Massive rhythmical sound bundles.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Brandanburger Tor
Relaxed, regular beats quite close.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Night
End piece with dominant echos.

 

15/03/2015
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Works on Paper III

 
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Works on Paper III

3 May – 5 July 2015

 


 
Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch
Produced by Emilio Rapanà

 

 

In cooperation with:

 

Performances:
May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
  Exhibition:
6 June — 5 July 2015

 

3 May at 3 – 6pm
Mariana Hahn: Distant Letter Present Now
Zhou Xiaohu: A Collective Exercise “The Good Person of Szechuan”
Isaac Chong Wai: The Shape of Missing Violence
Kirsten Palz: Dance 001 variation 1, performed by Efrat Stempler
 
10 May at 3 – 6pm
Marina Belikova: Re:mémorer
Amir Fattal: Frieze
 
17 May at 3 – 6pm
Andreas Blank: Untitled – A Sculptural Performance
Adam Nankervis: past present/future tense, in acoustic collaboration with James Edmonds (London/Berlin)
Paul Darius: I Believe I Can Fly, performed by Sophie Ammann
David Medalla: Chinoiserie in Potsdam: A Paper Fantasy
 
24 May at 3 – 6pm
Zeno Gries: Progress
Richard Berger: A Lack of Information
 
31 May at 3 – 6pm
Melisa Palacio Lopez & Noise Canteen (Pleines & Liebold): S P A C E
ƒƒ: Pfffffffff, To Gather Instant Purification

 
Featuring:
Marina Belikova // Richard Berger // Andreas Blank
Isaac Chong Wai // Paul Darius // Amir Fattal // ƒƒ
Zeno Gries // Mariana Hahn // David Medalla // Adam Nankervis
Melisa Palacio Lopez & Noise Canteen // Kirsten Palz // Zhou Xiaohu

 

For the MPA-B Month of Performance Art Berlin 2015, MOMENTUM reprises its month-long program of Performance Sundays entitled WORKS ON PAPER. WORKS ON PAPER III inverts classic assumptions of paper as a medium, inviting performance artists to approach paper not as a static blank canvas, but as a dynamic source of conceptual and performative possibility. Bringing together a diverse group of international artists based in Berlin, MOMENTUM invites them to work on paper and with paper to activate all the possibilities of the medium in unexpected ways. WORKS ON PAPER III generates a dialogue between performance artists confronted with the challenge of working with paper, and artists whose medium is paper, given the challenge of working with performance, invoking the breadth of performance art to reimagine paper: this most traditional of artistic media.

Taking place every Sunday in May (3, 10, 17, 24 & 31) from 3-6pm, WORKS ON PAPER III takes the form of a cumulative series of performances – with each subsequent performance engaging with the artifacts resulting from the works preceding it in the series. By generating a cumulative, site-specific series through the appropriation of the remains of one another’s performances, the artists in WORKS ON PAPER challenge and reinvigorate the notion of the stationary, disengaged exhibition. What, they ask, is the life of performance after the event concludes? Whether engaging in durational performance, instruction pieces, physical and social architecture, live performance in tandem with other media, sculpture, dance, poetry, or text, these artists challenge expectations of working with the traditional medium of paper in real-time.

Each performance is documented on video, and from 6 June to 5 July 2015, MOMENTUM will exhibit these videos alongside the artifacts in a gallery exhibition.


Artists and Works
(click on the icons below to read the full information about each work)

 
 


WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT:

 
 


Photo Gallery, May 3
(photos by Marina Belikova)

 


Photo Gallery, May 10

 


Photo Gallery, May 17
(photos by Petra Fantozzi)

 


Photo Gallery, May 24

 


Photo Gallery, May 31
(photos by Kai Dieterich, Hanae Utamura and Dian Zagorchinov)

 

06/03/2015
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Li Zhenhua

 

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Li Zhenhua

 

Li Zhenhua is a Beijing/Zurich-based multi-media artist, curator, writer and producer for international and Chinese contemporary culture. He is the founding-director of Beijing Art Lab, a virtual and physical platform for art, research, and exchange, as well as of Mustard Seed Garden. He is currently head-curator of Art Basel Hong Kong’s Film section (2015). Since 2010 he is nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (Switzerland), as well as for The Prix Pictet (Switzerland). He was a member of the International Advisory Board for ‘Digital Revolution’ at the Barbican Centre in 2014, jury-member for the Transmediale Award in 2010 and advisor for Leonardo, Journal of Arts, Science and Technology.
In 2010 he was chief planner for the Shanghai eARTS Festival. He has participated in various symposia on new media art in leading galleries and museums around the world, such as ZKM Karlsruhe (2003), Walker Art Centre Minneapolis (curated the WAVE project) and Guangzhou Museum. Li has exhibited in the Ghuangzhou Triennale (2005) and in ‘Beam me Up’ at the new media art institution plug.in in Basel, Switzerland. His first solo-exhibition, ‘NOTHING IS EVERYTHING’ was held at Galerie Lucy Mackintosh in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2012.

He has produced the first international new media art festival MAAP, at Beijing Millennium Museum in 2002 and brought the London festival ‘onedotzero moving image’ to Beijing’s Today Art Gallery in 2004. Li was project manager and producer of the ‘Synthetic Time: Media Art China’ at NAMOC (National Art Museum of China) in 2008, curator for ‘CINA CINA CINA’ in CCCS Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, and of the 3rd Nanjing Triennial. In 2006, Li was appointed executive producer of the Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium.
Li 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.



 

GOD, a dog is better than me

2010, Video, 3 min 31 sec

 

 

I am a dog that barks for a hundred years, but I cannot awake the Chinese.

Ma Hsiang-po (1840–1939), Chinese Jesuit priest, scholar and educator and one of the founders of Aurora University, Fu Jen Catholic University and Fudan University.

Strolling on the beach, talking to friends about local life during his visit to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Li Zhenhua encounters a dog, playing with a log. Fascinated by its behaviour, he films it with his iPhone. In the film, we observe the animal blissfully engrossed in his game, as he digs a hole around it, takes it into the waves and out again, to no particular end. In this fragment of daily life, the dog’s unconscious needs appear nonsensical, much like we would seem to an alien observer, if viewed from above. But in this behaviour, Li attempts to capture something fundamental to creativity and often lacking in our own conduct, as we persist to live consumed in self-importance and in a continuously dissatisfied strife for success and recognition. The dog in GOD, a Dog is better than me has no sense of chronological evolution, the main element obscuring our vision and detaching us from daily life, according to the artist. Her focus is on the most basic and immediate: the here and now. Earning her Li’s sympathy and admiration and with some sadness in the realization that he will never attain such a state, this film is an ode to play, creativity, intuition and a lesson in forgetting.

Originally trained as a chef, Li Zhenhua once asked curator and art critic Li Xianting what it means to curate. “I do not know”, he replied. Frustrated by the state of Chinese contemporary art, its market and fixation on the prestigious and the “big things”, Li abandoned the kitchen in 1996 and began curating independent exhibitions in Beijing to support local artists. He is currently the chief proponent of contemporary video-art in China and has contributed greatly to its development and to its increasing presence on the international stage. In 2005, stimulated by input from friends, Li began to make art, alongside his curatorial practice. He describes the hands-on, spatial activity of art-making as a horizontal engagement, as opposed to the verticality that typifies curatorial practice; from the top down. His ready-made machines – robots made from refrigerators and televisions, for instance – are made to trigger interaction with the viewer. Li attempts to create a space wherein nostalgia is thwarted in favour of constructing memory through alienation. For him, the screen-based experience offers the strongest sense of community, collective experience, social responsibility, action and activism, all equally central in his curatorial approach.

In art, mass-communication is unavailing, “it does not need the public notion”. Li understands the intimate and the small to be significantly more compelling, wherein the viewer experiences the possibility to interpret and to think on a personal level. In GOD, a dog is better than me, the viewer can hold the animal in its hands, walk around or sit down and privately observe. The video-player is reminiscent of a photo-frame, its weight emphasizing its presence as an object, rather than merely a video, inciting physical interaction rather than passive viewing.


04/03/2015
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Intersection InsideOut

 
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MOMENTUM_InsideOut Screening
 

For Cinema Total, part of the Berlinale International Film Festival

10 – 16 February 2014

20:00 – 24:00
 

FEATURING:

Theo Eshetu // Bjørn Melhus // Reynold Reynolds // Sarah Choo Jing // Bence Fliegauf

 

Curated by:
David Szauder, Fanni Magyar, Francoise von Roy, Rachel Rits-Volloch

 

Venue:
Media Facade, Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstrasse 12, 10117 Berlin-Mitte

A selection of video works illustrating Cinema Total’s special focus on the intersection of film and video art, screened after dark on .CHB’s panorama window – the Medienfassade.

 

The event follows the INTERSECTION Panel Discussion for CINEMA TOTAL (more information here>>)

 

Bjorn Melhus, Policia, 2007

Bjorn Melhus (born 1966, Kirchheim unter Teck) is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew.

Through a synchronised sound and light projection that evokes a helicopter gunship in battle, Murphy creates a disturbingly imaginative portrayal of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Operating a dramatic reduction to abstract fields of colour, the visual onslaught is concentrated on, as well as intensifying, the violent soundscape of guns and rotating helicopter blades. The videolight sequence is based on sound snippets from the movie Blue Thunder (USA, 1982), which was one of the early 80’s media rehabilitation of Vietnam war veterans in civilian society. By re-integrating war veterans into a civilian society, the war itself was subconsciously brought to America and turned the air space above the urban landscape of Los Angeles into a battlefield. In Murphy the visible stream of colored light and the absence of the image itself creates an imaginary movie that possibly connects to the first draft of the screenplay for Blue Thunder which featured Frank Murphy as more of a crazy main character with deeper psychological issues, who went on a rampage and destroyed a lot more of the city. Murphy is a true abstract Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Exhibiting a paradoxically static yet active Mexican police helicopter, appearing to be simultaneously vigilant and pointless, it is as if suspended on it’s way to an emergency operation. Acting as a biting commentary on the hollowness of the Mexican state, where country’s security apparatus imposes surveillance systems that fails to offer security, Policia delineates the paradox of control in contemporary Mexican society. In a country that is being increasingly militarized and where drug barons and paramilitary organizations are eroding the political and legal structures of the state, the suspended helicopter points to the increasingly blurred boundaries between the various groups competing for power.

Tracey Moffatt, Night Cries, 1989

Tracey Moffatt (born 1960, Brisbane) is an Australian photographer and filmmaker. Moffat began her career as an experimental filmmaker and as a producer of music videos, and she continued making films after establishing herself as a photographer.  She uses obscure references to issues of sexuality, history, representation and race. In the late 1990s she focused on the relationship between Australian Aborigines and white colonial settlers. The use of photogravure and deliberately flawed prints heightens the ambience, informed by late 19th century photography as well as by Expressionist cinematic techniques of shadow and distortion. The typically atmospheric, dreamlike quality of these works creates a space in which actors can embody wider sexual and social conflicts. Moffatt’s work since 2000 has retreated from specific locales and subject matter and become more explicitly concerned with fame and celebrity. 

Her works often deal with indigenous issues and questions black and white relationships. Drawing on manifold aesthetic icons from both withe and black Australia in her photo series and films, Moffatt presents her agenda of life in contemporary Australia in highly stylized terms. Her short film Night Cries is engaged with the older movie’s problematic ideologies of race and power relations. The short telling a story of an adopted middle-aged Aboriginal women who is bound to care for her dying white mother, both of them being entrapped within their histories. They are shown to embody the tension between the white education and an Aboriginal parentage. The Technicolor aesthetics of Night Cries studio landscape and interior are set against the chilling soundscape of the titular cries, thus creating a cinematic style torn between melodrama and the Gothic.


Bence Fliegauf, Milky Way, 2007

Bence Fliegauf (born 1974, Budapest) learnt all aspects of his industry. After training as a stage designer, he worked on film sets as well. He also worked as an arts journalist and made television documentaries for various Hungarian broadcasters. Even without the official sanction of the film academy, he soon convinced the trade of his talent and skills. Fliegauf has completed his films there ever since. He has so far made three highly distinctive full-length fiction films, one long documentary, and a handful of experimental shorts. A highly thoughtful and involved film maker, Fliegauf is heavily involved in the technicalities of film making alongside the metaphysics of moving image creation.

Milky Way is perhaps Fliegauf’s most experimental film yet, it is always accessible and mesmerizingly beautiful. It consists of ten lengthy landscape shots filmed with a static Scope camera, most of them featuring subtly modulated sound and human figures engaged in what initially appear to be strange, arcane rituals. There’s no overall plot though the painterly scenes proceed from night through various exquisitely captured daylight hues and back to night again – but each vignette suggests some sort of small, mysterious narrative, be it suspenseful, sad or drily funny.

Reynold Reynolds, Secret Life, 2008

Reynold Reynolds (born 1966, Central Alaska) influenced early on by philosophy and science, and working primarily with 16mm as an art medium. Reynold Reynolds has developed a film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Detailed evolving symbols and allusive references create a powerful pictorial language based on Reynolds’ analytical point of view. By subtly altering the regular conditions of life and watching their effects, he transfers the experimental methods of science to filmmaking, where he frames reality in his laboratory and changes one variable at a time to reveal an underlying causality.

Secret Life (2008) explores the edges of our human perception, where time does pass but is almost impossible to observe. This is the first part of the Secrets Trilogy, portrays a woman trapped in an apartment with a life of its own. She moves at a mechanical speed and her mind is like a clock whose hands pin the events of her life to the tapestry of time; reflected in the mechanical eye of the camera. Her thoughts escape her and come to life, growing like the plants that inhabit the space around her: living, searching, feeling, breathing and dying.


Choo Jing Sarah, The Hidden Dimension, 2013

Choo Jing Sarah (born 1990, Singapore) is a Multidisciplinary Fine Artist who has recently graduated from the Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art Design and Media. Focusing on the relationship between space and time, Choo’s work depicts identifiable moments and characters within contemporary Singaporean society. Intentionally constructed and staged, the artist reflects upon local social and cultural norms.

Solitude has become a significant issue in today’s society. In her recent work, Choo reflects upon this phenomenon. In The Hidden Dimension she questions the effectiveness of the relief offered by daily routines. Seven members of her family are depicted engaged in trivial acts of self-occupation. At exactly the same point in the film, in an unexpected cadence, they simultaneously break from their self-imposed Sisyphean distraction and look out into the audience and each other.

02 lightning Strikes extra

Theo Eshetu, Lightning Strikes, 2009

Theo Eshetu (born 1958, London) his childhood was spent between Ethiopia, Senegal and Yugoslavia, among other nations. Theo Eshetu has worked in media art since 1982, creating installations, video art works, and television documentaries. As a video maker, he explores the expressive capabilities of the medium and the manipulation of the language of television. Exploring themes and imagery from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religious iconography, he attempts to define how electronic media shapes identity and perception. World cultures, particularly the relationship of African and European cultures, often inform Eshetu’s work.

Lightning Strikes (2009) is being shown to coincide with Theo Eshetu’s exhibition The Return of the Axum Obelisk at the DAAD Galerie, running from Feb 1 – March 15th 2014. The Obelisk of Axum was taken as a war trophy from Ethiopia to Rome by Mussolini’s army during the Italian occupation of 1935. Since the signing of a peace, treaty in 1942 it became the subject for debate as to whether it should be returned to Axum or not. Over the years support for its restitution grew, but neither political or historical arguments, nor a legal battle to full fill a contractual commitment, succeeded in having the Obelisk returned. Further research into its structural conditions to withstand the process of dismantling and remounting resulted in a declaration that it was simply too fragile to be returned. It was only in 2002, when the Obelisk was damaged by a lightning strike struck by lightning, that the decision to have it returned was made.


20/02/2015
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Guido Nosari Residency

 

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Guido Nosari

CVWebsite

4 January – 1 April 2015

 

 

Guido Nosari (MADRE) (b. 1984, Bergamo) is a Berlin/Milan-based artist mainly working with textile. Originally a painter and draughtsman, after receiving his degree in Fine Arts from Brera Art Academy in 2010, his artistic production underwent a two-year long period of intermission. This was broken in 2012, when he resumed his practice by sewing fabrics and weaving threads onto his canvasses. For Nosari, the act of sewing manifests an enclosing and trapping of temporalities within the non-navigable chaos of unmediated time. This process holds a ritual quality that allows him to approach the otherwise inaccessible zones of his thought. Nosari has had various solo-exhibitions in galleries including Maria Cilena (2014-15) and Casa Testori (2011) and his work has been acquired by various museum and private collections in Italy. He has been selected for the 2015 Berlin Textile Biennale and is currently pursuing an Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, Berlin, in which he researches the implications of decontextualizing his practice.

The idea that we all share an emptiness that I do not know, unnerves me. My research is focused on following this absence that escapes me every time I try to grasp it. To understand how much is common amongst human beings. In sewing I feel safe, because it creates a space and a time that is determinate. A way to follow. My thoughts are wrapped and tied, close to my dead.


The chaos grinds silences.

– Guido Nosari


A TALLIT FOR THE NEUE SYNAGOGE

This project is made possible by the generous support of:

The displacement of context will bring a similar significance.
Hence, in this project I will attend a place where prayers of different worship have joined each other.

Creating a giant Tallit for the shadows of the Neue Synagoge.
For all the shadows in the memories of the Centrum Judaicum.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Everything starts in the dome of the New Synagogue. The city is nothing but a grid, if we look at it from above, and from the dome we have this privilege. The dome is a central point within this grid – a grid of meanings. With this project, the floor of the dome of the Neue Synagoge becomes the place where these meanings become interwoven and are made visible.

The first phase is to identify exactly where in the space of the dome’s floor the cardinal points are located. Through this gesture, I map the urban grid on the floor of the dome.

Subsequently, all places of different worship within the region of Berlin will be located, be they Catholic, Protestant, Islam, Hindu, or Jewish. By identifying them on the map of Berlin, I will position them relative to the dome,

with points along the circumference of the floor. The floor thereby becomes a central point on which all connections between different religious traditions meet.

In the second phase, each point that allows me to look in the direction of each differents space of worship will be connected to all other points along the circumference through the technique of thread crochet. The choice for this technique is essential to produce the idea of slowness and handmade work, but also of resistance. A good dialoge requires all of the above.


This process will result in a real skeleton of spatial relationships between all places of worship in Berlin. This skeleton is made with blue thread, respecting the Jewish tradition by recovering the idea of the blue that is present in tzitzit (the knotted thread that is attached to the tallit), which allows one to connect between all of the points on the earth and God. To finalize this phase, all of the threads will be sewn together, to be fixed within the grid.

In the third phase, each space that remains open between the structure of the crochet skeleton will be covered with a different fabric. This will result in a unique and fully colored tapestry covering the full area of the floor of the dome.

By combining all of the threads with different fabrics, I create a single mantle that makes all of the experiences and memories covered by the great Tallit symbollically connected with God and all other traditions. Each fabric is different, in the same way that everyone has a story, each of which is part of the dialogue. By doing so, I respect every single story in initiating a new opportunity of dialoge.

During this process, all of the architectural discontinuities along the floor (such as staircases, tubery, columns, etc.) will be respected by circumventing them, thereby marking the actual topography that is integral to the dome. In this way, the piece will be made into the Neue Synagoge, as a site-specific work.

Once completed and having covered the entire floor, the dome of the Neue Synagogue will have become a space of possibility for dialogue, to create mutual understanding and to share the history of the Centrum Judaicum . It is for this dialogue that we work and for the same that I pray.

During this project, it is my intention to continue with two peculiarities: the first is to record the working-process while it is being executed, to result in a final video that shows the progress of its composition. The video will record only the floor of the dome. The second will be to welcome anyone who wants to attend as I work, to engage in dialogue and to explain its reasons and meanings.

Some examples of how the tapestry will look like, from my previous work:


RELOCATION

In the fourth and final phase, the tapestry will be removed from the dome and relocated into various exhibition spaces.

This has three basic layers of meaning: the first is that anyone who encounters the piece in different contexts remembers that there has been a place where dialogue has been possible, and that this place is there, before the eyes of the visitor, as incontrovertible proof.
Secondly, it manifests that any place can be elected as a place of dialogue. This project only exposes that potential. In fact, every place is inevitably a crossing point of meanings, because the space of man is first and foremost a space of meaning. Finally, it is a reflection on man’s tendency to cover space with significance. The meanings that man gives to that which surrounds him are like a cloak that covers everything, multiplying in various layers of space. Only by exhibiting the work in different contexts is it possible to make visible this omnivorous potential of significance.

 

19/02/2015
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Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon

 
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Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon #2

 

25 January 2015

David Elliott in conversation with
Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal and Sophia Pompéry


 
The Kunst Salon is a part of the Fragments of Empires Exhibition,
read the full information about the Exhibition here >>
.


 

 

Fragments of Empires is an exhibition of contemporary art that addresses issues of memory, identity and the impact of migration through three different time-based media: sound, film and photography. Throughout the exhibition ‘fragments of empires’ are revealed through the notion of ‘object memories’ as artists examine how objects, and associations related to them, have been transferred and re-imprinted through historical processes of colonisation and migration, moving in this way from one culture to another. Although originally circumscribed by imperial ambition, the work made by the artists in the exhibition shows different ways in which these fragments have been woven into new lives or realities to establish other meanings and identities in the present.

Berlin in the 21st Century sits on the intersection of many immigrant cultures and nations, as people from all over the world flock to the city. In recent years, Berlin has come to be especially known for attracting the world’s leading artists. Equally, Berlin is famous for the wealth of cultural artifacts housed in its museums. This convergence, in this capital city, of creative and historical culture with the world’s migrant cultures is often remarked upon, but it has not yet been closely considered in terms of the convergence of the different colonial legacies of the many populations that inhabit Berlin. Fragments of Empires is thus a timely reflection on the hybridization of cultural practices, and the fact that not only in Berlin, but everywhere in the world, we can all find roots somewhere else.

Reflecting upon the lasting legacies as diverse as the British, Byzantine, French, Ottoman, Roman Empires within the context of Berlin’s particular struggle with the painful histories of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, this exhibition extends the remits of history through artistic innovation. Fragments of Empires brings together artists who have dissected the historical legacies of their particular cultures to rebuild them into contemporary statements about how cultures, by absorbing one another, defy established borders and concepts of nationhood that have been drawn and re-drawn by political force. The opening of the exhibition in Berlin in early November will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The work by the artists in the exhibition – Kader Attia, Lutz Becker, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, and Sophia Pompéry – encapsulates a wide range of different approaches to experiences of empire, migration, cultural transformation and appropriation. All strongly reflect the viral, diasporic symbolisms of contemporary culture across the world and the different contexts within which they are perceived. In Fragments of Empires, MOMENTUM is bringing these seven artists together for the first time.

This exhibition accordingly invokes time-based art practices to explore the legacies of cultural histories that have constantly changed through the passing of time. As Berlin’s only platform focusing exclusively on time-based art, MOMENTUM focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural backgrounds also re-frame different historical moments.
 


11/02/2015
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #10 with Doug Fishbone

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #10

 

The Contemporary Jester
Humor, satire and role-play in Doug Fishbone’s politics of mass-media representation

 


 

Doug Fishbone in dialogue with Shen Qilan

22th MARCH 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Doug Fishbone, an American artist based in London, often uses satire and humor in his films, performances and installations to critically examine consumer culture, mass media, relative perception and context. His work frequently forces the viewer to confront his-or-her own interpretive backgrounds. By combining a variety of found images from Google Image Search, Fishbone illustrates and undermines his own confrontational, repulsive and funny monologues on contemporary media and its corollary, the underground and avant-garde. Fishbone is best known for his project 30,000 Bananas, a mountain of ripe bananas installed in the middle of London’s Trafalgar Square and later given away to the audience for free. In 2004, his work was included in the British Art Show 6, a national touring exhibition held every five years in celebrate of the best of contemporary British art. Fishbone had his first major solo project at Gimpel Fils in London in 2006, and he performed at the Hayward Gallery in 2007. He has since performed live at the ICA, exhibited at Rokeby, London, Tate Britain, the 2008 Busan Biennale and in Switzerland, Japan and Korea. He was heralded as one of the art world’s “Future Greats” by Art Review magazine. Most recently, Fishbone has recently produced a feature-length action film, Elmina, that connects two vastly different audiences of the Western art world and the African home video market. Filmed in Ghana with major Ghanaian celebrities, the movie’s only artistic intervention is the insertion of Fishbone, a white American artist, as the lead role in a completely African production. The work fully adopts Ghanaian film making conventions, taking advantage of the shared language used and the low cost structure of the Ghanaian home video industry. In this new project Fishbone continues to examine the complex relationship between perception and reality and the politics of representation while simultaneously asking wider questions about race, globalization and notions of a shared visual language. (Rokeby Gallery, London). Born in New York in 1969, Fishbone earned an MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College in 2003 and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004.

Dr. Shen QilanD is an expert on arts and culture and a member of the editorial board of BOOKTOWN Magazine. She holds a master of philosophy from Fudan University and obtained her Ph.D. at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. Prior, she was Director of the editorial department of Art World magazine (2010-2011), and later Chief Editor of Arts and Director of International Projects at Shanghai Insight Media (China South Publishing & Media Group). Qilan is dedicated to cultural projects between Europe and China and became chief advisor, editor, and co-author of Europe-China Cultural Compass — Orientation for Cultural Cooperation between China and Europe. She organizes events and gives lectures at different cultural institutions. Qilan was invited as “Kulturvermittler”, a scholarship awarded by the Goethe-Institute to visit Berlin, and was invited as a speaker to the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Melbourne, Australia.

 

WATCH THE TALK:

04/02/2015
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Qiu Anxiong

 

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QIU ANXIONG

 

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

 

Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972, Chengdu) is one of China’s most prominent contemporary artists. Brought up in the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute 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 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. In 2004, he made Shanghai his permanent home, and 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 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);

Selected solo exhibitions at major museums include: Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark (2013/2009); OCAT, Shenzhen, China (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). Museum group exhibitions 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); UCCA Art Museum, Beijing, China (2012); Istanbul Modern Art Museum, Turkey (2011); Mingsheng Museum, Shanghai (2011); Times Art Museum, Guangzhou (2011); Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2010); Museum of Unknown, Art House, Shanghai (2010); Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), Korea (2009); Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany (2008), Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany (2008); The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2008); National Musem of Modern Art Osaka, Japan (2008); Museum of Modern Art, Grand-duc Jean, Luxembourg (2008); Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland (2007); Arstrup Fearnleys Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007); San Diego Museum of Art, USA (2007); Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China (2006).



 

CAKE

2014, Video Animation, 6 min 2 sec

 

 

Qiu Anxiong’s Cake 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 the age of Corona.

This work was premiered in PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai, a co-production by MOMENTUM and Chronus Art Center, at MOMENTUM Berlin (2014).

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. In adding clay to his repertoire of visual tools, alongside paint and ink, Qui follows in the footsteps of Jan Svankmajer, the father of Czech surrealist animation. This ability to combine classical aesthetics with contemporary technology distinguishes his work, which owes as much of a debt to South African artist William Kentridge, a pioneer of hand-drawn animation.


25/01/2015
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Creating for the Future

 
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CREATING FOR THE FUTURE:
THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE

 

15 February – 19 April 2015
OPENING 14 February 2015 @ 19:00
@ MOMENTUM BERLIN

On the Occasion of the 5th Birthday of LEAP Magazine

MOMENTUM Presents LEAP LABS
Online & Print Exhibition

Curated by Cao Dan and Li Zhenhua

 

 


 


Web-site for the Online Exhibition

 


 

Featuring:


Aaajiao • Addie Wagenknecht • Bi Rongrong • Chen Dongfan • Chen Xiao
Cheng Ran • Danh Vo • David Siepert + Stefan Baltensperger • Feng Bingyi
Frank Tang • Hu Weiyi • Iris Long + Cedar Zhou • Jiang Jun
9mouth • Liao Wenfeng • Liu Guoqiang • Quynh Dong • Shi Yijie
Shi Yong • Song Ta • Tan Tian • Wu Juehui • Xu Qu • Yang Junling • Yuan Keru

Assistant curator: He Jing
Exhibition coordinator: Hong Yali
Graphic design: Li Mei

 

 

Artists and Works
(click on the icons below to read the full information about each work)

 

 
 

Originally existing as an exhibition in print and online curated by Cao Dan and Li Zhenhua for LEAP – the art magazine for contemporary China, MOMENTUM now brings ‘Creating the Future: Thinking about the Unthinkable’ to Berlin in real time and three-dimensional space, to literally LEAP off the page, off the screen, and into our gallery space.

After an enduring focus on so-called ‘Net Art’ since the mid-90s, which saw artists challenging the necessity or relevance of physical exhibition spaces, in recent years the term ‘post-internet art’ has come to dominate art discourse. Widely misunderstood, this term does not imply that we have in any way moved beyond net-based technologies – the main ground for the strong resistance to this term. Like ‘post-modernism’, and with a similarly counterintuitive and misleading choice of terminology, the ‘post’ in ‘post-internet art’ refers to a revisiting or reworking of the methods derived from internet art, rather than a break from it.

Whereas Net Art dealt directly with new digital strategies and mainly existed on the web itself, post-internet art applies these methods into a much wider range of fields, often to create physical objects in the real world.

This exhibition can be positioned as a curatorial exploration of this tendency or need to create crossovers between the on and the offline. Integrating the printed and digital versions of the exhibition within the now physicalized exhibition itself, it presents one and the same selection of works in the three main forms by which the public comes into contact with art today; a mise en abyme of exhibition-media with a gallery show of a virtual exhibition. Within the curators’ aim to create “a microcosm of the relationship between art and media”, at MOMENTUM the exhibition allows for an in-depth consideration of how pre-internet, net, and post-internet media may affect this relationship. It is a threefold exhibition – a series of déjà vu’s in the real, the reproduced and the virtual.

— Isabel de Sena


A LETTER TO THE FUTURE
An Exhibition Online and On Paper

Cao Dan

“Thinking about the Unthinkable,” comes from a work of the same name published in the 1960s by preeminent American futurist and Hudson Institute founder Herman Kahn. Kahn’s text analyzes and imagines the possible aftermath of nuclear war, directly dealing with various specific crises and circumstances with which mankind might be faced, all while maintaining a typically optimistic futurist faith in the possibility of this future human society to find a path to survival. Over fifty years later, we are in the midst of Kahn’s “future”: on one hand, improvements in democracy and science have brought mankind unparalleled safety and well-being, with continued progress in our control of the outside world giving a sense of exponentially increasing prosperity; on the other hand, the dangers of nuclear war, limited resources, climate change, pollution, and health epidemics are omnipresent, with anxiety about the future affecting our conceptions of identity, faith, and ethics, as well as other more subtle and intrinsic notions. How should we think about the future? Can the immediate or distant future really be thought of? Can our thinking affect the future? … Questions like these laid the basis for the subject of this exhibition, “Creating for the Future: Thinking about the Unthinkable”.

This exhibition has specifically enlisted renowned curator, Li Zhenhua to help LEAP and LEAP LABS to organize both the online and print exhibitions. The theme of this years exhibition is “Creating for the Future: Thinking about the Unthinkable.” For this year’s special edition, we have invited 25 young artists to use their own idea of an “image” to create a “Letter for the Future.” These images may end up being a composition of frames of memories made in order to connect to an unknown world; they may implore conceptual methods to create a realistic narrative; they might even delve into the realm of the not yet existent in order to explore the boundaries of reality and imagination… The lives and creations made by artists of this new generation are intertwined with the multitude of images that barrage them daily from all corners of the earth. It is both the most natural and most comfortable way through which these artists can express themselves.


CREATING FOR THE FUTURE

Li Zhenhua

From print media to the content and development of apps, art has been pushed forward by the transmission of information, and while small, this event exists as a microcosm of the relationship between art and the media. Perhaps not even Mcluhan or Neil Postman could predict our current reality: today’s media now extends beyond what is real and has delved into a manifestation of self-obsession. But, then again, maybe this is a reality they predicted at one time. If we are to say that the transmission of information is what brought about the current state of the world –and with it modern civilization— then isn’t it too hollow to say that the only thing the so-called second and third revolutions brought about is the vague concept of the “information age”?

Revolution often comes quietly, but it’s not because nobody is paying attention. Instead, it’s because we as people naturally accept a certain reality, one that accepts the creation of change. The information age began similarly without a sound. Just like the upgrade from a 286 to 386 computer, the pursuit of increased efficiency has caused us to crave new technology.

Besides adapting to the times around it, art creates its own spirit within an era. At the same time, art –as a force that existed before this time, and which will continue to exist after— brings with it both skepticism towards the present and worries about the future. This self-conflicting reality is one which artists have been unable to untangle, even as art begins to blur the boundaries between it and other disciplines –boundaries that it gets close to, but never crosses.

All the artists invited to “Creating for the Future” exist within this specific reality and are trying to find a way to respond to its current situation, or the situation of the future it will create.

Artists and their works are diverse in the way in which they are able to give us opportunities to think at exactly the right moment. To make us think: how will the future unfold? At the same time, art can also remove itself from these constructs, as if it were passing through the universe overcoming any sense of time or space. Art transforms media into becoming a reflection or observation. Through changing existing relationships and fostering new ones, art can create new connections that push our imaginations forward with an inertia that only comes when one has expectations for the future. When that scale tips, it’s like starting a landslide.

I once planed a “future media” issue for Vision Magazine, in which I hoped to discuss the role of print media. With this current project, however, I hope to be able to derive more specific creative methods from the artists themselves, and look to better understand how to best link print media and multi-media software. Inevitably, artists must be the ones to complete this practice. However, Cheng Ran’s scripts, Hu Weiyi’s imprints, Xu Wenkai’s fictitious landscapes, and Quynh Dong’s poetry and spaces did not respond to the essence of “Thinking the Unthinkable.” Instead, they focus specifically on working towards a future that is on the verge of occurring. These artists get very close to approaching reality through directly linking the future to the present and therefore bring the subjects of their work into every aspect of their lives. That is not the point of this project. Unfortunately, herein lies the paradox of “Thinking the Unthinkable”: in order to ascertain the future, perhaps hope must come in the form of an escape from reality. The protagonists of most stories do not make it to the future. When their moment comes to approach it, they look back to the earliest ancestors of humanity or moments from times past, yet towards the future their thoughts are nothing more than emptiness.


WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

THE OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION
(photos by Marina Belikova)

THE INSTALLATION SHOTS
(photos by Marina Belikova)

21/01/2015
Comments Off on Fiona Pardington Residency

Fiona Pardington Residency

 

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Fiona Pardington

CVWebsiteFiona Pardington in MOMENTUM Collection

23 September – 13 November 2014

 

Fiona Pardington’s work investigates the history of photography and representations of the body, examining subject-photographer relations, medicine, memory, collecting practices and still life. Her deeply toned black-and-white photographs are the result of specialty hand printing and demonstrate a highly refined analogue darkroom technique. Of Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent, Pardington’s practice often draws upon personal history, recollections and mourning to breath new life into traditional and forgotten objects. Her work with still life formats in museum collections, which focuses on relics as diverse as taonga (Māori ancestral treasures), hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now-extinct buia bird, calls into question our contemporary relationship with a materialized past as well as the ineffable photographic image.

Pardington holds an MFA and PhD in photography from the University of Auckland and has received numerous recognitions, including the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic in 2006, a position as Frances Hodgkins Fellow in both 1996 and 1997, the Visa Gold Art Award 1997, and the Moet and Chandon Fellowship (France) from 1991-92. Born in 1961 in Devonport, New Zealand, Pardington lives and works in Waiheke Island, New Zealand.

Fiona Pardington’s still life series Organic is part of MOMENTUM Collection. More info here.

Fiona Pardington took part in a Kunst Salon with a workshop in collaboration with Janet Laurence, to develop ideas and frameworks for an upcoming project with MOMENTUM.

Pardington will also take part in the forthcoming MOMENTUM exhibition FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRES (7th Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015), along with 6 renowned international artists. Click here for more info.

With the generous support of Two Rooms Gallery (Auckland).


 

Watch ‘Naturally’ Kunst Salon with Fiona Pardington:

[fve] http://vimeo.com/117583130 [/fve]

 

Further reading:

Rhana Devenport, ‘Foreword’, in: Fiona Pardington. The Pressure of Sunlight Falling, ed. Kriselle Baker, Elizabeth Rankin (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2011). ORDER MONOGRAPH HERE

Fiona Pardington, (From PhD thesis) ‘Towards a Kaupapa of Ancestral Power and Talk’ (to request full thesis, please contact isabel@momentumworldwide.org)
 
Andrew Paul Wood, ‘Ex Vivo’
 
Andrew Paul Wood, ‘Lux et Tenebris’
 


 

For her Residency at MOMENTUM, Pardington will be creating her first-ever installation piece for Fragments of Empires, to open on November 7th. This installation is the result of an extensive period of research into and deep engagement with the history and significance of Blanke Helle, an ancient ritual lake situated in Berlin’s Tempelhof-Schöneberg district. In Pardington’s own eloquent words:
 

There’s a large part of my practice that turns on my intuitive engagement with the day and the things I come in to contact with that day. I am always travelling and collecting in nature.
 

I discovered Blanke Helle within a few days of arriving in Berlin. I had been made aware before i left about the Norse Goddess Hel, but didn’t expect to find such an important physical link to the deity when I arrived. Right in Berlin! Our goddess in Aoatearoa /New Zealand is Hine Nui Te Pō, the Great Lady of the Night. Every people have their Death Goddess, who is both ancient and contemporary simultaneously, ever changing and ever staying the same.
 

I’m interested in Hel and Hine Nui Te Pō as powerful deific masks who both speak loads in respect to their own deep indigeneity, both Norse and Maori. How they intertwine during my residency is similar to the way bloodlines intertwine when coloniser and colonised meet and create new people and a new whakapapa/genealogy is created. Certainly I am the product of many of those meetings, with Maori, Scottish, Irish and English whakapapa.
 

Blanke Helle is a glacial kettle lake remainder, a still, dark, ancient holy pond in Berlin’s Alboinplatz. According to local folk tradition, there was a sacrificial stone altar beside the great lake tended by a pagan priest, and Hel (who was believed to dwell at the bottom of the lake) would send up black bulls that emerged from the water. These bulls would help the priest clear the land, and work it. The land itself was blessed, and would provide plenty of grain that kept the priest well fed.
 

But as the priest grew old, he took it as a sign when one day a Christian monk appeared at the lake that his time on Midgard was ending. He asked the holy man to continue to look after the place of sacrifice. But after the pagan priest had passed from the world of the living the monk refused to honour a pagan Goddess. Hel was greatly displeased and sent Her massive bulls, the now extinct Auroch, foaming up from the water after the monk, whom they killed. Since then, it is said in some versions of the local folk tales that instead of waiting for others to sacrifice to Her in an age of Christianity, that the Goddess Herself lures victims to Her holy waters, and takes them as drowned sacrifices.
 

Leafy suburbia masks a past of human sacrifice… Hel is a half-rotted goddess, both beautiful woman and skeletal form in one. She is a goddess of bare necessity, only speaking the truth and loving and protecting the dead. She’s meeting me on my fleeting sojourn in Berlin, and I’m talking to her about my country Aotearoa/New Zealand, and about the people I come from.
 

Dr. Fiona Pardington
Studio Atahu
Aotearoa/New Zealand

 


 

See Fiona Pardington’s AiR Visual Diary: