ABOUT FACE. A military command. A reflection of our tumultuous times. A comment on the cult of beauty perpetuated by every television screen.
The works in this exhibition – ranging from painting to performance, video, and poetry – each address in their own way these turbulent times. Wars, financial crisis, environmental disasters. They have all happened before. About face. They will all happen again. Not even the art world is safe. Artists are busy responding, re-thinking, revolting. Some people stop and listen. The rest of the world goes on as usual. The revolutionaries become icons. About face. The next generation of revolutionaries rises against them.
What drives our destruction? About face. What drives our self destruction?
Is destruction at the heart of all creation? Is our sinister devotion to icons the same fuel we burn when we destroy them. The microscopic line between destruction and construction. A postmodernist’s wet dream.
Terrible beauty. About face. The beauty of terror. Yet even while we indulge in it, we deny the filth, we wear masks of purity, clean facades maintained by wipe-clean surfaces. Anything to save face. About face.
Reversal, revolution, repetition, identity, defacement, destruction, rebirth. The three emerging talents in this group exhibition converge upon these issues in surprising ways. Jarik Jongman, a painter, invokes performance for the first time in his interactive painting series, (de)facing revolt (2012). Ensuring the complicity of the spectator, this exhibition is not about watching – it is about being. States of being and becoming are reflected through the new Mariana Hahn’s evocative performance and video, Poem 1, Her Name (2013), her poetry sticking in our brains. The rhythms of Sarah Ludemann’s video works stick too from the relentless demolition of body in Schnitzelporno (there within the tender embrace of humanity’s structures) (2012), to the repeated dissintegration of structure in flap goes the wing of the butterfly in slow motion. and I close my eyes and sense the cracks in my flesh (2010-2012). Flesh and blood or concrete and steel, it is all created to be destroyed.
Showing during 2013’s Frieze week, ABOUT FACE demonstrates an alternative to consumerist, established art world in London, and allows the visitor to confront its dictators, be they collectors or creators.
Mariana Hahn was born in the mid 1980s in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany. She did Theatre Studies at ETI in Berlin, and has a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London. Her work has been described like an itch under the skin. The itch of something that is there but cannot be caught, be laid finger on. Subtle movements of what lays beneath the surface that carries us, moves us back and fro. Transparent and yet hidden, isolated and yet profoundly prominent, like the voices of an oracle. Voice becomes a palpable medium in Hahn’s performance. The poetry inflected cadence becomes the action, the performance of the body’s stillness, draped in plastic, like a defunct statue.
A former assistant of Anselm Kiefer, Jarik Jongman uses both his own photographs and anonymous pictures found in flea markets, books, magazines and the internet as a starting point for his work, which often deals with archetypical imagery. Dutch born, he studied in Arnhem and has had numerous exhibitions in London, Berlin, Switzerland, Amsterdam and at the 53rd (2009) and current 54th Venice Biennale in a collateral event. He lives and works in Amsterdam. In ABOUT FACE, Jongman will be showing a series of ten painted portraits of icons of the contemporary art world; some of the richest and most influential players of our time, which he will subsequently, with the help of the audience, deface. The result will be a series of mutilated images, reminiscent of the damaged murals and toppled statues of ousted dictators across the world.
Sarah Lüdemann continuously disassembles her body and identity, explores psychological states, concepts of self, social roles and ways of perception and (re)presentation. It is all a self portrait and yet generally relevant and open to identification and interpretation. Repetition and proximity, seduction and repulsion, love and hate, destruction and resurection. The birth of poetic brutality. As a woman and as a being with tender harshness. Visuality and sensuality play a vital role in Lüdemann’s works as she aspires to create experiences that are at once sensuously engaging and thought provoking. Sarah Lüdemann finished an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins/Byam Shaw in September 2011. In 2009 she was selected for an influential residency with Mona Hatoum. She has been awarded the South Square Trust Award and was shortlisted for the Arts & Humanities Research Council BGP Award in 2010.
MOMENTUM is pleased to announce the showing of a special programme of video works originally screened at the 1st Kiev Biennale last year. The works will be on view from 6 September – 27 October 2013 at MOMENTUM Berlin and then on our SKY SCREEN initiative for video art in public space in Istanbul and Berlin! Curated by the Artistic Director of the Biennale, David Elliott, the programme features new works by John Bock, Yang Fudong, Gulsun Karamustafa, Lutz Becker, Tracey Moffatt, Map Office, and Miao Xiaochun. MOMENTUM is excited to bring these works to audiences in Berlin, Istanbul and beyond.
Echoing the first words of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens’ famous novel set at the time of the French Revolution, this exhibition jumps forward to the present to consider how contemporary art and aesthetics use the past to express the future. The ideals of Human Rights developed during 18th Century European Enlightenment found their first political expression in the American and French Revolutions. Yet, in spite of fine intentions at the outset, Human Rights have been constricted as each revolution has contained at its core the worst as well as the best of human thought and action. This exhibition reflects on utopian dreams of freedom, equality, and security that are very much at the heart of our lives today, as well as on their opposite: terror, inequity and war. It is the destructive forces of both man and nature that seem to make a more ideal life impossible. Showing simultaneously across three locations in Berlin and Istanbul, revisiting this selection of works is a timely response to the current situation in Turkey, where ideals of democracy and freedom have been brought into renewed focus.
The artist Miao Xiaochun, who is part of this programme, is currently representing the People’s Republic of China in the 55th Venice Biennale.
The artist Gülsün Karamustafa, who is part of this programme, has a major solo exhibition at our collaborating partner SALT, coinciding with this programme: A Promised Exhibition.
ARTISTS and WORKS:
Lutz Becker, THE SCREAM, 2012
Born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany 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). As of 2003, Becker has been working for the Mexican Picture Partnership ltd.’s reconstruction project of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s film ¡Que viva Mexico! ‒ Da zdravstvuyet Meksika!.
THE SCREAM
‘The video installation The Scream is an homage to the Ukrainian filmmaker and poet Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1894-1956). It is a reflection on Dovzhenko as a poet who told his stories in the form of the classical eclogue, in which pastoral simplicity stands in contrast with modernist self-consciousness. Even in his more overtly political films Dovzhenko’s perspective remained subjective, attached to the old art of story telling, its allegorical elements, symbols and types. The installation, originally presented on three screens, is shown here as a single-channel version especially created for this exhibition. The work is a montage of segments from Dovzhenko’s films, based on dramatic interactions and accidental synchronicities of images and scenes, the play of affinities and contrast, textures, details, and the monumentalisation of the human face’.
Born in 1965 in Gribbohm, Germany lives and works in Berlin, Germany. John Bock makes lectures, films and installations that combine and crosspollinate practices of language, theatre and sculpture in an absurd and complex fashion. He is known for producing surreal, disturbing and sometimes violent universes in which he manipulates fantasmagorical machines constructed out of waste and found objects. Bock actively collapses the borders of performance, video and installation art. Raised in a rural area of Germany (a background that he has drawn upon for his films involving tractors and rabbits), Bock came to prominence in the 6th Berlin Bienniale (1998), the 48th Venice Biennale (1999) and Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002). He was initially known for his unpredictable, sprawling live performances in which he brings together uncanny costumes, jury-rigged sets made from tables, cupboards and simple machinery, and his own wildly discursive lecturing style. Clad in bright and excessive cloth appendages and covered in sickly materials, Bock interacts with handmade assemblages and inanimate objects that reference a range of social, scientific and philosophical structures. Following the less florid practice of Joseph Beuys, the settings and objects remain in the exhibition space as installations in the aftermath of his lectures. Moving from early documentation videos of performances, Bock has recently begun to work on more complex videos and films that play with the structures and genres of cinema. He uses spectacular settings and costumes, rapid-fire editing, and a mix of sound and popular music to stage narratives that reference such broad fields as 1990s Hollywood cliché, 1970s Glam Rock and nineteenthcentury dandyism. He does not appear personally in Monsieur et Monsieur, 2011, the film shown here, but instead plays the role of director of this bizarre, kafkaesque nightmare.
Born in 1971 in Beijing, China lives and works in Shanghai, China. Yang Fudong’s films, photographs and video installations are born out of an interest in the power of the moving image to explore subjectivity, experience and thought. He draws stylistically on different periods in the history of Chinese cinema to create open ended existential narratives that interweave quotidian ritual with dream and fantasy states. Yang trained as a painter in the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. In the 1990s, he started to work in the medium of film and video. He is known for his cinematography and mastery of cinematic style, using 35mm film to produce powerful and poetic works about the human condition with its malaise and fantasies of everyday life. He possesses a sensitivity to the traditions of Chinese art, cinema and the place of the intellectual (the literati). Each of his films is philosophical and open-ended, engaging questions around both history and contemporary life, mostly depicting the lives of young people from his own generation, albeit with historical resonances that sometimes span many centuries. Through vignettes staged with classical precision, yang’s works propose a poetics of place and a critique of time that is determined through the interaction of individuals rather than by political doctrine.
THE NIGHTMAN COMETH / Ye Jiang
The single screen work shown here, unfolds in the realm of historical fantasy. An ancient warrior is seen wounded and forlorn after battle, in conflict about his path in life. Three ghost-like characters appear as emblems of feelings and thoughts that surface and clash within the warrior’s heart and mind as he has to decide whether to disappear or continue fighting. Yang has preferred to describe this film as ‘neo-realistic’ rather than historical or allegorical: Neo-realism” is a history theatre where current and contemporary social conditions come to play. Who exists realistically, the warrior baron in his period costume or the ghost in a modern outfit? When the ancient battlefield scene and other historical events appear and reappear, where do they belong, in the past, the present or the night-falling future?…. There is hope nonetheless. The body is full of desire whereas the soul is more precious. His spirit is what backs him up in life. How should we live our lives now? How do we identify ourselves with neorealistic historical events and continue to search for spiritual meanings? What do we really want?” [DE]
Born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Working in diverse media throughout her four-decade-long career, Karamustafa has investigated ideas of mobility, including displacement, immigration, expatriation, exile, and relocation.
INSOMNIAMBULE
Insomniambule follows the nightly journeys of two characters, Somnambule and Insomniac. While one gives clues that she is suffering from nightly sleepwalks, the other stands in contrast as a symbol of constant consciousness. Though they seem to depict the heterogeneity of being awake and asleep, at their core, the two states exhibit distinct similarities. Both are fighting against the state of sleep ‒ Insomniac deliberately rejecting sleep and trying to keep consciously awake while Somnambule struggles against deep slumber from within an already induced state of sleep. From either side, both characters must find a way to adapt themselves to normal life. The characters pass through the doors of memory and recollection, subconsciously playing several games that lead them through both personal and social past and present. The two characters, represented by the women who constantly follow one another, accentuate the uncanny sensation and weird relationship of being split into two. Therefore Insomniac and Somnambule can easily join together to form the word Insomniambule, which symbolizes them both. It also creates a platform for understanding the connection between artistic creativity and the twin conditions of insomnia and somnambulance.
Running concurrently with MOMENTUM’s video program, Gülsün Karamustafa has a major retrospective of her work at SALT, our partner for SKY SCREEN in Istanbul. The solo show, A PROMISED EXHIBITION, runs from 10 September 2013 – 5 January 2014. For more information, please click here: SALT.
Born in 1960 in Brisbane, Australia, lives and works in Australia and USA. Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists as well as being an artist of international significance. She has had numerous solo 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.
DOOMED
Tracey Moffatt’s video collage, Doomed, features depictions of doom and destruction ‒ war, violence and terror ‒ as they appear in popular cinema. In collaboration with Gary Hillberg, with whom she made Other (2009), Love (2003), Artist (2000) and Lip (1999), Doomed uses cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and black-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory ‒ the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes, however, within Moffatt’s own essaying, creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Not only does Moffatt play within the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations, she revels in it. Moffatt points at how the viewer is involved in filmic narratives through an emotional hook, by the promise of imminent disaster, an important narrative device. Moffatt’s film itself is crafted with an introduction, body and finale ‒ in a presentation of the form of filmic entertainment, as well as of ‘art as entertainment’.
MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (b. 1966, Casablanca, Morocco) and Valérie Portefaix (b. 1969, Saint-Étienne, France). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression including drawing, photography, video, installations, performance, and literary and theoretical texts. Both are teaching at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
THE OVEN OF STRAW
Ukraine is traditionally the barn of Europe and one of its most important agricultural producers. Against a background of food crisis and financial speculation on agriculture, we would like to use wheat as a point of entry for thinking about the impact of speculation on the land. The Oven of Straw was originally a video installation, and is shown here as a film weaving together narrative fragments linked by their relation to wheat. The installation was a small construction inviting the visitors to enter a confined space in the shape of an oven made of straw. The structure of the oven echoes the structure of a bank with its thick wall and small entrance suggesting the opposite effects of potential danger and safety. The interior is designed like a small cinema, where visitors are presented a short film. Mixing archival material from various films, Oven of Straw explores the role of wheat as a valued system of exchange.
Born in 1964 in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China lives and works in Beijing, China. Miao Xiaochun graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, China and the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. He is presently a professor at CAFA and one of the leading digital artists in China. While studying in Europe he familiarised himself with western art history and motifs from famous classic paintings are often animated in his videos. Miao Xiaochun is considered one of the most representative and influential artists In the domain of China’s new media art. He started in 90s his creative explorations on the interface between the real and the virtual. His extensive body of work includes photography, painting and 3D computer animation which are parallel to each other. He works in contemporary photography based on the “multiple view point” perspective to pioneer connections between history and the modern world. Miao Xiaochun successfully uses 3D technology to create upon a 2D image a virtual 3D scene, to transform a still canvas into moving images, concurrently changing the traditional way of viewing paintings and giving a completely new interpretation and significance to a masterpiece of art, especially with the striking use of his idiosyncratic imagination about history and the future. His works add an important example to contemporary negotiations with art history, and open up new potential for art as he experiments with new possibilities, taking a step forward into new potential spheres.
RESTART
The apocalyptic 3D video Restart begins with an animation of Pieter Breughel’s The Triumph of Death (c. 1562). Here one famous Western masterpiece morphs into another and classical civilisation crumbles into modern chaos. As the video continues, images of the present begin to take hold, some reflecting China’s recent economic growth and technological prowess. yet no triumphalism is intended in what after all is a continuing cycle. In Xiaochun’s works the naked homogeneity of seemingly oriental CG figures based on the artist’s body, dead or alive, represent everyman ‒ his joys and horrors as well as the endless struggles between life, love and death.
Davıd Elliott is an English born curator and writer. From 1976 to 1996 he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001), founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007), Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008 – 2010) and Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London and on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES REBIRTH AND APOCALYPSE IN CONTEMPORARY ART
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times reflects on seemingly utopian dreams of freedom, equality, and security, as well as on their opposites: terror, inequity, poverty and war, that are very much at the heart of our lives today. It is this destructive impulse – some may say necessity – within both man and nature that seems to make a more ideal or stable life impossible. Yet the Kantian idea of artistic autonomy is one of the significant survivors of this age of revolutions. Without it art would always be the servant of some greater power and contemporary criticism would end up as little more than a small, rudderless, leaky boat at the mercy of a boundless, all-consuming tide.
This same program will be shown on SKY SCREEN, MOMENTUM’s initiative for video art in public space. SKY SCREEN turns the museum and gallery inside out by bringing video art onto the streets, thereby making it widely accessible and building curiosity and public interest in contemporary art.
SKY SCREEN:
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times Revisited: Selected Videos From The 1st Kiev Biennale
Curated by David Elliott
Showing On:
11 – 15 September, from dusk until dawn
SKY SCREEN Istanbul at SALT Beyoğlu
İstiklal Caddesi 136, Beyoğlu 34430 İstanbul, Turkey
Coinciding with the Opening of the Istanbul Biennale
IN COLLABORATION WITH SALT
SALT is a not-for-profit institution located in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. Opened in April 2011, SALT hosts exhibitions, conferences and public programs; engages in interdisciplinary research projects; and sustains SALT Research, a library and archive of recent art, architecture, design, urbanism, and social and economic histories to make them available for research and public use. SALT’s mission is to explore critical and timely issues in visual and material culture, and cultivate innovative programs for research and experimental thinking.
SALT Beyoğlu, İstiklal Caddesi 136, Beyoğlu 34430 İstanbul, Türkiye
And:
21 – 22 September, 20:00 – 24:00
SKY SCREEN Berlin at Collegium Hungaricum
Dorotheenstr. 12, 10117 Berlin
During Berlin Art Week
IN COLLABORATION WITH .CHB
The .CHB is an innovative cultural institution located in Berlin and an active partner in the cultural landscape of Berlin and Germany. It explores a wide range of topics, shedding its own perspectives on current issues, ideas and concepts. Collegium Hungaricum Berlin is part of the Balassi Institute for the promotion of Hungarian Culture.
Kate McMillan (b.1974 in Hampshire, UK. Lived in Perth, Australia from 1982-2012. Lives and works in London, UK.)
Kate McMillan (b.1974, Hampshire, UK), lived in Perth, Australia from 1982-2012, relocating to London in 2013. McMillan’s work incorporates a range of media including sculpture, film, sound, installation, textiles and performance. She is interested in the linking narratives of forgetting and place, often focusing on the residue of the past. McMillan’s artworks thus act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are over-looked.
McMillan has resided on the Board of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) based in Sydney. She earned her Phd at Curtin University, Perth, examining the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island in Western Australia. In addition to her practice as an artist, she is currently a Lecturer in Contemporary Art in the Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College, London. In this role, she convenes the arts-based research for two Master’s programs and is also the Development Lead for a new BA in Culture, Media and Creative Industries which will be launched in September 2020. Prior to this, she has guest lectured at The Ruskin, Oxford University, University of the Arts, Farnham and Coventry University and in Australia at Curtin University. Her recent academic monograph was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2019, titled ‘Contemporary Art & Unforgetting in colonial landscapes: Islands of Empire’which explores the role of arts-led research by female artists in the global south in troubling accounts of history and decolonising knowledge. Other research includes the 2019 and 2020 author of the Freelands Foundation, Representation of Female Artists in Britain.
Through McMillan’s practice as an artist, her work has been featured in various museums and biennales, including the 17th Biennale of Sydney; the Trafo Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Perth Institute for Contemporary Art; John Curtin Gallery, Perth; Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.
Previous solo exhibitions include ‘The Past is Singing in our Teeth’ presented at MOMENTUM in 2017, which, in 2018, toured to the Civic Room in Glasgow and Arusha Gallery for the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Other solo exhibitions include ‘Instructions for Another Future’ 2018 Moore Contemporary, Australia; ‘Songs for Dancing, Songs for Dying’, 2016, Castor Projects, London; ‘The Potter’s Field’, 2014, ACME Project Space, London; ‘Anxious Objects’, Moana Project Space, Australia; ‘The Moment of Disappearance’, 2014, Performance Space, Sydney; ‘In the shadow of the past, this world knots tight’, 2013 Venn Gallery; Paradise Falls, 2012, Venn Gallery; ‘Lost’ at the John Curtin Gallery in 2008, ‘Broken Ground’ in 2006 at Margaret Moore Contemporary Art and ‘Disaster Narratives’ at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts for the 2004 Perth International Arts Festival.
Her work was part of ‘All that the Rain Promises and More’ curated by Aimme Parrott for the 2019 Edinburgh Arts Festival. In March 2018 McMillan presented new work for Adventious Encounters curated by Huma Kubakci at the former Whiteley’s Department store in West London. In June 2018 she produced a new film based installation for RohKunstbau XXIV festival at the Schloss Lieberose in Brandenburg curated by Mark Gisbourne. 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.
McMillan’s work is held in private collections around the world, as well as in the Christoph Merian Collection, Basel; Soho House Collection, London; The Ned 100, London; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Wesfarmers Arts Collection; KPMG; Murdoch University, Australia; University of Western Australia and Curtin University, Australia; and the MOMENTUM Collection.
PARADISE FALLS I
2011, Video, 2 min 49 sec
Sound: composed by Dr Cat Hope, performed by Decibel, recorded by Stuart James at Soundfield Studio
Camera: Luc Renaud; Editing: Sohan Ariel Hayes
Woman on the lake: Eveline Bouvla
Paradise Falls I & II form part of the body of work covering 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. These works are the philosophical culmination of the time McMillan spent in Switzerland in 2011 as well as her PhD research into the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, Western Australia. The sound for both films, developed by Cat Hope, is an important aspect of the works provides an un-nerving contrast to the poetic images of the films, highlighting the persistent disquiet of history.
Paradise Falls I was shot in the Black Forest in 2011 during an Artist Residency with the Christoph Merian Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. The lake
where the work is set, situated on top of an extinct volcano, is called Mummelsee (Mother Lake). There are many myths associated with this lake in German folklore, most notably about a siren who lures men into the forest and kills them. In McMillan’s video, a ghostly female form flickers in and out of view at the edges of of the otherwise still landscape. Setting up an interplay between landscape, memory, forgetting and history, Paradise Falls I considers how history can leave a residue in the landscape and the past often comes back to haunt us.
PARADISE FALLS II
2012, Video, 3 min 28 sec
Sound: composed by Dr. Cat Hope, The Abe Sada Project, recorded by Andrew Ewing
Camera & Editing: Sohan Ariel Hayes
Man in the boat: Aaron Wyatt
Paradise Falls II follows an Aboriginal man as he rows towards the craggy silhouette of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island. He too appears and disappears from sight, finally lost to the inky black of the ocean. The island was the site of an Aboriginal prison that is barely acknowledged in the historical record. The film portrays a man rowing back to his captors, highlighting that history can not always be forgotten. The spectral characters in Paradise Falls I & II are stand-ins for fractured and partial histories that disappear from focus, yet continue in our collective psyche as dark and haunting traumas.
The films are like moving paintings, heavily referencing the romantic tradition of Germanic landscape painting. The work of artists such as Arnold Bocklin and Casper David Friedrich 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 bearing witness to the beauty of sadness that is contrary to the horrors of forgetting history.
(b. 1971 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)
Kirsten Palz is a visual artist, with a degree in Computer Science from the IT-University in Copenhagen, and a degree of Fine Arts in Painting from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In the past decade Kirsten Palz has shown her work in a variety of exhibitions, performances and readings in Berlin and abroad, and worked collectively with international artists. Her work has been structured around a text archive, which now consists of over 500 texts or instructions for performative actions and translations (as e.g. drawings, sculptures, performances, theater scripts and dance choreographies). The archive, which is titled ‘Sculpture as Writing’ departs from an expanded concept of sculpture that can materialize across techniques and disciplines. In addition to her own artistic practice, she supports and curates works of other artists. Palz runs a project space ‘le Foyer du Château’ at Karl-Liebknecht Straße, Berlin, and is involved with the organisation Art and Feminism to organise for Berlin the international workshop EDIT-A-THON (wikipedia) taking place on international women day.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
‘Sculpture as Writing’ is an archive – elementary entities; the manual, the score, the flyer, the playwright, the architectural plan, the choreography or the data-set. They exist before the performance, before the realisation, before the show. It is thus a speculative open process for new actors; be it a visitor, a curator, a collective, an actor, a director or a performer.
‘Sculpture as Writing’ is independent towards any previous staging and find power in the future. Each new interpretation, performance or act of a singular work from the archive becomes unique within the new engagement. I welcome this uncertainty.
The fragmented and independent representation suits my practice that is performative and changes with every iteration. Everyone is invited to engage.
– Kirsten Palz
Solo Exhibitions and Performances include, in 2022: ‘Chronicles of Extinction’, Changing Room, Berlin; ‘Nie wieder Krieg’ (performance) Neue Nationalgalerie, Mahnmal für Ukraine, Berlin. 2020: Re-imagining America, Spor Küblü, Berlin; ‘Below the Sun’, Changing Room, Berlin. 2019: Urhütte: Variations on an Archetype, Performative reading with Norbert Palz, SCHARAUN, Siemensstadt, Exhibition Heidegger’s Hut; Kirsten Palz. E.S. KOMMT UND GEHT Disko – Buchhandlung, Berlin; SET AND ALGORITHM Performance, Changing-room, Berlin. 2018: New editions with ACTA, Friends with Books, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. 2017: Sculpture as Writing // Konversationskunst in Botschaft, Berlin, Kirsten Palz with Antje Eske & Kurd Alsleben. 2016: Data Mining Kiosk, Exhibition in VII Acts, ACTA with Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, National Museum, Berlin. 2015: Breakfast at Paul’s, Schwartzsche Villa, Berlin; ‘Sculpture in four parts’ ACTA with Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Grimmuseum, Berlin; Performance with Efrat Stempler, Month of Performance Art, MOMENTUM, Berlin; Choreography for One, Performance with 26 readings for dancers. Eden, Berlin; Dance 001 (Performance), Tete, Berlin. 2014: Sculpture for closed space, Performance, Studiolo, Kunst-Werke, Berlin; 3D Soirée. Lesung I +II/ Manuale von Kirsten Palz mit Erik Steinbrecher, Hochschule der Künste, Zurich. 2013: Ernst in der Sache, Performance with Paul Polaris, Kunsthaus Zürich; Manuals for R, Performance. MOMENTUM, Berlin. 2012: Sculpture for Friends, Ozean, Berlin; Sculpture as Writing, Grey Sheep, Institut für Raumexperimente, Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin. 2011: Kirsten Palz and Jeroen Jacobs, Rakete.co, Berlin. 2010: Kirsten Palz _ Manuals. Spor Klübü, Berlin.
Group Exhibitions include, in 2022: Blind Vision, Wilhelminenhofstr, Berlin; MICROLOGIES, Berlin- Los Angeles Connect, Irenic Projects, Pasadena, LA, USA. 2021: Temporäre Projekte im Stadtraum. Organiseret af lfdc; States of Emergency, MOMENTUM, Berlin; Points of Resistance, Zionskirche, Berlin. 2020: ELYSIUM, Positions, Berlin. 2019: PEACE, Spor Klübü, Berlin. 2018: ‘ÄRMEL AUFKREMPELN ZUPACKEN AUFBAUEN!’, Spor Klübü, Berlin. 2016: ‘Inglan is A Bitch’, Spor Klübü, Berlin; Gutai, Performance, Tokyo WonderSite, Japan; Psycotropic Sculpture for closed space, Performance, Tete, Berlin. 2015 Xerox, Bar Babette, Berlin; Tekst efter Text, Den Frie, Copenhagen; Works on Paper, Month of Performance Art, MOMENTUM, Berlin. 2014: Festival of Future Nows, Performance, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; IWF Mördertreff, Spor Klübü, Berlin; Die Äesthetic des Wiederstands, IG Bildende Kunst, Wien. 2013: Thresholds: crossing boarders between video, performance and the visual arts, MOMENTUM Archive of Performance, Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin; Ernst in der Sache with Paul Polaris. ‘Invisible Zurich’, Stadtarchiv, Südbühne, Gessnerallee, Zürich; ‘REMIX – 10 years in the mix’, Spor Klübü, Berlin; ‘The Oracle’, with ff, The Wand, Berlin; Works On Paper, Month of Performance Art, MOMENTUM, Berlin; ff /Erogenous Zone, Temporary Autonomous Zone /2/, Galerie in Körnerpark, Berlin. 2012: Unfair poetry and other art things, Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin; ‘Cocaine-.’ Spor Klübü, Berlin; Presence /Absence, Hotel Paravent, Berlin; LANDING, Project-room Teksas, Denmark. 2011: Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; SOLOS II, Ozean, Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin; MOLTO, Artissima Lido, Turin; Künstlerische Produktion, Espace Surplus, Berlin; 4th Gemini Show, WEST GERMANY, Berlin; Wilhelm Reich | Ayn Rand, Gallery Essays and Observations, Berlin; An Exchange with Sol LeWitt, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MOCA). 2010: Stranded in the Future, Spor Klübü, Berlin.
MANUALS FOR R (2012/2013)
ink on paper
The Manual as Script, Drawing and Experiment. I define the Manual as an open directive and conceptual sketch for an factual or potential intervention in space. The manuals are named after the industrial manual and prescribe the execution, matter and functionality of specific situations and objects.
The manuals describe these developments, processes and objects trough texts and diagrams. Manuals for Rachel comprises a selection of manuals written in 2013. These new manuals are a continuation of the series ‘Writings as Sculpture’ started in 2012.
Songbooks (2016-2023) / ‘Sculpture as Writing’
Ink on paper. Written in verse, each of the books engage with a current theme. The series consists to date of the books:
2023 Songbook/ Nunca más la guerra, un lamento. Edition.
2022 Songbook/ Nie wieder Krieg. Edition.
2020 Songbook/ Covid-19. Edition.
2019 Songbook/ Below the Sun. Edition.
2019 Songbook/ Do we feel lonely. Edition.
2018 Songbook/ Human Biotope and Bioengineering. Edition.
2016 Songbook/ Book of Verse. Edition.
Below the Sun (2020) was written against the backdrop of rising global temperatures. The score’s theme centers on the sun as the most powerful energy resource in our solar-system and its relationship to ancient mythology and modern science. On Christmas Day 1968, the Apollo 17 mission delivered a complete photographic image of the Earth, which went down in history as the “Blue Marble”. The visual depiction showed a fragile, glassy-looking object and its implication was responsible for a growing ecological awareness in the decades that followed. However, more than 50 years later, human impact on the planet through consumerism and environmental destruction has brought the world’s ecology onto the verge of destruction. Below the Sun was written against the backdrop of rising global temperature. It’s a song about the sun as the most powerful energy resource in our solar-system. Further more, the sun with its voluminous burning mass, was central for ancient mythology and modern science alike.
– Kirsten Palz
The Songbooks are part of Kirsten Palz’s ongoing conceptual practice of “Sculpture as Writing”, based upon an expanded concept of sculpture that can materialize across techniques and disciplines. The Songbook / Nunca más la guerra, un lamento. (2023) is an adaption of the Songbook Nie wieder Krieg (2022). The lament was performed for the first time at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin as a protest against the war in Ukraine. This tragic war remains ongoing at the time of this exhibition, as are so many other senseless wars being fought around the world. Kirstn Palz’s lament – a denial of violence, a plea against history repeating itself – poses a stark reminder of all the distant wars raging elsewhere. The Songbook / Nunca más la guerra, un lamento. was made especially for MOMENTUM’s exhibition ART from ELSEWHERE: Mexico City.
ink on paper, 24 books from an ongoing series, 30.5 × 68 cm
Chronicles of Extinction marks the start of a new series of work for Kirsten Palz, while remaining true to her conceptual practice of “Sculpture as Writing”, encompassing her manuals, songbooks, and other text-based works. The 24 books from the ongoing series Chronicles of Extinction, are a cry against the ecological devastation mankind is wreaking upon our planet; they are a song of mourning for the disappeared and still disappearing species that once inhabited this earth with us; a needed reminder; a sad farewell.
Chronicles of Extinction consists of 24 individual editions that form the beginning of an ongoing archive. Each of the twelve editions lists twelve extinct species. The applied scientific classification system compiles information on kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species for each extinct member:
VOID 01 ACTINOPTERYGII ray-finned fishes
VOID 02 AMPHIBIA shrub frogs
VOID 03 AVES birds
VOID 04 AVES birds
VOID 05 BIVALVIA molluscs
VOID 06 GASTROPODA snails and land slugs
VOID 07 INSECTA owlet moths
VOID 08 LILIOPSIDA lilies
VOID 09 MAGNOLIOPSIDA flowering plants
VOID 10 MAGNOLIOPSIDA flowering plants
VOID 11 MAMMALIA rodents
VOID 12 REPTILIA reptiles
Each extinction creates a void.
Each extinction is irreversible.
Watch here the Spotlight interview with Kirsten Palz
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, MOMENTUM, the Platform for Time-based Art and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin are presenting a program of Exhibition, Performance, Discussion, and SKY SCREEN on the theme of
THRESHOLDS: CROSSING THE BORDERS BETWEEN
VIDEO, PERFORMANCE, AND THE VISUAL ARTS
Curated by: Vera Baksa Soós, Dávid Szauder, Rachel Rits-Volloch, Fanni Magyar
• Friday – Sunday, 20-22 September EXHIBITION: MAKING THE MEDIUM •
Opening Friday 20 Sept at 19:00 – 22:00, with live performance by Nezaket Ekici at 20:00
• Saturday, 21 September at 19.00 – 19.45 INTERDISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE: THRESHOLDS•
• Sunday, 22 Sept at 16.00 – 18.00 PANEL DISCUSSION: CURATING PERFORMANCE ART – WHERE DOES THEATRE END AND ART BEGIN •
• Saturday – Sunday, 21-22 Sept at 21:00 – 00:00 SKY SCREEN: THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES REVISITED •
MAKING THE MEDIUM
Friday – Sunday, 20.09 – 22.09.2013Opening Friday, 20.09.2013 at 19:00 – 22:00, with live performance by Nezaket Ekici at 20:00
On the occasion of the exhibition opening, Nezaket Ekici will stage a live performance, re-enacting her 2008 work, TUBE (duration 30 minutes), 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.
We invite you to a special performance by Nezaket Ekici. Ekici is a Turkish-born, Berlin-based performance artist who trained with Marina Abramovich. Following in her tradition of extreme durational statements, Ekici’s work is focused on her body and the gaze of the spectator which sustains the performance.
During the weekend of Berlin Art Week, MOMENTUM is screening our Collection of contemporary international video and performance art at the Moholy Nagy Gallery in the Collegium Hungaricum. The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists. 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. Three years later, the MOMENTUM Collection has expanded from its original roster of 10 to 24 artists. The Collection represents a cross-section of digital artworks at the top of the field. It ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists and includes work from Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, the US, the UK, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland and Germany. 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. We are honored to present this iteration of the MOMENTUM Collection at Collegium Hungaricum. The program is divided into three main themes: Subjects and Objects; Rituals and Ghosts; and Evolution/Revolution. We invite you to consider the ways in which our curatorial categories are limited and limiting; to consider the program as at times a discursive whole or a fragmented dialogue. Due to the unique nature of its growth, the Collection especially lends itself to this type of inquiry. Like the works that constitute it, the Collection both sets apart time (to be etched onto a hard drive, recorded on film, or projected across a gallery wall) and is constantly changed by the passing of time itself. The MOMENTUM Collection, including Artist Bios and Statements can be seen by following the link to MOMENTUM COLLECTION.
THE EXHIBITION IS BROKEN INTO 5 SECTIONS:
Subjects and Objects looks at works which address the individual as both subject and object of the gaze, of scientific enquiry and biological necessity, of the material expectations of beauty, and as objectified by the material traces of individual histories. Including works by:
TRACEY MOFFAT, NEZAKET EKICI, HYE RIM LEE, MARK KARASICK, GABRIELE LEIDOFF, FIONA PARDINGTON
Rituals and Ghosts brings together works which look at the stories, traditions, and games we repeat to ourselves and to others, which define both the stark differences between cultures, and the sometimes uncanny similarities between them. Including works by:
OSVALDO BUDET, DAVID MEDALLA, MARTIN SEXTON, ERIC BRIDGEMAN, TV MOORE, HANNU KARJALAINEN, MARIANA HAHN, ZUZANNA JANIN
Evolution/Revolution begins with the purity of nature, and moves on to ancient civilizations, the beginnings of society, racing in to the present day to address the many ways mankind misuses its hard-earned civilization. Including work by:
JANET LAURENCE, MARIANA VASSILEVA, ERIC BRIDGEMAN, MARTIN SEXTON, JAMES P. GRAHAM, MAP OFFICE, DOUG FISHBONE, SUMUGAN SIVANESAN, SARAH LÜDEMANN
Performance Archive features videos of performances commissioned by or staged at MOMENTUM. Including works by:
JOYCE CLAY, CATHERINE DUQUETTE, MARIANA HAHN, EMI HARIYAMA AND MARIANA MOREIRA, JARIK JONGMAN, KATE HERS, SARAH LÜDEMANN AND ADRIAN BRUN, KIRSTEN PALZ, SUMUGAN SIVANESAN, UNIT 7, YULIA STARTSEV
Collegium Hungaricum Berlin complements MOMENTUM’s international video selection with its own selection of Hungarian video art of the past 10 years. Reflections on personal experiences, gender and social critical aspects play a significant role in the curatorial selection of these works. Including works by:
ERIKA BAGLYAS, MONA BIRKÁS, JÁNOS BORSOS, MARCELL ESTERHÁZY, DÁVID GUTEMA, MIKLÓS MÉCS, HAJNAL NÉMETH, RÓZA EL-HASSAN, EDINA CECÍLIA HORVÁTH, ISTVÁN ILLÉS, JUDIT KIS, ANNAMÁRIA SZENTPÉTERY
The MAKING THE MEDIUM exhibition will travel to TRAFO Kunstahalle in Szczecin, Poland on 23 November – 7 December 2013. TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin is the first center for contemporary art in the northwest of Poland. Founded in 2013, and located in a renovated historic power station, TRAFO takes advantage of its geographical potential – the cross-border location within the Baltic Sea region and the immediate vicinity of Berlin, the cultural capital of this part of Europe. It acts as a unique “display window” through which Szczecin confronts its artistic image with the world.
INTERDISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE
Saturday, 21.09.2013 at 19.00 – 19.45 Created, Choreographed, and Directed byEmi Hariyama (Staatsballet Berlin) Dr. Marcus Doering, Interactive Light Design Specialist
Music composed by Bela Bartok, György Ligeti, Peter Kirn, and Szilvia Lednitzky
What happens when a ballerina meets Germany’s most innovative light design specialist in an responsive, interactive performance? The live score, performed by contemporary electronic producers Peter Kirn and Lower Order Ethics (Szilvia Lednitzky), will combine and improvise on self-collected samples. In asking these artists to work together, we have given them free reign to develop their own expressions towards this location and their own answers to the question MOMENTUM continuously poses: What is time-based art? Transgressing disciplinary boundaries and drawing together their creative synergies, these performers embody MOMENTUM’S mission to enable great art to happen across cultural and institutional borders.
Emi Hariyama is a ballerina born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated from Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow in 1996. She joined the Moscow Ballet Theater and the Aalto Ballet Theater in Essen, Germany in 1997. She has won numerous international competitions, including the Special Prize at Moscow International Ballet Competition, a bronze medal at the New York International Ballet Competition, and a silver medal at the International Ballet Competition in Paris (no gold was awarded). Since 2004, Emi Hariyama has been a member of ”Staats Oper Unter den Linden” and ”Deutsche Oper Berlin” under the direction of the maestro Vladimir Malakhov.
Dr. Marcus Doeringholds a PhD in Physics and has made a name for himself with pmd-art for innovative light design. Together with André Bernhardt and the designers of büro+staubach, he realizes interactive worlds of experience. The three-dimensional illuminations and real-time projections on actors and objects that are moving through space correspond exactly to their contours, calculated by a specially developed 3D computer model. In Berlin, Marcus participated with interactive LED zones during the “Festival of Lights“ 2011 and the “Magical Mystery Show“ at the Wintergarten Variété.
Peter Kirn is an audiovisual artist, journalist, and technologist. Classically trained in composition and piano, he now focuses on live electronic performance. He is the founder of CDM, a widely-read daily site that explores creative technology, and has contributed to Macworld, Popular Science, De:Bug, Keyboard, and others. He teaches and develops open creative tools, including co-creating the open source MeeBlip synthesizer. Born in Kentucky, he is now based in Berlin. He is a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at The City University of New York Graduate Center.
Szilvia Lednitzky (Lower Order Ethics), born in Budapest, is known in the electronic music scene for her tense and masterful transmissions on the edge of welcome sonic paranoia. Flirting with borderline gothic and harsh industrial, her sonic world pries open the doors of noise’s secret chambers, conjuring up smoky, hypnotic images of endless nights spent in daze. Lower Order Ethics is currently undertaking DJ-shows at selected cultural events around Europe, researching Hungarian and Middle-Eastern ethnomusicology at the same time.
PANEL DISCUSSION: CURATING PERFORMANCE ART
Where does theatre end and art begin?
Sunday, 22.09.2013, 16.00 – 18.00
By nature of its medium, performance art crosses many boundaries, taking in elements of installation, video and even theatre and dance. Given the continuation of Berthold Brecht’s program of heightening the self-reflexivity of theatre performances through contemporary playwrights such as René Pollesch, a territory once claimed by performance art is thrown wide open. The panel discussion will address if and how boundaries between the disciplines can still be drawn, raising questions such as: ‘Representation vesus reality – or the literary basis of theatre versus the ontology (the body) of performance.’ Is this distinction (first forged with performance art in the 1960s and ’70s) still valid?’ ‘Politics in theatre and performance – are these the same?’ ‘Is Theatre ever curated – does it make sense to talk about theatre in these terms and if so how?’ ‘Have we been recently witnessing a theatricalisation of performance art with the idea that performances are not unique events and may be choreographed so that they can be re-presented by others? What does this mean?’ ‘Is performance art now a historical category which no longer has relevance to what artists are doing?’
With Nezekat Ekici (performance artist), Mathilde ter Heijne (artist, Professor for Visual arts, Performance and Installation, Kunsthochschule Kassel), Jens Hillje (Co-director and Chief Dramaturg at the Maxim Gorki Theater), Hajnal Németh (performance artist, 54. Biennale di Venezia, Hungarian Pavillion), Joel Verwimp (Co-Founding Director, Month of Performance Art Berlin), Jack Pam (Curator, Ikono TV Festival), Jeni Fulton (Associate Director, MOMENTUM) and moderated by David Elliott (museum director, curator, writer).
David Elliott is a curator and writer who has directed contemporary art museums and institutions in Oxford, Stockholm, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney and Kiev. He is currently working on two traveling exhibitions for the UK and USA. He is also President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London, on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum and a Guest Professor in Curatorship at the China University in Hong Kong. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields and many other aspects of contemporary art. In 2008-10 he was Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney and in 2011-12 directed the inaugural International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Kiev, Ukraine. He has also advised the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charitable Trust on the development of CPS into a center for contemporary art and heritage.
Nezekat Ekici was born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970 and 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. 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. 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.
Photo by Nihad Nino Pušija
Jeni Fulton was born in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1981. She studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a M.A. (Hons). From 2003 onwards she worked as political and economic consultant for energy consultancies in London and Berlin, most recently for the Biogasrat+ e.V. Berlin. In 2010, she enrolled as PhD candidate at the Faculty for Cultural Theory at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, with a thesis on “Value and Evaluation in Contemporary Art”. Her thesis examines the interplay of art criticism and ranking systems in establishing value hierarchies in contemporary art. Since 2011, she has been contributing to art publications on a freelance basis, holding the position of Contributing Editor at Sleek Magazine. In 2013 she joined MOMENTUM UG as Associate Director.
Mathilde ter Heijne (born 1969 in Strasbourg, France) is a Berlin-based Dutch video and installation artist and a professor of Visual Art, Performance, and Installation at Kunsthochschule Kassel. She works in a wide range of media such as installation, video, sculpture, and performance. In her work she explores the social, cultural, political, and economic backgrounds of gender-specific phenomena within different cultures. Political, structural, and physical violence related to existing power structures in society are the starting points for a series of video works in which the artist represented different scenarios of violence and its victims using life-sized dummies. Simultaneously, ter Heijne examined her own role as an artist and analyzed these particular structural conditions. She is currently researching the fashioning of rituals and oral traditions as a way to preserve and share knowledge for social minorities. In these contexts, she explores alternative writing and symbol systems and considers the potential for matriarchal politics.
Jens Hillje was born in 1968 and grew up in Italy and Lower Bavaria. After his first experiences with revolutionary theater in Bavarian taverns, he decided not to become a gardener after all and instead studied Applied Cultural Studies in Perugia, Hildesheim, and Berlin. After finishing his studies, Hillje co-founded with Thomas Ostermeier in 1996 the Baracke am Deutschen Theater in Berlin (1998 Theater of the Year). From 1999 until 2009 he was a member of the artistic direction at the Schaubühne at Lehniner Platz. As a freelance dramaturg he worked with the director Nurkan Erpulat on the successful staging of the play Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood) at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße. In 2011, Hillje became the artistic director of the Performing Arts Festival In Transit at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He is now Co-director and Chief Dramaturg at the Maxim Gorki Theater.
Hajnal Németh (born 1972 in Szőny, Hungary) lives and works in Berlin and studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Németh has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at prestigious art institutions in Europe, America and Asia, including MUMOK, Vienna; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; The Kitchen, New York; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Art Museum, Singapore; Ludwig-Museum, Budapest; TENT, Rotterdam; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Kunsthalle, Budapest; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Comunidad de Madrid; 2nd Berlin Biennale, KW Berlin; Casino Luxembourg; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne; Picasso Museum, Barcelona; Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2011, she represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale.
Jack Pam is a West Australian Artist, Filmmaker, and Curator based in Berlin, whose image and sound-based work has been extensively published and collected worldwide. He is the Co- Founder and Art Director of Staple Magazine, a West Australian skate and photography magazine, founder of Tennis Club Book Shop, a unique self-made focused bookshop and publishing house based in Amsterdam, as well as the Creative Director of mapfilms: a collective of experimental video producers. Pam works independently as a curator and art critic focusing on contemporary video and media art, and joined ikono in late 2012 to direct the inaugural ikono On Air Festival.
Joël Verwimp is a Berlin-based Belgian artist who works primarily in the context of performance art. Initially trained as a visual artist and cook, Verwimp was Bethanien resident of the Flemish Government and Curator at Netwerk / center for contemporary art. He was a board member at the artist space Flutgraben e.V. and co-initiated the MPA (Month of Performance art) Berlin in 2011 as well as the APAB (Association for Performance Art in Berlin) in 2013. In recent years, his work has been hosted by Agora collective, Baltic Circle Festival (Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma), Belluard Bollwerk International arts festival, Bains Connective Art Laboratory, a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies), Theater an der Parkaue, Die Denkerei, Kaaitheater arts centre, Skulpturenpark Berlin, Stiftung PROGR (Lehrerzimmer), Exchange Radical Moments! Live Art Festival and Grüntaler9. He is currently doing research into forms of complicity and is since 2009 developing together with Nicolas Y Galeazzi the VerlegtVerlag as a framework for performance on paper. Verwimp is a curious mind fascinated with the ever-changing world around him. He loves to mingle in debates surrounding ownership, migration, performativity, and hospitality. He considers it a blessing to still be relatively sane.
SKY SCREEN: THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES REVISITED
Saturday – Sunday, 21.09 – 22.09.2013 from 21.00 – 00.00
Featuring:
Lutz Becker, John Bock, Yang Fudong, Gülsün Karamustafa, Tracey Moffatt, Map Office, and Miao Xiaochun
Curated By David Elliott
MOMENTUM is pleased to announce the showing of a special program of video works originally screened at the 1st Kiev Biennale in 2012. The works will be on view from September 7th – October 26th 2013 at MOMENTUM Berlin and then as part of our SKY SCREEN initiative on the media facade of the Collegium Hungaricum! Curated by the Artistic Director of the Biennale, David Elliott.
Echoing the first words of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens’ famous novel set at the time of the French Revolution, this exhibition jumps forward to the present to consider how contemporary art and aesthetics use the past to express the future. The ideals of Human Rights developed during 18th Century European Enlightenment found their first political expression in the American and French Revolutions. Yet, in spite of fine intentions at the outset, Human Rights have been constricted as each revolution has contained at its core the worst as well as the best of human thought and action. This program reflects on utopian dreams of freedom, equality, and security that are very much at the heart of our lives today, as well as on their opposite: terror, inequity and war. It is the destructive forces of both man and nature that seem to make a more ideal life impossible. Showing simultaneously across three locations in Berlin and Istanbul, revisiting this selection of works is a timely response to the current situation in Turkey, where ideals of democracy and freedom have been brought into renewed focus.
The artist Miao Xiaochun, who is part of this program, is currently representing the People’s Republic of China in the 55th Venice Biennale.
(b. 1961 in Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw and London.)
Zuzanna Janin is a visual artist and former teen actor, having in her youth starred in the Polish TV serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron). Having turned her talents to visual art, Janin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw (1980-87), and in 2016 completed her PhD at the University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland. Throughout her diverse practice of sculpture, video, photography installation, and performative actions, Zuzanna Janin deals with the subject of space, time and memory, as well as the problem of exclusion and absence. The main theme of her work is a conceptual approach to the visualization of processes, changes, comparisons, continuity, what’s “in between.” Janin transforms fragments of private memory, comingling her own experience with collective memory and images of universal history, contemporary social and political problems.
Alongside countless others, significant works include: the processual sculptures of wire and cotton candy Sweet Girl, Sweet Boy (2001); the spatial photographic installation Follow Me. Change Me (2001) and related video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), which shows the artist fighting in the ring with a professional boxer; the video-installation SHAME (Tar and Feathers) (2016); the sculpture installation Volvo Transformed Into Drones (2014-2015); and the series of sculptures from epoxy resin Anthropocene Sculptures (2014- 2020), which include: Seven Fathers (2016), Monument of Teenager. Triple Portrait (Majka Melania Zuzanna) (2019), and Home Transformed into Geometric Solids (2016-2018). She creates an ongoing social media photo project on Facebook and on her blog From the Series Home Sculptures (rzezbydomowe.blogspot.com). In 2004-20010 Janin created the fictional televiZJon_studio, adapting the common format of TV programs to invite curators to participate in an Art Talk Show.
Zuzanna Janin has taken part in a number of international Biennals, including the Sydney Biennial (1992), Istanbul Biennial (1992), Soonsbeek (1993), Liverpool Biennial (1996), Łódź Biennale (2010), 54th Venice Biennale (2011) (in the official program of Romania). She had a solo shows, screenings and performances at: Foksal Gallery Warsaw, Kunsthalle Wien, MAM Rio de Janeiro, Salzburger Kunstverein, National Museum Cracow and Warsaw. Group exhibition include: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal School of Art, Edinburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Jeu de Pomme Paris; Japanese Palace, Dresden; Kunstmuseum Bern; Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin; TOP Museum Tokyo; Foundation Miro, Barcelona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunsthalle, Bern; Hoffmann Collection, Berlin; TT The THING, NY.
Zuzanna Janin is a member of the board of Foundation Lokal Sztuki and Foundation Place of Art – both NGOs involved in promoting contemporary art and artists. Together with Agnieszka Rayzacher, Zuzanna Janin created the art program (exhibitions, talks, meetings) at the independent art space lokal_30 in Warsaw (2005-2012) and the second temporary space lokal_30_warszawa_london in London (2009-2010). Since 2018 Janin is a member of the Committee of Maria Anto & Elsa von Freytag Art Prize.
Since 2019, Zuzanna Janin is a lecturer in Postgraduate Study of Contemporary Art at the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. Janin was Guest Professor in a number of universities, incuding: Academy of Fine Art Cracow (Poland) , ASAB Academia del Arte, Bogota (Colombia), Sapir College of Art in Sderot , (Israel), Haifa University (Israel), Academy of Fine Art Bratislava (Slovakia) , Bezalel Jerusalem (Israel), Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (Poland) , Academy of Fine Art Warsaw and King’s College London (UK) and took part in conferences, meetings and talks in many other art institutions.
PAS DE DEUX (2001)
2001, Video, 5 min
With a title appropriated from ballet, Zuzanna Janin’s Pas De Deux (2001) is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues. Shot in a jerking close-up of two pairs of legs in constant motion on a blank white background, we are drawn into what could be a dance as readily as a fight. It is a dialogue between two bodies, a give and take of power and physical space. It is also a different perspective on one of Janin’s best-known works, the video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), where the slight, fragile-looking artist takes on a professional heavyweight boxer. To create this work, Janin spent 6 months training with him in the ring. The boxing match in The Fight is real and harrowing to watch in its intensity. In this work, the camera weaves in and out, dodging and feinting with the fighter’s blows, as close-up and personal as the physical act of combat.
Yet for Janin, this combat between two mismatched opponents is also a dance, a language allowing two bodies to communicate. The direct perspective of the camera in The Fight draws us into the brutality of this uneven combat. But changing the perspective and dropping the camera to ground level suddenly reveals the ambiguity lurking beneath the violence. For Pas De Deux, Janin’s fight performance is shot with the intimacy of a camera moving with the two bodies as they follow the same motions as The Fight, but without seeing the blows. The violent mismatch is transfigured into a match, a term which in sports signifies a contest between opposing competitors, whilst in normal usage it means a harmonious pair.
With Prof. Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath (Director Fine Arts, Akademie der Künste), Candice Breitz (Artist, Professor, Braunschweig University), Christian Jankowski (Artist, Professor, Akademie der Bildende Künste, Stuttgart), Ivo Wessel (Collector, Founder, Videoart at Midnight), Sylvain Levy (Collector, Founder, dslcollection), Elizabeth Markevitch (Founder, CEO, Ikono TV), moderated by Thomas Eller (curator/artist/writer)
PLACE: Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstr. 12, 10117 Berlin
MOMENTUM is proud to announce our collaboration with the Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin) and TRAFO (the new Kunsthalle in Szczecin, Poland) to mark our first international SKY SCREEN program.
MOMENTUM’s first internationally hosted SKY SCREEN program takes to the streets on April 14th, screening in 3 locations simultaneously. SKY SCREEN turns its hosts into an ever-changing canvas for contemporary art, bringing video art out of darkened galleries and onto the streets for everyone to see.
In Berlin, SKY SCREEN will be at our usual location overlooking Rosenthaler Platz, as well as on the media-facade of the Collegium Hungaricum on Museum Island. In Szczecin, SKY SCREEN overlooks the National Art School in an artist-run project space. This SKY SCREEN program is curated by David Szauder, focusing on Hungarian animation and media art, and will open in conjunction with the first TRAFO exhibition in Szczecin and with Gallery Weekend in Berlin.
Video art is still a daunting media for most collectors and art lovers. MOMENTUM and CHB will open up a discussion on the topic of why collecting video art is still intimidating, and why the commercial value of time-based media has not measured up to its institutional prominence. Aiming to address how video can be effectively collected and shown in a diversity of groundbreaking ways, MOMENTUM invites a panel of prominent international collectors, curators, and gallerists. MOMENTUM is a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin. Through our program of Exhibitions, Kunst Salons, and Public Video Art Initiatives, we are dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists working with time-based practices. This discussion is accompanying our Sky Screen program for Video Art in Public Spaces, concurrently screening at MOMENTUM, CHB, and TRAFO Szczecin.
MASS AND MESS is to be considered as a reflection on politics, history and society through a kind of selfexamination. The starting point is the video of David Mozny (Rahova), a really well structured and symbolical deconstruction of our architectural environment: the mass is falling into pieces creating new units, individual pieces. The next is of Eva Magyarosi’s work, attempting to arrange these pieces as a reflection of the inner world of the artist, a gesture to face her grandfather’s past, but the arrangement itself is generated by the history. György Kovásznai’s piece is somewhere between the outer play, the history and the inner play of the individual, being a cynical handling of the story of the 20th century. István Horkay’s Covert action, set up especially for skyscreen program, however, is a simple gesture to put “everything on the table” as they are given by the past. By his humour a positive taste of the past is offered. Horkay’s video can be considered as the acme of the “mass” as from that point the examination is a virtual return back to the inner world, represented by Bart Hess’s video. His blue sticks are not removable, as they are temporary or constant grooving in his skin. Bart Hess’s video is also a return to the human body, or to the state of mass. The last piece is more like a vision of the society form outside by Ádám Magyar representing everyday people in everyday situations. Faces, complexions, visages: segments of our society. (David Szauder)
David Szauder was born in 1976 in Hungary and attended Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest and studied Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest in 2004. Szauder received a scholarship to the TAIK School of Arts, Design and Architecture – Aalto Univeristy, Helsinki, where he focused on environmental studies and media design. Szauder then moved to Berlin and works for the Collegium Hungaricum as a media artist and curator. In 2012, Szauder founded a cultural association – Culture Democracy CUD e.V.
AES+F King of the Forest, KFNY
2003, Video, 11:01 min
AES+F King of the Forest, Le Roi des Aulnes
2001, Video, 9:07 min
Jiang Zhi Post Pause
2004, Video, 10 mins
Courtesy of the dslcollection
Cao Fei Rabid Dogs
2002, Video, 8 min
Courtesy of the dslcollection
Sumugan Sivanesan A Children’s Book of War
2010, Video animation with an accompanying text
MAP Office Runscape
2010, Video, 24:18 min
__________________________
The Collegium Hungaricum, founded in 1924, is a prominent multidisciplinary cultural institution dedicated to the exploration of art, science, technology and lifestyle in Berlin. The mission of the CHB is to actively stimulate discourse pertaining to current issues, ideas and concepts, in order to further enrich the dialogue surrounding the European cultural experience while simultaneously disseminating Hungarian culture through various events.
The institute has been operating since the Second World War and is regarded as leading a wide array of programming including concerts, literary events, book fairs, photo exhibitions, film screenings, festivals, art exhibitions, technical installations, symposiums, workshops, panel discussions while also hosting an in house public library with over 9000 individual pieces of varying media. The Neubau CHB is a five floor cubist building designed by Schweger Architects in 2007 with a focus on harmonizing trends in Hungarian and German modern design. The structure acts as a highly flexible media facade of which the possibilities for artistic interaction remain limitless.
The Collegium Hungaricum is a part of the Balassi Institute for the promotion of Hungarian culture and also acts as host to the Moholy-Nagy Galerie.
uslu airlines is a Berlin based luxury cosmetics brand created by Türkish makeup artist Feride Uslu and German entrepreneurial master mind Jan Mihm in 2003. Uslu Airlines offers over products in 180 locations in over 170 countries and has hosted MOMENTUM’s SKY SCREEN at their HQ in Rosenthalerplatz, Berlin since April, 2012.
Baltic Contemporary is a newly founded centre for Contemporary Art, located in Szczecin, with the mission to link Szczecin with cultural institutions in the Baltic region and beyond, while hosting its own programme of contemporary art. TRAFO is the Kunsthalle associated with this initiative, which will open in August 2013.
TRAFO – Trafostacja Sztuki – is the new center for contemporary art in Szczecin.
TRAFO sets a new creative space of unrestrained activity and interdisciplinary experimentation.
TRAFO, using its cross-border location within the Baltic Sea region and the immediate vicinity to Berlin, becomes a transregional, international exhibition space.
TRAFO is a unique “display window,” through which it communicates its artistic appearance with the world, and through which the world can co-create the artistic appearance of Szczecin.
TRAFO supports the development of contemporary art on many different levels by organizing not only exhibition activities, but also art education, publishing, international collaboration and artistic exchange under Artist-in-Residence program.
TRAFO will provide visitors with a brand new, exceptional exhibition space in the now restored historic building in ul. Świętego Ducha in Szczecin.
19 May Kirsten Palz: Manuals for R (17:00 – 17:15)
Joyce Clay: Book I, Book II (17:30 – 18:00) Mariana Hahn: Empress of Sorrow (18:15 – 19:00)
26 May Kate Hers: 7 Drawings, 28 Kisses (17:00 – 17:45)
Joyce Clay: Book I, Book II (18:00 – 19:00)
For Month of Performance Art, MOMENTUM curates a month-long program of Performance Sundays entitled WORKS ON PAPER. This exhibition series inverts usual assumptions, inviting performance artists to use paper both as form and as content; not as a blank slate upon which to create, but as a dynamic building block with which to create. 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. Working through durational performance, instruction pieces, physical and social architecture, live performance in dialogue with video performance, and a diversity of individual practices, WORKS ON PAPER invokes the breadth of performance art to reimagine paper: this most traditional of artistic media.
Following the conclusion of May’s Sunday Performance Series, WORKS ON PAPER transitions into an exhibition showcasing the accumulated artefacts and video records from each artist’s performance. In dialogue with the videography, these object-based remains take on an unexpectedly performative life. As the Performance Series progressed, the artists integrated the artefacts from the previous week’s performances into their own work, effectively reiterating the series itself through the viewpoint of process-based performance. 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?
WORKS ON PAPER will remain on view until 30 June 2013.
“Performance has been considered as a way of bringing to life the many formal and conceptual ideas on which the making of art is based.” RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present.
For Month of Performance Art, MOMENTUM presents Works on Paper, a month-long program of Performance Sundays that repurposes and resurrects the most traditional of artistic media: paper. Following in the footsteps of such legendary artists as Josef Albers and Vito Acconci, Works on Paper inverts classic assumptions of the medium, inviting seven performance artists to approach paper not as a static, blank canvas, but rather as a dynamic source of sculptural, conceptual and performative possibility.
As an innovator of early twentieth century performance and art education, Josef Albers famously instructed his beginning students at the Bauhaus to explore the three-dimensional potential of paper. By revealing this fundamental material’s previously latent applications – its performance under tension, cutting, folding and twisting – Albers emphasized the process of materialization and its unexpected deviations over the finished, materialized product. As he explained to his students, “Art is concerned with the HOW and not the WHAT; not with literal content, but with the performance of the factual content. The performance – how it is done – that is the content of art.”
Decades later, American artist Vito Acconci based his performances not on the “page ground” he had formerly used as a poet, but rather on the physical ground of his own body. By shifting focus from the written word to the contours of his own figure, Acconci raised questions about the relationship between artist and object: How do the medium and maker relate, when they become one and the same? And what does it mean to collapse the boundaries between disciplines?
Through grappling with similar questions and themes, the seven international, Berlin-based artists included in MOMENTUM’s Works on Paper diversely approach this fundamental medium. Whether engaging in durational performance, instruction pieces, physical and social architecture, or live performance in tandem with video, these artists challenge expectations of working with traditional materials in real-time. Joyce Clay’s live and video performances consider the body as an extension of performed sculpture, questioning the role of the human figure as a collection of parts versus a singular, materialized whole. Her performances for Works on Paper, Book I and Book II, meld body and paper as an expression of intransient forms and the relation between repurposed, everyday objects. Mariana Hahn’s Empress of Sorrow merges performance, song and poetry and approaches the body as a paper onto which memory – specifically, a woman’s familial memory – is written. Kate Hers’s practice focuses on happenings that engage issues of transnational identity and cultural belonging, often through different modes of communication and public/private interventions. Yulia Startsev will investigate Nikolai Gogol’s book The Overcoat in a workshop-based performance, an event that will examine the self and social relationships in relation to the written – and copied – word. Kirsten Palz’s performance Manuals for R draws from the artist’s ongoing archive of manuals; begun in 2007, this project of over 317 manuals engages topics from dreams to memories to myth and social space. Sarah Lüdemann’s and Adrian Brun’s joint performance uses a mound of cardboard to create an architectural space that engages visitors in various acts of repetition. By continuously sculpting, carving, penetrating and shaping the surface of these mounds, the artists refer to underground movements that undermine political bodies until they collapse. In Impermanence, Emi Hariyama and Mariana Moreira examine the fundamental use of paper as a means of communicating and recording ideas, focusing on the medium’s short and ever-changing lifespan. Finally, Catherine Duquette’s On Presence | On Paper meditates on the notion of presence from the perspective of a writer, probing the gap between the actual and the desired self.
Ultimately, by refracting this traditional medium through the lens of performance, Works on Paper questions and challenges the very nature of artmaking and its formal, conceptual and process-based components.
The underlying theme common to my works is the conflict or dialogue with myself and my interactions with the world. What should I hide about myself? What should I show? What should I reveal? There are questions, there is inquiry – and all of this goes on within the context and with the understanding that I’m sharing the space and creating an experience with other people who are busy with the same thing. The two works I have presented here feature performance, sculpture, and body in an intertwined relationship. Body is a part of the sculpture, and an inseparable piece of it. The performance is putting into question the presence of the body, and the experience is relating to the artist as a person or as a part of the object in that moment. As the designer of these frameworks for experience and an integral performer of them, I experience the performed sculptures as an extension of my body, and as a frame for my body that defines borders, declares division, and offers points of access and inaccessibility. In these works, I create a specific structure for the situation or interaction, which I assume has clear guidelines. However in reality, each person present, individuals loaded with imagination, cultural conditioning, social inhibitions, influence of their peers, will perceive, interpret and act differently in the given situation, and that’s when things get interesting.
“His father’s name was Akaky, so let his son’s name be Akaky too. In this manner he became Akaky Akakiyevich. They christened the child, whereat he wept, and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor.” (Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat, p. 1). To write, rather than to speak; to put to paper any given thought is to somehow bind one’s will to language. This is the weight that a paper frequently carries. But, to copy, is to somehow exclude one’s self from the process of making the word real, an avoidance of binding one’s self to the concept and meaning of language. A workshop-based performance will function as research into Nikolai Gogal’s book The Overcoat, both examining the act of copying from the perspective of Akaky Akakiyevich as abstraction, and as a societal relationship.
The pile of paper containing thousands and thousands of sheets is reminiscent of laborious and repetitive exercises that are used for drill, punishment or mastering a skill. In this sense of an ongoing production and reproduction the pile also generates a metaphor for something one sits on top of in order to breed and keep alive, like a pile of eggs and in a more abstract sense a set of rules and traditions or a system.
In its multitude the sheets of paper become a solid body, which cannot only be marked on the surface, but also carved into, penetrated and shaped both literally and metaphorically. While the structure – the appearance of the pile – remains intact on the outside, changes occur on the inside. Both destroying and building, this penetration of the body may be regarded in a political context as a metaphor for underground movements and the act of undermining systems and ideologies, until they eventually collapse. In the context of scholarly, repetitive exercises the two performers take on the roles of master and disciple.
The seeming authority of the observer or the master is in itself a failure within the system, as the action carried out on top of the pile is not completely visible. Both the observer and the observed are aware of each others presence and their limited control. Somewhat both roles are interchangable, so that everyone is the observer and simultaneously the observed. The acceptance of this ritual is an absurdity in itself, however, it is so that systems continue to function or are eventually changed.
From Germany and Argentina respectively the artists are drawing on their personal histories as well as those of their countries, challenging current political systems and social power structures (class, gender, race, religion) still shaping our times.
Performers:
Maria Angeli as The Empress of Sorrow
Rowan Hellier as The Deed as Word, Words as Tear
Ingrid Goetlicher as The Lady of History
Mariana Hahn as The Servant of History
The empress is wrapped into Lethe (forgetting)
Lethe is being washed off her.
With each washing, with each further needle work, with each word sung The
Empress remembers more of Ate (sorrow), each sign made upon the hands of
her fellows deepens the inscriptions made by the Lady of History upon her skin,
connects The Empress to the net of the world, until the Empress is fully wrapped
into Ate, into life.
“My dog, an avatar of Job, lacerates my foot with his desperate teeth and forever prints his message of indignation in the flesh of my memory.” This is one of the first sentences of Cixous’s foreword to her Stigmatexts. The body as paper onto which memory is written, wherein an augmentation of memory by a mnesic growth can be perceived; a scar has found its voice, it has been born like a dark star, orbiting the plane of our perception. The stigmatized person shows traits of a saint and an outlaw at the same time, both a martyr and condemned, elected and excluded. This is what the stigma conveys, a paradoxical message: It lives in between the worlds, as an interlocutor of the underlining message of humankind’s ill figure.
Empress of Sorrow is a work that contemplates the body of a being enchained by pattern; the fate of this being’s family writes itself into the body as if it were a blank sheet of paper, with the body of the woman becoming host of the family’s patterned desire to be. The white fabric used in the performance acts as the herald of such a pattern. It tells the story and spins it at the same time.
The cherubs perform an unholy mass, cannibalistic heritage.
There certainly is something sexual about the act of devouring, and of seduction something profoundly animalistic and yet it emits deepest sensuality, the sensuality of the totality within an experienced ecstasy which the empress is silently.
Swollen history, ready to be drunk up.
The performance shows a struggle, a very silent retreaded struggle, a horrendous physical exaltation of trying to rid itself of the inscriptions upon her body, yearning to birth herself, to find an existence outside of linguistic definitions.
And yet she cannot get away from that pattern upon her body. It’s inside.
The Manual as Script, Drawing and Experiment. I define the Manual as an open directive and conceptual sketch for a factual or potential intervention in space. The manuals are named after the industrial manual and prescribe the execution, matter and functionality of specific situations and objects. The manuals describe these developments, processes and objects trough texts and diagrams. Manuals for R comprises a selection of manuals written in 2013. These new manuals are a continuation of the series Writings as Sculpture started in 2012.
kate hers has been using foreign languages as a medium to explore transnational identity and the construction of self through language for over a decade. Her recent performances investigate problematic German colloquiums while evoking the simplicity of Minimalism, the self-referential tendencies in Conceptualism, and Fluxus art actions. In 7 Drawings, Twenty-eight Kisses, hers makes use of one of her new ready-made objects to create 7 “action drawings” live for the audience. This work was created with the generous support of the Millay Colony for the Arts.
As part of the theme of this work is paper, the stage will be set with multiple levels of hanging paper and a paper cylinder, in which one of the artists will wait prior to the performance. Once the music begins to play, she will dance, playing with light and shadow as it falls upon the paper. Suddenly cutting herself free from the cylinder, the other artist will join in the background, painting the word “Hakanasa” (“transience,” “impermanence,” “fragility of existence”) upon a hanging sheet of paper in Japanese. Both artists, dressed in paper costumes, will be covered with writing and words. As the first artist dances and the second artist works, the paper costumes will be torn from their bodies and the first, through the dance, will tear down the paper hanging with the word “Hakanasa” upon it, revealing another drawing behind. This work, inspired by the main use of paper – communication and recording of ideas – and its short life, focuses on the nature of change as well as the transience of ideas and forms. From the paper cylinder a concept is born in the form of the dancer, described and defined by the words applied to it. From its birth to its eventual destruction, it fights against becoming outdated, oldfashioned and useless. The initial black and white scene evokes the sterility of the written word upon paper, as opposed to the vibrance of reality, and distances the audience from everything except the world of written communication. In its fight against the changing context, the concept’s initial definitions and descriptions are stripped away, leaving it less and less of what it was. Finally, in a last act of violence, the dancer as concept will try to defy the nature of “transience” and “impermanence” itself via her attack on the first canvas, where the second artist will have written “transience”, only to reveal the vibrant piece of art behind: a reality which she cannot destroy, and in acting against it, she is destroyed by it. This work attempts to focus on the utter inability to permanently define or express anything, the inability of the human mind to create an immortal concept.
What does it mean to be present? How does one close the gap between the actual self and the desired self? On Presence | On Paper is a meditation on the notion of presence, an interactive performance about works on paper from the perspective of the writer. Writing is the act of putting thoughts on paper, of concretizing self, of declaring, “I think, therefore I am – and here’s the proof”. The transference of ideas from mind to page is a simultaneous act of grasping and creating self, whereby the paper becomes body – a vessel containing thoughts that is malleable, desirable, transferable. Witness how one writer navigates the space between perceiving and being, separation and connection. The paper – in all its pliability – serves as her model, a highly coveted blueprint for the writer to become one and the same with her creation. However, the writer’s body appears too rigid to assume paper’s form and the paper’s content too exacting to realize. Propelled by text both off and on paper, the writer observes herself and others, all the while pushing and pulling at feeling present, ultimately unveiling her struggle as a static subject of longing whose creation is more present and powerful than she is.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ART FESTIVAL IN MUSRARA, JERUSALEM 28 – 30 MAY 2013; 19.00 – 23.00
Jarik Jongman will be making a site specific version of (DE)FACING REVOLT, the interactive performative painting series he made for the group exhibition ABOUT FACE at MOMENTUM in August 2012. Also shown will be the video of TRAVELING SOULS, the gorgeous interdisciplinary performance MOMENTUM commissioned in December 2012.
For the 13th year, the MusraraMix Festival is an international multidisciplinary event that takes place in the borderline neighborhood of Musrara, initiated and produced by the Naggar school in Musrara. The festival is a hub of artistic and social happenings, embodying the political and cultural essence of Jerusalem and Israel. Every year the festival is based around one theme. The 13th year of the festival is the year of NoEgo.
This year, dozens of artists from Israel and abroad explore issues related to ego: the ever present motif, hidden or outspoken, which is an obstacle as much as it is a motivation in our life and in the process of artistic creation. The program of the festival explores the ego from the personal point of view as well as from the collective point of view, through self expression and free will. It allows a glimpse into the relationship built between the artist and the community, between artists, and between people in general.
Our age is characterized by new social connections, information flow and virtual sharing. This makes life into a new fabric, woven by practical threads that align into a balance of power that is changing before our very eyes – between local and global, between the limits of art and the limits of life. The access to information and to technological means is now available to everyone. The viewer becomes a part of the artwork and the artist – a part of a community.
Ego is present in the creative process and in life. In MusraraMix collaboration is vital, inevitable and driven by human resources: Musrara students, neighborhood residents, young and professional artists, and the audience.
All of them together produce a direct multisensory experience. Multi-disciplinary art will be presented in the public spaces of the neighborhood and in the backyards of the residents: video art, new media, photography, installation, performance and dance. The music stage will present contemporary and experimental music. This year the festival hosts artists from France, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Poland and Turkey. In the spirit of NoEgo, the event will include artworks from students and graduates from the photography school in Arles, France, and artists from TRAFO – Centre for Contemporary Arts in Szczecin, Poland, alongside artworks by Musrara students and graduates.
The festival expresses the school’s outlook. We believe in the significant role the creative process has, when it turns our gaze onto society and the identities that structure it. We believe in the power the festival has, as part of the educational process of the students. The Naggar art school in Musrara invites the public to participate in the events taking place during the festival, to experience the neighborhood, explore its streets, be a guest in the backyards, meet the residents and enjoy some of the best multidisciplinary art made in Israel and the world today.
The Musrara school of art invites you to take part in each of the events of the festival, to experience the neighborhood, tour its alleys, be a guest in the backyards, meet the residents and enjoy some of the best interdisciplinary art made in Israel and the world today. We would like to thank our partners: firstly the residents of Musrara, the public funds and organizations from Israel and abroad that sponsor our activity, and of course our students, teachers and school staff.
(Lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Berlin, Germany.)
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist, researcher and writer, and a transcultural radical. His eclectic practice is concerned with the legacies of colonialism, the experience of cultural differences, and the diaspora. Often working collaboratively his interests span migrant histories and minority politics, activist media, artist infrastructures, more-than-human rights and multispecies politics, queer theory, Tamil diaspora studies and anticolonialism. In Berlin, he organizes with Black Earth, a collective who address interacting issues of race, gender, colonialism, and climate justice.
Sumugan earned a doctorate from the Transforming Cultures research center at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia (2014). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for English and American Studies (Cultural Studies), University of Potsdam (2016) supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to research ‘Urban Eco-politics of the Anthropocene’, blogging at: shadowofthefuture.org. He has received grants from Kone Foundation, Finland (2019), Create New South Wales 360 Visions virtual reality development program (2017), Australia Council for the Arts Literature (2014), Australia Council for the Arts Emerging and Experimental Arts (2013), and Australia Council for the Arts Music Board (2008, 2005), among others.
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 the history of cannibalism and its contemporary legacies. In February 2012, Sivanesan premiered his performance-lecture, “The Anticolonials”, tracing the past and present of anti-colonial politics, at MOMENTUM Berlin, in an exhibition also featuring a retrospective of Sivanesan’s video works. A Children’s Book of War, shown in this exhibition was subsequently gifted to the MOMENTUM Collection.
With the artist and writer Tessa Zettel he co-founded The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society during a two-month residency at the Nida Art Colony to develop a work for its 2018 Inter-format Symposium ‘On Rites and Terrabytes.’ In November 2018 he was in residence at Instituto Procomun LABxS Santos, Brazil where he initiated Lunch Against Work: Almoço Contra o Trabalho, a social kitchen and laboratory for exchanging knowledge about plants, poverty, foraging, and food systems. Late in 2014, he undertook a two-month residency with the Faculty of Arts, University of Peradeniya, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts Literature (2014) and Arts NSW (2014). Here he initiated a critical writing and micro-publishing project, “Theoretically Tamil”.
Sumugan Sivanesan has produced events and exhibitions at: Nadine Laboratory for Conetmporary Arts (Brussels 2020); Akademie Schloss Solitude (2020); Tehai (Dhaka 2020); Frame Contemporary Art (Helsinki, 2019); The Floating University Berlin (2019); EX-EMBASSY (Berlin 2018); BE.BoP 2018: Black Europe Body Politics, Maxim Gorki Theatre (Berlin, 2018); Nida Art Colony Inter-format Symposium (Lithuania, 2018); Art Laboratory Berlin (2015); ZK/U Centre for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin (2015, 2014); Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2014); The Reading Room (Bangkok 2013); Performance Space (Sydney 2013); MOMENTUM Berlin (2012); Yautepec Gallery (Mexico City 2011) and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney 2011, 2010); MOMENTUM Sydney (2010). Sivanesan was a member of the experimental documentary collective theweathergroup_U who formed for the Biennale of Sydney 2008. He was active with media/art gang boat-people.org who engaged the Australian publics in issues of borders, race, and nationalism between 2002 and 2014.
A CHILDREN’S BOOK OF WAR
2010, Video, Animation, 1 min 45 sec
The following text is written by by Sumugan Sivanesan to accompany A Children’s Book of War:
A CHILDREN’S BOOK OF WAR:
‘TERRA NULLUS’ AND THE PERMANENT STATE OF EXCEPTION
One interpretation of international law has it that people can prove their sovereignty by their ability to make and maintain laws, and their abilty to declare war. Looked at that way, war is not only something civilizations do – it is something they must do in order for their right to self–rule to be respected.
In March 2003, as Australia prepared to send troops into Iraq, two activists painted the words ‘No War’ on the Sydney Opera House.
But there was – and is – a war. After all, war is what makes the world go ‘round. War is an act of civilization. War and law go hand in hand. They govern each other so tightly that those who wage war often prefer not to call what they do ‘war’ to avoid having to abide by all the rules and conventions that have grown up around conflict.
Due to war or civil disorder or natural disaster we might find ourselves in situations where laws are suspended – in a ‘State of Emergency’. Like in Haiti after a major earthquake in January 2010 killed hundreds of thousands of people…
In Sri Lanka through more than 20 years of civil conflict…
And in Australia where the Northern Territory National Emergency Response was introduced in the lead up to a federal election.
Extreme circumstances can create a ‘State of Exception’ where the rule of law is put aside. Ever since September 11 when hijackers flew planes into New York’s Twin Towers, a State of Exception has justified a ‘War on Terror’. A war that includes the war in Iraq – the war that the Opera House activists made such a scene of objecting to – and the war in Afghanistan. A war not likely to end any time soon.
Teenage Riot
In February 2004, Aboriginal teenager, Thomas ‘TJ’ Hickey met a violent death, impaled on a fence behind a block of units in the Sydney suburb of Waterloo. He was last seen riding his bike at high speed from the neighboring suburb of Redfern. Two police vehicles were nearby.
From around the state mourners gathered in the community commonly known as ‘The Block’. That night, angry youth spilled out on Lawson Street. Throwing bottles and bricks at Redfern Station, they vented their frustration on state property and at the rows of riot police that had formed that afternoon in this ‘Space of Exception’.
In full view of the international media, their ‘riot’ unsettled the ‘relaxed and comfortable’ national image that Australia projects, revealing an unresolved legacy of colonial violence.
Bring the Troops Home
In 1901 the six colonies of Australia federated, and in 1915 they went to war. Prime Minister Billy Hughes declared that “Australia was born on the shores of Gallipoli” where more than 8,000 young Australians died fighting. But what about the war back home?
The War Memorial in Canberra enshrines the tomb of ‘The Unknown Soldier’ one of the nameless thousands who died fighting in a foreign theatre of war. To enter this shrine you must first pass through a courtyard enclosed by walls that feature a series of sculpted heads. Hung like hunting trophies, they depict the various animals the British settlers found when they came to this continent. Alongside the stairs that lead up to the shrine are the heads of an Aboriginal man and woman.
As you enter the tomb they display the geometry of power laid down by this foundational myth and are a startling reminder of the other Great War. After all, don’t these nameless heads represent the other ‘Unknown Soldiers’?
The War on ‘Terra’
When the British came to settle in 1788 they brought with them the idea of sovereignty, a European concept of authority by which they established their right to rule. Using the principle of ‘Terra Nullius’ – a land belonging to no one – they took possession of the land and water, failing to recognize the system of laws and land ownership already in existence.
An episode of popular Australian history involves the spearing of the first Governor of Sydney, Arthur Phillip, in 1790. A group of people had gathered to feast on a whale that had beached at Manly. Amongst them was the Eora man Bennelong. Not long before, Bennelong had been kidnapped into the British colony in an attempt to force diplomacy. It was a success as Phillip and Bennelong became friends, formally exchanging names. After some months ‘inside’ Bennelong slipped away, taking with him an understanding of the settlement and their ways.
When Phillip approached the gathering at Manly, Bennelong came forward and they exchanged pleasantries, they even toasted the King with wine the Governor had brought. Bennelong introduced Phillip to several others at the gathering including a man named Willemering, a carradhy1 invested with the power to deliver punishment according to Eora law. Willemering speared Phillip.
This spearing extracted a blood debt from Phillip as the head of the colony, for all the laws the settlers had broken. For establishing a permanent camp without permission, for the fish and game stolen, for the stolen weaponry and nets, for the random shooting of natives, for the curse of smallpox, for the mysterious genital infections of women and then of their men.2 This metering of justice brought the British into Eora law.
1 A carradhy is a ‘clever man’ 2 Keneally, Thomas. The Commonwealth of Thieves – The Sydney Experiment.
Random House Australia, 2005. p 304.
End Game
In Cabinet 96 in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum, there is a shield. It is titled ‘bark shield’ and its description reads:
“The bark shield below was one of the first Australian objects to arrive in Britain.
In April 1770 Captain Cook and his officers attempted to land on Australia’s southeast coast. When two men of the Eora tribe tried to stop the landing, one was wounded by gunfire and dropped his shield. First contacts in the Pacific were often tense and violent.” 3
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.
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 exhibition at MOMENTUM in 2012, The Anticolonials. 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 short animation A Children’s Book of War, packed with seemingly cheerful imagery and low-tech video game aesthetics, is not at all what it initially appears. Packed into this concise video collage are images comingling diverse icons of popular culture with references to centuries of colonial conflicts underlying the foundation myths of Australian nationhood. The power of A Children’s Book of War lies in its jarring conjunction of war, sovereignty, and violence with a format usually reserved for much more lighthearted topics. With its bright color palette and amusing soundscape, this video incorporates iconography as diverse as Julian Assange, the Sydney Opera House, and the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.
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.”
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.
THE GHOST OF ISAAC NEWTON IN ANOTHER VACANT PLACE
2011, Video, 3 min 56 sec
Commissioned for MOMENTUM’s joint exhibition A Wake (2011), “The Ghost of Isaac Newton in Another Vacant Place” features Einstein walking on Biesentalerstrasse in Berlin at the moment he encounters the ghost of Isaac Newton, eating an apple and addressing an empty room in another vacant space.
Somewhat ironically, the ghost story’s audio file was lost following its inclusion in a program at Tate Britain, rendering the sound as ephemeral as the content.
Medalla labeled this piece one of his numerous impromptus, low key and spontaneous performances that often engage random audiences in public spaces.
MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (b. Casablanca, 1966) and Valérie Portefaix (b. Saint-Etienne, 1969). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression that includes drawing, photographs, video, installations, performance and literary and theoretical texts. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space.
Their projects have been included in major international art and architecture events, including: the 7th, 11th and 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2000, 2008, 2010), the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), the 10th Istanbul Biennale (2007), the 15th Sydney Biennale (2006), and the 52nd Venice Art Biennale (2007).
Laurent Gutierrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he leads the Environment and Interior Design discipline and the Master of Strategic Design as well as the Master in Urban Environments Design. He is also the co-director of SD SPACE LAB. Gutierrez is currently finishing a PhD on the “Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta region.”
Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE. She received her Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and a PhD in Urbanism from the Pierre Mendes University France. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
RUNSCAPE
2010, Video, 24 min 18 sec
RUNSCAPE
Secondary Title: When running remains the only unbounded space in the urban field.
Completion Date: June 2010
Running Time: 24′ 18″
Country of Production: Hong Kong SAR – CHINA
Shooting Location: Hong Kong
Shooting Format: Full HD (Canon EOS 5D Mark II)
Screening Format: BETA SP – PAL 16/9 – STEREO
Language: English Subtitled
Director: Gutierrez + Portefaix
Text, Image and Sound editing: Gutierrez + Portefaix
Cast: Gaspar Gutierrez, Yannick Ben
Voice: Norman Jackson Ford
Music: A Roller Control
STREET MOVIE www.streetmovie.net
Production: MAP OFFICE www.map-office.com
Runscape is a film that depicts two young males sprinting through the public spaces of Hong Kong, almost invariably via the visual mode of the long shot, while a narrator describes this action through the rhetoric of post-structuralist urban theory. This narration makes repeated reference to a range of texts from the psychogeographical dérive of urbanism in Guy Debord and the Situationists to the biopolitical machines of Gilles Deleuze to the literary styles of Jean-Luc Nancy. The runners both follow existing paths and establish new ones, moving in straight lines through crowds and across rooftops while also using exterior walls as springboards for less-likely forms of motion. This is, however, far from parkour; it is a much more purposeful action that claims a certain territory or at least trajectory described within the narration through the image of the body as a “bullet that needs no gun. A soundtrack contributed by Hong Kong rock band A Roller Control complements this aesthetic violence, guiding the eye and ear of the viewer across this novel interpretation of the definition and uses of public space. In this action, invisible facades are constructed across a grid that spans the area between the codified signs of polished facades, an open-ended and performative notion of being-in-transit. (Robin Peckham)
Runscape was shown at MOMENTUM’s second exhibition in its Kunstquartier Bethanien gallery, during Berlin’s 2011 Gallery Weekend. MAP OFFICE returned to Berlin the following year for an Artist Residency at MOMENTUM to gather footage for “Runscape Berlin”.
RUNSCAPE – ANAYLISIS by MELISSA LAM
The City is growing Inside of us…
A political act of defiance of the Urban Authority
With its surveillance and restrictions on movement.
[Excerpt from Film]
In 1996, when Jean Baudrillard first published “The Conspiracy of Art” he scandalized the international art community by declaring that contemporary art had no more reason to exist. The question of aesthetic banality and retreat from issues of public life and “the real” are questions that have plagued the art world for centuries, from the very first copied Renoir apple to Tino Sehgal or Sophie Calle experiences that anthropologically mix aesthetics, art and life. Baudrillard has since become interested in the simulations of reality set forth by film and vice versa.
In film, the work of simulation becomes drama, a comparative drama that seeks to simulate reality. Runscape is used to knit together the geography of Hong Kong, a cartography that trades on the idea of mapping by running through the streets (a young man is seen pounding / racing through the streets purposefully, in stark contrast to the plethora of crowds that are slowly inching forward along the traffic jammed pavement of Causeway Bay.) The runner dodges past pedestrians, runs diagonally through meticulously urban planned plazas, up flights of stairs and through the shopping malls of Hong Kong in order to appropriate the city on his own terms. The direction of his sprint, the contour of his cityscape is directed by his own desires, a remapping of cartography that allows him to remake the city in his own image. In Runscape, the idea is that a single individual can remap the cartography of the city, to redefine the city on each individual’s terms, to make each city mapping unique to each individual rather than a grouping of concepts, random census tracts, defunct neighborhoods and property blocks. The runner is at times cooperating with the city, in running along the stairs and sidewalks that are mandated, at other times, he jumps over unsuspecting walls and leaps over fences, pitting the city as an adversary, a challenge to his movement, testing the limitations of the concrete jungle as it slowly comes alive with the unorthodox use of its cityscape.
Political and cultural boundaries collapse as the figure jumps over districts in Causeway Bay, Central, and Aberdeen. The runner stitches a new type of geographical exploration that reimagines the terrain on a new mapped media. References and location systems zip by a sprinting figure in a rapidly moving short film where motion, major landmarks and assorted cultural topography become simply a simulation, simulacra of importance. Runscape is about the seduction of film as moving photography, images of Hong Kong flash by us in blinding images knit together only by the running figure as he races across the entire city.
The runner becomes also a performer, as he leaps and jumps, sprinting through the city, catching the eye of the strolling pedestrians as he breaks out of conventional modes of behavior, putting his body in action, moving faster than the city, as if internally pushed forward, as if fleeing or listening to a voice that was slowly speaking outside of everyone else’s sound register. The culture of the walking figure derived from the French Flaneur, the American Beat Poets, all contextualized and used in exploring and connecting the city streets. Runscape explores the liminal notions between film as public art with the city as landscape and cartography. The film knits the city together in a geography intersecting private and public space. The runner acts as artistic intervention creating an impact on the space itself. This is a creation of an unexplained inexplicable artwork on the street as it blurs the line between performance, a happening, fear, trauma, physical exercise, and rebellion.
American cartographer, Arthur H Robinson stated that stated that a map not properly designed “will be a cartographic failure.” Robinson also stated, when considering all aspects of cartography that “map design is perhaps the most complex. A map must be fit to its audience. Map Office’s Runscape is a new kind of map that explores the history of running, forms of mapping, data, space and time, multiple dimensions, language and the body. Runscape uncovers the influence and possibilities of mapping in our world today. Maps have become easier to create, change, develop collaboratively and share. Depicting geographical areas, mindscapes and digital realms alike, these multidimensional maps express endlessly interconnected ideas and issues.
Going back to the beginning of his “postmodern” phase, Baudrillard begins his important essay “The Precession of the Simulacra” by recounting the feat of imperial map-makers in a story by Jorge Luis Borges who make a map so large and detailed that it covers the whole empire, existing in a one-to-one relationship with the territory underlying it. It is a perfect replica of the empire. After a while the map begins to fray and tatter, the citizens of the empire mourning its loss (having long taken the map – the simulacrum of the empire – for the real empire). Under the map the real territory has turned into a desert, a “desert of the real.” In its place, a simulacrum of reality – the frayed mega-map – is all that’s left.
Runscape is a bravura performance by Map Office in which they use the figure of a boy to stitch the city together in a mapping that creates a territorial relationship between the runner who runs, and the territory or terras that is beneath his feet. The city map does not exist without his performance. The runner, nor does his physical running exist outside of the map. When the runner stops, the city (like Borge’s map) will leave us in tattered ruins, and dissemble into nothing so much as a simulacrum of it’s former self.
A WAKE is consciousness with an eye on an open coffin. A gathering in celebration as well as mourning, it is humor as much as horror. As a platform dedicated to interrogating time-based art, with A WAKE, MOMENTUM explores what happens when our time runs out.
MOMENTUM celebrates the Day of the Dead, Los Dios de los Muertes, with A WAKE: Still Lives and Moving Images. This exhibition combines, video, cinema, and photography in a co-mingling of media which bring the still into motion, and the motion into emotion. The exhibition takes the form of a processional of monitors leading into the gallery itself, which will be oversaturated with projections. In the tradition of inviting the dead to a party with the living, we crowd the gallery with the conversations of flickering ghosts; a saturation of images in dialogue with one another. Reflecting upon our daily inundation by images of death, where news programs sensationalize death no less than the fictions of TV shows and feature films, A WAKE addresses the media as the Vale of Tears, the surface between now and the hereafter, as well as the past. Co-mingling archival films with contemporary art, we enact a conversation across mediums and generations to celebrate life as well as death.
A WAKE is a ritual viewing of the body after death; a coming together to observe the end of time, to celebrate the transition through the vale. It is also an emergence into consciousness, as well as a consequence or result. Taking this transitional point between being and representation as our title, A WAKE confronts us with the process and the presence of
death in order to wake us up to the inevitable result of the passage of time. The works in this show all use video, digital media, and film to address the mediation of death; where media itself becomes the vale/veil through which we pass, the translucent surface between observer and observed, between now and the hereafter. All the works in this show manipulate media forms in some way, whether in mobilizing still images into motion, or in bringing together past and present, fiction and reality, re-editing found footage, re-visiting rituals, or re-living the horrors of war.
All cultures acknowledge the Day of the Dead. Some celebrate, others mourn, but the ineluctable culmination of life is a part of every belief system, and of every personal journey. Opening the weekend of All Saints Day, Los Dios des Muertes (The Day of the Dead), A WAKE is held in the once upon a time infirmary within the former cloisters of Bethanien House Berlin. Originally built as a hospital, a space both battling and housing death, Bethanien has long been transformed into a place where art through the process of creation manifests the victory of life over death. We fill this space with a labyrinth of screens which illuminate still lives and moving images. A WAKE is a passage through time, a processional which is our “offerenda”, an offering to visiting souls awakened on this day every year. Through the translucent veil of time-based art, past, present and future meld into one in this metaphysical meditation on the passing of being into representation.
“Défilé” (2000-2007), dig projection, 7 dig photos. “Who Wants To Live Forever” (1998), 6:25min. In «Défilé» we explore the way individuals deal with the concept of mortality by juxtaposing images of death with images of beauty, in this case high fashion. In pairing fashion with death, we have found a modern-day counterpart to the traditional juxtapositions of love and death and beauty and death. An obsession with fashion, symbolizing temporality, can be seen as a way to deal with the fear of death. It is an ancient preoccupation, as can be seen in the elaborate rituals in Western and non-Western cultures associated with death. Humans have always attempted to «decorate» death, based in part with a desire to ward off death. “Who Wants To Live Forever” is a critique of the global media, addressing not only the media, which uses the sexual scandals and the death of the celebrities but also the exhibitionistic behavior of the media star. The career top of a media star, who produces nothing but his face on the screen, is death.
“Creative Wakes” (2011), dig video, 10 mins. Puerto Rico – In the fall of 2008, Angel Luis Pantojas told his family that in the case of his death, he wanted to be presented at his wake in a standing position. Two weeks later, he was fatally shot. His family fulfilled his death wish, and this triggered the beginning of a movement of themed and theatrical wakes in Puerto Rico. Osvaldo Budet explores the possibilities that this new trend has awoken. With his documentary-based practice, Osvaldo Budet consistently blurs the line between reality and representation.
“The Great Good Place” (2010), dig video. This video shows the life of a community of abandoned indoor cats living in a park in Istanbul. “The Great Good Place” was shot in Istanbul, documenting the street cats who live in dwindling numbers throughout city. A regular urban presence, when removed from their environment they appear eerie, floating in darkness. In the context of this exhibition, they seem like creatures of the night; familiar sights on the streets of Istanbul, becoming familiars of a more supernatural kind. But perhaps they remain, after all, simply cats upon which we project our own realities. During 2012 ‘’The Great Good Place’’ has been shown in the first international Kiev Biennale as well as the Shanghai Biennale.
“N 37° 25′ 20″, E 141° 1′ 58″” (2011), dig video. This piece comes out of the reactions of the artists to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and devastation. The piece invokes elements of life and death via the sounds and visuals of surgery as well as fire and the human body. The risk involved in the actions depicted helps set the scene. There were no special effects used in doing the fire performance. This is the first collaboration between Yishay Garbasz, a photographer working with the body and the mobilization of images, and Nikola Lutz, a musician and sound artist. The piece is dedicated in gratitude to the memory of Dr. Johannes D. Lutz, who passed during the making of this work.
“Passagens n.1″ film converted to digital media, 1974
Passagens n.1, is a video from the series I titled Situações-limite. The point of the piece is to bring visually, through repetitive movements of my climbing stairs – a sense of unfinishable path. Changes of scenery, going through narrow and broad steps, inside – outside, bringing a sense of continuity/ discontinuity, the difficulty of crossing. In my three repetitions (inside and outside stairs scenes) I perform slight differences, and the tiresome effort increases. In this and other videos from the same period I deal with the symbolic and also with the specific language of video. For instance, the movement of the artist crossing the cathodic tube in its 4 corners, creates an invisible center of the image.
“Schlaflied” dig. 720p HD-Video, 3:54min. (Berlin, 2011). Premier. Schlaflied is a German lullaby sung to children at bed time. Projecting a diapositive on the backyard walls of Wedding, the most war ravaged area of Berlin in World War II, the slide shows a cemetery of soldiers in France. Halter, through this performative action explores a futility. A futility in the loss of life. The futilities of war.
“Sachsenhausen” (2009/2010) dig projection, 14 photographs. Premier. Predominantly a painter, the starting point for my paintings is always photography and it is now for the first time that I’m showing a series of photographs that were taken at the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, during a three month residency period in Berlin, in the winter of 2009/2010. Taken with a Lomo camera and presented digitally, the result merges the painterly, the photographic, and the cinematic. Thus blurring of media creates a timelessness most jarring in this tragic location situated shockingly close to Berlin.
“The Testimony of Hiroshima a Fotofilm” (1999) 1:54min.
Among other atomic bomb survivors, Matsushige Yoshito continuously tells his story at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In 1945, at the time of the dropping of the atomic bomb, the 32 year old journalist was at home at a distance of 2.7 kilometers from the bomb hypocenter. ‘The Testimony of Hiroshima’ is an hommage an Matsushige-san, who passed away in 1995. The film describes the three hour lapse of time in his life when he was unable to photograph death and pain.
“The Ghost of Isaac Newton in Another Vacant Space” (2011), video performance. David Medalla presents a video impromptu. Eienstein is walking on the road of Biesentalerstrasse Berlin when he sees the ghost of Isaac Newton, eating an apple, addressing an empty room in another vacant space. A dialogue ensues…. David Medalla is constantly shifting his strategies and media; when one thinks one has him pinned down as a situationist, a surrealist, or a conceptualist, one is stumped as he continues to endlessly conceive other fantastic, often unrealisable schemes. He is an icon of an artist who has made no clear distinction between his art and his life in a body of work stretching back to the sixties.
“Doomed” (2007) video, (Tracey Moffatt collaboration with Gary Hillberg), 10mins. This fast-paced montage of film clips takes Hollywood’s fixation with death and disaster to its ultimate cinematic end. “Doomed” comprises cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and blackly-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory – the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Moffatt plays with the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations. Looking at the forms of filmic entertainment, as well as ‘art as entertainment’, she addresses what it is about death and destruction that we invariably find so entertaining. Music manipulates. The soundtrack builds and peaks – emotive, and a central device in journeying through the sequence to climactic effect. It is important that the title ‘Doomed’ has the quality of the not yet destroyed. It is a description that is applied to individuals, families, lovers, politics, and nations – an observation made from the outside and yet containing the possibility (read hope) that situations can be salvaged.
“We Dream of Gentle Morphius” (2011), from “Organic” dig projection of the photo series “Still Lives”
Fiona has been working in a still-life format within museums, recording taonga (Māori ancestral treasures) and other historic objects such as hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now extinct huia bird. In these works, she brings to a contemporary audience an awareness of traditional and forgotten objects. Her art practice occupies itself with both memory and mourning, and the ineffability of the photographic image. Her photographs demonstrate a mastery of analogue darkroom technique combined with the digital. Presented for the first time as a digital projection, these combined images, says Fiona Pardington, “work on a number of levels – once again my whakapapa/genealogy – random items that belong to beloved family members and important family members i had little contact with – like a child’s silver christening cup found by chance in a skip by my aunt when my grandmother’s house was cleared after sale- it belonged to my father…silk scarves found in french flea markets, shells taken from beaches important to ngai tahu because they are mahinga kai/traditional food gathered from the sea….seaweed, bottles dug out of the sand, midden shells from the beach the ngai tahu cheif tangatahara lived near. paua shells from otakou- paua shells are important food but also the shell can be seen as a tourist cliche and is sitting in a strange NZ cultural limbo presently. crystal wine glasses from op shops, native flowers and introduced weeds and pest plants introduced from overseas by the colonizers….”
“Loom” (2010) dig animation, 5:30mins.
Loom tells the story of a successful catch. A moth being caught in a spiders web. Struggling for an escape, the moth’s panic movements only result in less chance of survival. What follows is the type of causality everyone is expecting. The spider appears, claims its prey and feeds on it. The way nature works. But it’s the point of view that creates an intense relationship between the hunter and its victim. There is much more to explore, much more to feel if one takes the time to really experience the content of a split second. Polynoid uses digital animation to heighten the senses, turning the natural into the hyper-real with a virtuosity of technique blurring the line between the digital and the science of life and death.
“Crash” (2009) Series, 3 Videos #1
“Crash” is a car accident scene that continously reveals one picture forward and at the same time continues to repeat itself. Gradual picture exposing strengthens the curiosity of what would happen next, multiplication intensifies the brutal tension, which can emanate with outrageous beauty. Finally, tension and tempo can bring on a visual catharsis. In drawing out a moment of film to manipulate the media and the viewer, Paul Rascheja confronts the basis of our fascination with violence. Too horrified to look, yet too mesmerized to look away, we are caught in this endless moment at the cusp of life and death.
“Night and Fog” (Nuit et brouillard) 1955, 32 minutes
Knowledge and memory change with time – this is one of Resnais’ thematic concerns, in this film and elsewhere. “Nuit et brouillard” is a remarkable documentary made 10 years after the end of WWII, constructed and reconstructed out of a blending of archival footage and then-contempoary sequences. The contemporary (colour) sequences were shot at Auschwitz and Maïdanek, authorised and financially supported by the Polish government. The past, in black and white, was reconstructed from documentary material and stills gathered from concentration camp museums. It is precisely Resnais’ obsession with and mastery of form that gives Nuit et brouillard an emotional power unequalled by any fictional reconstruction of the Holocaust. The near-digressions of the subtly orchestrated and edited filmic narration and the ironies of the commentary capture and focus the viewer’s attention, ensuring that the most horrible images (those shots of corpses, for example, that the censors objected to) are seen with clear eyes, and that therefore their human meaning cannot be avoided. The juxtaposition of past and present ensures that the final question (“Alors, qui est responsable?”/”Well, then, who is responsible?”) is directed at the viewer, any viewer, the viewer of 1956 (when, Resnais admits, the growing war in Algeria was much on his mind) and the viewer today, living in an era of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and state violence differing perhaps on target but not in effect from those that came before. West Germany became the first country to purchase and distribute “Nuit et brouillard” when it came out. In the context of this show, it is important to bring it back.
Known as a forefather of both Czeck surrealism and animation, it is ironic that this is perhaps Svankmajer’s only documentary, yet it could so readily be misconstrued as one of his elaborately constructed fictions. One of the masterpieces produced during Švankmajer’s early career, Kostnice (The Ossuary, 1970), is shot in one of his country’s most unique and bleakest monuments, the Sedlec Monastery Ossuary. The Sedlec Ossuary contains the bones of some 50 to 70 thousand people buried there since the Middle Ages. Over a period of a decade, they were fashioned by the Czech artist František Rint with his wife and two children into fascinating displays of shapes and objects, including skull pyramids, crosses, a monstrance and a chandelier containing every bone of the human body. Their work was completed in 1870, and these artifacts have been placed in the crypt of the Cistercian chapel as a memento mori for the contemplation of visitors. Well-known for his appreciation of the macabre, Švankmajer found in Sedlec a subject sufficiently grim not to have to add very much to it. The theme of ageing, ruin and death appears right from the beginning. yet we are saved from morbidity by the elaborate, contrast-rich editing, alternating static images and leisurely camera pans with bursts of rapid-montage, swish-pans and tilts reminiscent of the impressionist technique of the pioneer of early French film Abel Gance. At other times, a long shot of the chapel’s interior, a sculpture or a camera pan is intercut with close-ups of a skull or another poignant detail, producing an atmosphere of nervous tension. A subtle detail in the concluding images of the film links the macabre atmosphere of death with the oblivion of the living: adolescent initials scratched into the skulls and bones by anonymous visiting vandals. A silent commentary on the eternal forgetting of humans—or perhaps their effort to laugh at death?
In collaboration with guest curators and international film archives and film festivals, we are launching a program of 16mm film nights. In addition to a curated program of screenings, each LOST AND FOUND film event will also be an open forum for artists working in 16mm to screen their works and open up discussion about working in this increasingly rare medium.
To mark the launch of LOST AND FOUND, we present our inaugural event as an exhibition coinciding with the Berlinale Film Festival:
A multichannel film installation screened on projectors from the 1920′s – 30′s.
Artists unknown (1920′s – 1940′s).
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Usually when we wish to recollect something from the past we see it as a still frame. It happens, that imagination about the far, often unknown past comes to us as an eye-blink, a single image hovering in time. Sometimes this memory of the image reminds us of something that we know or more often it has an accidental connotation. During the process of watching films, we usually transfer our private space into an unknown area, which could be unreadable for somebody from outside. Private stories that we could watch on the screen, go beyond both aesthetic and cinematic practices which are known from narrative and documentary cinema. An apparently chaotic plot, lack of dramaturgy, seems to be less interesting, but then again, this world without artistic qualities discovers for us an unknown or often ignored layer of representation.
Home movies evoke the world in which we as strange viewers, who have no access to the private stories played in front of the camera, become invisible participants. As such we recognize this thin layer, the border that divide the imaginary world from “here and now”. The process of recollecting events from the past works also in reverse: when we look at pictures taken by others, facts from our private lives are called to mind. Participating in this blaze of places and characters, we start to think that we, not the other, created these images – that we saw them like that, fooling our memories into occupying the space of the anonymous filmmakers. Following this logic, private stories carry on the dialogue with each other. Accordingly, screened images would somehow repeat the work that we as viewers have to do by ourselves in recollecting these disparate stories. Projecting our own experiences, we become the unknown eye behind the camera. The exhibition is structured as multichannel projections, all of the materials date back to the 1920′s – 1940′s and come from private archives, the people and places are a mystery. . .
Curated by Roman S.
Short Bio:
Roman S. is a media expert who was born in Poland, and now lives and works in Berlin. He restores and collects 16mm projectors as well as films and found footage by unknown artists. This exhibition features works and projectors from his collection.
Experimental cinema program in Poland for several institutions. Featuring programs on:
New American Cinema, British experimental, Expanded Cinema (Guy Sherwin), Beat Cinema, New York Filmakers Coop, Bruce Conner, Harry Smith, Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Peter Tcherkasky, Matthias Mueller, Len Lye.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(Dylan Thomas, 1952)
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 photographs are the result of specialty hand printing and demonstrate a highly refined analogue darkroom technique, translated in her more recent practice to digital media. 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 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 New Zealand.
Pardington participated in MOMENTUM’s 2011 exhibition A WAKE: Still Lives and Moving Images with 30 digital photographs chosen from three discreet series of works, now organized into the single moving image piece “Organic” (2010/11) for the MOMENTUM collection. By pairing seemingly random but personally charged items that once belonged to beloved family members in New Zealand, she questions the nature of human survival in relation to forgotten or altered cultural activity.
In 2014 Fiona Pardington undertook a seven week Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, working towards her participation in the exhibition FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRES (7 Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015).
“It works on a number of levels – once again my whakapapa/genealogy – random items that belong to beloved family members and important family members i had little contact with – like a child’s silver christening cup found by chance in a skip by my aunt when my grandmother’s house in bluff, southland was cleared after sale – it belonged to my father…silk scarves found in french flea markets, shells taken from beaches important to ngai-tahu because they are mahinga kai/traditional food gathering from the sea….seaweed, bottles dug out of the sand, hidden shells from the beach the ngai-tahu cheif tangatahara lived near. Paua shells from otakou – paua shells are important food but also the shell can be seen as a tourist cliche and is sitting in a strange NZ cultural limbo presently. Crystal wine glasses from op shops, native flowers and introduced weeds and pest plants introduced from overseas by the colonizers.
All the flowers and fruit are found on waiheke on roadsides (one of the few places wild food still exists on our waiheke) and back yards, or my back yard (very early house) or abandoned houses/fields. Op shops around NZ for much of the glassware/junk- or france, same. Many of the objects are mine personally, each with particular meanings/memories and places. I see reflections of the original cultures colonizers were a part of. There are personal simple lifeways in things such as agee jars and early penfolds wine/sherry bottles. Some of the bottles are dug up from early settlement is NZ like out on the otakou peninsula. Pipi and shells from traditional maori food collection beaches both here and otago/moeraki… weeds like hemlock, wormwood/mugwort, clover, etc etc…potions, healing, poisoning, folk remedies. I have yet to do clematis and a few more maori plants involved in rongoa. soon as rose season comes, theres early settlers roses that have gone wild to pick and photograph. eggs are from my freerange chickens. They tie you to nature, going and picking up warm eggs just laid. Also such a perfect meld off form and function is the egg. the big one is a hand made dummy egg – it was made by an old lady on wilma road who has organic goats, makes cheese etc – raku fired and blue (for my aracana hens) she gifted it to me when I gave her some of my laying hens.
Huge woodpigeons eat all the plum blossoms and the new leaves. All the weeds and such have their times to blossom, I’m watching seasons as I drive up and down to the ferry, watching individual plants of hemlock bud flower and seed. Lemons – nothing more beautiful than the morning scent of a lemon picked by our own hand from an ancient bush. They are all lumpy and have various leaf blights and so forth, but they are so real, matter of fact.
Survival, seasons, bottling, making jam, its all activity lost to many of us. It was more than a good quality of life, it meant the difference between struggling and starving or living with some grace and gusto.
My grandmother told me that when she was young, she and her mother dug a big pit on their back yard and buried all their unwanted crockery and glassware…. there’s an old fridge buried in this back yard. An old chicken coop has been broken and smothered by a huge plum tree. A staple fruit tree for early NZ colonizers. Jam pans in the shed. Bottling jars. I still fantasize about finding the house and the backyard and digging up all my great grandmothers unwanted kitchenware. people did things differently back then.
I spend a lot of time on beaches and on land surrounding beaches looking at the shells, fish, food sources, the power of one pipi shell (herries beattie collection at dunedin public art gallery taught me that, as any maori about their mahinga kai) ……where people lived and what they planted, what they cut down and destroyed, remnants. Like old bottles and jars. Things dropped and lost. Gorse. Gorse gorse….one of my next still life subjects. It was hedging in britain but flowers 4x a year here. It really upsets me. Pipi shells have different striations and colours depending on the minerals they are buried in. I know where all the different coloured shells – blacks or oranges – are on different beaches, and where certain types of shells I love are. I know their names and they comfort me and keep me focused when I am thinking about art when i walk on the beach. I find them each so unique and so humble, little bits of nothing, but each nothing is also something. Everything and nothing combined. Just like me, or you.
People getting old and dying, all their things been thrown out in to the bush behind their house, left in sheds or sold, given to op shops etc…its just happened to one of the original pakeha families 3 doors up – house sold, all their stuff gone, found his 1930′s drivers license in the bush just up from our place. Someone had thrown all their old suitcases down in to the creek in the native bush below us. Masses of baby nikau and karaka seedlings slowly suffocating them. Fallen widowmakers (epiphytic plants living in the top of tress that fall down and kill people) lying dying on the forest floor. Trickling water and tui song chucking away out in the sunlight. I know there are morepork hiding and there is a white kereru in the valley.
Every object has a particular meaning for me, a certain feeling, an emotion, a history, often a history I can sense, even though I can’t tell you its story.”
— Fiona Pardington (2011)
Quai Branly Residency, 2010
This series was made during Pardington’s Residency at Musée Quai Branly, Paris (Résidence PHOTOQUAI) in 2010, which she pursued as an extension of the work she presented at the 2010 Sydney Biennale (Ahua: A Beautiful Hesitation), for which she created a series of large-scale portraits of life-casts made of Maori and Pacific peoples during Dumont d’Urville’s voyage to the Pacific in the mid-19th century. This led her to further her research and exploration of the rich and equally controversial archives of French national collections and most notably those housed at the Musée de l’Homme, in Paris. Taken from both dead and living models, the resulting casts can be understood as early precursors to photography – a mechanism through which to achieve an allegedly exact, indexical recording of a subject. Similarly, photography – invented only about half a century after these casts were made –immediately became an instrument of ethnographic studies and thereby embodies a thoroughly problematic genealogy of its own. In this series, Pardington explores the presence of the subjects that were forever captured in the casts with the utmost degree of respect, thereby endowing the photograph with a profound sense of humanity, of which its history once robbed it. Simultaneously, she inverts the direction of the gaze: it is now not the colonized, but the coloniser’s view of the colonized that becomes thoroughly scrutinized. Largely abstaining from a straightforwardly judgmental approach, however, Pardington rather attempts to understand how or why it was so impossible for the colonizer to integrate with those who appeared so alien to them.
— Isabel de Sena
Still Lifes, 2011
With a clear reference to the (Dutch Golden Age) still life genre in painting, this series is a bold challenge to much of contemporary photographic practice and its preference for highly Photoshopped and stylized imagery. Pardington’s still life photography has an extraordinary painterly quality and she dedicates much of her diligent attention to meticulously arranging, lighting and capturing the objects, rather than on working the digital images in the post-shooting phase, which, though she does not discard it altogether, she does limit to an absolute minimum. Like a painter, the quality of the image-surface is of utmost importance to her and from her classical training in the time that analogue photography was widely practiced, she became a highly skilled master of fine photographic hand-printing. Today, faced with the kind of plasticized papers and synthetic substrates that the industry produces, Pardington has turned to photo-prints on canvas in the last decades. Not fully satisfied, however, and unremittingly insistent on the importance of the image surface, Pardington has embarked on a complex period of research that has led her to invent a new photographic substrate and is currently setting up an industrial studio to produce it, based in Auckland. This substrate is ground-breaking in that it allows for a remarkable amount of detail on an extremely smooth surface and retains its prime condition even after rolling the canvas.
Ultimately, the weight that Pardington awards to the photographic image-surface bears on her intense preoccupation with the immediacy and immanence of the image. Weary of the distance that a glass-covered and/or plasticized print builds in relation to the viewer, Pardington insists on maintaining a strong presence in the nature of her photographic images and by extension of the subjects depicted in them. Fundamentally, the animistic Maori tradition, furthered by the influence of Gilles Deleuze’s writings on the plane of immanence (the central concept of her doctoral thesis, ‘Towards a Kaupapa of Ancestral Power and Talk’, University of Auckland, 2013) greatly inform her particular relationship towards photography. This series’ reference to the Vanitas-genre (remember death and the meaninglessness of earthly life and transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits, or: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity”) hereby becomes discrete; Pardington continuously oscillates between life and death, presence and absence, or a constant tension between the two, whereby they ultimately become thoroughly porous and unopposed.
— Isabel de Sena
Phantasma, 2011
PHANTASMA: CECI N’EST PAS UN CHAMPIGNON
When I was young I spent childish good times in gumboots out in cow paddocks eeling or collecting mushrooms in buckets. The rain, fog, big bulls or the creeping fingers of mists slipping down from the fragrant native bush never dampened my enthusiasm, as mum’s mushrooms on toast beckoned at the end of each adventure
– Fiona Pardington
And all the time they could, if they liked, go and live at a place with the dim, divine name of St. John’s Wood. I have never been to St. John’s Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle. But all these things can be imagined by remaining reverently in the Harrow train.
– G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
In many ways the Mushrooms: The Champignons Barla series of photographs is simply yet another arrow in Fiona Pardington’s thematic quiver of Eros and Thanatos, the Aristotelian and encyclopaedic collecting policies of the nineteenth century museums, the eighteenth century Wunderkammer cabinet of curiosities, and a pronounced Francophilia. The Musée de l’Histoire Naturelle in Nice, driven by the celebrated naturalist, Antoine Risso (1777-1845), was the first museum to open its doors in that city, in the Place Saint François (the old city square) in 1846. Jean-Baptiste Vérany (1800-1865) compiled its rich collections of birds, molluscs, minerals and fossils, but of interest to us is the private collection of plaster and wax models of fish, flowering plants, and especially fungi of the South of France by Jean-Baptiste Barla (1817-1896). Barla’s collection became part of the museum in 1863 when it moved to its own premises on the site of the current museum, donated to the City of Nice in 1896. It was here on a visit to Nice in April 2011 that Pardington discovered the mycological collection and photographed it for four fungus-filled days.
It is only natural that a culinary culture like the French would be fascinated by fungi. The playwright and satirist Molière named his most famous fictional creation Tartuffe for the old French for truffle, and even named his country estate “Perigord” for the region in France where the black truffle grows. The French invented the cultivation of mushrooms, growing them in the limestone caves at Bourré in the Loirre Valley since the reign of Louis XIV. Every regional cuisine of France uses its own locally growing fungi: truffles, champignon de Paris, channterelle, pleurote (oyster mushrooms), and cèpes (porcini). If you can eat it, the French probably have a sauce that goes with it, and consequently the French know their fungi. The Larousse Gastronomique contains extensive notes on the cooking of mushrooms, and the poisonous ones to avoid. Models like the Barla collection were originally created and circulated around the French municipalities on the typically pragmatic orders of a recently restored Napoleon III so that the public might be educated about which mushrooms were and were not safe to eat.
Among the images of Mushrooms we find a rambunctious cavalcade of names, forms and colours. Each unique specimen is made a character portrait, invested with a personality and supernatural presence as if one had stumbled upon them in some ancient primeval wood. Most of these specimens are poisonous. One of the most deadly fungi of all, though not found among these images, is the Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap or Destroying Angel discovered in 1727 by a French botanist who gave it its Latin name for its phallic appearance rudely jutting erect from the maternal earth. As the common names suggest, A. phalloides is deadly poisonous, and unfortunately resembles some edible mushrooms such as the common Puffball. The fifth century BC Athenian tragedian Euripides lost his wife and three children to a meal of this toadstool. It was used to deliberately poison the Roman Emperor Claudius in AD54 (so that Nero might don the imperial purple) and Pope Clement VII in 1534 to prevent him aligning with France (a few days after commissioning Michelangelo to paint The Last Judgement for the Sistine Chapel), and also caused the accidental death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740.
Mushrooms and toadstools, the fruiting bodies of the fungi family, have long held a peculiar place in human culture and imagination. Some of those which appear in these works are infamous. The white-freckled blood-red cap of the Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric is notorious for its use by the shamans of many cultures from throughout Eurasia to achieve communion with the divine other realm, though unlike the Psilocybe genus (so called “magic mushrooms” or just plain “shrooms”) they have rarely been sourced for recreational purposes outside of wedding feasts in the Lithuanian hinterland (served in vodka). Among the Turkmenic peoples of Siberia the A. muscaria was first consumed by a shaman and consumed by the rest of the tribe in the much safer form of the Shaman’s urine. A similar practice may have been observed in ancient India, giving rise to the legend of Soma described in the Rig Veda. It has been reported that the Sami sorcerers of Lapland would consume A. muscaria that had seven spots on their caps and claims that it was used by the Parachi-speaking tribes of Afghanistan, and the Ojibwa and Tlicho tribes of North America. It has even been suggested that the Viking Beserkers used A. muscaria to achieve their battle frenzy. The A. muscaria is perhaps the archetypal image of a toadstool (a English children’s argot word, as noted by literary opium addict Thomas de Quincy in his “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (1827), a place where toads were imagined to sit). Arising suddenly from the earth in a season when most other plants are dying, and bearing none of the green of spring foliage, it is easy to see how such an ominous growth would be associated with the magical, the underworld, and the dead – particularly given their frequently poisonous nature.
The abrupt eruption of fungi, particularly in circles, was attributed to shooting stars falling to earth, lightning strikes, mephitic terrestrial vapours, witches, fairies and evil spirits, beliefs persisting in rural parts of Europe well into the nineteenth century. A common folk belief was that dire things would befall any mortal foolhardy to step inside a fairy ring, ranging from being struck lame or blind, or losing one’s way or wits, to being abducted to serve in the realm of Faerie where time moves differently to our world. It was a common rural superstition that cows that grazed in a fairy ring would produce sour milk. The Ivory or Trooping Funnel Clitocybe geotropa is now known as Infundibulicybe geotropa (geotropa deriving from the ancient Greek for “earth turn”). Like misery, it loves company and frequently forms fairy rings – one such being reported in France as a half mile across and estimated at eight centuries old. In ancient Egypt only pharaohs were permitted to eat mushrooms, which they believed were reincarnations of the gods that travelled down from the heavens on bolts of lightning.
This is an association certainly not lost on Pardington:
I loved fairy rings and always made a point of trying to stand inside one on the slim hope of catching a glimpse of a fairy. Being an obedient child, I was informed I should never touch Amanita muscaria, that alarmingly festive creature that that pushed up boldly beneath the arms of dark nested pine trees in a park we lived nearby. Magic was afoot in mushroom season and I was not about to miss it…. I felt close to the earth at these times, endlessly fascinated by its secrets. When I lay on my stomach on the ground and looked closely at the delicate furls underneath the mushroom’s hat, I imagined glancing down to see changelings left by cruel fairies in place of children. The fact I was an avid reader from a very young age meant that I was steeped in fairytales and fairy law, my knowledge extended over Christmas holiday visits to my grandma’s, where I would read her occult Man, Myth and Magic weekly magazines, often scaring myself stiff, at the same time revelling in the power of the unseen, occult worlds and to me mushrooms were the outposts, fairy arena, villages or guard-towers of magical kingdoms and occult territories.
The Flemish painters subtly included toadstools in their depictions of Hell. It is A. muscaria which appears so liberally in picture books of tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, its hyphae baroquely populating the undergrowth of haunted forests full of witches, wolves and menacing anthropomorphic trees. In illustrations from the nineteenth century onward, and in that peculiarly tenacious Victorian genre of fairy painting, they are homes to the little folk, which in more recent times underwent metamorphosis into the more cheerful kitsch incarnation of the Smurf (Les Schtroumpfs in French-speaking countries) village and the giant toadstool (by-product of an extraterrestrial mineral) in Hergé’s L’Étoile mystérieuse (1942), an adventure of boy reporter Tintin later translated as The Shooting Star. One wonders if the Mushroom in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) on which the caterpillar sits smoking who-knows-what in his hookah, was related. Certainly Alice’s dramatic changes in size upon eating pieces of it suggest some kind of hallucination.
The Hydnum auriscalpum is these days known as Auriscalpium vulgare. The original name comes from the Latin auris (ear) and scalpo (“I scratch”) and was bestowed by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the “Father” of Latin taxonomy, in 1753 for the fungus’ resemblance to an ear pick. In the model it is posed with a pinecone, it’s usual place of incubation. Also represented here is another of the few fungi named by Linnaeus, Cortinariuss violaceus, the Violet Webcap. The Psathyra corrugis or Red-Edged Brittlestem was once the cause of the accidental poisoning of BBC Wild Food presenter Gordon Hillman, when he was given one instead of an edible variety and then proceeded to drink a beer. Alcohol has a liberating effect on many fungal toxins, and in Hillman’s case resulted in monochrome vision, memory problems and difficulty breathing. Is it any wonder that some societies regard some fungi with awe, as if they might transmit their deadly poison through the air like the evil eye.
The spectacular Clathrus cancellatus is of the foul smelling Stinkhorn family and generally regarded with great superstition and foreboding in Southern France, where it is reputed to grow in cemeteries from the bones of the dead, and cause rashes, convulsions and even cancer. The name Clathrus comes from the ancient Greek for “lattice”, referring to the fungus’ basket-like structure. In the area of the former Yugoslavia its red cousin Clathrus ruber was known as Witch’s Heart. Another Stinkhorn in the collection is Phallus impudicus (imodest phallus, a name bestowed by Linnaeus) which is known for its carrion stench and resemblance to the male anatomy. John Gerard (1545-1611) in his 1597 General Historie of Plants called it the “pricke mushroom” and “fungus virilise penis effigie”, while John Parkinson (1567-1650) in his 1640 Theatrum botanicum called it “Hollander’s workingtoole” – cough cough, nudge nudge, wink wink. Gwen Raverant (1885-1957), the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, remembers roaming the woods of Victorian Cambridge with a Maiden Aunt who would locate the rude fungus by its smell, uproot them, and bear them back to the house and burning them behind the locked door of the drawing room for fear of corrupting the morals of the maids. By contrast, the peasants of Northern Montenegro fed the Stinkhorn to their bulls as an aphrodisiac, and rubbed them on the necks of the bulls to give them strength before bullfights.
The Saffron Milkcap or Red Pine Mushroom Lactarius deliciosus has been eaten for centuries. A fresco in preserved by the ash of Vesuvius in the ruins of the Roman town of Herculaneum depicts this fungus, making it one of the oldest examples of a mushroom known in art. Lactarius viridus (now L. blennius) or Slimy or Beech Milkcap cannot be recommended for the table, though a number of chemicals have been extracted from it which prove to have potentially useful medical applications. The unloved Russula emetica has a slew of names deriving from its emetic and purgative properties: Sickener, Emetic Russula, and Vomiting Russula. It unfortunately resembles edible Russulae and one Sickener mixed in with them will ruin a whole meal. Curiously the British Red Squirrel, little Squirrel Nutkin Sciurus vulgaris, has no such problem with the fungus and has been observed to forage for, store, and eat R. emetic with no ill effects. The Man on Horseback or Yellow Knight, Tricholoma equestre or Tricholoma flavovirens is a tricky customer in that it is widely eaten in Europe, but is in fact poisonous. Named by Linnaeus, the botanical name derives from the ancient Greek for “fringe of hair” and the Latin for “pertaining to horses”. This relates to the fungus’ resemblance to a saddle.
Fungi are so charged with a baggage of meaning and alien looking that they even make their way into Science Fiction. H. G. Wells’ story “The Purple Pileus” (1896) makes a mushroom the muguffin that changes the entire course of a man’s life. Ray Bradbury’s “Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!” (1980) and John Wyndham’s “The Puffball Menace” (1933, essentially a dry run for The Day of the Triffids, 1951) feature enormous weaponised man-eating fungi. Looking at Pardington’s eerie images, one might easily imagine these eldritch organic, biomorphic forms to be intelligent, utterly otherworldly, and quite possibly malign.
Much of the fun in these photographs comes from their false premise. Rene Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images, 1928–29, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) depicts a pipe with the inscription “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – ‘This is not a pipe’. Of course it isn’t a pipe, it’s a painting of a pipe. Likewise Pardington’s images are not fungi, or even photographs of fungi, but photographs of facsimiles of fungi. The images exemplify Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacra as not merely recreations of real things, nor even deceptive recreations of the real; they are not based in the real at all, nor do they hide a reality, they obscure that reality is irrelevant to our existence because we semiotically still recognise these images as fungi. As Pardington notes:
What I love about the Barla polychromed champignons is that these fairy-towers or toad-perches aggravate the incorporeal freedom that the simple materiality of the photograph gestures towards. This freedom imbued in every photographic act positively charges us with its link to the invisible realms of metaphysical thought as equally of any intellectual or scientific ruminations. The photograph always impresses us with its blithe ability to preserve and transmit an intimate physical knowledge of our visible world, although its existence does not necessarily depend on any of the references it springs from. For instance, if I take my photographic portrait, it is not necessarily a correlate of my thought, nor a necessary correlate to my absence, or by any absence of knowledge about any of its situated-ness. Photographs operate anonymously perfectly well, and pouring through the thousands of carte-de-visites at the Vanves fleamarket recently impressed this upon me yet again. When my eyes fall upon the photograph of any of the mushrooms, I imagine Barla’s spade plunging in to the earth, editing out the fairy ring of Russula furcata, activating a kind of transubstantiation where the very this-ness of that day, the haecceity of that day and that hour of September 1862 remains with us thanks to the two styles of time portal that moulage and photography represent to us.
In its own humble way, the mushroom moulage sur vif and its companion photographic portrait can even become an operator in nothing less than ‘a phrasing of history’ (Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs of Auschwitz, Georges Didi-Huberman, University of Chicago Press, 2008, p139), its quiet manifestation shaking down our present grasp on what representation might be…. and what slips in between the cracks in the moulages and settles with a fine aura like fairy-dust is the incommensurable.
Over the years, however, the pigments on the models have changes so that they are no longer scientifically accurate; spectacularly so in the case of the R. emetica. This factor contributes another layer of distance and complexity to what at first glance might be considered a relatively simple body of work. As the artist herself says: “For me it is a very nice undercutting of the scientific drive for arrangement of detailed knowledge and certainty. It adds a further ‘danger’ too, because if you followed the advice of these wee plaster and paint confections you could end up dead.”
This is not a straightforward act of cataloguing as one finds in the water tower photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Further to their already slightly surreal appearance, Pardington introduces subtle methods of distortion through Photoshop, unconsciously suggesting the Alice in Wonderland and trippy, hallucinogenic aspect of fungi. Photoshop adds a layer of indeterminacy to the images, and is merely the newest incarnation of practices that go back to Darwin’s half-cousin Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), explorer, anthropologist, and pioneering inventor of fingerprinting and, unfortunately, the founder of eugenics. Galton was fascinated by the commonality of some physical traits in ethnic groups, and used composite photography in the 1870s to emphasise and analyse these. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein closely reproduced these experiments fifty years later in his fascination with the rhizomatic dispersal of traits in family resemblances, though Wittgenstein, as does Pardington in this case, sought a kind of Heisenbergian-like uncertainty, a conceptual ‘fuzziness’ in which all probabilities may co-exist, again suggestive of the reputed psycho-active traits of certain fungi.
The result is these extraordinary images, infused with an aura of something deeply mysterious and magical. Pardington’s dramatic lighting and digital editing and enhancement draws out the sculptural complexity of these fungal forms, focussing in with the kind of intensity one might associate with Albrecht Dürer’s detailed, eagle-eyed studies of divots of grasses and wildflowers, but viewed through a fictive scrim of fantasy. The viewer is left in no doubt that fungi, and through a dim race memory of sympathetic magic, these talismanic models, inhabit a twilight and liminal world.
– Andrew Paul Wood
Ex Vivo, 2013–14
Old ocean, there is nothing far-fetched in the idea that you hide within your breast things which will in the future be useful to man. You have already given him the whale. You do not easily allow the greedy eyes of the natural sciences to guess the thousand secrets of your inmost organization. You are modest. Man brags incessantly of trifles. I hail you, old ocean.
— Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore-Lucien Ducasse), Les Chants de Maldoror (1869)
Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these
Indigestibles, the spars of purposes
That failed far from the surface. None grow rich
In the sea. This curved jawbone did not laugh
But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph.
— Ted Hughes, “Relic”
Twice a day the tides that lave and redraft the coastline wash up a diversity of bounty:driftwood, kelp, shells, dead crabs, bones, fishing floats, perhaps a rare paper nautilus,and occasional hints of life in the deep interior depths and cool green hells, or over the blue horizon. After a big storm, more than likely there will be dead seagulls and albatrosses too, studies in greyscale. New Zealand’s long and supine coastline acts like a driftnet, gathering it all up. You never know what gifts Tangaroa will surprise you with, which is part of the magic of it all. If it floats, and falls into the Tasman, the Pacific, the freezing Southern Ocean, or perhaps further afield, hidden currents will probably wash it up on our sand or shingle for a beachcomber to find.
It is beachcombing which provided most of the objets trouvés for this suite of works by Fiona Pardington. Appropriately enough, it starts out as a Pacific phenomenon. The first appearance of the word in print is to be found in Herman Melville’s 1847 novel Omoo which described a community of feckless and outcast Europeans in the Islands who had abandoned Western culture for a life “combing” the beach for anything they could use or trade. Not for the faint of heart, Sappho warns the squeamish against poking the coastal rubble; Μὴ κίνη χέραδασ. While living in Waiheke Island, Fiona regularly explored Rock Bay and Ontetangi beaches, and later Ripiro and Bayley’s Beach, walking her canine menagerie. She, also, was looking for things to use and trade, though these transactions are of an entirely aesthetic sort. She is, as Shakespeare writes of Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, “a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”
The albatross feathers allude to the artist’s great love of nature and her Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Ngāti Kahungunu ancestry – Māori associations with the deep water, long voyages and return. To Māori, albatrosses, Torora, represented beauty, grace and power, and their feathers and bone were worn by people of rank or adorned the prow of waka taua (war canoes). The (with a nod to Monty Python) ex-gulls. Karoro, the blackbacked gull, were kept as pets by some Māori to control vermin, and were considered an ill omen seen inland. The objects that look like white wax flowers and the plastic casings of fired rifle cartridges. These can be considered symbols of explosive and potentially dangerous energy and transformation.
The philosophy of collecting and salvage moves like an eel up the river from the coast. Like the carnage from the Māori legend of the battle between the sea birds and the land birds, among the fallen, mingling with the gulls and albatrosses are a humdrum sparrow and a young kāhu (hawk). Te kāhu i runga whakaaorangi ana e rā, / Te pērā koia tōku rite, inawa ē! (“The hawk up above moves like clouds in the sky. Let me do the same!”). Here, too, are items that have washed up from the human sea; a crystal ball, a pounamu heart (the heart of Fiona’s whakapapa lies among the iwi of Te Wai Pounamu, the South Island), a hag stone (a stone naturally pierced by water through which those gifted with second sight were, according to legend, supposed to see the future and the other world through, a pewter mug, roses, and a cut glass decanter of water from Lake Wakatipu. Transparent and fragile vessels are important in Fiona’s work, alluding to the tradition of Vanitas painting (remember, you too shall one day die) and often containing water from places significant to the artist. These lustrous objects also reveal Fiona’s virtuosity with light, and photography, after all, is Classical Greek for drawing or writing with light. The eye scavenges.
Osvaldo Budet, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1979, is a contemporary Puerto Rican artist living in Berlin, Germany. Budet received a BFA in painting in 2004 from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico and an MFA in Painting from the Hoffberger School of Painting in 2008 at Maryland Institute College of Art. He was an artist in resident at Museo del Barrio Santurce, Puerto Rico in 2005 and in The Leipzig International Art Program, Germany in 2008. Budet’s work is influenced by documentary film, and activism and his production of paintings, photographs and videos are characterized as being both “Humorous and serious”.
The work displays a conscious of the problems of identity; a notion of the colonized is at the center of this work. Budet constructs paintings and photographs which use self-portraiture to explore historical moments, often citing the creation of colonial identity. Budet uses reflective materials, such as diamond dust, iron oxide and glass to reference the material of film. His work has been shown in Puerto Rico, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore, Washington DC, Ireland and Italy.
CREATIVE WAKES
2011, Video, 12 min 3 sec
Creative Wakes Puerto Rico – In fall 2008 Angel Luis Pantojas asked his family that in the case of his death he wanted to be presented at his wake in a standing position. Two weeks later he was fatally shot, apparently for drug related crimes.
His family fulfilled his death wish and this triggered the beginning of a movement of themed and theatrical wakes in Puerto Rico. Osvaldo Budet explores the possibilities that this new trend has awoken.
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 subsequently moved to Berlin’s iconic Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center in January 2011, with an on-going program supporting its mission as a non-profit platform for Time-Based Art. As the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, Rachel-Rits Volloch has curated and produced over 250 exhibitions, artist residencies, education events, and a diversity of related programming worldwide, showing close to 700 artists, since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010. 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.
EMILIO RAPANÀ – Co-Director
Emilio Rapanà holds undergraduate and Masters degrees in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano. After one year in the Erasmus program at the Faculty of Architecture, Oporto University (FAUP), Rapanà moved to Rio de Janeiro to continue his studies at the Federal University, Faculty of Civil Engineering (UFRJ). In Brasil, Rapanà worked at MPU, Metrópolis Projectos Urbános, one of the leading architecture and urban design offices focusing on complex and multi-disciplinary development projects in Rio’s favelas. Rapanà earned his Masters degree in Milan in 2010 with a thesis titled “Project for the growth of a favela. A flexible housing unit in Cidade de Deus, Rio de Janeiro“. Rapanà has worked at MOMENTUM since early 2013, building up his position to Head of Operations & Design, and as Co-Director since 2016. In his 10-year tenure at MOMENTUM he has overseen many international contemporary art projects, working closely with renowed artists, curators, galleries, museums and foundations. Concurrently Emilio Rapanà sits on th Board of Peninsula, the association of Italian artists and curators based in Berlin. Emilio Rapanà lives and works in Berlin.
MOMENTUM Advisory Board
Cassandra Bird
Cassandra Bird was Co-Director of MOMENTUM for its first two years in Berlin, in 2011-2013. She subsequently returned to Sydney to become the Director of Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery. In 2024, she opened her own gallery, the Cassandra Bird Gallery. She is also the owner of von Bertouch Galleries in Newcastle, Australia, which was in her family for 50 years. Previoulsy, Cassandra ran the broadcast design and animation team for two years, after working for five years as a designer for two television networks in Australia. She then went abroad to gain gallery experience with contemporary art, working at Venetia Kapernekas Gallery in New York, Johnen Galerie in Berlin, and DUVE Berlin. Cassandra has written for many art publications, both online and in print, in addition to acting as an independent art advisor connecting artists and clients internationally. Cassandra Bird holds an M.A. in Curatorship and Arts Administration from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts (COFA) and graduated from Charles Sturt University with a B.A. in Theatre & Media and a double diploma in Business, marketing and advertising.
Thomas Eller
Thomas Eller (born 8 September 1964) is a German visual artist and writer. Born and raised in the German district of Franconia he left Nürnberg in 1985 to study fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts. After his forced expulsion he studied sciences of religion, philosophy and art history at Free University of Berlin. During this time he was also working as a scientific assistant at the Science Center Berlin for Social Research (WZB). From 1990 he exhibited extensively in European museums and galleries. In 1995 he obtained his greencard and moved to New York. Next he participated in exhibitions in museums and galleries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. In 2004 he moved back to Germany and founded an online arts magazine on the internet platform artnet. As managing director he developed the Chinese business team and was instituting several cooperations e.g. with Art Basel and the Federal German Gallery Association (BVDG). In 2008 he became artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. In 2013, Thomas Eller became the co-publisher of Randian China, an online magazine of art criticism focusing on Chinese contemporary art. He is the co-curator of the exhibition The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing (2014, Berlin).
David Elliott
David Elliott is an English born curator, writer, art historian, and museum director. 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); senior curator and vice-director of the Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art in Guangzhou, China (2015-2019). David Elliott was Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-2012); Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014). He 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). He was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art (1998-2004); Honorary President of the Board of Triangle Art Network in London (2010-2016); on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York; on the jury of Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul (2011-2017); currently he is the Chairman of Judges of the Sovereign Asian Arts Prize, and the Chairman of the Advisory Board of MOMENTUM (2010-Present). Amongst numerous publications, “Art & Trousers: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Asian Art” a major anthology of his writings, was published in 2021.
Jeni Fulton
Jeni Fulton is the Executive Editor for Content & Communications at Art Basel. Prior to this, she was Editor-in-Chief of 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 completed her PhD Thesis on “Value and Evaluation in Contemporary Art” at the Faculty for Cultural Theory at the Humboldt University, 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 is bilingual in German and English and is fluent in French.
Erika Hoffmann-Koenige
Erika Hoffmann-Koenige is the Founding Director of the Sammlung Hoffmann, a private collection of contemporary art open to the public. She studied art history in Freiburg, Vienna and Bonn from 1958 to 1963, including a placement at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne. From 1968 to 1988 she was in charge of the womens’ collection Lady von Laack in her husband’s, Rolf Hoffmann’s, clothing company van Laack. In 1979 she produced a collection of Constructivist clothing after designs by Popova, Stepanova, Exter, Rodchenko and others. The collection was shown in Galerie Gmurzynska in Cologne in 1979, and then toured to numerous museums in the US, Moscow and Tokyo. In 1984, she created and produced the exhibition 50 Kleider, utilising the designs of fifty contemporary artists on the occasion of Rolf Hoffmann’s 50th birthday. The exhibition was shown in the Altes Museum Mönchengladbach. Between 1988 and 1991, following the sale of the company, she curated the exhibition Buchstäblich – Bild und Wort in der Kunst heute for the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal. During this period, she and her husband developed a plan for a Kunsthalle in Dresden after a design by Frank Stella, which, however, was not realised. In 1994 the couple purchased and restored a former factory in Berlin-Mitte, creating the complex known today as the Sophie-Gips-Höfe. The building is a home in addition to housing their art collection, and its rotating exhibitions are open to the public on Saturdays. In 2009, the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau in Dresden exhibited Mit dem Fahrrad zur Milchstraße, an exhibition drawn from the Hoffmann collection. It was curated by Erika Hoffmann-Koenige in conjunction with Ulrich Bischoff and Mathias Wagner. Erika Hoffmann is also a member of the Neue Nationalgalerie advisory board.
Dirk Kleiner
Dirk Kleiner has been working since 2000 primarily in the field of banking and capital market law and also in real estate law. He primarily advises and represents credit institutions and commercial companies in the real estate sector. In addition to providing ongoing advice on all banking and real estate law issues, his practice focuses on the nationwide management of banking litigation. Dirk Kleiner has particular expertise in the judicial enforcement of claims arising from non-performing loan commitments and in the realization of loan collateral.
Mirkku Kullberg
Mirkku Kullberg is the CEO of the studio, incubator and consultancy, Glasshouse Helsinki. Mirkku Kullberg is known as a visionary leader and design executive with a strong track record in branding and turnaround management. Kullberg inspires audiences around the world by speaking about the future of retail and changing consumer lifestyles. Also, Kullberg interprets interestingly the blurring lines between home, work and office. Finnish born, internationally seasoned and educated Kullberg speaks 4 languages. She was Strategic Marketing Director of Kämp Collection Hotels, and served as the Head of Vitra Home at Vitra International AG from 2014 to December 2015 in Birsfelden, Switzerland. Prior to Vitra, Kullberg was the CEO of Finnish design icon Artek. Previously Kullberg has revamped Finnish design icons such as Artek, Nanso and Grunstein. During Kullberg’s two decades in fashion industry Kullberg’s projects have expanded the boundaries between art, design, media and technology. Kullberg splits her time in Berlin and Helsinki. In her free time she collects art her photographer husband and restores charming dwellings in the Nordic archipelago.
Li Zhenhua
Li Zhenhua has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly concerning curation, art creation, and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (Switzerland), as well as for The Prix Pictet (Switzerland). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. Since 2000 focused on curating and dialog with filmmakers and documentary filmmakers from China, since 2004 involved in CIFF. 2015 producer of JU Anqi’s film Poet on a Business trip. 2010 curated Heat: ZHANG Yuan solo show in Nanjing, China. 2007 producer of SHEN Shaomin’s documentary film I am Chinese. Since 2003 worked as a jury in the film and arts field, such as Shorti (Span 2003), Napolis Film festival (Italy 2006), Transmediale 2010 (Berlin, Germany 2009), CCAA (Beijing, China 2012), CIFF (Nanjing, China 2012), Fantoche (Switzerland 2012), Art Award China (Beijing, China 2015-2016), 2021 KCC UK X Germany Open Call (Germany & UK 2021), DAAD: Fellows of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme 2022(Germany 2021). Li Zhenhua has edited several artists’ publications, including Yan Lei: What I Like to Do (Documenta13, 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.
Elizabeth Markevitch
Elizabeth Markevitch is an art professional and the founder of ikono, an international platform of display and broadcasting visual arts. Markevitch started her career in the early eighties as assistant fashion editor for Vogue Hommes and has since served many roles in the art industry: head of the Art Fund, Artemis; head and founder of the art advisory department of J. Henry Schröder Bank; Senior Manager of the painting’s department at Sotheby’s. Markevitch works as an art consultant and has collaborated and curated a wide variety of special art events. Her passion for exploring new ways to impart and display art while making it accessible to a wider audience became manifest in 1998, when she co-founded the online gallery eyestorm; projects such as „46664 – 1 Minute of Art to Aids“ in 2003 have since followed. Through the 2006 founding of ikono, a collaboration between art historians, curators and cameramen, with artists and art institutions, Markevitch’s vision of building a visual bridge to the arts was realized: The whole world of art is brought to the homes of an international public, reached through the HDTV channels ikonoMENASA and ikonoTV as well as through the web portal www.ikono.org, which reaches 35 million households daily in Germany, Italy and 27 countries across Europe and bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
Christopher Moore
Christopher Moore is the publisher of randian 燃点 digital art magazine. From 2008-10 Christopher was the Shanghai correspondent for Saatchi Online. In 2012 Chris co-curated “Forbidden Castle” at Muzeum Montanelli in Prague, an exhibition of Xu Zhen’s pre-MadeIn work, and in April 2014 he curated Yan Pijie “Children of God” at orangelab Berlin. He is also the editor of the first monograph on Xu Zhen, to be published by Distanz Verlag this Spring, with contributions by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Li Zhenhua.
Dr. Irina Nikolic de Jacinto
Dr. Irina A. Nikolic (Nikolic de Jacinto) is a global health diplomat and international development expert, with a long-standing interest in contemporary art. In 2010, Irina joined the World Bank Group, where she is a senior official working on global health matters, strategy and organizational change initiatives. Previously, Irina Nikolic de Jacinto was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company, where she advised leading global organizations on strategy and performance, and led engagements in global health, economic development, and opportunity creation in the firm’s Social Sector Office. Irina has advised and worked on a number of recent global initiatives and partnerships, such as the Lancet’s Global Health 2035, the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child, and global health networks for universal health coverage. She has written extensively on strategy, global health, women’s empowerment, and development issues, including: “Chronic Emergency: Why Non-communicable Diseases Matter”, “The Business of Empowering Women”, “How Helping Women Helps Business”, and “Rethinking How Companies Address Social Issues”. She has also worked on promoting international collaboration in health and education, and has led a health-focused foundation in New York. Dr. Nikolic de Jacinto holds a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in History and International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Belgrade. Born in Yugoslavia, Irina lives in Washington, D.C. and London with her family and art collection.
Dov Rubinstein
Dov Rubinstein holds a BA in Political Science from Haifa University, Israel and a BA and MA (Honours) in Law from King’s College, University of Cambridge. Dov Rubinstein began his career as a pilot in the Israel Air Force rising to the rank of Major and serving as the COO of the Squadron, he also served as an International commercial pilot at Arkia Airlines. After making a career switch to Law, he clerked at the Office of the Prosecutor at the Hague and at the prestigious Libai Law firm in Tel Aviv. He has served in several capacities at the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Switzerland, including as staff attorney, Resident Claims Judge, Deputy Secretary General and most recently as Secretary General (co-CEO), managing 80 professional staff with an annual budget of ca. CHF12M. He has founded the co-operation agreement between the two leading Institutions the Swiss Chambers Arbitration Institution (SCAI) and Israeli Center for Arbitration and Resolution (CADR) and serves as an International Arbitrator.
Ruth Ur
Ruth Ur is the Yad Vashem Director for German-speaking Countries. Previously she was Director of Partnerships Europe at the British Council. She has worked internationally for over 15 years with postings to Germany and, as British cultural attaché, to Turkey and Israel. Ruth was Curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2002) and has been responsible for several artist commissions, including a series of public art works across Turkey by major European artists such as Clemens von Wedemeyer and Mark Wallinger. Ruth headed the British Council’s Culture and Development programme (2010 – 13). With a particular interest in the intersection of culture and politics, Ruth was responsible for developing the British Council’s new cultural strategy in the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring, initiated a new cultural programme in South Sudan and was part of the team that established cultural exchange between the UK and North Korea in 2014. Ruth grew up in London, has a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA from the Courtauld Institute in Art History. She divides her time between Berlin, London and Alsace.
MOMENTUM’s SKY SCREEN is proud to host 2 video programs curated by New York City’s STREAMING MUSEUM
The Streaming Museum – In Cyberspace And Public Space On 7 Continents
The Streaming Museum has presented over 30 video exhibitions since its launch on January 29, 2008 that have been viewed by millions of people on public screens in over 55 cities and Antarctica. Produced and broadcast in New York City, Streaming Museum generates its dynamic, innovative content of international fine arts, culture and visionary innovations in collaboration with prominent and emerging visual and performing artists and curators. The museum also presents exhibitions and events at partnering cultural centers and international arts festivals. The selection presented on SKY SCREEN features 2 Streaming Museum video programs including 7 artists from around the globe.
WE WRITE TO YOU FROM THE DISTANT FUTURE
MICHAEL NAJJAR – Bionic Angel (2006)
MITCHELL JOACHIM/TERREFORM ONE – Jetpack Packing (2010); Blimp Bumper Bus (2008); Fab Tree Hab Village (2009); Rapid Re(F)Use (2008); Green Brain: A Smart Park For A New City (2006)
EDUARDO KAC – Lagoglyphs (2009)
ETOY – Mission Eternity (2005 – 2016)
ANDREA ACKERMAN – Rose Breathing (2003)
JOHN SIMON, JR. – HD Traffic (2009)
ARTIST AND WORKS
Streaming Museum’s fall 2010 exhibition featured at Zero One San Jose Biennial, Tina b. Prague Contemporary Art Festival, the Big Screen Project NYC, and throughout its global network of screens in public spaces.
We Write This To You From the Distant Future is a multi-media exhibition of work by visionary creators in the arts and sciences that focuses on a future world imagined and possible to build.
The exhibition title is a line spoken by the narrator in Immobilité (2009), a 75-minute feature length art film shot with a mobile phone video camera by Mark Amerika, with music score by Chad Mossholder. A remix collection from Immobilité opens the exhibition evoking questions – how will a technologically advanced world effect what it is to be human and what is the world with advanced technology to become?
In Michael Najjar’s Bionic Angel (2006) series (courtesy, bitforms gallery, NYC), creatures in the throes of transformation are a metaphor for inevitable genetic self-creation and possible immortality of the human body.
Mitchell Joachim/Terreform ONE, imagines human adaptation to global climate shifts and designs for transportation, habitat and sustainable living in the urban environment in Jetpack Packing, (2010); Blimp Bumper Bus, (2008), Fab Tree Hab Village, (2009), Rapid Re(F)Use, (2008); Green Brain: A Smart Park For A New City, (2006). View these images here.
Eduardo Kac animates a poetic code/language in Lagoglyphs (2009) that defies interpretation but derives meaning from his bio artwork, Alba (2000), a genetically engineered bunny.
Etoy’s Mission Eternity (2005 – 2016) is a digital cult of the dead for the information society that crosses the boundaries of the afterlife, and challenges the way human civilization deals with memory (conservation/loss), time (future/present/past) and death.
Rose Breathing (2003), an undulating cross-species rose, creates a Zen-like meditation as it rhythmically opens and closes in time-altered human-like respiration. Artist and scientist Andrea Ackerman has created at the intersection of technology, nature, aesthetics and ethics, a work that prophetically signals the inevitable integration of technology and nature.
HD Traffic (2009) by John F. Simon, Jr., is a software artwork inspired by the compositional style of Piet Mondrian, with particular inspiration from Broadway Boogie Woogie and Simon’s love of jazz improvisation. HD Traffic can react dynamically to real-time information streams taken from the Internet, and reflect the pulse of human movement that is embodied in the flow of traffic and other data.
“Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” (Nam June Paik)
What happens when you bring together a Japanese ballerina from the Berlin Staatsballet, a German painter, an American opera singer, and Berlin’s most innovative interactive media artist? Magic. MOMENTUM commissioned a new work made specially for our gallery in the historic Kunstquartier Bethanien, a former hospital built in 1847 by Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV which functioned as a hospital until 1970. Subsequently inhabited and fought over by squatters and arts organizations, this space has had a poignant and colorful history.
Enter four diverse artists who had never worked together before. Now based in Berlin, but originally from very different parts of the world, they came together to reflect on the movements that brought each of them to converge on this particular space at this particular moment. Using dance, visual art, voice and interactive light design, they responded to the unique spaces of Bethanien and the latent aura of its history. Performed in three parts in preparation for the final video, “Traveling Souls” ties together the split narratives of its migratory performers, Bethanien’s site-specific history as a place of passing, and the question that MOMENTUM continues to pose: What is time-based art?
“Traveling Souls” is scheduled to be shown in Jerusalem alongside other future locations, and MOMENTUM is excited to continue collaborating with this team of artists.
Crossing interdisciplinary boundaries, drawn together through creative synergies, this foursome of talent embodies MOMENTUM’s mission to enable great art to happen across cultural and institutional borders.
For more information on Traveling Souls please click here
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Randian seeks to promote independent cultural debate in China and to foster intellectual exchange between China and the rest of the world. This means independent commentary on art, artists, exhibitions and galleries, as well as video, architecture and design.
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Born 1982 in Maitland, Australia, Shonah Trescott received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2004 from the National Art School, Sydney, Australia. Trescott is best known for her landscape paintings, which, like the Hudson River School painters before her, explore the relationship between man and his environment. Indeed, her work belies a studied knowledge of Western history and landscape painting, as well as the primacy of landscape in the Australian cultural imagination. Although the views in Trescott’s paintings, often sweeping and dramatic, echo the grand outlooks of masters past, her broad and expressive brushstrokes, as noted by Hoshino Futoshi, seem indebted to modernism. More than the ease and intelligence with which Trescott quotes the history of painting, however, her distinct roots in the contemporary lie in the possibility that the land, once celebrated and held in such hopeful esteem, has fallen short of everything it promised us – or we it.
In her 2010 solo exhibition at Ando Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, entitled Mankind, Nature, Myth, Trescott paid homage to the history of colonial settlement in Australia and its resulting mythologies: the land as an awe-inspiring, daunting, and ultimately, destructive force. Unlike her predecessors, however, Trescott has ventured far abroad to capture her landscapes and is keenly aware of global climate politics. In May 2012, Trescott undertook a one-month residency on the island of Ny-Ålesund in the Arctic Circle. In her resulting paintings, Trescott paid close attention to the history of the island as a former coal-mining town that was abandoned after a deadly accident in the 1960s, and now serves as an international research base. These paintings were exhibited at Ando Gallery as well as at MOMENTUM as part of the March/April 2013 exhibition Missing Link. Trescott is currently represented by EIGEN + ART, Berlin.
LANDSCAPE OF LONGING
2011, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 cm
“The title of Trescott’s painting, Landscape of Longing, evokes the desires and dreams projected and imposed upon the land. The vastness of the landscape does not unfold beneath a single magisterial gaze. Instead, we approach the scene at eye level, the faces of the figures turned away from us or obscured by Trescott’s strokes. The muddled, oppressing sky bears down on the horizon line and the figures standing on the water’s edge. On the farther shore, our only glimpse of the sun is obscured by wafts of ominous smoke that cut across the composition like a knife’s jagged edge.
Here, the land cannot be controlled, cannot be subdued, cannot be disciplined even by the painter’s aesthetic regimen. The landscape in this ‘landscape of longing’ consists not just of the vistas of water and mountains, but of humans and their ambitions. Colored shades of dark forest green, just like the land and mountains around them, the figures teeter on the edges of our semiotic recognition. Half-man, half-landscape, Trescott seems to question just who – or what – is in control.
– Jenny Tang
ODE TO PARIS
2017, Print on Paper, 118,9 x 84,1 cm (A0)
Shonah Trescott’s Ode to Paris 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.
(b. in Cologne, Germany. Lives and works in Bremen, Germany.)
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.
“There is no control only imagination. I am a sculptor, a surrealist and bestial thinker.”
[Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham)]
Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham) studied Linguistics, Psychology and Fine Art at Cologne University from 2001 until 2005, and then lived in Norway, Italy, England and Holland to teach Academic Writing, Critical Thinking and Art History. In 2010 she was selected for an influential residency at Fundación Marcelino Botín, Villa Iris, with Mona Hatoum. Later that year she received the South Square Trust Award to study Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London, where she completed her MFA with distinction in 2011. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer in Contemporary Art and Mediation at the University of Bremen. Lüdemann’s work has been exhibited internationally, including: Printed Matter, New York (US) / Goethe Institute Cairo (EGY) / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin (DE) / Hayaka Arti, Istanbul (TR) / Trafo, Szczecin (PL) / LYON Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon (FR) / Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden (DE) / HDLU, Zagreb (HR) / October Salon, Belgrade Bienniale (RS) / Museum Frieder Burda, Berlin (DE) | Salon Berlin, Berlin (DE) / Ventolin Art Space, Melbourne (AUS).
“Sarah Lüdemann’s artistic work explodes norms. In her performances, drawings, sculptures, she proceeds like a surgeon. In her work one sees scraps of skin, tufts of fur, pubic hair, shredded flesh – in a magical way the nervous system and the emotional reflexes, fears and desires of humans and animals are exposed. These revealed drives form a new reality, a new narrative that breaks with the old hierarchies. Through the skin, the artist penetrates to the core of the human being, develops a new systematic. With her works, Sarah Lüdemann gives subtle markings to the world in strange rituals in which sensuality is explored as the vital center of all life.”
[Stephan von Wiese]
SCHNITZELPORNO
2012, Video, 174 min
Commissioned for MOMENTUM’s first emerging artist series, About Face, held in Berlin and London in 2012, Schnitzelporno is a durational video performance in which an unidentifiable Lüdemann ceaselessly beats a piece of meat for two hours. This physically taxing action, which begins with the pristine, white-clad figure sensually stroking the meat’s surface, eventually ends in the steak’s total demolition. Slowed down to three hours of video and artificially lightened, the final, washed-out video disconcertingly emphasizes the separation between soft, caressing gestures and the brutality of the action itself. Each initial stroke strips away the immediacy of the violence – an act that, when paired with an understanding of the meat as bodily metaphor, calls into question the viable limits of (female) identity shaping. What happens, Lüdemann asks, when this familiar, formative action is repeated without end?
Designed to be 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 should 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.
“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.”
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.
(DE)FACING REVOLT (2012)
Jongman’s (de)facing revolt is a series of 10 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 is a series of mutilated, paint bombed and blowtorched images, reminiscent of the damaged murals and toppled statues of ousted dictators across the world.
Situated against the changes wrought by the Euro and international banking crises and the Arab Spring, (de)facing revolt attempts to materialize and subvert the violence of contemporary international politics – as particularly rendered by art world leaders of the West. As stand-ins for the Roman practice of damnation memoriae, or “condemnation of memory,” these defaced portraits symbolize both the general atmosphere of anger, revolt and iconoclasm so present in the world today and the shift away from western cultural dominance.
Art world superstars – Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Charles Saatchi, etc. – and their accompanying platforms will likely feel the weight of such (r)evolution, perhaps leading to what Jongman hopes will be a more egalitarian system of art creation – already notable in digital and new media art.
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.
Created and performed for MOMENTUM’s emerging artist exhibition About Face, the 10 paintings from (de)facing revolt have been donated to the gallery’s permanent collection.
For further information and photographs of (de)facing revolt visit: About Face
SACHSENHAUSEN (2009/10)
Predominantly a painter, the starting point for Jongman’s paintings is always photography. In the photo series Sachsenhausen, Jongman shows his photographs for the first time. These images were made during Jongman’s three-month Artist Residency in Berlin, in the winter of 2009-2010. Intended as studies for a series of paintings on places of trauma, these photos are snapshots taken from a moving car driving past the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, outside Berlin. Taken with a Lomo camera and presented digitally, the result merges the painterly, the photographic, and the cinematic.
(b. in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany. Lives and works in Paris.)
Born in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany, Mariana Hahn lives and works between Berlin and Paris. After initially pursuing Theater Studies at ETI, Berlin in 2005, she graduated with a Fine Art Degree at Central St. Martins, London in 2012. Hahn’s practice is driven by the exploration of the relationship between the body and the transmission of memory and knowledge. Silk, hair, salt, copper, and textile are part of her research on memory and its means of transmission. Hahn poetically questions human fate as a universal condition through photography, performance and video. Her artistic practice is based on thinking of the body as carrier of continually weaving narrative. She believes that ‘weaving’ is a metaphor for creating human autonomy and often uses textiles to take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the carrier of the living narrative.
Mariana Hahn has participated in international biennales including: Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France (2021); the Venice Biennal, collateral event My Ocean Guide (2017); the 56th October Salon – Belgrade Biennial, Serbia (2016); the Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2014). She has exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries and festivals, such as: MOMENTUM, die Raeume, PS120, and Diskurs, in Berlin, Germany; The Moutain View, Shenzen, China; Ding Shung Museum, Fujian, China; Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China; Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong; Gelleria Mario Iannelli, Rome, Italy; Trafo Museum of Contemporary Art in Stettin, Poland; Corpo Festival of Performing Arts, Venice, Italy; amongst others. She has participated in Artist Residency programs, including: the Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong (2016); Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2017); Treeline Residency, Capalbio, Italy (2017); and others.
BURN MY LOVE, BURN
2013, Performance Video, 5 min 24 sec
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 deceased grandmother – and then burning and consuming its remains – Mariana Hahn examines the relationship between text, memory-making, and the human – particularly female – form. Originally shown at MOMENTUM in the exhibition Missing Link (2013), the work took the form of a video installation together with objects made from relics of the performance, photography, and video stills. Burn My Love, Burn was donated to the MOMENTUM Collection following this exhibition. MOMENTUM has been working with Mariana Hahn since inviting her to make her first live performance, and her first post-graduation artwork, in the exhibition About Face (2012), at MOMENTUM Berlin.
“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.”
Eric Bridgeman, Osvaldo Budet, Nezaket Ekici, Doug Fishbone, James P Graham, Zuzanna Janin, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Janet Laurence, Hye Rim Lee, Gabriele Leidloff, Map Office, David Medalla, Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, Fiona Pardington, Martin Sexton, Sumugan Sivanesan, Mariana Vassileva, and Traveling Souls (Emi Hariyama, Maximilian Magnus, Daniel Dodd Ellis, Marcus Doering, Max Mertz)
The MOMENTUM | Collection is a growing collection of international video art comprising the best and brightest artists we have shown and collaborated with worldwide. The Collection represents a cross-section of digital artworks at the top of the field. Ranging from some of the most established to emerging video artists, including work from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, the US, the UK, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland, and Germany. The works in the Collection have been generously donated by the artists to support MOMENTUM, as we are a non-profit organization. In turn, MOMENTUM is committed to supporting our collaborating artists by exhibiting and promoting the Collection internationally and making it available on our website and through our partner institutions as a resource to inform and inspire the public and art professionals alike.
Details of each work and more information about the artists can be found by following the link to THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION.
This short exhibition of all 52 outstanding video works in the MOMENTUM Collection is timed to coincide with the opening of CTM 12 – the Festival for Adventurous Music and Arts taking place concurrently in the Kunstquartier Bethanien, and to celebrate the addition of Traveling Souls to the MOMENTUM Collection by screening the new Director’s Cut by Max Mertz.
What happens when you bring together a Japanese ballerina dancing with the Berlin Staatsballet, a German painter, an American opera singer, and Berlin’s most innovative interactive media artist? Magic. MOMENTUM commissions a new work made specially for our gallery in the historic Kunstquartier Bethanien, a former hospital built in 1847 by Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV which functioned as a hospital until 1970. Subsequently inhabited and fought over by squatters and arts organizations, this space has had a poignant and colorful history.
Enter four diverse artists who have never worked together before. Now based in Berlin, but originally from very different parts of the world, they come together to reflect on the movements which have brought each of them to converge on this particular space at this moment. Using dance, visual art, voice, and interactive light design, they respond to the unique spaces of Bethanien and the latent aura of its history. In asking these artists to work together, we have given them free reign to develop their own expressions towards this location and their own answers to the question MOMENTUM continuously poses: What is time-based art?
Crossing interdisciplinary boundaries, drawn together through creative synergies, this foursome of talent embodies MOMENTUM’S mission to enable great art to happen across cultural and institutional borders. What happens when you bring together a ballet dancer, a painter, an opera singer, and a media artist? We expect to be amazed by the answer.
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Emi Hariyama has graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow with top scores, and won numerous international competitions and awards. She has performed at the ballet theatres in Moscow, Essen, San Jose, Boston, and Leningrad, amongst others, and is currently with the Staatsballett Berlin. The Japanese-born ballerina, together with her family, furthermore organises the biannual “Dream Concert“ held in cities throughout Japan. Emi Hariyama is the director of EIA, specializing in Performance and Event Production, Arts management, and Arts Business Consulting. She works with artists, filmmakers, and musicians, maintaining an exciting interdisciplinary practice alongside her expertise in traditional ballet.
The spectrum of Daniel Dodd-Ellis as a stage performer ranges from opera, classic drama, experimental theater, and interdisciplinary performance. His studies of Theater and Vocal Performance at Sarofim School of Fine Arts in Texas/USA and at the New York City Opera have decisively shaped his understanding of improvised movement, vocal play and spatial awareness. Under the direction of Robert Wilson he performed the title role in the touring blues/gospel opera “The Temptation of St. Anthony“. Furthermore, Daniel is a lyricist and playwrite, composes poetry and successfully performs with his soul/funk band “Daniel Dodd-Ellis & Band“. In Germany, he has collaborated with Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Daniel Hall and Patrick Nuo, amongst others, and co-created two performances in galleries in Hamburg and Berlin titled “Love and War“ and “The Mantis“.
Maximilian Magnus Schmidbauer is a trained set painter and has been for six consecutive years a stipendiary participant and teacher in Robert Wilson´s Watermill Center NY. He has worked as assistant to Lisa de Kooning and has had, as the first artist after Willem de Kooning´s death, the possibility to work and exhibit in his studio in the Hamptons. He has acted as a Visual Designer for Rufus Wainwright, Norah Jones and Jessye Norman, and since 2007 he manages the Academy of Scenic Painting and Arts in Unteregg/Bavaria together with his father Werner Schmidbauer. Maximilian lives in New York, Munich and Berlin. His works as an artist have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Germany, the United States, Russia and Spain, and are currently developing towards the three-dimensional and motion, towards dance performance, theater and music.
Marcus Doering holds a PhD in Physics and has made a name for himself with pmd-art for innovative light design. Together with André Bernhardt and the designers of büro+staubach, he realizes interactive worlds of experience for the brand communication of industrial enterprises as well as space and body projections for opera and theater, TV shows, fairs, corporate functions and huge public events. The three-dimensional illuminations and real-time projections on actors and objects that are moving through space correspond exactly to their contours, calculated by a specially developed 3D computer model. In Berlin, Marcus participated with interactive LED zones during the “Festival of Lights“ 2011, and currently his light art can be seen in the “Magical Mystery Show“ at the Wintergarten Variété.
REHEARSAL SHOTS ROUND 1
REHEARSAL SHOTS ROUND 2
REHEARSAL SHOTS ROUND 2
PERFORMANCE NIGHT
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WITH SPECIAL THANKS to Eidotech, pmd-art, and the many talented people who helped to film and coordinate the performance.
Additional Performers: Sabrina Reischl and Johannes Brussau
Additional Music: Chopin and Mother Perera
Emi Hariyama’s Costume by Nhu Doung and Emi Hariyama
MOMENTUM’s SKY SCREEN is proud to host 2 video programs curated by New York City’s STREAMING MUSEUM
The Streaming Museum – In Cyberspace And Public Space On 7 Continents
The Streaming Museum has presented over 30 video exhibitions since its launch on January 29, 2008 that have been viewed by millions of people on public screens in over 55 cities and Antarctica. Produced and broadcast in New York City, Streaming Museum generates its dynamic, innovative content of international fine arts, culture and visionary innovations in collaboration with prominent and emerging visual and performing artists and curators. The museum also presents exhibitions and events at partnering cultural centers and international arts festivals. The selection presented on SKY SCREEN features 2 Streaming Museum video programs including 7 artists from around the globe.
CYBORG ALARM, curated by TANYA TOFT
KAROLINA SOBECKA – Capacity to Act in a World (2011)
MICHAEL GREATHOUSE – In Dreams (2009)
SOPHIE KAHN – 04302011 (2011)
JAMES CASE-LEAL – Republic of Heaven (2010)
JASON BERNAGOZZI – The Presence of Something in its Absence (2008)
CARABALLO-FARMAN – Venerations (Applause) (2009)
KAIROS
EMANUEL DIMAS DE MELO PIMENTA – Kairos (2011)
These works can also be seen at MOMENTUM | Berlin from 8 November – 2 December 2012.
CYBORG ALARM
CYBORG ALARM: When Technology, Imagination and Body Collide; features artwork by 2011 NYFA Fellows and Finalists and is curated by Tanya Toft.CYBORG ALARM will be on view at Big Screen Plaza through July 2012 and will tour to international locations such as Momentum Worldwide, Berlin.
The exhibition address the timely topic of being human in a world in which digital technology and the body are colliding and giving us new experiences, ideas and capabilities for inventing and imagining our physical and virtual identities. The artworks explore the digital persona as it transcends the human body in representational situations of the contemporary world where norms and behavior are reformulated.
The exhibition is inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s description of how art acts as “an early alarm system” and anticipates future social and technological developments. This prompts us to reflect whether what we see in today’s art might anticipate a new reality for future generations. Has the idea of the cyborg, a fictional technologically dependent organism popularized in the 1960’s, gained new relevance as digital technologies continue to enhance our human capabilities and affect our behavior and imagination?
The artworks featured in CYBORG ALARM exemplify how art can translate these issues across time, space and cultures. Telling a story through images of the human dimension in the digital world, they could be considered “contemporary hieroglyphs.” They include:
Karolina Sobecka’s Capacity to Act in a World (2011)investigates the limits and meaning of human agency. It explores behavior within an interdependent matrix of elements, sets of norms and constructed histories. The piece exposes our capabilities for navigating and understanding the world in our overtly mediated environments.
In Dreams (2009) by Michael Greathouse is inspired by film noir and b/w Hollywood horror films and produced exclusively with composited computer animation. It depicts continual repetition of a single moment of a human portrait floating in animated waters. In Dreams addresses identity in terms of continuity and journeys through an anachronistic world with endless dimensions.
04302011 (2011) by Sophie Kahn is a collection of laser portraits of New Yorkers inspired by rotating 3-D models of people on large public screens in sci-fi movie scenes. The portraits appear incomplete and fragmented as a result of disruptions caused by the models’ movement and breathing during the scanning process, suggesting a metaphor of instability in our digitally mediated identities.
James Case-Leal’s Republic of Heaven (2010) presents a lyrical interpretation of the world in which we live. The piece illustrates a spiritual departure from the material world into “the next world” – that is fantastic and perhaps ideal – one which might be possible in the digital realm. It reflects human aspirations and a sense of endlessness, perhaps mirroring the experience in the world’s endless chain of Internet links.
Jason Bernagozzi’s The Presence of Something in its Absence (2008) illustrates a perceptual experience in a digital world. In this poetic universe, there is a sense of ‘getting lost in code’ or virtual worlds; perhaps a search for identity, perception and rhythm, covered in great expectations for the future.
Venerations (Applause) (2009) by caraballo-farman questions the dictates of logic and free will. Why does an audience produce shared emotional states and erupt in collective applause, bound beyond reason? This ritual mirrors situations of collective behavior in a manipulative, commercial, and participatory culture, which is becoming increasingly complex and opaque.
Karolina Sobecka, Michael Greathouse, Sophie Kahn, James Case-Leal, and the artist team caraballo-farman, are 2011 Artists’ Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Jason Bernagozzi is a 2011 Artists’ Fellowship finalist.
This presentation is cosponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program Administered by NYFA with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).
Emanuel Pimenta – KAIROS
EMANUEL DIMAS DE MELO PIMENTA, Kairos: an architectural design for a building in Earth’s orbit, 2011
This video and sound artwork was created in memory of John Cage, René Berger, Joseph Beuys, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and John Archibald Wheeler – seven magical doors to a new universe. The sound art is composed of extraterrestrial sounds and was presented in concert SETI in 2002.
“Human must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” – Socrates (469-399 BC)
“Following Nature’s own design principles, human may be able to produce most-economic designs while at the same time solving formerly insoluble design problems” – Richard Buckminster Fuller
Kairosis an orbital building, a privileged observatory of Earth, open to civil society, recalling the ancient Sumerian concept of ‘deep time’, projecting a complex of human values in a large-scale spectrum. KAIROS is a conceptual work that merges architecture design and art project in a same corpus – a crossing point between aesthetics, function and technology. Being an architectural design, it presents structural developments in terms of function and technological challenges. As a visual artwork, it crosses all fields of environments and functions, projecting unexpected images that are, at the same time, abstract and figurative, linear and non-linear. As an artwork it questions and criticizes the concept of contemporary art and culture in general. In few words, Kairos is a design for an orbital building.
Kairos launches on September 10, 2011, at Holotopia Academy, Amalfi Coast, where Ulysses met the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. The work will become part of a permanent collection of the ancient 17th century tower that has been transformed into a contemporary art museum by the scientist and art lover, Alberto del Genio, Founder of the Holotopia Academy which is devoted to music, art and philosophy. On October 27 Kairos will be exhibited at the Robotarium technology/art center in Lisbon, Portugal, curated by its founder/director and robotic artist, Leonel Moura. In November the book Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth will be released. It includes details of the project, and a history of space satellites, laboratories and stations.
MOMENTUM is proud to host 5 video programs curated by
New York City’s STREAMING MUSEUM
Featuring 29 digital and video artworks by 22 artists from around the world.
9 November – 2 December 2012
The Streaming Museum has presented over 30 video exhibitions since its launch on January 29, 2008 that have been viewed by millions of people on public screens in over 55 cities and Antarctica. Produced and broadcast in New York City, Streaming Museum generates its dynamic, innovative content of international fine arts, culture and visionary innovations in collaboration with prominent and emerging visual and performing artists and curators. The museum also presents exhibitions and events at partnering cultural centers and international arts festivals. The selection presented at MOMENTUM | Berlin features video programs curated for the ZERO1 Biennale in California and other international art festivals. We are featuring 5 Streaming Museum programs including 23 artists from around the globe.
REVELATION
JEREMY BLAKE – Chemical Sundown (2001); Station to Station: Indiglo Heights (#5), (2001); Winchester Redux (2004)
JENNY MARKETOU – Levels of Disturbance (2009 – 2011)
YORGO ALEXOPOULOS – No Feeling is Final (2010)
MARTY ST. JAMES – Oneiric (2001); The Invisible Man (2007)
CYBORG ALARM, curated by Tanya Toft
KAROLINA SOBECKA – Capacity to Act in a World (2011)
MICHAEL GREATHOUSE – In Dreams (2009)
SOPHIE KAHN – 04302011 (2011)
JAMES CASE-LEAL – Republic of Heaven (2010)
JASON BERNAGOZZI – The Presence of Something in its Absence (2008)
CARABALLO-FARMAN – Venerations (Applause) (2009)
KAIROS
EMANUEL DIMAS DE MELO PIMENTA – Kairos (2011)
WE WRITE TO YOU FROM THE DISTANT FUTURE
MICHAEL NAJJAR – Bionic Angel (2006)
MITCHELL JOACHIM/TERREFORM ONE – Jetpack Packing (2010); Blimp Bumper Bus (2008); Fab Tree Hab Village (2009); Rapid Re(F)Use (2008); Green Brain: A Smart Park For A New City (2006)
EDUARDO KAC – Lagoglyphs (2009)
ETOY – Mission Eternity (2005 – 2016)
ANDREA ACKERMAN – Rose Breathing (2003)
JOHN SIMON, JR. – HD Traffic (2009)
ARTISTIC LICENSE IN SILICON VALLEY (Concurrently being shown at the ZERO1 Biennale)
MICHAEL NAJJAR – The Invisible City (2004)
SOPHIE KAHN – 04302011 (2011)
MAURICE BENAYOUN – Emotion Forecast (2010)
SCOTT DRAVES – Gen 244 (2011)
MULTI-TOUCH BARCELONA – HI, A Real Human Interface (2009)
URSULA ENDLICHER – Facebook Re-enactments (2009)
MARK AMERIKA – #New Aesthetic Video (2012)
More information about each program below:
ARTISTIC LICENSE IN SILICON VALLEY
Streaming Museum launched its fall exhibition Artistic License in Silicon Valley at the ZERO1 Biennial Urban Screen, San Jose, California, on September 14. The Biennial runs through December 8. The exhibition features seven internationally known artists: Michael Najjar, Sophie Kahn, Maurice Benayoun, Scott Draves, Multi-touch Barcelona, Ursula Endlicher, and Mark Amerika. The Urban Screen program has been commissioned by ZERO1 and the San Jose Public Art Program with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Artistic License in Silicon Valley is an exhibition for screens presenting unique perceptions of technology in global digital culture created by internationally known contemporary artists. Streaming Museum @ ZERO1 Biennial
#NewAestheticVideo (2012) by Mark Amerika
This mock trailer for a movie that was never made but lives on the Web as a distributed narrative, refers to an eponymous artist whose artistic presence and remixed persona is a mashup of mobile phone videos, animated gifs, Google Earth glitch imagery, and the corrupting presence of a literary voice summoned from the digital-beyond.
Emotion Forecast (2010) (Video Version) by Maurice Benayoun
This real-time data visualization artwork depicts the Internet as the nervous system of the world by measuring 48 emotions on websites related to current events in more than 3200 cities worldwide, revealing the results in a hyperactive map.
Gen 244 (2011) by Scott Draves
Artificial intelligence and human designers come together in this generative, participatory “cloud art” work made with mathematics and Darwinian evolution by Draves’ Electric Sheep open source code. The essence of life is created in digital form in the artwork’s cyborganic mind comprised of 450,000 computers and people who vote on their favorite designs which reproduce according to a genetic algorithm.
Facebook Re-enactments (2009) (Video Version) by Ursula Endlicher
The artist bridges the gap between the Internet, physical reality and performance, impersonating people who share the same name on Facebook.
04302011 (2011) by Sophie Kahn
Laser portraits that appear incomplete and fragmented as a result of disruptions caused by the models’ movement and breathing during the scanning process, suggest a metaphor of instability in our digitally mediated identities.
HI, A Real Human Interface (2009) by Multi-touch Barcelona
This film imagines the concept of personal computer quite literally as possessing life-like qualities of human companions, by embedding a human being inside of one.
The Invisible City (2004) by Michael Najjar
Sensory fluid imagery of the megacities New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Paris, Berlin, London, Shanghai, and Tokyo explores telematic space and the future development of global cities as the material embodiment of information density.
WE WRITE TO YOU FROM THE DISTANT FUTURE
Streaming Museum’s fall 2010 exhibition featured at Zero One San Jose Biennial, Tina b. Prague Contemporary Art Festival, the Big Screen Project NYC, and throughout its global network of screens in public spaces.
We Write This To You From the Distant Future is a multi-media exhibition of work by visionary creators in the arts and sciences that focuses on a future world imagined and possible to build.
The exhibition title is a line spoken by the narrator in Immobilité (2009), a 75-minute feature length art film shot with a mobile phone video camera by Mark Amerika, with music score by Chad Mossholder. A remix collection from Immobilité opens the exhibition evoking questions – how will a technologically advanced world effect what it is to be human and what is the world with advanced technology to become?
In Michael Najjar’s bionic angel (2006) series (courtesy, bitforms gallery, NYC), creatures in the throes of transformation are a metaphor for inevitable genetic self-creation and possible immortality of the human body.
Mitchell Joachim/Terreform ONE, imagines human adaptation to global climate shifts and designs for transportation, habitat and sustainable living in the urban environment in Jetpack Packing, (2010); Blimp Bumper Bus, (2008), Fab Tree Hab Village, (2009), Rapid Re(F)Use, (2008); Green Brain: A Smart Park For A New City, (2006). View these images here.
Eduardo Kac animates a poetic code/language in Lagoglyphs (2009) that defies interpretation but derives meaning from his bio artwork, Alba (2000), a genetically engineered bunny.
Etoy’s Mission Eternity (2005 – 2016) is a digital cult of the dead for the information society that crosses the boundaries of the afterlife, and challenges the way human civilization deals with memory (conservation/loss), time (future/present/past) and death.
Rose Breathing (2003), an undulating cross-species rose, creates a Zen-like meditation as it rhythmically opens and closes in time-altered human-like respiration. Artist and scientist Andrea Ackerman has created at the intersection of technology, nature, aesthetics and ethics, a work that prophetically signals the inevitable integration of technology and nature.
HD Traffic (2009) by John F. Simon, Jr., is a software artwork inspired by the compositional style of Piet Mondrian, with particular inspiration from Broadway Boogie Woogie and Simon’s love of jazz improvisation. HD Traffic can react dynamically to real-time information streams taken from the Internet, and reflect the pulse of human movement that is embodied in the flow of traffic and other data.
“Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” (Nam June Paik)
EMANUEL DIMAS DE MELO PIMENTA, Kairos: an architectural design for a building in Earth’s orbit, 2011
This video and sound artwork was created in memory of John Cage, René Berger, Joseph Beuys, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and John Archibald Wheeler – seven magical doors to a new universe. The sound art is composed of extraterrestrial sounds and was presented in concert SETI in 2002.
“Human must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” – Socrates (469-399 BC)
“Following Nature’s own design principles, human may be able to produce most-economic designs while at the same time solving formerly insoluble design problems” – Richard Buckminster Fuller
Kairos is an orbital building, a privileged observatory of Earth, open to civil society, recalling the ancient Sumerian concept of ‘deep time’, projecting a complex of human values in a large-scale spectrum. KAIROS is a conceptual work that merges architecture design and art project in a same corpus – a crossing point between aesthetics, function and technology. Being an architectural design, it presents structural developments in terms of function and technological challenges. As a visual artwork, it crosses all fields of environments and functions, projecting unexpected images that are, at the same time, abstract and figurative, linear and non-linear. As an artwork it questions and criticizes the concept of contemporary art and culture in general. In few words, Kairos is a design for an orbital building.
Kairos was launched on September 10, 2011, at Holotopia Academy, Amalfi Coast, where Ulysses met the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. The work became a part of the permanent collection at the ancient 17th century tower which was transformed into a contemporary art museum by the scientist and art lover, Alberto del Genio, Founder of the Holotopia Academy which is devoted to music, art and philosophy. On the 27th of October 2011 Kairos was exhibited at the Robotarium technology/art center in Lisbon, Portugal, curated by its founder/director and robotic artist, Leonel Moura. and in November of the same year the book Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth was released. It includes details of the project, and a history of space satellites, laboratories and stations.
Pimenta is a Brazilian musician, architect, and intermedia artist. His works have been included in art collections and have been recognized by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of New York, the Ars Aevi Contemporary Art Museum, the Venice Biennale, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Bibliotèque Nationale of Paris and the MART – Modern Art Museum of Rovereto and Trento among others.
Pimenta develops music, architecture, and urban projects using virtual reality and cyberspace technologies. His concerts of music integrate visual art and have been performed in various countries in the last twenty years, beginning with his concert at the São Paulo Art Biennial, in 1985, with John Cage, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Pimenta has collaborated with John Cage, as commissioned composer for Merce Cunningham. He has been composer for several companies such as the Appels Company in New York. His concerts have been performed at the Lincoln Center and The Kitchen in New York, the Palais Garnier, the Shinjuku Bunka Center in Tokyo, the Festival of Aix en Provence, and the São Paulo Museum of Art.
In the early 1980s, Emanuel Pimenta coined the concept “virtual architecture”, later largely used as specific discipline in universities all over the world. Since the end of the 1970s he has developed graphical musical notations inside virtual environments.
He has served as a curator for the Biennial of São Paulo, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Triennial of Milan, and the Belém Cultural Center.
Pimenta is a founding member of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry. He is member of the jury of the BES Fellowship (Experimental Intermedia Foundation of New York, the Luso American Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) since 1995. He his director of the contemporary music festival Holotopia, in Naples. He is also founder and director of the Foundation for Arts, Sciences and Technology – Observatory, in Trancoso, Portugal. He was editorial director of the art and culture magazine RISK Arte Oggi from 1995 to 2005. He is also member of the advisory editorial board of the science magazine Forma, in Tokyo, and of the art and philosophy magazine Technoetic Arts, in Bristol, England.
Excerpt from the book “Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth”
CYBORG ALARM When Technology, Imagination and Body Collide
May 28 – June 30 at Big Screen Plaza and StreamingMuseum.org
Curated by Tanya Toft, Curatorial Fellow, Streaming Museum
Streaming Museum opened the exhibition CYBORG ALARM: When Technology, Imagination and Body Collide on May 28, 2012, from 6 to 10 pm at Big Screen Plaza, NYC, featuring artwork by 2011 NYFA Fellows and Finalists.
The artworks featured in CYBORG ALARM exemplify how art can translate these issues across time, space and cultures. Telling a story through images of the human dimension in the digital world, they could be considered “contemporary hieroglyphs.” They include:
Karolina Sobecka’s Capacity to Act in a World (2011) investigates the limits and meaning of human agency. It explores behavior within an interdependent matrix of elements, sets of norms and constructed histories. The piece exposes our capabilities for navigating and understanding the world in our overtly mediated environments.
In Dreams (2009) by Michael Greathouse is inspired by film noir and b/w Hollywood horror films and produced exclusively with composited computer animation. It depicts continual repetition of a single moment of a human portrait floating in animated waters. In Dreams addresses identity in terms of continuity and journeys through an anachronistic world with endless dimensions.
04302011 (2011) by Sophie Kahn is a collection of laser portraits of New Yorkers inspired by rotating 3-D models of people on large public screens in sci-fi movie scenes. The portraits appear incomplete and fragmented as a result of disruptions caused by the models’ movement and breathing during the scanning process, suggesting a metaphor of instability in our digitally mediated identities.
James Case-Leal’s Republic of Heaven (2010) presents a lyrical interpretation of the world in which we live. The piece illustrates a spiritual departure from the material world into “the next world” – that is fantastic and perhaps ideal – one which might be possible in the digital realm. It reflects human aspirations and a sense of endlessness, perhaps mirroring the experience in the world’s endless chain of Internet links.
Jason Bernagozzi’s The Presence of Something in its Absence (2008) illustrates a perceptual experience in a digital world. In this poetic universe, there is a sense of ‘getting lost in code’ or virtual worlds; perhaps a search for identity, perception and rhythm, covered in great expectations for the future.
Venerations (Applause) (2009) by Caraballo-Farman questions the dictates of logic and free will. Why does an audience produce shared emotional states and erupt in collective applause, bound beyond reason? This ritual mirrors situations of collective behavior in a manipulative, commercial, and participatory culture, which is becoming increasingly complex and opaque.
Karolina Sobecka, Michael Greathouse, Sophie Kahn, James Case-Leal, and the artist team caraballo-farman, are 2011 Artists’ Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Jason Bernagozzi is a 2011 Artists’ Fellowship finalist.
REVELATION
REVELATION: Jeremy Blake, Jenny Marketou, Yorgo Alexopoulos, Marty St. James
60:00
ARTISTS:
In the fall of 2011 the exhibition Revelation, in commemoration of 9/11, presented a collection of existential portraits and reflections on streams of realities that exist simultaneously in the contemporary world. Featured artists include Jeremy Blake, Jenny Marketou, Yorgo Alexopoulos, and Marty St. James. The artwork was balanced with a showcase of visionary programs that confront the world’s most pressing problems with solutions to bring about the Regeneration of society and the environment – The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, Green World Campaign, and the Ubuntu Education Center, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Jeremy Blake and Yorgo Alexopoulos are presented courtesy of Kinz + Tillou Fine Art in New York.
Revelation Part 1 – featured the artwork of Jeremy Blake and Jenny Marketou which is juxtaposed as a dialog that brings to view beautiful images that are concealing inherent danger. Blake’s Chemical Sundown aims at LA’s fantasy of exceptionally colorful sunsets that are in reality ominously artificial and caused by pollution. In Marketou’s Levels of Disturbance, a revolving sphere intrudes over video footage of the natural landscape of Los Alamos filmed from an airplane, mesmerizes and subverts attention from the reality of its radioactive history.
Revelation Part 2 – Jeremy Blake’s Winchester Redux is part of his Winchester series that distills and abstracts American myths of violence and spiritual reconciliation. The dreamlike flow of images gives an abstract emotional tour of the fearful chambers of his subject’s mind. Marty St. James’ Oneiric enters inner dimensions and confines of the individual, and reconstructed reality is explored in The Invisible Man. Yorgo Alexopolous’ No Feeling is Final is an abstract narrative symbolizing the interconnection between mathematics, humans, nature and universe, the real and virtual. Blake’s “Station to Station: Indiglo Heights is the fifth in a series of five individual time-based paintings,representing an imaginary urban transportation system. ”Contemporary anxieties concerning chemical weaponry, global warming gasses and mysterious technologies were also kept well in mind while making this work,” Blake wrote, “as was the sensory excitement of travel and the hypnotic allure of bright, pulsating city lights.”
Video portraits from conflict zones and architecture hovering above earth –
The intimate video portraits of Marines in Afghanistan by Balazs Gardi bring real-life connection with the men serving in one of the most dangerous conflict zones in the world. The work was created as a project of Basetrack, a web-based reporting initiative supported with a grant from the Knight Foundation.
This contrasts with a world-view from outerspace in Kairos – an architectural design for a building to orbit the earth by Emanuel Pimenta, that is informed by Socrates (469-399BC): “Humans must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.” Pimenta dedicated this video and sound artwork to his collaborators, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and to the humanist concepts of Buckminster Fuller, Joseph Beuys and other visionaries.
Chemical Sundown, 2001, video still. Courtesy of
Kinz + Tillou Fine Art
JEREMY BLAKE, Chemical Sundown, 2001, Station to Station #5, 2001, Winchester Redux, 2004
Chemical Sundown, 2001
In the past few decades Los Angeles has outpaced New York City as the urban environment that best exemplifies the apocalyptic in American consciousness. One portentous prospect, global warming, is hinted at in the popular wisdom that LA sunsets are exceptionally colorful because the atmosphere surrounding the city is polluted. Despite the fact that today’s mass anxieties are often yesterday’s news, cliches surrounding a specific place sometimes hold interest for me because they indicate inter-subjective fantasy locations and/or events more compelling than their sources in reality.
Chemical Sundown is a time-based painting that combines architectural and abstract imagery, inspired by the legendary optical effects of LA’s tainted air. The piece begins with a graphic depiction of a horizon line that begins to radically change shape, indicating a landscape capable of liquefying without warning. Soon, images appear which portray a glamorous modernist structure, built on this land despite the inherent danger. This structure is equipped with sliding walls and large windows designed to let in natural light. The changing light, in combination with the smog, creates clouds of color that range from beautiful to ominously artificial. Technically, this work deliberately ignores certain restrictions on bright colors in the NTSC color system. Other “raw” elements are also consciously left visible. The intention is to enable something like the visual equivalent of the controlled distortion common in electronically produced music.
In one room of the structure a film loop is shown embedded in a set of monitors. The footage (from the film Casino Royale) shows a woman in a pink gown, standing on a pink spinning bed, enjoying a shower of feathers swirling around her. This image of unapologetic hedonism is used here as a sexy, phantom presence. I also like the subtle implication that the cycling footage might have a hidden, but specific effect on the function of the architecture around it. (I imagine this working in much the same way that-in the movies at least-a ray of light might activate the door of an ancient tomb.)
An oval shape is repeated throughout the piece. This shape is meant to recall the sun, the lenses of sunglasses, and is arranged in groups of two that resemble the number eight. The 8 shapes provide a visual link to an earlier and related series of works entitled “Bungalow 8″, which dealt with the glamour, decadence and ambiance of Hollywood’s mythic character.
Jeremy Blake, 2001
Courtesy of Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, New York
Station to Station, 2001
Station to Station is a series of five individual time-based paintings (digital animations on DVD) that have been conceived to work as discrete pieces, but also forms a coherent series or system that, when shown together, adds substantially to the meaning and the impact of each individual work. Although each work is multifaceted, the basic structure of the series is simple. The first, third, and fifth monitor of this five-screen series represent stations on an imaginary urban transportation system. The second and forth represent travel between these stations.
The space intersected and contained by this system is meticulously gridded off, entirely design-mediated, and one which changes in color and mood constantly. Distinctions between inside and outside, and near and far prove to be difficult to draw, and largely deceptive when they are drawn. Contemporary anxieties concerning chemical weaponry, global warming gasses, and mysterious technologies were also kept well in mind while making this work, as was the sensory excitement of travel and the hypnotic allure of bright, pulsating city lights. For much of this imagery and atmosphere I have drawn from daily life in New York, as well as memories of the smoggy vistas of Los Angeles, but a major inspiration for the for the design of the three stations comes from an element of the subway system in Tokyo.
On a trip to Tokyo several years ago I was struck by the design of a bank of coin operated storage lockers in a downtown subway station. This bank was relatively large (from my snapshots I’d estimate at least 12 feet wide and 7 feet high). The door of each locker had one small section of a large landscape photograph printed on it. When all the doors were closed, a large landscape was visible, and the overall effect when viewed from a distance effectively simulated the experience of looking out a window at an attractive view. More often than not however, unused lockers were left open, creating gaping black holes in sections of the bigger picture. The fact that this apparently deep space quickly proved itself to be both traumatically shallow and defined primarily by its utility struck me as definitively contemporary. Therefore, each of the stations in Station to Station is outfitted with one of these banks of lockers, as well as abstract elements that have been derived from its design. In this work abstraction is treated not as static and monumental, but as something that may set in and wear off like the effects of a drug-or that may appear and disappear like a mirage.
Another, more general source for this work is “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s excellent biography of urban planner Robert Moses. Caro describes Moses as a brilliant, corrupt, and almost unbelievably arrogant figure-and the planner to whom we owe many of the defining characteristics of the infrastructure in and around New York City. In his book Caro has crafted gripping descriptions of Moses blasting through bedrock and destroying neighborhoods to build the Cross-Bronx Expressway, and clearing slums only to reinforce their existence with monumental housing projects. The fact that one person, and therefore one person’s subjectivity, is the source for so much of what I had always assumed was the result of a gradual accumulation of projects by different planners struck me as disturbing. In the course of reading “The Power Broker”, I began to imagine Moses as the Darth Vader of New York aesthetics, subliminally telling generations well meaning New York artists who have been influenced by their surroundings what they might have suspected but least wanted to hear, “I am your father Luke…” This fantasy is obviously an exaggeration encouraged by some startling reading, but its true that Moses’ grim aesthetics still help to define what its like to travel through New York. Moses was generally pro automobile and anti-mass transit, so there is a deliberate irony in my naming a station after him.
At its inception, rail travel transformed the way in which space was perceived and the speed with which temporal and spatial information was processed. Each passenger with a view out of the window was provided with a framed, flattened, constantly shifting landscape. In a way that we now take for granted, each passenger had suddenly become the director of a non-narrative cinematic experience. Station to Station draws on this precedent as a foundation for its formal structure in order to better reference its own, relatively new space-altering potential as a completely subjective landscape created in a time-based medium and accessible through multiple simultaneous views. In general my work draws from both traditional painting and time-based media in order to create something new.
Jeremy Blake, 2001
Courtesy of Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, New York
Winchester Redux, 2004
The Winchester trilogy and Winchester Redux are inspired by my interest in the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. The Mansion is an architectural wonder that Sarah Winchester, widow of the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, constructed over the course of 38 years, beginning in the late 1800’s. After suffering the premature death of her child and then her husband, Winchester, informed by her deep belief in Spiritualism, concluded that the angry spirits of those struck down by her family’s guns had cursed her. An advisor agreed and suggested that she build an enormously large house–an endeavor that would both accommodate good spirits and ward off evil ones with the sounds of never ending construction. The result is an eccentric, sprawling 160-room mansion, well outfitted for the undead with staircases going nowhere, doorways leading out into open air several stories above ground, and miles of darkened hallways for the spirits to roam.
The Winchester films combine 8mm film footage, static 16mm shots of old photographs, hundreds of ink drawings, and intricate frame-by-frame digital retouching. They are meant to provide an abstract and emotional tour–not so much of the architecture, but of some of the more fearful chambers of Sarah Winchester’s mind. The abstract imagery represents supernatural activity, heightened by paranoiac glimpses of shadowy gunfighters, painterly gunshot wounds blossoming into Rorschach patterns, and a spectrum of images from Winchester rifle advertisements. The entire series is informed by the idea that the Victorian aesthetic (embodied by the Mansion’s architecture) and the psychedelic sensibility (referenced through hallucinatory manipulation of the film) are sympathetic opposites.
My interest in the Mansion is rooted in an understanding that the site is more than just a monument to one person’s eccentric preoccupation-it is the tangible outcome from a collision of social and historical narratives. The series ties together several mythic strands fundamental to an American national identity in an attempt to justify Winchester’s architectural free-for-all. The figure of the gunfighter facilitates spiritual regeneration through violence, and lawmen and outlaws are thus treated with reverent trepidation-as are the ghosts of their victims.
Beneath the dreamlike flow of images, the structure of the films is very deliberate. They first explore the exterior of the Winchester Mansion, and then reveal glimpses of the interior, with an emphasis on parts destroyed in the earthquake of 1906. Sarah Winchester chose not to repair certain damaged sections, preferring to build around them, as she imagined that the house’s resident spirits disapproved of these accommodations. The camera next zooms in on a cinema complex of three space-age movie theaters situated across the street: Century 21, Century 22, and Century 23, alluding to the fact that it is film, TV and the media that perpetuate the icon of the gunfighter. This is represented by richly layered montages of the Old West and pop-culture imagery, as well as art and film celebrities who appear as phantom stand-ins to embody the specters of the Cowboy and of Sarah Winchester herself.
The Winchester series distills and abstracts American myths of violence and spiritual reconciliation.
Jeremy Blake, 2004
Winchester Redux, courtesy of Creative Time and Kinz + Tillou Fine Art
Biography
JEREMY BLAKE (1971 – 2007)
Jeremy Blake was an artist of recognized accomplishment and promise. His artistic achievements and career were fast on the rise. He was considered influential and iconoclastic. Sadly, Blake committed suicide in July 2007 in New York City one week after his beloved companion of 12 years, Theresa Duncan, committed suicide–the reasons for which remain open only to conjecture.
Blake first garnered attention in the late 1990s with his large-scale, semi-abstract digital C-prints that rendered the appearance of being paintings and photographs, but were neither. He then began to animate sequences of such images to create continuously looping digital video works that emulated paintings and film, but were neither. His visually dense images often incorporated both abstract and representational expressions through the language of Modernism and voices of Film Noir. Blake’s aesthetically stylized works addressed a range of subjects from violence and terrorism to glamour and decadence, from metaphors of architectural spaces to profiles of cultural personifications.
Blake’s works have been exhibited internationally. They were included in three Whitney Biennials, are represented in twelve museum collections, and are a topic of dissertations and textbooks. He is widely acclaimed as a pioneer in merging the traditions of painting with a new digital world. He created hybrids of new media works, new genres, and a new kind of art experience. He made “paintings” that were digital prints and films that were “moving paintings”. He was an innovator who opened doors to how others will express themselves long into the future.
Blake continued to challenge our expectations, as well as his own. He dissolved the distinction between object and time-based art while combining abstraction and representation in fresh and exciting ways. He used the most eloquent of formal vocabularies to illustrate hidden stories, present cinematic portraits and portray social perspectives. He was a narrative abstractionist who embraced history, pop culture, biography and fiction, and he always made things to be beautiful. His works are seductive; his subjects are provocative; his meanings are profound.
Jeremy Blake opened our eyes and expanded our ideas as to what art can be and how we see and think about the world. His contributions will be forever remembered and his legacy everlasting.
Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, New York
JENNY MARKETOU, Levels of Disturbance, 2009-2011
Single channel video projection, color and sound, loop
“We forget too soon the things we thought we could never forget.”… Jean Didion
Although we are all bombarded by seemingly endless amounts of imagery and “news”, I am convinced that we are also all suffering from information deprivation, and in a multiplicity of ways. While media conglomerates and government powers shield information from us continually – and spin the information that we are being fed – I think we are also all guilty of collectively forgetting our histories. Information is ignored even when we have access to it. Certain things are just too difficult to face. Government handouts, unregulated corporations, corporate takeovers of the media and of the government, industry’s devastation of the environment… These are very old stories. Why should these things surprise us when they continue to happen?
The material for video for Levels of Disturbance has been shot over a week’s period from an aerial view distance while I was flying over the town of Los Alamos and it was conceived during the period of my artist in residence at the Center of Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the fall of 2009.
Los Alamos which currently stands as a national monument and a tourist attraction is still contaminated by the nuclear waste and by turbulent human emotions going back to the late 40’s when Los Alamos is the most secret city in the world; the home of the renowned scientific community, known as the laboratory of the Manhattan Project where a weapon of incredible power, the atomic bomb has been produced and tested.
The artists process starts during montage when all the recorded aerial views of the breathtaking landscapes has been edited frame by frame into a slide show and has been used as a backdrop over which is imposed a red round shape. The shape suggests the infinity symbol of planetary orbits and standardized cartographic representations and measuring principles used for all natural phenomena. The two layers cycle is assembled digitally in a continuous flow of rotations and transformations and takes their rhythm from the ambient soundtrack composed by the sound of the propeller of a plane. The constant red color ripples of the circle seems as a powerful way to create suspense and focuses viewer’s gaze as some form of surveillance on the surface of the image and intentionally abstracts and distorts any passage to the landscape, and information is intentionally fragmented, abstracted and distorted.
The reason I set up Levels of Disturbance this way is to test the rhetoric of cultural and historical amnesia in contemporary images. Amnesia forms a vast territory of disintegrating or disappeared information. In an effort to map this sea of mind my video Levels of Disturbance explores one of the major themes related to the loss of memory and history – the deliberate suppression of memory by a society, the loss, confusion, destruction of information or alteration of a culture’s record of itself; and it investigates how technological mediation produces specific qualities in the images which erase memory, create disorientation, influence knowledge.
Jenny Marketou, 2011
Biography
JENNY MARKETOU
Born in Athens, Greece, Jenny Marketou is a new media and old media artist based in New York City. Her work reaches the public through photography, web, public performances and interventions, video installations, single channel videos, design, teaching, lecturing and various forms of social actions. She has produced many internet and network projects, some highly recognized such as SmellBytes and taystes.net during her involvement with the net.art movement in 1998. Her work is based on creating open systems by modifying communication and mobile technologies and she is also developing work in the area of physical public performances. Jenny Marketou is intrigued by hidden information, being public and is unified by sympathy, fear and humor for the individual in the contemporary world of dense mediated communication, mobility, surveillance and social networking.
Marketou is currently working on her solo project Paperophanies which will be launched on October 8 , 2011 as part of Praxis projects at Atrium Museum in Vitoria in collaboration with local universities , community groups , artists and the Guggenheim in the Basque Country in Spain. Her public installation Red Eyed Sky Walkers/ SILVER Series is currently on view at Gate (ways): Art and Networked Culture, an exhibition at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia (Cultural Capital of Europe) commissioned Kumu Art Museum and by Goethe Institute.
Marketou’s work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally. Recently she has had solo exhibitions at (EMST) National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece , the Contemporary Art Museum Reina Sophia in Madrid, Spain; Fondazione Claudio Buziol in Venice, Italy in collaboration with students from the Art and Design School in Treviso (IUAV).
Her work has also been featured at 54th Venice Biennial in Venice; Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, Greece; APEX Art, New York City; The Project Room for New Media and Performing Arts, Chelsea Art Museum, New York City; PULSE Art Fair, New York; Anita Beckers Gallery, Frankfurt/Main; the 3rd Biennial of Seville, Seville, Spain; KunsthalleBasel, Switzerland; Strozzina Center of Contemporary Art, Florence; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Germany; The New Museum, New York City; Eyebeam, New York City; Rose Museum of Contemporary Art, Brandeis University, Boston; ZKM Center for New Media and Art, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2006; Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece; CornerHouse, Manchester, UK; Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois; The Banff Center, Canada, among other venues. She represented Greece in the Biennial of Sao Paolo, Brazil and in Manifesta at Witte de With, Rotterdam.
Since 1995 Marketou’s work has been awarded grants and residencies NYSCA Grant, New York; Experimental TV Center Grant, Ithaca, NY; Artist in Residence, Center of Contemporary Art (CCA), Santa Fe, New Mexico; Ohio State Art Council Grant, Cleveland; Artist in Residence, Eyebeam, New York; Artist in Residence and Co-production at The Banff Center, Canada; OMI International Residency, New York among others.
Jenny Marketou holds an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and has taught at Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. She has lectured extensively in academic institutions and art centers around the world. She is the author of the book “ Great Longing: The Greek of Astoria, New York”, with photographs and interviews of first generation Greek immigrants who made home Astoria, Queens.
Current projects:
Paperophanies” PRAXIS Projects, Artium Museum, Vitoria, Spain
Red Eyed Sky Walkers: Silver Series 2011, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia
YORGO ALEXOPOULOS, No Feeling is Final, 2010
This work is a synchronized composite of two horizontally aligned high-definition video frames with a continuous looping duration of ten minutes. An animated grid of digitally manipulated paintings, photographs and graphics move across the screen. An abstract narrative unfolds, composed of archetypal images and symbolic shapes.
Our individual and collective connection to things larger than ourselves is the inspiration for this visual and audio orchestration. The enveloping experience invokes commonly held ideas and questions regarding ineffability and subjectivity as they relate to our understanding of nature and the universe. Intermixed with landscape images are the simple Euclidean geometries (circle, square, triangle) that have helped philosophers, artists, and scientists interpret and represent the complexities of the universe. A mountain becomes a triangle, and the moon a perfect circle.
The metaphoric “characters” in this animistic drama stride across the stage, assembling loosely as a collage of abstract shapes and their earthly counterparts, therein revealing the basic forms that we use to perceive the world. This places the supposed purity of nature against our projected emotions of its representation.
For example, the desert often symbolizes vast emptiness or the negation of landscape. From one point of view it is a place to retreat and find divine revelation. On the other hand, it is a symbol of spiritual sterility. In contrast, a garden is a place where nature is tamed and its beauty cultivated. As a symbol of perfection and ordered beauty, the garden is often an enclosed escape from ominous wilderness where death, disorder, and violence can lurk. Because nature is subdued and controlled in a garden, it is often taken to represent the conscious mind as opposed to the forest, which stands for the dark, tangled, rooted growth of the unconscious.
The pulsating matrix of No Feeling is Final organizes its visuals like a map; forming a topographical world with latitude and longitude lines unrelated to the actual proportions of the Sphere. Each square is a world within itself. All together they support each other collectively. In our fractal reality perfect shapes fit together like pieces of a puzzle, whereas in No Feeling Is Final, they fade into each other and share the same space, as if it were some other place where both the “real” and the constructs of our imagination co-exist peacefully.
Yorgo Alexopoulos, 2010
Biography
YORGO ALEXOPOULOS
Yorgo Alexopoulos is a New York-based artist best known for his innovative use of digital media and technology. His artistic approach is gleaned by fusing traditional media such as painting, photography, film and sculpture with digital media. He often creates experiential video installations and high definition flat screen pieces by syncing multiple monitors or projections. Alexopoulos’ artworks often touch upon transcendental themes. He uses animation software informed by techniques fine-tuned from earlier in his career as a visual effects animator in the motion graphics industry. He is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Website
Courtesy of Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, New York
MARTY ST. JAMES, Oneiric, 2001; The Invisible Man, 2007
These video artworks signify the human struggle to locate an inner sense of self and being, a recurring theme in the artist’s body of work. Oneiric enters inner dimensions and confines of the individual. The Invisible Man, explores a reconstructed reality, in a 3 channel digital video projection installation, excerpted and remixed here for the public screen platform. It is an Homage to H.G Wells’ book by the same name, the landscape paintings of Turner and Constable, Beuys with his hat, and Magritte with his notions of formal clothing elements in his men with Bowler hats. It is also a personal homage to the artist’s late brother. St. James films in South West of France and edits in London.
Biography
MARTY ST. JAMES
Existing somewhere between the moving and the static is an excellent description of the work of and intentions of artist St.James. Stepping, as if from one stone to another he has created artworks primarily in performance art, video art, photography and drawing. He describes it as exploring the physical, the electronic and the pencil equally.
‘a time based artist media artist straddling both modernist and post-modernist times..’
– Sue Hubbard The Independent Newspaper.
Tours of Europe and North America in the 1980’s with a suitcase full of props brought him recognition as an improvising based performance artist dealing with popular cultural issues and themes. These social based works were performed in galleries, festivals, ferries and shopping centres. Civic Monument a travelling living sculpture (1990 supported by the Art Angel Trust) saw the end of his live performance art works.
Forty of his video pieces have been archived by the British Film Institute in the UK including Mr and Mrs his first video work based on a television game show appearance and Metamorphosis (Headcake 1998). During the 1980’s a number of his video works were broadcast on national television including Timecode (Heartbeat 1988) shown in a number of countries worldwide.
The Video Portraits of the 1990’s are some of his best known works including The Swimmer an 11 monitor installation work in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. These works ranged from miniature single monitor video objects to large multi-monitor installations.
He has represented Britain abroad in a number of exhibitions, performance art events, video screenings and festivals via the British Council and Arts Council, including, Electronically Yours at the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo (1998) and Artec Nagoya, Japan (1995). During 2000 his year- long inter-active digital work Picture Yourself showed at the Scottish National Galleries celebrating the millennium with the public able to see themselves projected on the museum walls. In 2000 his Boy / Girl video diptych showed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Painting the Century, 101 Portrait Masterpieces from the 20th century including Picasso, Freud, Bacon, Warhol, Munch etc…
Running through St.James’ works there has been a sense of self-portraiture or the portraiture of others. In his recent shows in Moscow, The Journey of St Maurin (2002) and New York Somewhere or Between (2005) there has been a sense of the artist involved in a struggle to locate an inner sense of self and being. And a serious attempt to try and convey this to audience rather than ignore their presence or pander to our obvious emotions. Too much video art has tended to rely on the obvious, cheap tricks and gimmicks; St James has begun a process of real engagement between self, medium and viewer.
On the subject of his drawings St.James describes his paper works as ‘thinking actions’, things that land and are fought onto the paper via thinking.
…. Marty St.James believes that art only matters if the artist has something important to say, that his or her work is not simply an item of commercial transaction. His is an Apollonian discourse rather than a Dionysian one. For him art is a way of thinking in the visual rather than the making of a heroic statement or precious object. He is in tune with Bachelard’s notion that the embodiment of knowledge exists in the action of making, rather than in the object of the finished piece. His intention is to investigate “the stringing together of moments in frame type form to explore surface and time.”
– Sue Hubbard Arts Editor The Independent Newspaper, London
OPENING 7 September 19:00 – 21:00 8 September – Extended until 7 November
PARALLEL EVENTS:
11 Sept – 14 October: SKY SCREEN Program, Running the Cities
12 Sept: MOMENTUM Curator’s Talk at Berlische Galerie
20 Sept: Panel Discussion at the Hoffmann Collection – Aspects of Revolt
In collaboration with lokal_30, MOMENTUM is proud to present the solo exhibition of Zuzanna Janin, THE WAY: Majka from the Movie. This exhibition marks the premiere of the complete series of Majka from the Movie – the first time all 9 episodes have been shown together. The serial video project Majka from the Movie (2009-2012) merges investigations into the history of art and film with a focus on rebellion. In the episode REVOLUTION (Heroes & Heroines) the artist addresses the history of urban protests: from the revolt of 1968, to the resistance movement in the totalitarian regime of Poland in the 1980s, to the protests against ACTA; thus highlighting an essential characteristic of contemporary art – the potential to visualise that which is ‘in-between’ – development processes, change, ongoing rebellion. The video Majka from the Movie (8 episodes and a pilot episode in collaboration with Tomasz Kozak) is a body of quotes from films and music of the last 40 years, which develops a vision of history and culture interlaced with ongoing political and social revolt. The video series will be accompanied by a sculptural installation, which will face Majka – rebellious fictional character from a 1970s film – with a boy, a notorious vagabond. In the episodes ‘JOURNEY’, ‘WALK’, and ‘THE WAY’ Majka encounters Zygmunt Bauman, Slavoj Zizek and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and talks with them about heroes, dreams and the role of artists in the world.
In the course of the exhibition at MOMENTUM | Berlin, works by Zuzanna Janin will be shown on SKY SCREEN, our public art initiative in Rosenthaler Platz. There will be a Curators talk at the Berlinische Galerie, and the private museum Hoffmann Collection will host a panel aimed at discussing the engagement of artists and art in contemporary social, political and cultural problems, as well as the role of art as a tool of social change. The project will be presented later at the Królikarnia Palace, part of the National Museum in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and The National Museum in Cracow. It has previously been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and Kunsthalle Wien (2010).
Zuzanna Janin lives and works in Warsaw. She is the author of sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, actions and performances. The central themes of Zuzanna Janin’s works are space, memory and time, as well as the states in between. Her works invite reflection on the arbitrariness of social roles, their fluid boundaries and the place of individual freedom within the workings of state and society. Janin’s film and video practice, alongside her installations and three dimensional objects, frequently address ideas of social construction and formation of interactive singular and/or group identities. In her latest works, she visualizes how both singular and collective identities are manipulated and played off against one another in today’s contemporary culture. A singular identity thus finds itself – as Janin makes us aware – in a continuous state of personal construction and displacement. Majka from the Movie is a series of videos, based on the Polish TV series from the 70s. The episode “REVOLUTIONS” was included in the international group presentation at the 54th Venice Biennale. The multichannel video screened at MOMENTUM features 9 full episodes, including the new episode in this series – “THE WAY”, to be premiered the week before at the Krolikarnia, part of the National Museum in Warsaw.
“The shaping of identity is made in time and by circumstances, and it is not something that is a pre-given. This is most evident in her recent and ongoing major video serial project Majka from the Movie (2009), which is yet to be finally completed. The multi-part video serial Majka from the Movie takes as its point of departure and as a framing narrative a television soap opera of sorts, called the Madness of Majka Skowron (1975), a popular series made in Poland in the mid-seventies and still shown. The original series story was based on a generational conflict between a father and adolescent daughter…By using her daughter as both an extension and part of her own personal identity formation, the artist presents herself both in front of and behind the camera… The periodic intercutting or splicing in of Majka, and also her contemporary re-incarnation or life projection, operate as the shared unity against a backdrop or compendium of personal film and music appropriations…” (Mark Gisbourne, Identifying Identity, March 2010)
Since 2005 lokal_30 has been providing the space and environment for various projects and artistic actions. The venue continues to operate as a place for artists to meet and work, a site for artistic activities, a backdrop for photographers, a set of art movies, a creative workshop, an exhibition space, and a meeting-place for the art world and everyone interested in art. The mission of lokal_30 is to serve art and artists, and give rise to new projects of all kinds: one-off events, works-in-progress, performances, actions, socially-engaged initiatives, meetings and debates.
As a gallery, lokal_30 concentrates most of its exhibition and promotion efforts on video works, with a mission to provide the best possible conditions for contact with and reflection on contemporary video art, as well as debates with the artists. lokal_30 is run by Director Agnieszka Rayzacher and collaborates with a great many of artists and curators, who all make it a venue where innovative and fascinating high quality art is exhibited and created.
The current SKY SCREEN program coincides both with Berlin Art Week and the Berlin Marathon. Art Week brings the city alive in a mad rush from opening to opening, everyone running from gallery to museum to art fair, while the Marathon brings the city out to the streets to watch bodies in motion, in admiration of the endurance of the human body. In tribute to both these events, we curate a program of video art focusing on the body going beyond the limits of the everyday, pushing beyond its normal boundaries to transform athletics into a lyrical dance of motion. The body moves in space and time, it transforms its surroundings and is transformed by them.
ZUZANNA JANIN Pas de Deux, 2001 Fight (ILOVEYOUTOO), 2001
Boxing involves direct physical confrontation – no complications, no excuses, no words. Mano a mano, here and now – boxing is combat in the abstract, stripped down to its bare essentials. This sublime distillate of combat is neutral and graciously embraces every projection. In The Champion boxing was a metaphor of the ruthless drive to succeed where each knocked-down opponent brings the hero closer to his goal : a glance into the dark side of the American Dream. Its flip-side was Rocky – by slugging away at slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse freezer its hero showed how determination, blood sweat and tears, and self-confidence can move mountains. As heavyweight Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, Robert de Niro exposed the weakness latent within strength – if life is a struggle it always ends in defeat, because time is mercilessly working against the fighters. When the American Dadaist Arthur Cravan challenged the professional boxing champion of the time to an uneven contest, he was actually throwing down the gauntlet before the bloodless art of salons. Joseph Beuys also stepped into the ring, at documenta V in Kassel, donning gloves on behalf of direct democracy – using his fists to prove that socially committed art was not an aesthetic concept but a real-life struggle taken up by artists wanting to change the world….
In Zuzanna’s work, a woman and a man, the artist and professional boxer, are pitted against each other in identical white costumes and red training gloves. Their identical uniforms seem to suggest that both are on the same team. Zuzanna, a featherweight it would appear, is cast against a professional heavyweight boxer. The actual disproportion of strength does not matter: we are operating in arbitrary media space. A boxing champion is a TV celebrity, a semi-fictional character for most of us. Zuzanna likewise assumes the stance of a media heroine. Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lara Croft – pistol-packing daredevil, Trinity – Matrix martial-arts mistress, cybercop Motoko and other Grrrls have gotten us used to the idea that women in the pop culture know how to stand up for themselves. Size and weight are irrelevant – everyone’s a fighter here….
(Excerpts from text by Stach Szabłowski. Read complete text: click here.)
The City is growing Inside of us…
Runscape is a poetic act of resistance
Runscape is a politic act of defiance
of the urban authority
with its surveillance and restrictions on movement.
(Excerpt from film narration.)
RUNSCAPE (2010) is a film that depicts several young male figures sprinting through public spaces of Hong Kong, almost invariably via the visual mode of the long shot, while a narrator describes this action through the rhetoric of post-structuralist urban theory. This narration makes repeated reference to a range of texts from the psychogeographical dérive of urbanism in Guy Debord and the Situationists to the biopolitical machines of Gilles Deleuze and the literary styles of Jean-Luc Nancy. The runners both follow existing paths and establish new ones, moving in straight lines through crowds and across rooftops while also using exterior walls as springboards for less-likely forms of motion. This is, however, far from parkour; it is a much more purposeful action that claims a certain territory or at least trajectory described within the narration through the image of the body as a “bullet that needs no gun.” A soundtrack contributed by Hong Kong rock band A Roller Control complements this aesthetic violence, guiding the eye and ear of the viewer across this novel interpretation of the definition and uses of public space. In this action, invisible facades are constructed across a grid that spans the area between the codified signs of polished facades, an open-ended and performative notion of being-in-transit. (Robin Peckham)
Training Sculpture consists of four separate videos (two minutes each) that deal with the relationship between space and the body, in the context of sports. The first two videos, (gymnastics and diving), demonstrate how the space of a training hall is defined by the movements of the athletes’ bodies: Space is treated here as being static, like a “visual sculpture”. In videos (tennis & basketball), in contrast, the distance between the observer and the athletes’ bodies becomes dissolved: The camera is focusing closely on the athletes’ bodies that are moving in an out of the picture, the importance and presence of the surrounding space are lost. Soundtracks are composed by jayrope, Berlin, with original sound from Marisa Maza.
The inaugural SKY SCREEN program touches down in Moscow with AES+F, launches you down under with Tracey Moffatt and Sumugan Sivanesan, flies you through Korea and New York with Hye Rim Lee, and unleashes the best of contemporary Chinese art with Cao Fei and Jiang Zhi from the DSL Collection.
AES+F King of the Forest, KFNY
2003, Video, 11:01 min
King of the Forest, Le Roi des Aulnes
2001, Video, 9:07 min
The King of the Forest – is a mythological creature of medieval Europe. He kidnaps beautiful children and keeps them in his palace. The subject of that myth was used by many writers, such as J-W. Goethe and Michele Tournier, for instance. The circle of projects «The King of the Forest» – is series of performances in different countries (Russia, Egypt, USA, etc.) …The mass media image of humankind became younger and younger last decade. The teens from Calvin Klein’s advertising, models, and pop stars, who starts the carriers from childhood, young heroes of tennis – all the media world at the beginning of the new millennium is unusually young and sometimes extremely young. The project of AES+F group concerns the theme of contemporary children’s corporations, modified by the human civilization of the 3rd millennium using new, just technological methods. The other aspect of our interest – the body in architecture and nature. But the body with smaller scale and other proportions in most monumental architectural space.
The first project of the circle – «Le Roi des Aulnes» (a novel by Michael Tournier) was shot in the palace of Catherine the Second in Tsarskoye Selo (St.-Petersburg). It concerns the theme of the corporate identity of professional children from the ballet sport and the media industry. For the first performance, we chose more than a hundred pupils of the special ballet and sports schools and some children from model agencies from St.-Petersburg, all of them from 3,5 to 11 years old. We did not ask the children for special poses, but they behaved themselves in front of the camera as well as experienced media stars from cover stories. The third part of the cycle – «King of the Forest: New York» was done in New York in 2003. There were around one hundred kids from Ford Models, who posed on «Military Island» on Times Square – one of the most significant places in the United States (or even in the world) in sense of mass media.
Jiang Zhi Post Pause
2004, Video, 10 mins
Courtesy of the dslcollection
“Paused moments of city life in Shenzhen. Faces and faces of twisted bodies humanity line up the streets and bridges of the city mark the cost of desires and consumerism in our contemporary culture. A Kafkaesque dreamscape of labyrinths and maze.”
…”In Shenzhen, the rapidly evolving city where I currently live, there is perhaps the highest proportion of dreamers in the whole country. Many came penniless and destitute, having brought with them only the determination to savagely scrape together a fast buck in a few short years. As the Deng Xiaoping saying goes: “The most virtuous ethic is the virtue to pursue development.” At any moment, the dreamers are ready to bring their dreams to fruition, and apparently willing to do so for any price.”… “In the city streets, I might encounter many strange and wonderful things. Those people we see are like actors on a stage. Those sets and scenes look no different from a directed play in progress. It was only much later that I become conscious of the fact that this is the reality in its true form. That one individual with that group of people over there, with the motions they are acting out, are all controlled by a hand. This may originate from organizational leaders behind the scene, their bosses, their husbands, mistresses, or perhaps it might be the factory, the company, or even these people themselves… However, I am only directing a small segment in this short film. I would like to suggest this is a response to the issues brought forth by the characters. In those embarrassing realities yet to receive people’s attention there is also the fantasy world that we are so insistently infatuated with – only when I can examine these two worlds in parallel may the prying curiosity in me be satisfied.”
Jiang Zhi was born in Yuanjiang, Hunan in 1971. Graduated from the China Academy of Fine Art in 1995, now he is living and working in Shenzhen and Beijing, China. Jiang Zhi’s works concern contemporary social reality in China. His works have an insight into human civilization and China society, bringing the public introspection in an amusing form.
Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hilberg video collaboration Other
2009, Video, 7 min
Momentum Special Edition, Edition of V
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 is amongst Australia’s leading artists, returning there recently after having been based in NY for many years. Her practice encompasses photography, film, and video, with works that that address gender, race, social issues through artifice and humor.
Cao Fei Rabid Dogs
2002, Video, 8 min
Courtesy of the dslcollection
“We love whips; we need to bite; we dare not bark. We work tamely, faithfully, and patiently like dogs. We can be summoned or dismissed at the bidding of our master and understand his intentions clearly at once. We are surely a miserable pack of dogs and we are willing to act as beasts that are locked in the trap of modernization. When will we be daring enough to bite our master, to take off the masks, to strip off the furs and be a real pack of rabid dogs?”
Cao Fei (1978) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. She is known for her multimedia installations and videos and is acknowledged as one of the key artists of a new generation emerging from Mainland China. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Her recent project RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche Guggenheim (2010)，Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), Yokohama Triennale (2008). I. Mirror by China Tracy, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Chinese Pavilion; RMB CITY- A Second Life City Planning has been exhibited in Istanbul Biennale (2007); Whose Utopia, TATE Liverpool (2007), Nu Project, Lyon Biennale (2007). Cao Fei also participated in 17th & 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006/2010), Moscow Biennale (2005), Shanghai Biennale (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She also exhibited video works in Guggenheim Museum (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), MoMA (New York), P.S.1 (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musee d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). And Cao Fei is the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010, and won The 2006 Best Young Artist Award by CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award ).
Hye Rim Lee Obsession / Love Forever
Eight individual High Definition 3D Animation Pieces with Sound, Looped DVD
(Shown above in a standard definition, single-channel viewing copy), 2007, Looped
One edition of each, out of an edition of five
Hye Rim Lee is a Korean born artist who now lives and works in New York, Auckland, and Seoul. In the title of the project, Obsession is named after a perfume by Calvin Klein, and love and forever are common words/themes for perfumes. Touching on the humorous or surreal, the works have significantly steered clear of clichés of the psychological definition of obsession; rather they explore the theme with a mixture of seriousness and delicacy.
The project aspires to come to terms with our contemporary vision of beauty by examining the crossover between the fashion industry’s construction of norms and the contemporary myth created in computer gaming and cyberculture. In the age of computers, online games, and the internet, digitalization, and computerization have changed our environment, our viewing habits, modes of perception, and fashion in contemporary pop culture. Digital technology and scientific progress have tried to create the absolute perfect vocabulary of beauty. The project seeks to investigate ideas about the relationship between beauty, perfection, and technological progress.
Sumugan Sivanesan A Children’s Book of War
2010, Video animation with an accompanying text
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist. Often working collaboratively, his practice is concerned with histories of anti-colonialism and transcultural exchange.
A Children’s Book of War discusses legacies of colonial violence in contemporary Australia within the context of the current War on Terror, the law and contesting sovereignties.
The MOMENTUM Collection
at Musraramix Festival in Jerusalem
23 – 25 May 2012
Eric Bridgeman, Osvaldo Budet, Nezaket Ekici, Doug Fishbone, James P Graham, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Janet Laurence, Hye Rim Lee, Gabriele Leidloff, Map Office, David Medalla, Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, Map Office, Fiona Pardington, Martin Sexton, Sumugan Sivanesan and Mariana Vassileva
We are proud to show the MOMENTUM Collection at the Musraramix Festival in Jerusalem to mark our partnership with the Musrara School of Art and the launch of the MOMENTUM Jerusalem Residency.
Musraramix is an annual outdoor public art festival focusing on moving image and performance art. For the Musraramix Festival, we curate the MOMENTUM Collection into 3 programs:
1. Subjects and Objects looks at works which address the individual as both subject and object of the gaze, of scientific enquiry and biological necessity, of the material expectations of beauty, and as objectified by the material traces of individual histories. Including works by: Tracey Moffatt, Nezaket Ekici, Hye Rim Lee, Mark Karasick, Gabriele Leidloff, Fiona Pardington
2. Rituals and Ghosts brings together works which look at the stories, traditions, and games we repeat to ourselves and to others, which define both the stark differences between cultures, and the sometimes uncanny similarities between them. Including works by: Osvaldo Budet, David Medalla, Martin Sexton, Eric Bridgeman, TV Moore, Hannu Karjalainen
3. Evolution/Revolution begins with the purity of nature, and moves on to ancient civilizations, the beginnings of society, racing in to the present day to address the many ways mankind misuses its hard-earned civilization. Including work by: Janet Laurence, Mariana Vassileva, Eric Bridgeman, Martin Sexton, James P Graham, Map Office, Doug Fishbone, Sumugan Sivanesan
The MusraraMix festival is an annual international multidisciplinary event that takes place in the culturally diverse neighborhood of Musrara in Jerusalem, initiated and produced by the Naggar school in Musrara since 2000. Focusing on digital and performance art in public space, the festival is a hub of artistic and social happenings, embodying the political and cultural essence of Jerusalem and Israel. Every year the festival is based around a new curatorial theme engaging its unique location within the Musrara community, traditionally bridging East and West Jerusalem..
Dinner Behind the Screen is part of our Public Art Initiative, SKY SCREEN, bringing international museum quality video art to the streets and skyline of Berlin and beyond.
To announce MOMENTUM’s collaboration with the Streaming Museum and our plans to take SKY SCREEN global to 11 cities in 11 countries in 11 months, we launch our Dinner Behind the Screen series in partnership with USLU Airlines, our host for SKY SCREEN Berlin.
Dinner Behind the Screen brings together artists, art press, curators, and other art professionals for a unique view behind the screen explaining our program and creating new opportunities for SKY SCREEN.
This event took place in context of the MOMENTUM_InsideOut SKY SCREEN program: Running The Cities.
RUNNING THE CITIES
13 SEPTEMBER – 31 OCTOBER 2012
ZUZANNA JANIN – Pas de Deux (2001), The Fight (2001)
The current SKY SCREEN program coincides both with Berlin Art Week and the Berlin Marathon. Art Week brings the city alive in a mad rush from opening to opening, everyone running from gallery to museum to art fair, while the Marathon brings the city out to the streets to watch bodies in motion, in admiration of the endurance of the human body. In tribute to both these events, we curate a program of video art focusing on the body going beyond the limits of the everyday, pushing beyond its normal boundaries to transform athletics into a lyrical dance of motion. The body moves in space and time, it transforms its surroundings and is transformed by them.
ZUZANNA JANIN Pas de Deux, 2001 Fight (ILOVEYOUTOO), 2001
Boxing involves direct physical confrontation – no complications, no excuses, no words. Mano a mano, here and now – boxing is combat in the abstract, stripped down to its bare essentials. This sublime distillate of combat is neutral and graciously embraces every projection. In The Champion boxing was a metaphor of the ruthless drive to succeed where each knocked-down opponent brings the hero closer to his goal : a glance into the dark side of the American Dream. Its flip-side was Rocky – by slugging away at slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse freezer its hero showed how determination, blood sweat and tears, and self-confidence can move mountains. As heavyweight Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, Robert de Niro exposed the weakness latent within strength – if life is a struggle it always ends in defeat, because time is mercilessly working against the fighters. When the American Dadaist Arthur Cravan challenged the professional boxing champion of the time to an uneven contest, he was actually throwing down the gauntlet before the bloodless art of salons. Joseph Beuys also stepped into the ring, at documenta V in Kassel, donning gloves on behalf of direct democracy – using his fists to prove that socially committed art was not an aesthetic concept but a real-life struggle taken up by artists wanting to change the world….
In Zuzanna’s work, a woman and a man, the artist and professional boxer, are pitted against each other in identical white costumes and red training gloves. Their identical uniforms seem to suggest that both are on the same team. Zuzanna, a featherweight it would appear, is cast against a professional heavyweight boxer. The actual disproportion of strength does not matter: we are operating in arbitrary media space. A boxing champion is a TV celebrity, a semi-fictional character for most of us. Zuzanna likewise assumes the stance of a media heroine. Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lara Croft – pistol-packing daredevil, Trinity – Matrix martial-arts mistress, cybercop Motoko and other Grrrls have gotten us used to the idea that women in the pop culture know how to stand up for themselves. Size and weight are irrelevant – everyone’s a fighter here….
(Excerpts from text by Stach Szabłowski. Read complete text: click here.)
The City is growing Inside of us…
Runscape is a poetic act of resistance
Runscape is a politic act of defiance
of the urban authority
with its surveillance and restrictions on movement.
(Excerpt from film narration.)
RUNSCAPE (2010) is a film that depicts several young male figures sprinting through public spaces of Hong Kong, almost invariably via the visual mode of the long shot, while a narrator describes this action through the rhetoric of post-structuralist urban theory. This narration makes repeated reference to a range of texts from the psychogeographical dérive of urbanism in Guy Debord and the Situationists to the biopolitical machines of Gilles Deleuze and the literary styles of Jean-Luc Nancy. The runners both follow existing paths and establish new ones, moving in straight lines through crowds and across rooftops while also using exterior walls as springboards for less-likely forms of motion. This is, however, far from parkour; it is a much more purposeful action that claims a certain territory or at least trajectory described within the narration through the image of the body as a “bullet that needs no gun.” A soundtrack contributed by Hong Kong rock band A Roller Control complements this aesthetic violence, guiding the eye and ear of the viewer across this novel interpretation of the definition and uses of public space. In this action, invisible facades are constructed across a grid that spans the area between the codified signs of polished facades, an open-ended and performative notion of being-in-transit. (Robin Peckham)
Training Sculpture consists of four separate videos (two minutes each) that deal with the relationship between space and the body, in the context of sports. The first two videos, (gymnastics and diving), demonstrate how the space of a training hall is defined by the movements of the athletes’ bodies: Space is treated here as being static, like a “visual sculpture”. In videos (tennis & basketball), in contrast, the distance between the observer and the athletes’ bodies becomes dissolved: The camera is focusing closely on the athletes’ bodies that are moving in an out of the picture, the importance and presence of the surrounding space are lost. Soundtracks are composed by jayrope, Berlin, with original sound from Marisa Maza.
Following the exhibition of RUNSCAPE HONG KONG at MOMENTUM | Berlin last year, we invite MAP OFFICE to Berlin to produce the next work in this series: RUNSCAPE BERLIN. MAP OFFICE see Berlin as a laboratory where the physical urban territory and the territory of film have been interconnected over the last hundred years – from “M” to “Run Lola Run”. RUNSCAPE BERLIN aims at unfolding a new reading of the city through the eyes of the runner and cinema.
AND
FRIDAY 29 June 7pm RUNNING THE CITIES mapoffice_DAZ_Invitation
Lecture and screening of RUNSCAPE HONG KONG at DAZ
Deutsches Architektur Zentrum DAZ, Köpenicker Str. 48/49, 10179 Berlin-Mitte
Ikono TV is an outstanding all art all the time HD cable channel screening in over 30 million households across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. With a mission to bring art out of the museums and into peoples homes, Ikono TV makes art an integral part of every day life. MOMENTUM is proud to announce our partnership with this extraordinary initiative by screening selected works from the MOMENTUM Collection, and by sharing the content of our programs for SKY SCREEN, our Public Art initiative bringing international video art to the streets and skyline of Berlin. MOMENTUM shares with Ikono TV the goal to bridge across national and institutional boarders, bringing art to the people, through collaboration, exchange, education, exploration, and most importantly, inspiration.
Our first program on Ikono TV features selected works from the MOMENTUM Collection. The MOMENTUM Collection is a growing collection of international video art comprising the best and brightest artists we have shown and collaborated with worldwide. The Collection represents a cross-section of digital artworks at the top of the field. Ranging from some of the most established to emerging video artists, including work from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, the US, the UK, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Germany. For Ikono TV, we curate the Collection into 3 parts:
1. Subjects and Objects looks at works which address the individual as both subject and object of the gaze, of scientific enquiry and biological necessity, of the material expectations of beauty, and as objectified by the material traces of individual histories.
Nezaket Ekici, VEILING AND REVEILLING, 2009
Hye Rim Lee, OBSESSION / LOVE FOREVER, 2007 [5 Pieces edited for Ikono TV
out of series of 8]
Mark Karasick, MICHAEL, 2004
Gabriele Leidloff, IN PURSUIT, 2004
Fiona Pardington, ORGANIC, 2011 [animated series of 30 Digital Photogrpahs]
2. Rituals and Ghosts brings together works which look at the stories, traditions, and games we repeat to ourselves and to others, which define both the stark differences between cultures, and the sometimes uncanny similarities between them.
Martin Sexton, INDESTRUCTIBLE TRUTH (Tibet UFO), 1958/9
Eric Bridgeman, TRIPLE X BITTER, 2008
TV Moore, MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS, 2009
Hannu Karjalainen, WOMAN ON BEACH, 2009
3. Evolution/Revolution begins with the purity of nature, and moves on to ancient civilizations, the beginnings of society, racing in to the present day to address the many ways mankind misuses its hard-earned civilization.
Janet Laurence, VANISHING, 2009/10
Mariana Vassileva, MORNING MOOD, 2010
Eric Bridgeman, THE FIGHT, 2010
Martin Sexton, BLOODSPELL (Mexican UFO), 1973 – 2012
James P Graham, CHRONOS, 1999
Doug Fishbone, COMMUNISM, 29 May 2008
Sumugan Sivanesan, A CHILDREN’S BOOK OF WAR, 2010
MOMENTUM in discussion with Thomas Eller at the Berlinische Galerie
12 September 2012, at 7:00pm
Including Screenings of the MOMENTUM Collection
And Launching the New SKY SCREEN Program
PROMO
Artist / Curator Thomas Eller talks to Cassandra Bird and Rachel Rits-Volloch from Momentum Berlin. Founded in Sydney in 2010 and in Berlin in 2011, Momentum defines itself as a global platform for “time-based art”. This not-for-profit institution invites artists, performers and galleries from all over the world to present their work in Berlin, building an international network of partners. Momentum uses various formats around the media of film and video: exhibitions, a workshop programme, an art salon, a collection, and art in the public space. Cassandra Bird and Rachel Rits-Volloch talk about their activities and their experience with changing cultural spaces and artistic strategies. What do moving images mean in a digital age? And how do they affect the spaces where we experience culture?
DISCUSSION VIDEO
The talk is accompanied by screenings of the MOMENTUM Collection and the premier of the new SKY SCREEN program, turning the Berliniche Galerie itself into a screen for video art, animating the urban space.
Zuzanna Janin lives and works in Warsaw. She is the author of sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, actions and performances. The central themes of Zuzanna Janin’s works are space, memory and time, as well as the states in between. Her works invite reflection on the arbitrariness of social roles, their fluid boundaries and the place of individual freedom within the workings of state and society. Janin’s film and video practice, alongside her installations and three dimensional objects, frequently address ideas of social construction and formation of interactive identities. In her latest works, she visualizes how both singular and collective identities are manipulated and played off against one another in today’s contemporary culture. A singular identity thus finds itself – as Janin makes us aware – in a continuous state of personal construction and displacement.
Majka from the Movie is a series of videos, based on the Polish TV series from the 70s. The episode “REVOLUTIONS” was included in the international group presentation at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). The multichannel video screened at MOMENTUM features 9 full episodes, including the new episode in this series – “THE WAY”. THE WAY: Majka from the Movie, Zuzanna Janin’s solo exhibition at MOMENTUM, marks the premiere of the complete series of Majka from the Movie – the first time all 9 episodes have been shown together. The serial video project Majka from the Movie (2009-2012) merges investigations into the history of art and film with a focus on rebellion. The project will be presented later at the Królikarnia Palace, part of the National Museum in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and The National Museum in Cracow. It has previously been shown, in part, at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and as a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien (2010).
I am very much into the dialogue before, during and after cooking. Starting from shopping for the ingredients, how we see things in the Chinese shop: is it healthy food, authentic food or just another exotic thing to do..? It’s not only the cooking and food, but the method of food-making and talking art…
Suppose.. that we should be reminded that there is the innocent and unknown, an unexpected experience, a very intimate way of exchange between the cook and people who eat the food. What I shall do for the format of cooking and eating, is that people who participate shall have no regulation for doing anything. They will only be requested to write a little comment after dinner… to disrupt the food and culture/aesthetics behind it, max 200words:-)
Li zhenhua | 李振华
guests:
Cassandra Bird, Matthias Boettger, Marianne Burki, Helena Demakova, Dili, Thomas Eller, David Elliott, Drew Hammond, Marita Muukkonnen, Adam Nankervis, Kirsten Palz, Rachel Rits-Volloch (our most gracious host), Anna Russ, Monica Salzar, Giaco Schiesser, Ivor Stodolsky, Valerie Portefaix and Laurent Guiterrez with Emma + Zoe, Yan Lei, Siegfried Zielinski
hosts: MOMENTUM (Rachel Rits-Volloch and Cassandra Bird). CONCEPTUAL COOKING Session I is being co-hosted by the MOMENTUM Kunst Salon Series.
date: thursday 28 June, 2012 at 7.30 pm
Youth Vision Magazine (with thanks to Li Zhenhua), Randian-Online.com and MOMENTUM Worldwide are projected publishing partners of THE CONCEPTUAL COOK BOOK
23 August – 1 September 2012
OPENING 23 August 19:00 – 22:00, with the artists present
FINISSAGE 1 September 19:00 – 22:00, with live performance by Mariana Hahn at 20:00
ABOUT FACE. A military command. A reflection of our tumultuous times. A comment on the cult of beauty perpetuated by every television screen.
The works in this exhibition – ranging from painting to performance, video, and poetry – each address in their own way these turbulent times. Wars, financial crisis, environmental disasters. They have all happened before. About face. They will all happen again. Not even the art world is safe. Artists are busy responding, re-thinking, revolting. Some people stop and listen. The rest of the world goes on as usual. The revolutionaries become icons. About face. The next generation of revolutionaries rises against them.
What drives our destruction? About face. What drives our self destruction?
Is destruction at the heart of all creation? Is our sinister devotion to icons the same fuel we burn when we destroy them. The microscopic line between destruction and construction. A postmodernist’s wet dream.
Terrible beauty. About face. The beauty of terror. Yet even while we indulge in it, we deny the filth, we wear masks of purity, clean facades maintained by wipe-clean surfaces. Anything to save face. About face.
Reversal, revolution, repetition, identity, defacement, destruction, rebirth. The three emerging talents in this group exhibition converge upon these issues in surprising ways. Jarik Jongman, a painter, invokes performance for the first time in his interactive painting series, (de)facing revolt (2012). Ensuring the complicity of the spectator, this exhibition is not about watching – it is about being. States of being and becoming are reflected through Mariana Hahn’s evocative performance, I Sweat You (2012), her poetry sticking in our brains. The rhythms of Sarah Ludemann’s video works stick too from the relentless demolition of body in Schnitzelporno (there within the tender embrace of humanity’s structures) (2012), to the repeated dissintegration of structure in flap goes the wing of the butterfly in slow motion. and I close my eyes and sense the cracks in my flesh (2010-2012). Flesh and blood or concrete and steel, it is all created to be destroyed.
Mariana Hahn was born in the mid 1980s in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany. She did Theatre Studies at ETI in Berlin, and has a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London. Her work has been described like an itch under the skin. The itch of something that is there but cannot be caught, be laid finger on. Subtle movements of what lays beneath the surface that carries us, moves us back and fro. Transparent and yet hidden, isolated and yet profoundly prominent, like the voices of an oracle. Voice becomes a palpable medium in Hahn’s performance. The poetry inflected cadence becomes the action, the performance of the body’s stillness, draped in plastic, like a defunct statue.
A former assistant of Anselm Kiefer, Jarik Jongman uses both his own photographs and anonymous pictures found in flea markets, books, magazines and the internet as a starting point for his work, which often deals with archetypical imagery. Dutch born, he studied in Arnhem and has had numerous exhibitions in London, Berlin, Switzerland, Amsterdam and at the 53rd (2009) and current 54th Venice Biennale in a collateral event. He lives and works in Amsterdam. In ABOUT FACE, Jongman will be showing a series of ten painted portraits of icons of the contemporary art world; some of the richest and most influential players of our time, which he will subsequently, with the help of the audience, deface. The result will be a series of mutilated images, reminiscent of the damaged murals and toppled statues of ousted dictators across the world.
Sarah Lüdemann continuously disassembles her body and identity, explores psychological states, concepts of self, social roles and ways of perception and (re)presentation. It is all a self portrait and yet generally relevant and open to identification and interpretation. Repetition and proximity, seduction and repulsion, love and hate, destruction and resurection. The birth of poetic brutality. As a woman and as a being with tender harshness. Visuality and sensuality play a vital role in Lüdemann’s works as she aspires to create experiences that are at once sensuously engaging and thought provoking. Sarah Lüdemann finished an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins/Byam Shaw in September 2011. In 2009 she was selected for an influential residency with Mona Hatoum. She has been awarded the South Square Trust Award and was shortlisted for the Arts & Humanities Research Council BGP Award in 2010.
“A collection cannot survive in isolation. It needs to be heard, to be seen and most importantly, to be experienced.” (Sylvain Levy)
PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives in Contemporary Chinese Art brings six outstanding video works from the dslcollection to MOMENTUM | Berlin. Framed around the 3D exhibition curated by Martina Koppel Yang, MOMENTUM shows the video works featured in dslollection’s virtual museum. While the 3D film contextualizes these works within the broader framework of the dslcollection and the development of Chinese contemporary art, MOMENTUM enables the experience of direct contact between the viewer and the artwork. PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives in Contemporary Chinese Art explores the balance between our experience of an artwork and the mediated document of that artwork. Presenting an innovative model of exhibition practice with a 3-dimensional immersive experience of a virtual museum, alongside the video works themselves, PRESS PLAY highlights the integral role of time in the experience of art. We need to give any artwork time to see it in all its complexity, to understand it on both a mental and emotional level. This is especially true in the case of time-based media, such as video art. As a collection needs to be heard, to be seen, and to be experienced in order to acquire meaning, the 3D film acts as a contextualising counterpoint to the works themselves, allowing them to be understood within the broader framework of the dslcollection.
In joining forces with the dslcollection, MOMENTUM is proud to collaborate with a cutting edge collection, at the forefront of contemporary Chinese art and of utilizing new technologies in exhibition practice. The dslcollection, positioned as a virtual museum, is open to the public by way of innovative digital media and collaborative practices. Started in 2005 by Sylvain and Dominique Levy, the dslcollection focuses on the best of contemporary Chinese art. Including a broad array of artistic practices and media, the principles linking the Collection as a whole are quality, communication and coherence, and a direct address to issues confronting contemporary Chinese culture. With a mission to show art outside the traditional white cube of the gallery space, and to bring the Collection to a broad audience irrespective of national and institutional borders, the dslcollection is available as a resource online, and hosts online exhibitions of curated works from the Collection. Sharing the experience of Chinese contemporary art online as well as in traveling exhibitions, the dslcollection also supports Chinese contemporary visual culture through its cinema with DSL CineMag.
“We love whips; we need to bite; we dare not bark. We work tamely, faithfully and patiently like dogs. We can be summoned or dismissed at the bidding of our master and understand his intentions clearly at once. We are surely a miserable pack of dogs and we are willing to act as beasts that are locked in the trap of modernization. When will we be daring enough to bite our master, to take off the masks, to strip off the furs and be a real pack of rabid dogs?”
Cao Fei (1978) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. She is known for her multimedia installations and videos, and is acknowledged as one of the key artists of a new generation emerging from Mainland China. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Her recent project RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche Guggenheim (2010)，Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), Yokohama Triennale (2008). I. Mirror by China Tracy, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Chinese Pavilion; RMB CITY- A Second Life City Planning has been exhibited in Istanbul Biennale (2007); Whose Utopia, TATE Liverpool (2007), Nu Project, Lyon Biennale (2007). Cao Fei also participated in 17th & 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006/2010), Moscow Biennale (2005), Shanghai Biennale (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She also exhibited video works in Guggenheim Museum (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), MoMA (New York), P.S.1 (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musee d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). And Cao Fei is the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010, and won The 2006 Best Young Artist Award by CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award ).
Chen Chieh Jen, Lingchi – Echoes of a Historical Photograph (video, 25 mins), 2002
Artist’s Statement:
“History has been lingchi-ed, that is, chopped and severed as human bodies. Violence is also gradually internalized, institutionalized and hidden. We do not see where we are and what was before us. We do not see the violence of history or that of the State either. That is the reason why we need to gaze at the images of horror and penetrate through them. Is the dark abyss of wounds not the very crack that we need to pass through so as to arrive at the state of full-realization and self-abandonment. In the early age of so called “history of photography” regions outside the western world played the role of “shooting objects”….I focus on how to reverse the subject of colonial photography history from people in front of a lens to the behind…”
This film is based on the famous 1905 photograph of a man being punished the Manchu way, by being cut into pieces for the crime of murder. His ecstatic expression is attributed to opium, which was administered to prolong the torture. Philosopher Georges Bataille discussed this photo extensively in his book The Tears of Eros and noted the correlations between the beauty of religious eroticism, divine ecstasy and the shocking horror of cruel torture. Chen’s cinematic close-ups of the victim’s face bring to mind images of blissful euphoria, homoeroticism, and religious crucifixion. Slow motion close-ups of a hand holding a knife, the grim expressions of the crowd of ponytailed bystanders, blood dripping down the crowd’s legs and flowing into the ground are eerie, but surprisingly not as violent as what one might expect considering Chen’s topic. …By linking the historical with the contemporary social and economic situation in Taiwan, Chen has created an extremely powerful work that links the past with the present, the fictive with the documentary. He is also specific to the local situation, while remaining universal.” (Susan Kendzulak)
Chen Chieh-jen (b. 1960 in Taoyuan, Taiwan) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. He has held solo exhibitions at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; REDCAT art center in Los Angeles; the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid; the Asia Society in New York; and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Group exhibitions include: the Venice Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, São Paulo Art Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Biennale of Sydney, Istanbul Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, and the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane. Chen has also participated in photography festivals in Spain, Lisbon and Arles; and film festivals in London, Vancouver, Edinburgh and Rotterdam. Chen Chieh-jen was also the recipient of the Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation’s National Award for Arts in 2009, and the Korean Gwangju Biennale Special Award in 2000.
Liang Juhui, One Hour Game (video of performance installation, Skyscraper Construction Site, Tianhe, Guangzhou), 1996
Liang Juhui’s action “One Hour Game” disturbs the “normal process” of vertical urban expansion. In an elevator in a skyscraper under construction in Guangzhou’s new town, he sets up a video game and plays the game for an hour while the elevator continues to move up and down, carrying workers to work. The usual path of construction is hence disturbed. What is more interesting is that, here, there is a detournement of the metaphoric significance of the elevator through the intervention of the game. The elevator has become more like a sight-seeing elevator in an amusement park than a construction tool.
Liang Juhui was one of the founders of the Big Tail Elephant Working Group which emerged in Guangzhou during the early 1990’s. The members of the group, Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin, and Xu Tan, presented regular performances and site-specific installations to directly intervene with the rapid social and political transformation of the city of Guangzhou. Being one of the first cities in which the new economic experiment of China took place, the rate of urban development in the early 90’s was unprecedented. Being keenly aware of the limited time frame of the economic open door policy, the order of the day for the vast majority was to accumulate as much wealth in the shortest time possible. During this time, popular culture and media from nearby Hong Kong as well as icons and merchandises from the “West” were dutifully consumed with little resistance shown. The direction of culture was adrift in a socialist turned ultra-capitalist society. The lack of official venues for hosting exhibitions or cultural events in the early 1990s meant the working group had to take their actions to the street. The Big Tail Elephant Working Group was crucial in preserving the integrity of critical artistic practice at such a unique historical juncture. They questioned the common ambition in the development of the city at the expense of denying social and moral values. Acutely aware of the ineffectiveness of the avant-garde movement of the early 1980s in China to refute official ideology, the group’s mission was less to initiate social change than to question the relevancy of contemporary art in everyday life. (Hou Hanru, “Barricades, Big Tail Elephant Working Group”)
Zhang Peili, Just For You (video installation, 10 monitors) 1999
Artist’s Statement:
“This is a song nearly everyone knows how to sing, but very few people know, nor care who, in which year, in what country, composed it. It is a pop, an international symbol, a sign of happiness and a mark of time.”
As a central figure of the historical avant-garde 85 New Wave movement, Zhang Peili (b. 1957, Hangzhou) played a role in the founding of the Pond Society collective and became a core advocate of the school known as “rational painting.” In 1988 he completed what is commonly known as the first piece of video art created in China with 30 x 30, the infamous onscreen performance in which he smashed and repaired a square mirror, thus entering into a sustained investigation of video and related media including photography, installation, and electronic art. Typically adopting a minimal or reductive position that constructs an essential relationship between the aesthetics of video playback technology and the moving image itself, his video installation focuses on questions of perceived reality, media convention, individual agency, and spatial structure. In the years between 1988 and 2011 his video practice has undergone a number of significant shifts, beginning with the cool and contained painting of the mid-1980s and then moving into the aesthetics of boredom and control in his first video projects, including Document on Hygiene No. 3 (1991), in which the artist subdues and washes a chicken at the center of the frame. The mid-1990s saw classical reworkings of the relationship between content and spatial form, as withUncertain Pleasure II (1996), in which a hand scratches every corner of a naked body depicted only in fragmentary close-up shots across 10 channels, or Water: Standard Edition of Cihai (1991), for which a television announcer reads a dictionary entry as if it were the evening news. And then there are the appropriation and remix works, including not only Last Words but also Actors’ Lines, in which the gestures of revolutionary fervor depicted in a militaristic propaganda film are reframed to read almost romantically. Finally, more recent works involve interactive closed-loop systems like Hard Evidence No. 1 (2009) and theatrical scenes like A Gust of Wind (2008).
Zhang Peili was trained at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, graduating from the oil painting department in 1984 on the cusp of the aesthetic upheavals of that decade, and returned to the China Academy of Art as a professor in 2002, where he is currently responsible for the Embodied Media Studio of the School of Intermedia Art. His work is held by the collections of major global institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.
“While producing art works, I often angel sexuality to explore the problems of femininity and woman as part of the society. In Ladies, I chose the nightclub’s ladies’ room where the female workers from the club come to do -various activities. The scene showed a reality beyond one’s imagination. The scene reveals a very serious problem in society, and the problem will have its effects in history. On the surface, what I shot was about the state of women, but what I cared more was the social class behind scenes and how viewers read the work from cultural, historical and economic perspective. I chose the video to shoot this work, and the moving image expressed clearly the concept of time and space and content.”
Not particularly much to be seen here: some girls in front of a mirror readjusting dress and makeup. A much less stylish woman doing some clean up amongst them. These two images are stills from the 6’ 12” video Ladies Room by Cui Xiuwen. Trained as a painter, she has been focusing on themes of sexuality and gender early on, once shocking her audience with paintings of naked men whose genitals she particularly emphasized; something even more uncommon in China than in the West. At the occasion of a dance night out in a posh Beijing club, she realized that there is another side to the beautiful glamour girls on the dance floor. “Like hell in heaven, or heaven in hell.” as she puts it. Nevertheless, she felt that oil painting, her main artistic medium so far, would not be sufficient to express what she wanted to communicate. Shortly afterwards Cui came into contact with shooting video and had found her technique. Hiding a camera in the ladies’ room of an expensive Beijing night-club, she simply filmed the women in front of the mirror. They rearrange or change clothing, check out their appearance, admire themselves, re-do makeup and exchange gossip. It is only towards the end of the video that it becomes apparent that what seems to be ordinary girls enjoying an evening out in fact are prostitutes having a break from work. They also tuck away their money in bras and briefs, call their customers to arrange for new dates and catch their breath before returning to the clubroom. Cui does not comment on the scenes but offers a rare insight on one particular facet of the much-acclaimed China boom. Like Zhang Dali’s head down suspended plaster casts of migrant workers in Chinese Offspring the women in the lavatory do the lowest of services to those who profit most of the streams of money in contemporary China. And by doing so, add to the glamor of the scene. (Christof Buettner)
“Paused moments of city life in Shenzhen. Faces and faces of twisted bodies humanity line up the streets and bridges of the city mark the cost of desires and consumerism in our contemporary culture. A Kafkaesque dreamscape of labyrinths and maze.”
…”In Shenzhen, the rapidly evolving city where I currently live, there is perhaps the highest proportion of dreamers in the whole country. Many came penniless and destitute, having brought with them only the determination to savagely scrape together a fast buck in a few short years. As the Deng Xiaoping saying goes: “The most virtuous ethic is the virtue to pursue development.” At any moment, the dreamers are ready to bring their dreams to fruition, and apparently willing to do so for any price.”… “In the city streets, I might encounter many strange and wonderful things. Those people we see are like actors on a stage. Those sets and scenes look no different from a directed play in progress. It was only much later that I become conscious of the fact that this is reality in its true form. That one individual with that group of people over there, with the motions they are acting out, are all controlled by a hand. This may originate from organizational leaders behind the scene, their bosses, their husbands, mistresses, or perhaps it might be the factory, the company, or even these people themselves… However, I am only directing a small segment in this short film. I would like to suggest this is a response to the issues brought forth by the characters. In those embarrassing realities yet to receive people’s attention there is also the fantasy world that we are so insistently infatuated with – only when I can examine these two worlds in parallel may the prying curiosity in me be satisfied.”
Jiang Zhi was born in Yuanjiang, Hunan in 1971. Graduated from China Academy of Fine Art in 1995, now he is living and working in Shenzhen and Beijin, China. Jiang Zhi’s works concern contemporary social reality in China. His works have an insight into human civilization and China society, bringing the public the introspection in an amusing form.
MOMENTUM_InsideOut is MOMENTUM’s initiative for Video Art in Public Space. Traditionally shown in the darkened rooms of galleries and museums, video art is now bursting out into public space through the acceleration of digital technologies. MOMENTUM turns the museum and gallery inside out by bringing international museum quality video art to the streets, thereby making it widely accessible to new audiences and building curiosity and public interest in contemporary art.
MOMENTUM_InsideOut works in partnership with visionary institutions in Berlin and abroad. In cooperation with our partners the CHB – Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, MOMENTUM programs an ongoing series of screenings on Berlin’s Museum Island. And thanks to cooperations with international institutions such as SALT Istanbul, Odra Zoo Szczecin, Chronus Art Center Shanghai, and Viva Con Agua, MOMENTUM_InsideOut has taken place in Turkey, Poland, China, and more locations to come.
MOMENTUM is a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin at the Bethanien Art Center. Through MOMENTUM’s program of Exhibitions, Education, Public Video Art Initiatives, Residencies, and Collection, we are dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional international artists working with time-based practices. The term ‘time-based’ art means very different things today than when it was first coined over forty years ago. 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’? Positioned as a global platform with a vast international network, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. The key ideas driving MOMENTUM are: Collaboration, Exchange, Education, Innovation, and Inspiration.
In joining forces with the dslcollection, MOMENTUM is proud to collaborate with a cutting edge collection, at the forefront of contemporary Chinese art and of utilizing new technologies in exhibition practice. The dslcollection, positioned as a virtual museum, is open to the public by way of innovative digital media and collaborative practices. Started in 2005 by Sylvain and Dominique Levy with a museological imperative, the dslcollection focuses on the best of contemporary Chinese art. Including a broad array of artistic practices and media, the principles linking the Collection as a whole are quality, communication and coherence, and a direct address to issues confronting contemporary Chinese culture. With a mission to show art outside the traditional white cube of the gallery space, and to bring the Collection to a broad audience irrespective of national and institutional borders, the dslcollection is available as a resource online, and hosts online exhibitions of curated works from the Collection.
Using our current exhibition at MOMENTUM | Berlin as a model, we ask the question of how can virtual and actual experiences be combined to create a new, and perhaps more sustainable, way of bringing art to an international audience. In co-mingling a 3D virtual exhibition with the actual video works it represents, MOMENTUM pursues its mission to challenge the notion and presentation of time-based art both in the context of historical and technological development. 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. As the technologies which drive our societies and lifestyles continually develop MOMENTUM | worldwide remains at the forefront of the intersection of art and life. Our creative ideology includes freedom from limitations on ideas, processes, and creative output.
This Kunst salon takes place in conjunction with the current exhibition at MOMENTUM | Berlin:
PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives in Contemporary Chinese Art, The dslcollection at MOMENTUM | Berlin
Featuring works by: Cao Fei, Chen Chieh Jen, Liang Juhui, Zhang Peili, Cui Xiuwen, Jiang Zhi
EXHIBITION APRIL 25 – JUNE 12
“A collection cannot survive in isolation. It needs to be heard, to be seen and most importantly, to be experienced.” (Sylvain Levy)
PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives in Contemporary Chinese Art brings six outstanding video works from the dslcollection to MOMENTUM | Berlin. Framed around the 3D exhibition curated by Martina Koppel Yang, MOMENTUM shows the video works featured in dslollection’s virtual museum. While the 3D film contextualizes these works within the broader framework of the dslcollection
and the development of Chinese contemporary art, MOMENTUM enables the experience of direct contact between the viewer and the artwork. PRESS PLAY: New Perspectives in Contemporary Chinese Art explores the balance between our experience of an artwork and the mediated document of that artwork. Presenting an innovative model of exhibition practice with a 3-dimensional immersive experience of a virtual museum, alongside the video works themselves, PRESS PLAY highlights the integral role of time in the experience of art. We need to give any artwork time to see it in all its complexity, to understand it on both a mental and emotional level. This is especially true in the case of time-based media, such as video art. As a collection needs to be heard, to be seen, and to be experienced in order to acquire meaning, the 3D film acts as a contextualising counterpoint to the works themselves, allowing them to be understood within the broader framework of the dslcollection.
PARTNERSHIP
We are proud to announce that this occasion marks the beginning of our collaboration with Artek, the outstanding Finnish design company founded in 1935 by Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen, and Nils-Gustav Hahl.
Following in Artek’s tradition of a grand synthesis of the arts, the MOMENTUM Kunst Salons bring together arts professionals from all disciples to discuss, inform, and inspire one another. Thank you for joining us for this. occasion.
NADJA MARCIN
STAGING THE WORLD – PERFORMING THE FLOOR
MOMENTUM | Berlin Parallel Program
With Guest Curator Veit Rieber
Part of MONTH OF PERFORMANCE ART BERLIN
“Staging the World – Performing the Floor” introduces artistic positions, which address the interplay between the individual and society with the help of performance and visual media. Depicted are psychological and social courses of action as well as concealed communication features in order to highlight, how moral conceptions, rituals and conventions guide our action, how the person is confronted with expectations of the group and how it tries to fulfill them by means of adaption, rearrangement and canalization.
The floor is the perfect medium for staging this picture. As an often underestimated architectural side phenomenon it is nevertheless the way to the primarily “important” rooms of a building and therefore in its ambivalence neither the inside nor the outside, but both the interface and the indicator between these extremes.
One just has to think of Kafka’s novels, where the floor often serves as a symbol of institutional power and intransparency in which the individual is helpless and at the mercy of higher powers. Even stronger the floor metaphor is used by the director David Lynch, who stages it is as the dark side of an ‘intact’ society. As a place of indirect and unofficial communication, the floor is not only a connecting element between official rooms, but also an inner architectural market place, where information is exchanged quickly and concisely. Therefore, the exhibition stages and performs the floor as a psychological and social phenomenon. In so doing, its functional ambivalence also reflects the position of performance and new media art as peripheral species in the current art business.
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist. Often working collaboratively, his practice is concerned with histories of anti-colonialism and transcultural exchange. He was invited through 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art to perform at MOMENTUM|Sydney (2010), with “Who’s Eating Gilberto Gil”, a performance-lecture using history, popular culture, art and music, invoking the tropes of cannibalism to discuss recent ideas about race, settler–colonialism and contemporary necropolitics. M O M E N T U M is proud to invite Sivanesan back with another performance-lecture on the topics which take his research-based practice around the world.
The Anticolonials traces a thread of anti-colonial anti-politics through history and into the present, offering a patchwork reading from scraps of material culture and glimpses of contemporary mediated life. Itinerant artist Sumugan Sivanesan will present a performance-lecture developed whilst shifting between Sydney, London and Berlin.
Sivanesan’s recent activities include: What’s Eating Gilberto Gil – a performance/lecture that proposes cannibalism as a strategy to counter neo–colonial violence, Jump Ship – an endurance/performance in collaboration with acclaimed tattoo artist WT Norbert that interrogates a history of South Asians at sea; Nice Dreams – a major installation with Gustavo Böke exploring what many regard to be the first act of terrorism in Australia; The Trouble with TJ – a series of installations, videos and text, marking 5 years since the death of aboriginal teenager TJ Hickey and the subsequent “Redfern Riots” ; a major installation at Cockatoo Island for the Biennale of Sydney, 2008 as part of theweathergroup_U; Gang 2008 – Australia/Indonesia cultural exchange. He is also active with media/art gang boat-people.org. He has exhibited at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney 2010), MOMENTUM (Sydney 2010), Black and Blue Gallery (Sydney, 2009), Sydney Underground Film Festival (2009), OK Video Festival (Jakarta, Indonesia 2009), Filmer la musique (France 2009) Transit Lounge (Berlin/Australia, 2006 & 2008), Transmediale (Germany 2006), Videobrasil (Brasil 2005), Gang (Indonesia/Australia 2005), Electrofringe (Australia 2003), Abstraction Now (Vienna 2003), New Forms (Canada 2003), The International Symposium for Electronic Art (Japan 2002), d>ART (Australia 2002 & 2004), Liquid Architecture (Australia 2002 & 2004 – 05). Sivanesan lectures in experimental video at COFA (College of Fine Art at the university of New South Wales).
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
MOMENTUM brings together, for the first time, selected video works representing the trajectory of Sumugan Sivanesan’s practice. From the early works of 2003-2004, experimenting with form, sound, and the body, Sivanesan’s practice moves toward a growing fascination with the body politic, creating works increasingly documentary and political in nature, and finally moving into research, installation, and performances which take the form of lectures building stories around remarkable histories almost lost to popular consciousness. By way of this dialogue with both overt and hidden histories, Sivanesen delves into the roots of nationalism and the mythologies of identity.
In a trajectory which moves through video, sound, electronic arts, and music, by 2009 Sivanesan is engaged with documenting the cultural upheavals unraveling around him, literally, in the predominantly indigenous neighborhood of Redfern, coincidentally where MOMENTUM | Sydney took place in 2010. Sivanesan’s research into the causes of these upheavals develops into a broader interest in “the part that mythmaking has played in the history of colonialism around the globe. In performing this kind of exploration, Sivanesan’s more recent work has drawn deeply on the profound contradictions at the heart of both colonising and de-colonising processes – and the inequities, absurdities and impossibilities that crop up in the life stories of particular people who have been caught right where these contradictions are revealed at their sharpest…
For Sivanesan, such an emphasis on research and story-telling has meant an increasing use of written and spoken language as an element in his work. Yet in these pieces, the move toward using language is a complex one. On the one hand, these newer works are very much about the crucial role of language in oral and written histories as a breeding ground for myth. At the same time, however, in addressing its untrustworthy tendency toward mythmaking Sivanesan has not tried to pin language down, to force language to behave as a faithful servant and perfect transmitter of meaning in his own work. Rather, he chooses to go with it, telling stories rather than sticking to strict argumentation, jumping back and forth in time to make outlandish (but compelling) connections, letting far-flung examples rub up against each other to beget illegitimate offspring – and all the while seeming perfectly happy to fight myth on its own turf.” (Excerpted from Brendan Phelan’s essay for Last Words, Summar Hippworth and Aaron Seeto (ed) 2010, courtesy of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art).
Focusing solely on Sumugan Sivanesan’s video works, M O M E N T U M | Berlin brings together a selection of 8 videos created over the last decade. The Anticolonials performance-lecture will be documented and shown alongside the videos for the duration of the exhibition.
The Bedroom [2003]
The Bedroom re-maps footage of a flickering flourescent light to a soundtrack of construction noise. External forces penetrate domestic boundaries.
Anaesthesia [2004]
Addresses the treatment of people seeking asylum in Australia. Contained within the space of a television monitor, voices from another dimension struggle against an alarming and censoring tone.
A Scenario Of Non–simultaneous And Only Partially Overlapping Transformative Events [2004]
with Brendan Phelan
Phelan’s sporadic appearances are timed to a soundtrack of surfed radio signals, from talkback to the hits of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. As exemplifi ed by Phelan, we are thrown around the banal media that is made available to us over the airwaves.
An Equal and Opposite Force [2004]
camera Brendan Phelan
Manipulated documentation of a performance experiment. Loosely exploring (anti) social engagement, archetypes, and role playing within the public sphere. King St, Newtown.
Goebbel’s Pupils [2005]
with Adán Durán Vázquez (Galicia)
Experimental audio/video that manipulates and re-interprets the speeches of various public figures regarding the March 11 bombings in Madrid, 2004.
Commissioned by Crónica for Essays on Radio: Can I have 2 minutes of your time?
The Trouble with TJ [2009] AND Accompanying Text by Sumugan Sivanesan | The Trouble With TJ
A multi-faceted research project that recounts the circumstances surrounding the death of Aboriginal teenager Thomas “TJ” Hickey in February 2004 and the subsequent “Redfern Riots” in an inner city suburb of Sydney. www.thetroublewithtj.blogspot.com
Palm Island [2009] WITH Compilation of Essays on the Politics of Indigenous Urban Space | There Goes The Neighborhood-eBook
Edit of police footage used in the prosecution of Lex Wotton following the riots that occurred on Palm Island (Queensland) after the death in police custody of Cameron ‘Mulrunji’ Doomadgee.
A Children’s Book of War [2010] AND Accompanying Text by Sumugan Sivanesan | A Children’s Book of War
Animation
A Children’s Book of War discusses legacies of colonial violence in contemporary Australia within the context of the current War on Terror, the law and contesting sovereignties.
KUNST SALON VIDEO PART II, “WHAT IS TIME-BASED ART?”
ABOUT:
After Cameraman’s highly successful premiere at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, MOMENTUM, in association with GRANTPIRRIE Projects, is proud to bring this film back to Berlin for its first European screening. Shot last year on location in Berlin, this two-channel video installation presents a curious sequence of events that take place between a film set, a cameraman’s apartment and an artist’s studio, involving a camera lens imbued with mystical qualities. One channel of the video conveys the action of the film set and its protagonists; the other interweaves the perspective of the film being shot – the ‘film within the film’. For the viewer, the experience is one of traversing the realities of multiple screen-worlds, and registering the ‘slippages’ between them.
Australian artist Sam Smith has long been interested in the capacity of moving images to manipulate our sense of time and space and to absorb viewers into fictitious realms. This project is the first time he has shot on celluloid film in addition to video, bringing a new dimension to his exploration of cinematic conventions in an era of digital production. Sam Smith is a video and installation artist currently based in Berlin, Germany. At once an artistic critique of cinema and an exposure of the technology behind video imagery, Smith’s practice integrates sculptural form and moving image. He is interested in the capacity of film and video installation to distort our sense of time and space through the manipulation of filmic narratives. True to MOMENTUM’s mission to interrogate what we define by time-based art, Sam Smith’s layering of analog film, digital media, and physical sculpture self-referrentially and lyrically addresses the manipulations of time by both viewer and artist.
MOMENTUM marks the finnisage of the exhibition Runscape with a Salon and artist workshop with the artist/architect team behind Map Office. Visiting from Hong Kong, Map Office present the body of work leading up to Runscape (2010) and map out future directions for Runscape Berlin. Runscape is a political response to the current privatization and militarization of our cities. When running remains the only unbounded action in the urban field, Map Office scout paths through back alleys and left over spaces, revealing alternative routes to the globalized and controlled urban spaces while engaging with the perspectives and locations integral to the history of cinema. Following the fragmented course of images, a narrative unfolds the history of street fighting, from the 19th century Parisian revolutions, 1968, and up to contemporary combat. Having begin this project in Hong Kong, Map Office apply this framework to the streets of Berlin.
MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix.
This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression including drawing, photographs, video, installations, performance and literary and theoretical texts. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space.
Laurent Gutierrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he leads the Environment and Interior Design discipline and the Master of Strategic Design as well as the Master in Urban Environments Design. He is also the co-director of SD SPACE LAB. He is currently doing a PhD on the “Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta region”.
Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE. She received her Master of Architecture degree from School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and a PhD in Urbanism from University Pierre Mendes France. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
A salon evening of artful discussion and drinks, as a prelude to the show at MOMENTUM | Berlin, Andrew Rogers – Time and Space: Drawing on the Earth. The evening features a discussion with Eleanor Heartney (NY-based art critic and writer for Art in America) and Adam Nankervis (Australian, Berlin-based curator and artist) interrogating what we define as time-based art, and situating Andrew Rogers’ monumental interventions on the surface of the earth within this context.
Time and Space: Drawing on the Earth at MOMENTUM | Berlin features photographs and documentation of Andrew Rogers’ “Rhythms of Life”, the largest contemporary land art undertaking in the world, forming a chain of 47 massive stone sculptures, or Geoglyphs, around the globe. The project has involved over 6,700 people in 13 countries across seven continents. Australian sculptor Andrew Rogers employes local materials and building methods in constructing his Geoglyphs on a scale which can be seen from space, and with the intent to endure in their environments for hundreds of years.
Rogers’ sculptural practice is ultimately durational, from the length of time it takes to realize each project (upwards of 20 years in some cases), to the time they will leave their mark upon the surface of the earth, to the time it takes to view and experience structures on this scale. As a platform for time-based art, MOMENTUM considers this body of work as a departure point to interrogate what we mean by time-based practice.
MOMENTUM | Berlin invites you to TIME AND SPACE: Drawing on the Earth at our Berlin gallery from 9 September to 23 October 2011. This show is timed to coincide with the September completion in Cappadocia, Turkey of Time and Space, the largest land art sculpture park in the world and the current culmination of Andrew Rogers’ Rhythms of Life project. Located at the heart of Berlin’s Turkish community, MOMENTUM is pleased to bring to Berlin these monumental interventions in Turkey’s most beautiful landscape, and other far-reaching locations around the world. Please join us for a global journey in time and space.
THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES – REBIRTH AND APOCALYPSE IN CONTEMPORARY ART
An exhibition about art and life in the world today
Echoing the first words of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens’ famous novel set at the time of the French Revolution, this exhibition jumps forward to the present to consider how contemporary art and aesthetics use the past to express the future. The ideals of Human Rights developed during 18th Century European Enlightenment found their first political expression in the American and French Revolutions. Combining ideology with action, these initiated a continuing wave of national uprisings that still continue to form the world. Yet in spite of good intentions Human Rights have been constricted and each revolution has contained at its core the worst as well as the best of human thought and action. This exhibition reflects on utopian dreams of freedom, equality, and security that are very much at the heart of our lives today, as well as on their opposite: terror, inequity and war. It is the destructive forces of both man and nature that seem to make a more ideal life impossible.
In one way the “best” and “worst” may be understood as opposites, as part of the dialectic of rational, western materialism, in which existence is formed by both choice and circumstance. Yet, in another sense, the best and worst are embedded within the same cyclical motion in which the finest dreams are crushed by seemingly uncontrollable forces, the worm of individual greed consumes collective balance or the green shoots of hope grow out of the most sterile wasteland. Within the “worst” redemption lies dormant, while the “best” may be an illusion that harbours the seeds of its own destruction. This latter view is found in many facets of Eastern philosophy and religion.
Kyiv, the site of this exhibition, is an historic Slavic city and state located on routes of trade and migration between East, West, North and South. It absorbed Vikings from the North in the 9th Century CE and strengthened its international significance and at different times Huns, Khazars, Greeks, Mongols, Pechenegs, Scythians, Tatars and other nomadic peoples, many of whom originated in the Far East, have passed through and sometimes settled there. The diasporic heritage of the vast Eurasian landmass is reflected in the choice of works for this exhibition in which artists from the Ukraine and CIS states are shown with those from the North, South, West – and particularly the East.
As well as reflecting the culture, history and genealogy of this region, this approach refers particularly to recent cataclysmic changes in the balance of wealth and power in which the mixed legacies of the European Enlightenment have been challenged. The crisis in Socialism and the whole idea of a public space, Allied adventures in the Gulf and Afghanistan, corporate greed and the virtual collapse of capitalism, the Jasmine Revolutions in northern Africa and elsewhere, have all clearly revealed that the now challenged hegemony of the West has been fatally compromised by its unenlightened self-interest. Today world poverty has reached record levels in spite of there being the resources to alleviate it. Environmental despoliation continues although it is obviously destroying our future. The ideals of freedom, democracy and Human Rights have been cynically regarded as adjuncts of power – commodities, dispensed sparingly like aid, scattering silence or compliance in their wake. One pattern emerges: the rich get richer and no one wants to give anything up. But out of this maelstrom it is by no means clear what acceptable alternatives can be found.
The intelligence, intuition and humanity of the artists who have made the work in this exhibition is not directed towards providing solutions to such questions as these but rather gives inspiration by its example. Their critical, sardonic, sometimes humorous or iconoclastic views of the world, their ability to think and see outside the cages into which we are so often willingly confined, and their clarity and commitment to truth in art, energizes us to go a step further – to experience and analyse more keenly for ourselves the causes and effects of life, the very fountainhead of art. And this is a necessary prelude for action.
The exhibition will comprise the work of about 100 artists and be organised around four hub ideas:
• The Restless Spirit
Looks at the way in which we derive strength from beliefs, myths and concepts of the universe that are not governed by material need;
• In the Name of Order
Examines how under the pretext of rationalism power attempts to dominate culture through the creation of self-serving hierarchies;
• Flesh
Takes the human body, its appetites, desires and limitations as its central theme;
• The Unquiet Dream
Focuses on nightmares and premonitions of disaster, without which we are unable to change.
A preliminary list of artists in the exhibition will soon be published.
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Rechtsgrundlage
Die Verarbeitung der als Kommentar eingegebenen Daten erfolgt auf der Grundlage eines berechtigten Interesses (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f DSGVO).
Durch Bereitstellung der Kommentarfunktion möchten wir Ihnen eine unkomplizierte Interaktion ermöglichen. Ihre gemachten Angaben werden zum Zwecke der Bearbeitung der Anfrage sowie für mögliche Anschlussfragen gespeichert.
Empfänger
Empfänger der Daten sind ggf. Auftragsverarbeiter.
Speicherdauer
Die Daten werden gelöscht, sobald diese für den Zweck der Erhebung nicht mehr erforderlich sind. Dies ist grundsätzlich der Fall, wenn die Kommunikation mit dem Nutzer abgeschlossen ist und das Unternehmen den Umständen entnehmen kann, dass der betroffene Sachverhalt abschließend geklärt ist.
Bereitstellung vorgeschrieben oder erforderlich:
Die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten erfolgt freiwillig. Ohne die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten können wir Ihnen keinen Zugang zu unserer Kommentarfunktion gewähren.
Newsletter
Art und Zweck der Verarbeitung
Der Versand unseres Newsletters erfolgt durch den Versanddienstleisters Mailchimp (The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA). Nachdem Sie sich für unseren Newsletter registriert haben, wird Ihre E-Mailadresse an Mailchimp übermittelt. Mailchimp ist es dabei untersagt, Ihre E-Mailadresse zu verkaufen und für andere Zwecke als für den Versand von Newslettern zu nutzen. Die Datenschutzbestimmungen von Mailchimp und weitere Informationen finden Sie hier: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/#3._Privacy_for_Contacts. Die bei der Newslettereintragung erhobene E-Mailadresse wird nur an den Versanddienstleister Mailchimp weitergegeben – nicht an andere Dritte.
Ihre Daten werden ausschließlich dazu verwendet, Ihnen den abonnierten Newsletter per E-Mail zuzustellen. Die Angabe Ihres Namens erfolgt, um Sie im Newsletter persönlich ansprechen zu können und ggf. zu identifizieren, falls Sie von Ihren Rechten als Betroffener Gebrauch machen wollen.
Für den Empfang des Newsletters ist die Angabe Ihrer E-Mail-Adresse ausreichend. Bei der Anmeldung zum Bezug unseres Newsletters werden die von Ihnen angegebenen Daten ausschließlich für diesen Zweck verwendet. Abonnenten können auch über Umstände per E-Mail informiert werden, die für den Dienst oder die Registrierung relevant sind (bspw. Änderungen des Newsletterangebots oder technische Gegebenheiten).
Für eine wirksame Registrierung benötigen wir eine valide E-Mail-Adresse. Um zu überprüfen, dass eine Anmeldung tatsächlich durch den Inhaber einer E-Mail-Adresse erfolgt, setzen wir das „Double-opt-in“-Verfahren ein. Hierzu protokollieren wir die Bestellung des Newsletters, den Versand einer Bestätigungsmail und den Eingang der hiermit angeforderten Antwort. Weitere Daten werden nicht erhoben. Die Daten werden ausschließlich für den Newsletterversand verwendet und nicht an Dritte weitergegeben.
Rechtsgrundlage
Auf Grundlage Ihrer ausdrücklich erteilten Einwilligung (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. a DSGVO), übersenden wir Ihnen regelmäßig unseren Newsletter bzw. vergleichbare Informationen per E-Mail an Ihre angegebene E-Mail-Adresse.
Die Einwilligung zur Speicherung Ihrer persönlichen Daten und ihrer Nutzung für den Newsletterversand können Sie jederzeit mit Wirkung für die Zukunft widerrufen. In jedem Newsletter findet sich dazu ein entsprechender Link. Außerdem können Sie sich jederzeit auch direkt auf dieser Website abmelden oder uns Ihren Widerruf über die am Ende dieser Datenschutzhinweise angegebene Kontaktmöglichkeit mitteilen.
Empfänger
Empfänger der Daten sind ggf. Auftragsverarbeiter.
Speicherdauer
Die Daten werden in diesem Zusammenhang nur verarbeitet, solange die entsprechende Einwilligung vorliegt. Danach werden sie gelöscht.
Bereitstellung vorgeschrieben oder erforderlich
Die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten erfolgt freiwillig, allein auf Basis Ihrer Einwilligung. Ohne bestehende Einwilligung können wir Ihnen unseren Newsletter leider nicht zusenden.
Verwendung von Google Maps
Art und Zweck der Verarbeitung
Auf dieser Webseite nutzen wir das Angebot von Google Maps. Google Maps wird von Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (nachfolgend „Google“) betrieben. Dadurch können wir Ihnen interaktive Karten direkt in der Webseite anzeigen und ermöglichen Ihnen die komfortable Nutzung der Karten-Funktion.
Nähere Informationen über die Datenverarbeitung durch Google können Sie den Google-Datenschutzhinweisen entnehmen. Dort können Sie im Datenschutzcenter auch Ihre persönlichen Datenschutz-Einstellungen verändern.
Ausführliche Anleitungen zur Verwaltung der eigenen Daten im Zusammenhang mit Google-Produkten finden Sie hier.
Rechtsgrundlage
Rechtsgrundlage für die Einbindung von Google Maps und dem damit verbundenen Datentransfer zu Google ist Ihre Einwilligung (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. a DSGVO).
Empfänger
Durch den Besuch der Webseite erhält Google Informationen, dass Sie die entsprechende Unterseite unserer Webseite aufgerufen haben. Dies erfolgt unabhängig davon, ob Google ein Nutzerkonto bereitstellt, über das Sie eingeloggt sind, oder ob keine Nutzerkonto besteht. Wenn Sie bei Google eingeloggt sind, werden Ihre Daten direkt Ihrem Konto zugeordnet.
Wenn Sie die Zuordnung in Ihrem Profil bei Google nicht wünschen, müssen Sie sich vor Aktivierung des Buttons bei Google ausloggen. Google speichert Ihre Daten als Nutzungsprofile und nutzt sie für Zwecke der Werbung, Marktforschung und/oder bedarfsgerechter Gestaltung seiner Webseite. Eine solche Auswertung erfolgt insbesondere (selbst für nicht eingeloggte Nutzer) zur Erbringung bedarfsgerechter Werbung und um andere Nutzer des sozialen Netzwerks über Ihre Aktivitäten auf unserer Webseite zu informieren. Ihnen steht ein Widerspruchsrecht zu gegen die Bildung dieser Nutzerprofile, wobei Sie sich zur Ausübung dessen an Google richten müssen.
Speicherdauer
Wir erheben keine personenbezogenen Daten, durch die Einbindung von Google Maps.
Widerruf der Einwilligung
Wenn Sie nicht möchten, dass Google über unseren Internetauftritt Daten über Sie erhebt, verarbeitet oder nutzt, können Sie in Ihrem Browsereinstellungen JavaScript deaktivieren. In diesem Fall können Sie unsere Webseite jedoch nicht oder nur eingeschränkt nutzen.
Bereitstellung vorgeschrieben oder erforderlich
Die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten erfolgt freiwillig, allein auf Basis Ihrer Einwilligung. Sofern Sie den Zugriff unterbinden, kann es hierdurch zu Funktionseinschränkungen auf der Website kommen.
Eingebettete YouTube-Videos
Art und Zweck der Verarbeitung
Auf einigen unserer Webseiten betten wir YouTube-Videos ein. Betreiber der entsprechenden Plugins ist die YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA (nachfolgend „YouTube“). Wenn Sie eine Seite mit dem YouTube-Plugin besuchen, wird eine Verbindung zu Servern von YouTube hergestellt. Dabei wird YouTube mitgeteilt, welche Seiten Sie besuchen. Wenn Sie in Ihrem YouTube-Account eingeloggt sind, kann YouTube Ihr Surfverhalten Ihnen persönlich zuzuordnen. Dies verhindern Sie, indem Sie sich vorher aus Ihrem YouTube-Account ausloggen.
Wird ein YouTube-Video gestartet, setzt der Anbieter Cookies ein, die Hinweise über das Nutzerverhalten sammeln.
Weitere Informationen zu Zweck und Umfang der Datenerhebung und ihrer Verarbeitung durch YouTube erhalten Sie in den Datenschutzerklärungen des Anbieters, Dort erhalten Sie auch weitere Informationen zu Ihren diesbezüglichen Rechten und Einstellungsmöglichkeiten zum Schutze Ihrer Privatsphäre (https://policies.google.com/privacy). Google verarbeitet Ihre Daten in den USA und hat sich dem EU-US Privacy Shield unterworfen https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework.
Rechtsgrundlage
Rechtsgrundlage für die Einbindung von YouTube und dem damit verbundenen Datentransfer zu Google ist Ihre Einwilligung (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. a DSGVO).
Empfänger
Der Aufruf von YouTube löst automatisch eine Verbindung zu Google aus.
Speicherdauer und Widerruf der Einwilligung
Wer das Speichern von Cookies für das Google-Ad-Programm deaktiviert hat, wird auch beim Anschauen von YouTube-Videos mit keinen solchen Cookies rechnen müssen. YouTube legt aber auch in anderen Cookies nicht-personenbezogene Nutzungsinformationen ab. Möchten Sie dies verhindern, so müssen Sie das Speichern von Cookies im Browser blockieren.
Weitere Informationen zum Datenschutz bei „YouTube“ finden Sie in der Datenschutzerklärung des Anbieters unter: https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy
Bereitstellung vorgeschrieben oder erforderlich
Die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten erfolgt freiwillig, allein auf Basis Ihrer Einwilligung. Sofern Sie den Zugriff unterbinden, kann es hierdurch zu Funktionseinschränkungen auf der Website kommen.
ist ein Widerspruch ausgeschlossen.
Eingebettete Vimeo-Videos
Art und Zweck der Verarbeitung
Auf unserer Website betten wir Vimeo-Videos ein. Betreiber der entsprechenden Plugins ist die Vimeo, LLC, 555 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (nachfolgend „Vimeo“). Wenn Sie eine Seite mit dem Vimeo-Plugin besuchen, wird eine Verbindung zu Servern von Vimeo hergestellt. Dabei wird Vimeo mitgeteilt, welche Seiten Sie besuchen. Wenn Sie in Ihrem Vimeo-Account eingeloggt sind, kann Vimeo Ihr Surfverhalten Ihnen persönlich zuzuordnen. Dies verhindern Sie, indem Sie sich vorher aus Ihrem Vimeo-Account ausloggen.
Wird ein Vimeo-Video gestartet, setzt der Anbieter Cookies ein, die Hinweise über das Nutzerverhalten sammeln.
Weitere Informationen zu Zweck und Umfang der Datenerhebung und ihrer Verarbeitung durch Vimeo erhalten Sie in den Datenschutzerklärungen des Anbieters, Dort erhalten Sie auch weitere Informationen zu Ihren diesbezüglichen Rechten und Einstellungsmöglichkeiten zum Schutze Ihrer Privatsphäre (https://vimeo.com/privacy). Google verarbeitet Ihre Daten in den USA und hat sich dem EU-US Privacy Shield unterworfen https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework.
Rechtsgrundlage
Rechtsgrundlage für die Einbindung von Vimeo ist Ihre Einwilligung (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. a DSGVO).
Empfänger
Empfänger der Daten ist Vimeo als Auftragsverarbeiter.
Speicherdauer und Widerruf der Einwilligung
Wer das Speichern von Cookies für das Vimeo deaktiviert hat, wird auch beim Anschauen von Vimeo-Videos mit keinen solchen Cookies rechnen müssen. Vimeo legt aber auch in anderen Cookies nicht-personenbezogene Nutzungsinformationen ab. Möchten Sie dies verhindern, so müssen Sie das Speichern von Cookies im Browser blockieren.
Weitere Informationen zum Datenschutz bei „Vimeo“ finden Sie in der Datenschutzerklärung des Anbieters unter: https://vimeo.com/privacy.
Bereitstellung vorgeschrieben oder erforderlich
Die Bereitstellung Ihrer personenbezogenen Daten erfolgt freiwillig, allein auf Basis Ihrer Einwilligung. Sofern Sie den Zugriff unterbinden, kann es hierdurch zu Funktionseinschränkungen auf der Website kommen.
Änderung unserer Datenschutzbestimmungen
Wir behalten uns vor, diese Datenschutzerklärung anzupassen, damit sie stets den aktuellen rechtlichen Anforderungen entspricht oder um Änderungen unserer Leistungen in der Datenschutzerklärung umzusetzen, z.B. bei der Einführung neuer Services. Für Ihren erneuten Besuch gilt dann die neue Datenschutzerklärung.
ist ein Widerspruch ausgeschlossen.
Fragen an den Datenschutzbeauftragten
Wenn Sie Fragen zum Datenschutz haben, schreiben Sie uns bitte eine E-Mail oder wenden Sie sich direkt an die für den Datenschutz verantwortliche Person in unserer Organisation:
Rachel Rits-Volloch
Prenzlauer Allee 214, 10405 Berlin
rachel@momentumworldwide.org
Privacy Policy
Responsible party pursuant to data protection laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is
MOMENTUM gUG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Prenzlauer Allee 214
10405 Berlin
+4915202074784
info@momentumworldwide.org
Your rights as the data subject
You can exercise the following rights at any time using the contact details of our data protection officer:
– Information on your data stored by us and the processing thereof (Art. 15 GDPR),
– Rectification of inaccurate personal data (Art. 16 GDPR),
– Deletion of your data stored by us (Art. 17 GDPR),
– Restriction of the data processing, provided that we may not delete your data due to legal obligations (Art. 18 GDPR),
– Objection to the processing of your data with us (Art. 21 GDPR) and
– Data portability, provide that you have consented to the data processing or have entered into a contract with us (Art. 20 GDPR).
If you have given us consent, you may withdraw it at any time, which will remain in effect in the future.
You can contact a supervisory authority with a complaint at any time, e.g. the supervisory authority of the state of your residence or the authority that oversees us as the responsible party.
You’ll find a list of supervisory authorities (for the non-public area) with their respective addresses at: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html.
Collecting general information during a visit to our website
Type and purpose of the processing
When you access our website – i.e. if you do not register or submit information – information of a general nature will be collected automatically. This information (server log files) contains the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service provider, your IP address and the like.
It is processed in particular for the following purposes:
– Ensuring an unproblematic website connection
– Ensuring seamless use of our website
– Analysis of system security and stability as well as
– For additional administrative purposes.
We will not use your data to draw conclusions about your person. This type of information will be statistically analysed by us if necessary to optimise our website and its underlying technology.
Legal basis
The processing occurs according to Art. 6 Para. 1 (f) GDPR, based on our legitimate interest in improving the stability and functionality of our website.
Recipients
Recipients of the data may be technical service providers, who work on the operation and maintenance of our website as the processor.
Retention period
The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer required for the reason they were collected. This is generally the case, after the respective session has ended, for data that are used to make the website available.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of the aforementioned personal data is neither legally nor contractually mandatory. Without the IP address however, the service and functionality of our website are not guaranteed. Furthermore, individual services can be unavailable or limited. For this reason, an objection is excluded.
Commentary function
Type and purpose of the processing
When users leave comments on our website, the time of their creation and the username selected by the website visitor are saved. This is for our security, as we may be prosecuted for any illegal content on our website, even if it was created by users.
Legal basis
The processing of the data entered as a comment occurs on the basis of a legitimate interest (Art. 6 Para. 1 (a) GDPR).
With the commentary feature, our aim is to provide you with an uncomplicated way to interact. The information you enter will be stored for the purpose of processing the request as well as possible follow-up inquiries.
Recipients
Recipients of the data may be processors.
Retention period
The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer required for the reason they were collected. This is generally the case, when the communication with the user has ended and the company can see from the circumstances that the respective issue has been clarified.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of your personal data is voluntary. Without the provision of your personal data, we cannot guarantee you access to our commentary function.
Newsletter
Type and purpose of the processing
Our newsletter is sent by the email service provider Mailchimp (The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA). After you have registered for our newsletter, your e-mail address will be sent to Mailchimp. Mailchimp is prohibited from selling or using your e-mail address for any purpose other than sending newsletters. Mailchimp’s data protection regulations and further information can be found here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/#3._Privacy_for_Contacts. The e-mail address you use to sign up for the newsletter will only be forwarded to Mailchimp and no other third parties.
Your data will be used exclusively to send you the newsletter you subscribed for via e-mail. We request your name so that we can address you personally in the newsletter and identify you as needed should you want to exercise your rights as a data subject.
To receive the newsletter, providing your e-mail address is sufficient. When you subscribe to our newsletter, the data you provide will be used exclusively for this purpose. Subscribers can also be notified by e-mail about circumstances that are relevant to the service or registration (such as changes to the newsletter offer or technical matters).
We need a valid e-mail address to complete your registration. In order to verify that a registration is actually made by the owner of an e-mail address, we utilize the ‘double opt-in’ procedure. To this end, we log the newsletter subscription request, when a confirmation e-mail is sent and the receipt of the requested reply. Additional data is not collected. The data will be used exclusively for sending the newsletter and will not be shared with third parties.
Legal basis
Based on your express consent (Article 6 (1) a DSGVO), we will send you our newsletter on a regular basis or comparable information via e-mail to your specified e-mail address.
The consent to save and use your personal data for the newsletter may be withdrawn at any time and remain in effect in the future. Every newsletter contains a corresponding link, and you can also unsubscribe on this website at any time or inform us of your cancellation via the contact option indicated at the end of this privacy policy.
Recipients
Recipients of the data may be processors.
Retention period
Data are only processed in this context provided that the corresponding consent has been given. The data will be deleted thereafter.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of your personal data is voluntary, based solely on your consent. Unfortunately, we cannot send you our newsletter without your consent.
Using Google Maps
Type and purpose of the processing
We use Google Maps on this website. Google Maps is operated by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (hereinafter ‘Google’). This allows us to show you interactive maps directly on the website, allowing you to conveniently use the map feature.
You’ll find additional information about Google’s data processing on the Google privacy policy page, where you can also change your personal privacy settings in the data protection center. Click here for detailed instructions on how to manage your own data related to Google products.
Legal basis
Your consent is the legal basis for the integration of Google Maps and the associated data transfer to Google (Art. 6 Para. 1 (a) GDPR).
Recipients
By visiting the website, Google receives information that you have accessed the corresponding subpage of our website. This occurs regardless of whether Google provides a user account that you are logged into or if there is no user account. When you’re logged into Google, your data will be directly assigned to your account.
If you do not want this assignment in your Google profile, you must log out of Google before activating the button. Google stores your data as usage profiles and uses them for advertising, market research and/or tailor-made design of its website. Such an analysis occurs in particular (even for users who are not logged in) to provide needs-based advertising and to inform other users of the social network about your activities on our website. You have the right to object to the formation of these user profiles, but you must submit this objection to Google.
Retention period:
We do not collect any personal data via the integration of Google Maps.
Revocation of consent
If you do not want Google to collect, process or use information about you via our website, you can disable JavaScript in your browser settings. In this case, you cannot or only partially use our website.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of your personal data is voluntary, based solely on your consent. If you prevent access, this can lead to functional limitations on the website.
Embedded YouTube videos
Type and purpose of the processing
We embed YouTube videos on several of our websites. The operator of the respective plugins is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA (hereinafter ‘YouTube’). YouTube, LLC is a subsidiary of Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheater Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (hereinafter ‘Google’). When you visit a page with the YouTube plug-in, a connection to YouTube’s servers will be created, which tells YouTube which pages you visit. When you are logged into your YouTube account, YouTube can associate your browsing behaviour with you personally. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account beforehand.
If a YouTube video is started, the provider uses cookies that collect information about user behaviour.
You will find additional information on the purpose and scope of the data collection and its processing by YouTube in the provider’s privacy policy, as well as additional information on your rights and setting options for protecting your privacy (https://policies.google.com/privacy). Google processes your data in the United States of America and is subject to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield: https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework.
Legal basis
Your consent is the legal basis for the integration of YouTube and the associated data transfer to Google (Art. 6 Para. 1 (a GDPR).
Recipients
Visiting YouTube automatically triggers a connection to Google.
Retention period and revocation of consent
Everyone who has disabled the storage of cookies for the Google ad programme will not have to expect any cookies when watching YouTube videos. However, YouTube also stores non-personal usage information in other cookies. If you would like to prevent this, you must block the storage of cookies in the browser.
You’ll find additional information on data protection at ‘YouTube’ in the provider’s privacy policy at: https://policies.google.com/privacy.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of your personal data is voluntary, based solely on your consent. If you prevent access, this can lead to functional limitations on the website.
Embedded Vimeo videos
Type and purpose of the processing
Our website includes videos embedded by the video portal Vimeo. The operator of the respective plugin is Vimeo, LLC, 555 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (hereinafter ‘Vimeo’). When you visit a page with the Vimeo plug-in, a connection to Vimeo’s servers will be created, which tells Vimeo which pages you visit. When you are logged into your Vimeo account, Vimeo can associate your browsing behaviour with you personally. You can prevent this by logging out of your Vimeo account beforehand.
If a Vimeo video is started, the provider uses cookies that collect information about user behaviour.
You will find additional information on the purpose and scope of the data collection and its processing by Vimeo in the provider’s privacy policy, as well as additional information on your rights and setting options for protecting your privacy (https://vimeo.com/privacy). Vimeo processes your data in the United States of America and is subject to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield: https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework.
Legal basis
Your consent is the legal basis for the integration of Vimeo (Art. 6 Para. 1 (a GDPR).
Recipients
The recipient of the data is Vimeo as the processor.
Retention period and revocation of consents
Everyone who has disabled the storage of cookies for Vimeo will not have to expect any cookies when watching Vimeo videos. However, Vimeo also stores non-personal usage information in other cookies. If you would like to prevent this, you must block the storage of cookies in the browser.
You’ll find additional information on Vimeo’s data protection in the provider’s privacy policy at: https://vimeo.com/privacy.
Mandatory or required provision
The provision of your personal data is voluntary, based solely on your consent. If you prevent access, this can lead to functional limitations on the website.
Revision of our privacy policy
We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy so that it always complies with current legal requirements or to implement changes to our services in the privacy policy, e.g. when introducing new services. Your next visit will be subject to the new privacy policy.
Questions for the data protection officer
If you have any questions pertaining to data protection, please send us an e-mail or contact the person responsible for data protection in our organization:
Rachel Rits-Volloch
Prenzlauer Allee 214, 10405 Berlin
rachel@momentumworldwide.org
MOMENTUM is a non-profit platform for time-based art, active worldwide, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center since 2011. MOMENTUM was founded in Australia as a parallel event to the 17 Biennale of Sydney in 2010. Following the inaugural event in Australia, the MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 with an initial donation of 12 video works by 10 artists exhibited at MOMENTUM Sydney. Since then, the Collection has grown to encompass over 150 outstanding artworks by 56 artists from 28 countries worldwide. Representing a diversity of media – video, performance, photography, painting, collage, and text – the MOMENTUM Collection ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists from Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the UK, and the US.
The ongoing growth of the Collection draws upon the breadth of MOMENTUM’s programming. Since its inception, MOMENTUM has presented over 250 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, through a program composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, Performance programs, and Education events. Positioned as both a local and global platform, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. Driving MOMENTUM’s program and the development of the Collection is the search for innovative answers to the question ‘What is time-based art?’. By enabling Exhibition, Discussion, Research, Creation, and Exchange, MOMENTUM is a platform which challenges 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 creates a Collection of contemporary art focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, exploring how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change – a question increasingly relevant in our post-pandemic times.
READ HERE THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION CATALOGUE
ART from ELSEWHERE – The MOMENTUM Collection, Berlin
MOMENTUM enters its second decade in a post-pandemic world radically altered in numerous ways, and yet remarkably unchanged when it comes to aspects of human needs and desires, and our impact upon the planet and one another. In this post-pandemic era of travel restrictions, Art from Elsewhere reframes the MOMENTUM Collection as a selection of works celebrating otherness – a way of seeing the world without travelling. Moving images move us, and artworks serve as windows onto the world. As we now emerge carefully after long periods of isolation, and learn how to negotiate the new realities of a post-pandemic world, it becomes more important than ever to have such windows through which to gaze. In these uncertain times, they remind us that, for all our differences, we are all in this together. The Berlin-based MOMENTUM Collection features artwork by 56 international artists as diverse as Berlin itself. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin is a city of mobile people and moving images, where art and artists alike are often from elsewhere. The works comprising the MOMENTUM Collection focus on global issues, equally relevant to us all, no matter where we live or where we have come from. They reflect on the social and environmental repercussions of globalization and its impact on the transformation of cultural identities; they interrogate issues of gender, inequality, and poverty; they scrutinize the environmental traumas we inflict on our planet and its creatures; and they ponder the (un)quiet poetry, conflicts, and beauty of how we must live from day to day.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS FEATURING THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION
ARTISTS! Needing a change of scene in a new city, or simply wanting to move neighborhoods in your own? We can help you with STUDIO SWAP!
MOMENTUM invites artists from all cities across the globe, seeking new studios and wanting to swap theirs, to list and share details of their studios and when they will be available. Artists and curators are invited to connect and share resources, to swap studios through a barter system. Offering this service free of charge, MOMENTUM aims to bridge international art communities, encouraging a breadth of experience across cultures by making it easy to exchange studios.
So get online, decide where you want to go, and start posting!
Studio Swap is an online Forum for artists, curators, and art professionals working internationally. Accessible free of charge via this website, MOMENTUM Studio Swap becomes a vehicle for dialogue and exploration, furthering the exchange not only of studios, but of ideas and opportunities as well across national and institutional borders. Nurturing the sharing of resources by providing links and communications between international networks of artists, MOMENTUM Studio Swap is an artist-run Forum fostering exploration, exchange, education, and collaboration.
Drawing on our wide network of art professionals, for each show at MOMENTUM, we invite a select group of curators and directors of the world’s major art institutions, along with artists, writers, and academics to discuss the artists showcased at MOMENTUM, and to address the evolving question of what is time-based art.
Held in the intimate setting of home, we aim to revive the tradition of the 19th century Salon, with an atmosphere of exhibition and open discussion, with a view to broadcasting the proceedings online, and creating an archive which will enable public access to these otherwise private events. This archive, along with our other online resources, provides an additional educational component to our program.
MISSING LINK is an exhibition showcasing new work by 4 international artists in the MOMENTUM Collection. Coming from Australia, Puerto Rico, Germany, and Finland, the link between the 4 artists in this exhibition is the Nordic landscape. MISSING LINK is an exhibition of artist’s expeditions, both to and from the far north: an exploration of the environmental impact of human hubris.
Traveling to Norway and the Arctic, the white stage few of us are privileged to see, MISSING LINK shares stories woven in ice, testaments of a very real, very new and ever changing environment. The scenic vistas and harsh realities the artists find there tell of a brave new world and remind us all of the heavy human ties we all hold with this fragile and irreplaceable part of the world. And traveling from Finland to Shanghai, the artist unearths a story of architectonic memories in the urban landscape. On the site of China’s historical revision, urban upheaval, and the endless drive to modernity, the artist records a vista reminiscent of the colours and rhythms of the Nordic landscape.
MISSING LINK
MISSING LINK is the void in our knowledge which needs to be filled.
MISSING LINK is action.
MISSING LINK is inaction of the world general political systems to communicate vital information about how to deal with a world in the throes of climate crisis,
MISSING LINK is the space where we can make a shift; to engage creativity to address the causes of climate change and our technocratic society’s addiction to fossil fuels.
MISSING LINK is the place where we can inspire one to think differently about the natural system and world we inhabit.
MISSING LINK is a space in MOMENTUM where we can all take part in an imaginative, insightful and meaningful dialogue to conjure new and resilient futures.
MISSING LINK is a story woven in ice far in the North that is shrouded in secrecy and corruption
MISSING LINK is a group of people dealing with a cultural response to our surroundings
MISSING LINK is the silence of the break in a chain of climatic events which effect us all
MISSING LINK is the term for the necessary condition the artist has to find themselves in, in order to be able to investigate. It is a proposition to the artist. If nothing would be missing, one wouldn’t have to make art.
Born in 1978 in Puerto Rico, Osvaldo Budet graduated with a Bachelors in Painting from Escuela de Arts Plasticas, then earning a Masters of Fine Arts in the US. Coming from a colony (Puerto Rico) in Post-Colonial times has given Osvaldo a unique perspective on the relationship between authorities and the powerless. This new body of work explores what happens when Colonization is used to impose control on the resources and land which belong to nobody or everybody. Osvaldo sees his role as art maker as a colonizing force, and coupled with his fascination for political conflict, this drives his documentary film practice. It is the desire to create and inhabit ‘truthful’ storytelling which compels him most. These worlds of politics and poetics, of fiction and truth are tightly intertwined. During Osvaldo’s recent artist in residence high in the Arctic circle on the Archipelago of Svalbard with the the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, he began to explore the notion of the expedition as an interrogation of the scientific, social and economic realities which lead to climate disruption as nations simultaneously explore and exploit this landscape. Osvaldo’s recent film, paintings and photographs examine this landscape of tundra and ice, a place which belongs to nobody, a land colonized by many and a fragile region which until now has been keeping this world in balance. Works shown courtesy of Walter OTero Contemporary Art (Puerto Rico).
Born in 1982, Australian artist Shohan Trescott graduated with a degree in painting from the National Art School in Sydney, subsequently moving to Leipzig and Berlin. Her work focuses on how humans create, interact with and impact the material and cultural landscapes we inhabit. She uses painting as a medium of communication of desires to explore the nature of the appearance of things and the capacities of vision between narrative and abstraction. Here Shonah questions beauty and terror; hope and disaster; serenity and unease; and what lies beneath. Her intention through painting is to highlight contradictions and connections, continuities and breaks. The tactile and rich quality of the surfaces she creates are often a contradictory experience to the harsh reality of the stories she seeks to evoke. In 2012 Shonah was invited by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Researchas as Artist in residence to 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. Works shown courtesy of Eigen + Art (Berlin/Leipzig).
Born in Helsinki in 1978, Hannu Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School with a Masters in Photography. He has works in many museums and private collections. Nanjing Grand Theatre (2012) explores the memory inherited in an architectonic site. The Nanjing Grand Theatre, 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. A decade ago, this building was moved 70 meters from its original location. 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. Work shown courtesy of Gallery Taik (Berlin / Helsinki).
Mariana Hahn was born in the mid 1980s in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany. She did Theatre Studies at ETI in Berlin, and has a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins in London. The work “burn my love, burn” (2013) is a series of stills, artifacts, and a video artwork created from the footage collected during a live performance enacted outside of Oslo. Inscribing text upon a shroud which burns on the frozen ice, the artist consumes and covers herself with the ashes of her words. “burn my love, burn” positions the body as the carrier of historical signature. 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, acting as the monument, the burning of which can become part of an organic form in motion. 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.
Since 2023, LAGOS and MOMENTUM have initiated a series of exchanges between our institutions which enable the mobility and visibility of the artistic communities of Mexico City and Berlin through our Artist-in-Residence Programs in both cities. Starting in 2024, we open the applications to international artists and curators, regardless of their nationality or where they are based. The locations of the Residencies are in Berlin at MOMENTUM-LAGOS in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, or at LAGOS in Mexico City.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
Our Residency Program is open to artists and curators, working in any medium (visual, sound, digital or performance art).
With a choice of locations between two of the most vibrant international hubs for contemporary art – Berlin and Mexico City – our Residency Program is aimed at a site-specific engagement with each city. Project proposals will be assessed on the basis of their sociopolitical relevance, and their relation between identity and community.
The Residencies are dedicated to the professional development, art production and international networking of our Artists-in-Residence in both cities.
MOMENTUM-LAGOS hosts artists and curators for a minimum period of 1 month, though other timeframes will be considered.
With the support of the curatorial teams of MOMENTUM and LAGOS, artists and curators are given individual guidance and support with the research and development of their work.
Drawing on the extensive networks of both institutions in Berlin and Mexico City, the Residency arranges studio, gallery and museum visits, and other events to connect art professionals who mutually benefit from cooperation and exchange.
The residency culminates in a public event such as an Open Studio, Presentation, Artist Talk, Workshop or Performance. The Residency is committed to documenting its activities, emphasizing the importance of process-based research, allowing participants to showcase their work during development and to maintain a legacy of their work on our online platforms.
LAGOS is an art studio and residency space in Mexico City dedicated to the production and development of contemporary art projects and their exhibition. LAGOS is an organization that supports artists and promotes the intersection of art professionals. Lagos seeks to support artists at crucial moments in their careers in three ways: by offering workspace, facilitating collaborations with specialists in various disciplines, and promoting new audiences through a diverse program that includes open studios and exhibitions. Lagos is open to artists, curators, writers, editors and cultural agents, offering them the opportunity to insert themselves in the creative panorama of Mexico City; as well as proposals, collaborations and projects that broaden the discussion of current problems addressed via contemporary art.
The MOMENTUM Residency is dedicated to artistic research into time and temporality in visual language. Open to artists, curators, filmmakers, and writers working in a variety of media and practices, from anywhere in the world. MOMENTUM AiR is a process-based residency designed to facilitate research as well as production of new work, while providing a framework for building professional networks and cooperations within Berlin’s thriving art community.
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’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Archive, an Education Archive, and a growing Collection. Positioned as both a local and global platform, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. MOMENTUM is dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists with a program focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, continuously seeking innovative answers to the question ‘What is time-based art?’.
MOMENTUM AiR is designed to further the mission of MOMENTUM as a global platform for time-based art, focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices. Visual languages will 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. By enabling Research, Creation, Discussion, Exchange and Exhibition, MOMENTUM AiR provides a platform and a network in which artists and curators can develop their practice, further their knowledge, innovate and experiment, within a respected international professional framework.
MOMENTUM AiR hosts artists and curators for a suggested period of 1 – 3 months, though other timeframes will be considered. Each Residency is individually programmed, and therefore the duration is flexible. With weekly supervision by the Residency Coordinator, and with the support of MOMENTUM’s curatorial team, artists/curators 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 studio and gallery visits, and other events in order to connect art professionals who mutually benefit from cooperation and exchange. The Residency culminates in a public event such as an Open Studio Presentation, Artist Talk, Workshop, Performance, or Kunst Salon. The Residency is committed to documenting its activities, emphasizing the importance of process-based research, allowing AiR participants to showcase their work during development and to maintain a lasting legacy of their work on our online platform and Education Archive.
Situated in Berlin, the ‘Art Capital of Europe’, The MOMENTUM Residency is located in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, with over 20 institutions and facilities for visual and performing arts. MOMENTUM AiR Residents have access to the facilities in the building, including a media lab, film and photography studios, sound and animation studios, a printing workshop featuring every form of print media, dance studios, theaters, a music school, and other facilities.
Access to film, media, print, and sculpture workshops, or other production facilities can be arranged, as required for our artists’s residency projects.
Iván Buenader (AR) – Nezaket Ekici (TR/DE) – Doug Fishbone (US/UK) – Hannu Karjalainen (FI) – Shahar Marcus (IL) – Christian Niccoli (IT) – Nina E. Schönefeld (DE)
Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch & Emilio Rapanà
When we made the title for this exhibition, we had no idea just how sadly prophetic it would prove. STATES of EMERGENCY takes place amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of war closer to home than any of us could previously imagine. Our hearts go out to our friends, families, and colleagues in Ukraine and all those in Russia hoping for peace, who never wanted this tragic war. During these turbulent times, MOMENTUM extends STATES of EMERGENCY until peace is restored in the Ukraine.
Focusing on artists of the MOMENTUM Collection, States of Emergency compiles their responses to a decade of global environmental and political crisis: particularly to the current pandemic emergency which has transformed the lives of many millions of people. States of Emergency forms the second part of our Corona Program begun with COVIDecameron, an online exhibition of video art curated during the first pandemic lockdown, recontextualising existing works in the MOMENTUM Collection. States of Emergency, however, focuses on new work and new directions in artistic practice since the start of the pandemic, reflecting directly on the far-ranging impacts of COVID-19 and its aftermath from socio-economic, environmental, political, global, and personal points of view.
In an era of seemingly endless calamities – pandemics, global warming, political upheavals – life is becoming increasingly cinematic, as the fictions of the screen blur into the realities of the daily news. Disaster scenarios of disease, natural catastrophe, rising sea levels, terrorist attacks, threats of war; is it Hollywood or CNN? Is art mirroring life or vise versa While many struggle to survive in these pandemic times, 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, offers and updates; confronted with a barrage of news – real, fake, and somewhere in between. (Mis)information flows as virally as disease. And, confined during the recent lockdowns and travel restrictions, we are required to blur the line between real space and cyberspace, living increasingly virtual lives. COVID-19 has affected all of us, worldwide. As we learn how to navigate this new pandemic reality amidst the chaos of (mis)information and mixed messages, we turn to one another for guidance. Artists – as cultural first-responders – are at the forefront of translating the felt experience of this time of emergency into visual languages, making sense of our precarious times. States of Emergency asks: What will emerge out of this global emergency?; While doctors and scientists race to heal our bodies, what will it take to heal the cultural aftermath of COVID-19?; What is the role of the artist in a state of emergency?
Together Birds & Bicycles is a platform initiated in 2021 as a cooperation between a dozen partners in Germany, Poland, and Russia, designed to address ideas of freedom and open boarders – notions of which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is making a travesty. Because there are so many in Russia who never supported this, such a platform for freedom is needed now more than ever, if there is to be hope of a peaceful resolution.
The factory of metaphors which is Birds & Bicycles Berlin, TAKING FLIGHT on IkonoTV, assembles the video work of 8 artists from Hungary, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Russia. Referring to the duality of the term flight as both an airborne means of travel and an escape from crisis, the artists in this exhibition address the metaphor of flight as a symbol for freedom in various forms. While AES+F re-imagine the airport as a modern-day Purgatory, Almagul Menlibayeva gazes out at space as the next border we are racing to cross. And while David Szauder surrealistically re-animates his grandfather’s Super 8 footage from the Eastern Bloc of the 60’s-80’s, Shaarbek Amankul captures the historic moment of Lenin in flight, suspended between a past of failed ideologies, and an uncertain future. In a world of global humanitarian, ecological, and medical disaster, we may often feel as if we are in free-fall. Dominik Lejman’s skydivers undulating in the vastness of space come to resemble at one moment the geometric shapes of gothic church architecture, and in the next the biological forms of chromosomes; continually switching between the spiritual and the scientific origins of life. The Russian exclamation “balagan” – describing, with celebratory gusto, a farce, a fine mess, the most unholy of cock-ups – is deployed by Marina Belikova to present a critical challenge to the chaos and misrule of our times. Hajnal Németh’s operatic rendition of quotations from failed leaders presents a sadly timeless portrait of an age when the irresponsibility and ignorance of leaders grows undiminished. And Zuzanna Janin’s boxing ballet is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues.
Committed to supporting artists and artistic innovation, MOMENTUM works with both local and global artists, from students to superstars. With an ongoing exhibition program active both in Berlin and abroad, in collaboration with museums and institutions in our global network, MOMENTUM brings to Berlin work by international artists that would not otherwise have been seen here, and ensures an international audience for exceptional local artists. MOMENTUM plays an active role in the Berlin art community and works with exceptional Berlin-based artists to enable them to make new work for a global audience. MOMENTUM generates exchange, sharing resources, and broadening audiences by providing links and communications between international networks of artists and institutions.
MOMENTUM’s major exhibitions include MOMENTUM Sydney (2010, Sydney Australia); A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images (2011, MOMENTUM Berlin); (the Works On Paper Performance Series (2013, 2014, 2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Thresholds (2013, Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin; 2014, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland); The Best of Times, the Worst of Times Revisited (2014, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, China); PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai (2014, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Fragments of Empires (2014-2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places (2015, MOMENTUM / Külhaus, / Stiftung Brandenburger Tor at Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin); Ganz Grosses Kino (2016, Kino Internationale, Berlin); HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Landscapes of Loss (2017, Ministry of Environment, Berlin); Focus Kazakhstan: Bread & Roses (2018, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Bonum et Malum (2019, Villa Erxleben, Berlin); Shiryaevo Biennale: Central Russian Zen (2019, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Water(Proof) (2019, MOMENTUM, Berlin); COVIDecameron: 19 Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection (2020, MOMENTUM Online; 2021 IkonoTV); amongst many others. Please follow the links on the icons at the top of this page to see Past, Current, and Upcoming Exhibitions.
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’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, complete Archives of the Performance Program and Education Program, and a growing Collection.
Positioned as both a local and global platform, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. Working on a model of international partnerships and cooperations, MOMENTUM supports artists and artistic innovation, bringing to Berlin work by international artists that would not otherwise have been seen there, and ensuring an international audience for exceptional local artists. The key ideas driving MOMENTUM are: Cooperation, Exchange, Education, Innovation, and Inspiration.
MOMENTUM continuously seeks innovative answers to the question ‘What is time-based art?’. 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. 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, exploring how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change – a question increasingly relevant in our post-pandemic times.
Having been founded by Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch in Australia as a parallel event to the 17 Biennale of Sydney in May 2010, MOMENTUM moved to Berlin to a permanent space in the iconic Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center in January 2011. Since its inception, MOMENTUM has presented over 250 exhibitions, education events, and artist residencies worldwide, showing close to 700 artists. MOMENTUM is also proud to feature the works of 56 international artists in the MOMENTUM Collection, in addition to 50 works comprising MOMENTUM’s Performance Archive.
The MOMENTUM gallery in Berlin is located in an extraordinary building dating back to the 1840’s, originally built as a hospital and school for nurses. The Kunstquartier Bethanien has been a dedicated art center over 40 years. We share the Kunstquartier Bethanien with other leading contemporary art initiatives such as Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Tokyo Wondersite, international artist ateliers, art publications, theater companies, a dance company, a music school, a dance performance media library, an outdoor cinema, and a restaurant with a concert program. We coordinate our openings and share guest lists with the other institutions in the building, to generate a dedicated audience. The MOMENTUM gallery within the Kunstquartier Bethanien is an attractive 76 sq meter versatile use space, with 4.5 meter high ceilings. The space adapts well to various types of installation, including both solo and group shows, and is used for exhibitions, artist studios, and as an office for project development. Additional spaces, such as Studio One, Studio Two, and Projectraum, are available to rent within the Kustquartier Bethanien should larger exhibition or event spaces be needed.
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 subsequently moved to Berlin’s iconic Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center in January 2011, with an on-going program supporting its mission as a non-profit platform for Time-Based Art. As the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, Rachel-Rits Volloch has curated and produced over 250 exhibitions, artist residencies, education events, and a diversity of related programming worldwide, showing close to 700 artists, since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010. 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.
EMILIO RAPANÀ – Co-Director
Emilio Rapanà holds undergraduate and Masters degrees in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano. After one year in the Erasmus program at the Faculty of Architecture, Oporto University (FAUP), Rapanà moved to Rio de Janeiro to continue his studies at the Federal University, Faculty of Civil Engineering (UFRJ). In Brasil, Rapanà worked at MPU, Metrópolis Projectos Urbános, one of the leading architecture and urban design offices focusing on complex and multi-disciplinary development projects in Rio’s favelas. Rapanà earned his Masters degree in Milan in 2010 with a thesis titled “Project for the growth of a favela. A flexible housing unit in Cidade de Deus, Rio de Janeiro“. Rapanà has worked at MOMENTUM since early 2013, building up his position to Head of Operations & Design, and as Co-Director since 2016. In his 10-year tenure at MOMENTUM he has overseen many international contemporary art projects, working closely with renowed artists, curators, galleries, museums and foundations. Concurrently Emilio Rapanà sits on th Board of Peninsula, the association of Italian artists and curators based in Berlin. Emilio Rapanà lives and works in Berlin.
Cassandra Bird
Director of Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Co-Director of MOMENTUM 2011-2013
Thomas Eller
Artist, Curator, Writer, former Director of Berlin’s Temporare Kunsthalle
David Elliott
Curator, Writer, Art Historian, International Museum Director
Jeni Fulton
Art Basel, Executive Editor, Content & Communications
Erika Hoffmann
Director of Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin
Mirkku Kullberg
Marketing Director, Kämp Group, former CEO, Artek Design, Finland
Elizabeth Markevitch
Founder and CEO of IkonoTV
Christopher Moore
Founder and Publisher of Randian China
Irina Nikolic de Jacinto
The World Bank, Global Health Specialist
Dov Rubinstein
Former Secretary General, Holocaust Claims Resolution Tribunal, Zurich
Ruth Ur
Yad Vashem, Director for German-speaking Countries
Participating Artists:Lida Abdul, Ai-Hz, Alice Anderson, Sarah Beddington, Stella Brennan, Eric Bridgeman, Yves Caro, Nezaket Ekici, Nathan Garnett, Stephane Graff, Anne Graham, James P Graham, Tim Gruchy, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Kolkoz, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Hye Rim Lee, Tracey Moffat, TV Moore, Tim Noble, Tatsumi Orimoto, portable [k]ommunity, Wang Qingsong, Martin Sexton, Sumugan Sivanesan, Serge Spitzer, Grant Stevens, Mieko Suzuki, Hiroki Tsukuda, Unit 7 (Jason Wing, Ash Wing, Vincent O’Connor, Vaughan O’Connor, Mark Brown, Sophia Kouyoumdjian, Khaled Sabsabi, Alex Kiers), Sue Webster
Symposium Speakers:Thomas Berghuis, Anthony Bond, Geoffrey Cassidy, Oron Catts, John Clark, Philippe Codognet, Rhana Devenport, Stuart Evans, Barbara Flynn, Tim Gruchy, Ian Howard, John Kaldor, Zhang Lansheng, Janet Laurence, Jay Levenson, Tim Marlow, Charles Merewether, Djon Mundine, Mark Nash, James Putnam, Wang Qingsong, Dick Quan, Stanislav Roudavski, Aaron Seeto, Serge Spitzer, Anita Taylor, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Paul Thomas, Vladimir Volloch, Joni Waka, Anna Waldmann, Mark Waugh
MOMENTUM was founded in Sydney in 2010 by Rachel Rits-Volloch to support artists, galleries, and institutions working with time-based practices, and to push through boundaries in professional practice by creating an open forum for exhibition, performance, discussion, and exchange. MOMENTUM Sydney took the form of a 4-day Event comprised of an Exhibition of 6 leading international Galleries; 5 Curated Programs from Japan, England, and Australia; 6 Performances; a Micro-Residency for 6 local artists to create new work; and a Symposium questioning established practices across commercial and non-commercial institutions and the artists, professionals, and collectors who are in a position to reinvent conventional practice for an increasingly digital age. Altogether showcasing 32 international artists alongside 32 of the world’s leading art professionals participating in the Symposium, MOMENTUM Sydney took place concurrently with the opening of the 17th Biennale of Sydney in 2010.
MOMENTUM’s independent publishing branch works hand in hand with our commitment to documentation, archiving, and education. Where funding permits, MOMENTUM produces catalogues for each exhibition, published either in print or as E-catalogues. MOMENTUM also maintains catalogues of our growing Collection and Performance Archive.
Committed to supporting artists and artistic innovation, MOMENTUM works with both local and global artists, from students to superstars. With an ongoing exhibition program active both in Berlin and abroad, in collaboration with museums and institutions in our global network, MOMENTUM brings to Berlin work by international artists that would not otherwise have been seen here, and ensures an international audience for exceptional local artists. MOMENTUM plays an active role in the Berlin art community and works with exceptional Berlin-based artists to enable them to make new work for a global audience. MOMENTUM generates exchange, sharing resources, and broadening audiences by providing links and communications between international networks of artists and institutions.
MOMENTUM’s major exhibitions include MOMENTUM Sydney (2010, Sydney Australia); A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images (2011, MOMENTUM Berlin); (the Works On Paper Performance Series (2013, 2014, 2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Thresholds (2013, Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin; 2014, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland); The Best of Times, the Worst of Times Revisited (2014, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, China); PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai (2014, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Fragments of Empires (2014-2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places (2015, MOMENTUM / Külhaus, / Stiftung Brandenburger Tor at Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin); Ganz Grosses Kino (2016, Kino Internationale, Berlin); HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Landscapes of Loss (2017, Ministry of Environment, Berlin); Focus Kazakhstan: Bread & Roses (2018, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Bonum et Malum (2019, Villa Erxleben, Berlin); Shiryaevo Biennale: Central Russian Zen (2019, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Water(Proof) (2019, MOMENTUM, Berlin); COVIDecameron: 19 Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection (2020, MOMENTUM Online; 2021 IkonoTV); mutopia 5 (2020, Australian Embassy, Berlin); Points of Resistance 1-5 (2021, 2022, 2023, Zionskirche, Berlin); ART from ELSEWHERE (2020, Kulturforum, Ansbach, Germany); TAKING FLIGHT: BIrds & Bicycles (2021, MOMENTUM, Berlin); ART from ELSEWHERE: Samarkand (2021, Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art, Uzbekistan); STATES of EMERGENCY (2021-22, MOMENTUM, Berlin); ART from ELSEWHERE: Danube Dialogues (2022, European Capital of Culture 2022, Novi Sad, Serbia); ART from ELSEWHERE: Mexico City (2023, Lagos, Mexico City Art Week); amongst many others.
MOMENTUM’s Artist-in-Residence program is designed to further the mission of MOMENTUM as a global platform for time-based art, focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices. MOMENTUM AiR is dedicated to artistic research into time and temporality in visual language. Open to artists working in a variety of media and practices, MOMENTUM AiR is a process-based residency designed to facilitate research as much as production of new work, while providing a framework for building professional networks and cooperations within Berlin’s thriving art community.
Starting in 2023 MOMENTUM Berlin initiates n Artist Residency Exchange with LAGOS in Mexico City. LAGOS Berlin opens its doors in the MOMENTUM space in the Kunstquartier Bethanien
to act as a studio and exhibition space for Artists-in-Residence from Mexico. And MOMENTUM offers the possibility for Residences at LAGOS, Mexico City.
With this initiative for video art in public space, MOMENTUM turns the museum and gallery inside out by bringing museum quality art onto the streets for all to see. MOMENTUM_InsideOut has taken place across multiple locations in Berlin, as well as internationally, making video art and performance widely accessible to new audiences and building curiosity and public interest in contemporary art.
Featuring:aaajiao, AES+F, Shaarbek Amankul, Inna Artemova, Lutz Becker, Marina Belikova, Eric Bridgeman, Osvaldo Budet, Iván Buenader, Stefano Cagol, Claudia Chaseling, Margret Eicher, Nezaket Ekici, Thomas Eller, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Doug Fishbone, Máximo González, James P Graham, Mariana Hahn, Zuzanna Janin, Christian Jankowski, Jarik Jongman, Gülsün Karamustafa, Mark Karasick, Hannu Karjalainen, Ola Kolehmainen, David Krippendorff, Janet Laurence, Hye Rim Lee, Gabriele Leidloff, Zhenhua Li, Sarah Lüdemann, Map Office, Shahar Marcus, Milovan Destil Marković, Kate McMillan, David Medalla, Almagul Menlibayeva, Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Christian Niccoli, Kirsten Palz, Fiona Pardington, Anxiong Qiu, Nina E. Schönefeld, Caroline Shepard, Martin Sexton, Sumugan Sivanesan, Saule Suleimenova, David Szauder, Shonah Trescott, Mariana Vassileva, Shingo Yoshida, Vadim Zakharov
The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists who’s work was shown at MOMENTUM’S inaugural event, 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. Ten years later, the MOMENTUM Collection has expanded from its original roster of 10 to 56 artists. The Collection represents a cross-section of over 150 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 28 countries worldwide: Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the UK, and the US. 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 through our online platform, as traveling exhibitions, and through educational initiatives such as the year-long program Time_Art_Impact Dialogues with Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai.
Featuring:Marina Belikova, Richard Berger, Andreas Blank, Adrian Brun, Jacobus Capone, Isaac Chong Wai, Clark Beaumont (Sarah Clark & Nicole Beaumont), Joyce Clay, Alysha Creighton, Paul Darius, Marcus Doering, Catherine Duquette, Nezaket Ekici, Thomas Eller, Daniel Dodd Ellis, Amir Fattal, ƒƒ Collective, Sasha Frolova, Zeno Gries, MNM (Christian Graupner, Mieko Suzuki & Ming Poon), Mariana Hahn, Emi Haryiama, Kate Hers, Jia, Peter Kirn, Olya Kroytor, Szilvia Lednitzky, Ma Li, Sarah Lüdemann, Mad For Real (Cai Yuan & Jian Jun Xi), David Medalla, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Mariana Moreira, Adam Nankervis, Noise Canteen, Tatsumi Orimoto, Melisa Palacio Lopez, Kirsten Palz, Sasha Pirogova, Qiu Anxiong, Selma Selman, Maximilian Magnus Schmidbauer, Sumugan Sivanesan, Yulia Startsev, Leonid Tishkov, Unit 7, Zhou Xiaohu, ZIP Group
MOMENTUM’s focus on time-based generates an active performance program. MOMENTUM is committed to documenting and archiving all the performances we commission, produce, and host. This archive is made available to the public as an educational resource and on our online platform. The Performance Archive, consisting of nearly 50 artworks to date, also forms a resource for international exhibitions of MOMENTUM’s Collection and Education resources.
MOMENTUM TALKS: Education and discussion are a key aspect of MOMENTUM’s programming. Each Exhibition and Artist Residency at MOMENTUM is accompanied by a discursive program of Artist Talks, Symposia, Panel Discussions, Workshops or Kunst Salon events, which bring selected art professionals together with the general public to discuss the show and its broader implications. All discursive programming is documented on video and, along with the MOMENTUM Collection and Performance Archive, are archived and made available on our website and social media as an educational resource. MOMENTUM is committed to creating an educational exchange between the general public, cultural institutions, and the international art community by actively developing programming which shares its educational resources with the public in Berlin and beyond.
MOMENTUM ist eine Non-Profit-Plattform für zeitbasierte Kunst mit Sitz im Berliner Kunstquartier Bethanien und seit 2010 weltweit aktiv ist. Das Programm von MOMENTUM besteht aus lokalen und internationalen Ausstellungen, Künstler- und Kuratorenresidenzen, Initiativen für Videokunst in öffentlichen Räumen, einem Kunstvermittlungsprogramm und Archiv, sowie einer Sammlung und einer Leistungsarchiv.
Durch die Bereitstellung von Ausstellungen, Diskussionen, Forschung, Produktion, Sammlung und Austausch, ein Schwerpunktthema von MOMENTUM war immer schon die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von zeitbasierter Kunst zur Digitalisierung unserer Gesellschaften. In Zeiten der Pandemie, in denen das globale Rennen um einen Impfstoff mit einem Wettlauf der Innovationen in der digitalen Kommunikationstechnolgie einhergeht, gewinnt diese Frage noch einmal an Relevanz. Visuelle Sprachen entwickeln sich stets im Einklang mit den Technologien, in denen sie sich artikulieren – und es liegt an der bildenden Kunst, die Grenzen dieser Sprachen auszuloten und zu erweitern.
Als eine lokale und globale Plattform positioniert, dient MOMENTUM als Brücke, die Künstler miteinander verbindet, unabhängig von institutionellen und nationalen Grenzen. Mit seinem Modell internationaler Partnerschaften und Kooperationen unterstützt MOMENTUM Künstler indem sie Arbeiten Berliner und internationaler Künstler zeigt, die sonst hier nicht zu sehen wären. Die konzeptuellen Grundpfeiler von MOMENTUM sind: Kooperation, Austausch, Bildung, Innovation und Inspiration. MOMENTUM ist stets auf der Suche nach innovativen Antworten auf die Frage “Was ist zeitbasierte Kunst?”.
Nachdem MOMENTUM im Mai 2010 von Rachel Rits-Volloch in Australien als Parallelveranstaltung zur 17 Biennale von Sydney gegründet worden war, zog MOMENTUM im Januar 2011 nach Berlin, um sich im Kunstquartier Bethanien niederzulassen. Seit seiner Gründung hat MOMENTUM über 200 Ausstellungen, künstlerischer Forschungsresidenzen, Kunstvermittlungsprogrammen und Leistungsprogrammen präsentiert, mit mehre als 600 Künstlern.
Scroll down to see the visual Timeline of MOMENTUM’s activities since 2010:
Australian artist Sam Smith has long been interested in the capacity of moving images to manipulate our sense of time and space and to absorb viewers into fictitious realms. This project is the first time he has shot on celluloid film in addition to video, bringing a new dimension to his exploration of cinematic conventions in an era of digital production. Sam Smith is a video and installation artist currently based in Berlin, Germany.
At once an artistic critique of cinema and an exposure of the technology behind video imagery, Smith’s practice integrates sculptural form and moving image. He is interested in the capacity of film and video installation to distort our sense of time and space through the manipulation of filmic narratives. True to MOMENTUM’s mission to interrogate what we define by time-based art, Sam Smith’s layering of analog film, digital media, and physical sculpture self-referrentially and lyrically addresses the manipulations of time from both the point of view of artist, and viewer.
MOMENTUM BERLIN | BENEFIT
8 October 2010 19:30 – 21:30
Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch
Opened by David Elliott
Hosted by Gallery TaiK
Momentum, launched in Sydney as a new platform for time-based art, is going global. Designed as a moveable feast, reconvening in major cities around the world, Momentum is also developing a network of international residencies designed to serve as project spaces for the artists, galleries, curators, and academics who take part in Momentum events worldwide, thus building a continuity between events and between a global network of arts professionals. The first residency is in Jerusalem inside the Old City, and will open in 2011.
In order to make all this possible Momentum is holding a one night Benefit Exhibition on Oct. 8th, hosted by Gallery Taik and coinciding with Art Forum. Our Berlin Benefit features video works generously donated by 10 of the artists showcased at Momentum / Sydney. The purpose of this event is both to raise funds for Momentum through the sale of unique video collections, and to raise awareness of what we did in Sydney and what we are now taking around the world as a new mobile institution and platform supporting time-based contemporary art. Funds raised through this benefit will enable Momentum to continue what we began in Sydney and to mature into our vision of a global platform linked through a network of residencies and participants worldwide.
Featuring works generously donated by artists showcased at Momentum / Sydney and invited to future Momentum Events, Sydney / Berlin / Worldwide: Works from the Momentum Collection, returns by popular demand for an extended run as our inaugural show opening Momentum / Berlin. Sydney / Berlin / Worldwide is an offsite event of Transmediale, Berlin’s eminent Digital Arts Festival. Momentum / Berlin is also proud to take part in Das Weekend, Berlin’s inaugural Digital Art and Sound Weekend.
Preview over Gallery Weekend, 29 – 30 April 2011, 12:00 – 19:00
Vernissage 6 May 2011, 19:00 – 22:00
Artist-run Workshop with Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix:
11 June 16:00-18:00 at M O M E N T U M /Berlin and
14 June 18:30 at the Universitat Der Kunste (UDK)
Finnisage 26 June 16:00 – 18:00
Runscape is a poetic act of resistance
Runscape is a politic act of defiance
of the urban authority
with its surveillance and restrictions on movement.
The Babel City, like Cyberspace, is filled with gaps and voids.
(Excerpt from RUNSCAPE)
ABOUT:
MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (Casablanca, 1966) and Valérie Portefaix (Saint-Etienne, 1969). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression including drawing, photographs, video, installations, performance and literary and theoretical texts. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space.
Laurent Gutierrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he leads the Environment and Interior Design discipline and the Master of Strategic Design as well as the Master in Urban Environments Design. He is also the co-director of SD SPACE LAB. He is currently doing a PhD on the “Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta region”.
Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE. She received her Master of Architecture degree from School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and a PhD in Urbanism from University Pierre Mendes France. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
RUNSCAPE (2010) is a film that depicts several young male figures sprinting through public spaces of Hong Kong, almost invariably via the visual mode of the long shot, while a narrator describes this action through the rhetoric of post-structuralist urban theory. This narration makes repeated reference to a range of texts from the psychogeographical dérive of urbanism in Guy Debord and the Situationists to the biopolitical machines of Gilles Deleuze and the literary styles of Jean-Luc Nancy. The runners both follow existing paths and establish new ones, moving in straight lines through crowds and across rooftops while also using exterior walls as springboards for less-likely forms of motion. This is, however, far from parkour; it is a much more purposeful action that claims a certain territory or at least trajectory described within the narration through the image of the body as a “bullet that needs no gun.” A soundtrack contributed by Hong Kong rock band A Roller Control complements this aesthetic violence, guiding the eye and ear of the viewer across this novel interpretation of the definition and uses of public space. In this action, invisible facades are constructed across a grid that spans the area between the codified signs of polished facades, an open-ended and performative notion of being-in-transit. (Robin Peckham)
RUNSCAPE
Secondary Title: When running remains the only unbounded space in the urban field.
Completion Date: June 2010
Running Time: 24′ 18″
Country of Production: Hong Kong SAR – CHINA
Shooting Location: Hong Kong
Shooting Format: Full HD (Canon EOS 5D Mark II)
Screening Format: BETA SP – PAL 16/9 – STEREO
Language: English Subtitled
Director: Gutierrez + Portefaix
Text, Image and Sound editing: Gutierrez + Portefaix
Cast: Gaspar Gutierrez, Yannick Ben
Voice: Norman Jackson Ford
Music: A Roller Control
STREET MOVIE www.streetmovie.net
Production: MAP OFFICE www.map-office.com
VIRAL PROJECT (2003), at the height of the SARS hysteria, the artists document their journey driving circuitously through Europe, from Berlin to the 50th Venice Biennale. With the 54th Venice Biennale overlapping with this exhibition, it’s time again to consider the processes of contagion – cultural and otherwise – at work throughout the world. This exhibition will finish with a workshop conducted by the artists. RUNSCAPE Berlin will undertake a mapping of Berlin though sequences of films shot in Berlin.
ARTIST-RUN WORKSHOP 11 JUNE 16:00 – 18:00, 14 June 18:30. The artist/architect team of Map Office will be visiting from Hong Kong to conduct a workshop, mapping Berlin through its cinematic signature. This is the first step towards creating the next Runscape video: Runscape Berlin. My Map – Runscape Berlin – will be the interactive platform setting up the basis of the project. The research consists in looking for very distinctive places from films shot in Berlin to create a placemark with the name of the film. Participants of the workshop and others not necessarily present in Berlin will be given the pass to access the map and add their placemark. The goal is to trace the journey of Runscape Berlin and re-write the history of cinema from the city following the runner. The artists will present their working practice which led up to the creation of Runscape in Hong Kong, and will explore their approach to generating this new work in Berlin.
Day 2 of the RUNSCAPE Berlin Workshop is on Tuesday 14 June at 18:30
AT THE UNIVERSITÄT DER KÜNSTE (UDK)
FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, IN AUDITORIUM 336
HARDENBERGSTRASSE 32, 10623 BERLIN
VIRAL OPERATION (2003)
Produced in response to the open call to reflect on possible routes from Jerusalem and Berlin to Venice for the Utopia Station project of the 2003 Venice Biennale, Viral Operation seizes upon the figurations of unintentional biological threat and the maintenance of the state and body by experimenting with the devolution of borders within the potentially utopian platform of continental Europe. Presented as a short video, the project follows MAP Office as they arrive in Berlin via the Hong Kong International Airport wearing the surgical masks that are considered, at least in greater China, a social nicety more than anything threatening. During the time of SARS, however, this appearance coupled with their point of origin made them a potential contaminant to the geographic health of the region; leaving the airport, they are accompanied by armed security guards.
As they make a point to cross as many land borders in central and eastern Europe as possible on their way to Italy, this situation remains much the same. Driving through checkpoint after checkpoint, they are asked to remove their masks for identification purposes (because, as the viewer is reminded, covering the face is illegal, as is the continued video documentation of these exchanges). As in other projects like Maskbook and Second Line, the mask functions as an over-determined signifier of identity and desire; in this case, however, it becomes a visual clue to a condition that does not actually exist; using this simple mechanism to test the durability of the European dream, it becomes clear that the body and the border are an enabling pair as much as they are political combatants.
[Robin Peckham]
RUNSCAPE (2010)
Runscape is a film that depicts two young men sprinting through the public spaces of Hong Kong, almost invariably via the visual mode of the long shot, while a narrator describes this action through the rhetoric of post-structuralist urban theory. This narration makes repeated reference to a range of texts from the psychogeographical dérive of urbanism in Guy Debord and the Situationists to the biopolitical machines of Gilles Deleuze to the literary styles of Jean-Luc Nancy. The runners both follow existing paths and establish new ones, moving in straight lines through crowds and across rooftops while also using exterior walls as springboards for less-likely forms of motion. This is, however, far from parkour; it is a much more purposeful action that claims a certain territory or at least trajectory described within the narration through the image of the body as a “bullet that needs no gun. A soundtrack contributed by Hong Kong rock band A Roller Control complements this aesthetic violence, guiding the eye and ear of the viewer across this novel interpretation of the definition and uses of public space. In this action, invisible facades are constructed across a grid that spans the area between the codified signs of polished facades, an open-ended and performative notion of being-in-transit.
[Robin Peckham]
Runscape was shown along with “Viral Project” (2003) at MOMENTUM’s exhibition during Berlin’s 2011 Gallery Weekend, with Runscape subsequently gifted to the MOMENTUM Collection. In collaboration with MOMENTUM, MAP OFFICE returned to Berlin the following year to gather footage for Runscape Berlin, a work comprised of video and photography mapping the city of Berlin through its cinematic history.
“Why running in Berlin? Runscape Berlin proposes to break through historical lines and building blocs, to bypass new political borders and barricades, to be naked in the ruins of the gigantic worksite of the city. Running activates a new form of intensity in a city lacking of density. In Berlin, the urban substance opens on undefined fields where new personal histories can be written.”
[MAP OFFICE]
RUNSCAPE – ANAYLISIS by MELISSA LAM
The City is growing Inside of us…
A political act of defiance of the Urban Authority
With its surveillance and restrictions on movement.
[Excerpt from Film]
In 1996, when Jean Baudrillard first published “The Conspiracy of Art” he scandalized the international art community by declaring that contemporary art had no more reason to exist. The question of aesthetic banality and retreat from issues of public life and “the real” are questions that have plagued the art world for centuries, from the very first copied Renoir apple to Tino Sehgal or Sophie Calle experiences that anthropologically mix aesthetics, art and life. Baudrillard has since become interested in the simulations of reality set forth by film and vice versa.
In film, the work of simulation becomes drama, a comparative drama that seeks to simulate reality. Runscape is used to knit together the geography of Hong Kong, a cartography that trades on the idea of mapping by running through the streets (a young man is seen pounding / racing through the streets purposefully, in stark contrast to the plethora of crowds that are slowly inching forward along the traffic jammed pavement of Causeway Bay.) The runner dodges past pedestrians, runs diagonally through meticulously urban planned plazas, up flights of stairs and through the shopping malls of Hong Kong in order to appropriate the city on his own terms. The direction of his sprint, the contour of his cityscape is directed by his own desires, a remapping of cartography that allows him to remake the city in his own image. In Runscape, the idea is that a single individual can remap the cartography of the city, to redefine the city on each individual’s terms, to make each city mapping unique to each individual rather than a grouping of concepts, random census tracts, defunct neighborhoods and property blocks. The runner is at times cooperating with the city, in running along the stairs and sidewalks that are mandated, at other times, he jumps over unsuspecting walls and leaps over fences, pitting the city as an adversary, a challenge to his movement, testing the limitations of the concrete jungle as it slowly comes alive with the unorthodox use of its cityscape.
Political and cultural boundaries collapse as the figure jumps over districts in Causeway Bay, Central, and Aberdeen. The runner stitches a new type of geographical exploration that reimagines the terrain on a new mapped media. References and location systems zip by a sprinting figure in a rapidly moving short film where motion, major landmarks and assorted cultural topography become simply a simulation, simulacra of importance. Runscape is about the seduction of film as moving photography, images of Hong Kong flash by us in blinding images knit together only by the running figure as he races across the entire city.
The runner becomes also a performer, as he leaps and jumps, sprinting through the city, catching the eye of the strolling pedestrians as he breaks out of conventional modes of behavior, putting his body in action, moving faster than the city, as if internally pushed forward, as if fleeing or listening to a voice that was slowly speaking outside of everyone else’s sound register. The culture of the walking figure derived from the French Flaneur, the American Beat Poets, all contextualized and used in exploring and connecting the city streets. Runscape explores the liminal notions between film as public art with the city as landscape and cartography. The film knits the city together in a geography intersecting private and public space. The runner acts as artistic intervention creating an impact on the space itself. This is a creation of an unexplained inexplicable artwork on the street as it blurs the line between performance, a happening, fear, trauma, physical exercise, and rebellion.
American cartographer, Arthur H Robinson stated that a map not properly designed “will be a cartographic failure.” Robinson also stated, when considering all aspects of cartography that “map design is perhaps the most complex. A map must be fit to its audience. Map Office’s Runscape is a new kind of map that explores the history of running, forms of mapping, data, space and time, multiple dimensions, language and the body. Runscape uncovers the influence and possibilities of mapping in our world today. Maps have become easier to create, change, develop collaboratively and share. Depicting geographical areas, mindscapes and digital realms alike, these multidimensional maps express endlessly interconnected ideas and issues.
Going back to the beginning of his “postmodern” phase, Baudrillard begins his important essay “The Precession of the Simulacra” by recounting the feat of imperial map-makers in a story by Jorge Luis Borges who make a map so large and detailed that it covers the whole empire, existing in a one-to-one relationship with the territory underlying it. It is a perfect replica of the empire. After a while the map begins to fray and tatter, the citizens of the empire mourning its loss (having long taken the map – the simulacrum of the empire – for the real empire). Under the map the real territory has turned into a desert, a “desert of the real.” In its place, a simulacrum of reality – the frayed mega-map – is all that’s left.
Runscape is a bravura performance by Map Office in which they use the figure of a boy to stitch the city together in a mapping that creates a territorial relationship between the runner who runs, and the territory or terras that is beneath his feet. The city map does not exist without his performance. The runner, nor does his physical running exist outside of the map. When the runner stops, the city (like Borge’s map) will leave us in tattered ruins, and dissemble into nothing so much as a simulacrum of it’s former self.
Larry Litt is a New York based mixed ritual spoken word artist and activist who produces videos and photos of his performances. Larry Litt has exhibited videos and performed in the Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Apokalypsa Festival, White Box NY, Holly Solomon Gallery, many college and university galleries and museums. He is currently represented by Magnan Metz Gallery in Chelsea, NY. He is producer with Eleanor Heartney of the highly acclaimed “The Blame Show” videos and cable televison series. In early March 2007 Larry Litt performed “Hate Books—Holy Fires” at the 2nd Moscow Biennale in a Special Program. Momentum is fortunate to host Larry Litt’s incendiary performance in Berlin – the very site it references and, through a ritual purification, seeks to absolve.
Hate Books—Holy Fires is a Ritual Burning of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This event shows the nefarious history and current life of the infamous fraudulent forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This book, which claims there’s a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy to rule the world, is still translated, published and distributed around the world. Several examples will be ritually burned to empower overcoming anti-Jewish plots and expel evil spirits from the plotters. “Symbolically burning Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” says Litt, “is a step towards publicly condemning the horrendous damage this book has done, and is still doing, since it’s first publication in early 20th century Czarist Russia.”
“I want to show the history of book burning as a way conquerors change culture to suit their needs,” Litt continues. “I don’t agree with book burning at all, however burning the Protocols is my way of attacking the lies that perpetuated the World War II Jewish Holocaust. Today its publication continues in many new translations.
Will it ever end? I want to make the world aware that these lies about Jews are the work of governments and people who themselves want to rule the world. They use the Protocols as their model, then blame the Jewish Conspiracy as a distraction from their own greed, policies and practices. These books have created Fires From Hell for millions of people, for hundreds of years. They come from all over the world, wherever evil is spread by loathsome, hate mongering propagandists. Their flaming, ritualistic destruction is my personal, universal and cosmic purification goal.”
The talismans created for this show are based on kabalistic designs from the Keys of Solomon, a magical book reputed to have been written by biblical King Solomon. Larry Litt’s Hate Book—Holy Fires performances are in the tradition of St. Paul, St. Boniface, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, ancient Chinese Emperors, the Cultural Revolution, German university students in 1933 and fascist anti-Semites throughout history and worldwide. Larry Litt maintains. “The books I symbolically burn are representative of great social and political evil. They do not deserve to survive. They sicken, repulse and anger me. They have done, and still do, incredible damage to clear thinking, civil humanity. So much so that I have condemned them to burn. Not something I do lightly as I, of course, respect books and writers.”
Using chant, percussion and shamanic poetry, the HATE BOOKS-HOLY FIRES ritual performance dramatically recreates the sacrificial experience of book burning throughout history. Only this time it is the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Hate Book” that burns. Audience are invited to symbolically burn the Protocols with Litt during the Hate Books-Holy Fires performance ritual. The performance is documented with photos and video, and numbered by the artist.
Time and Space: Drawing on the Earth showcases photographs and televised documentation of the monumental land art projects of Australian sculptor Andrew Rogers. All together entitled the Rhythms of Life, this body of work encompasses the largest contemporary land art undertaking in the world, forming a chain of 47 massive stone sculptures, or Geoglyphs, around the globe. The project has involved over 6,700 people across seven continents and 13 countries, as diverse as: Turkey, Israel, Chile, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Iceland, China, India, Nepal, Slovakia, USA, Kenya, and Antarctica. Andrew Rogers employs local cultural historical references, materials, and building methods in constructing his Geoglyphs that are made on a scale that can be seen from space. He also intends them to endure in their environments for hundreds of years. Rogers’ sculptural practice is ultimately durational, from the length of time it takes to realise each project (upwards of 6 years in some cases), to the time they will leave their mark upon the surface of the earth, to the time it takes to view and experience structures on this scale.
Using documentation of this vast global undertaking, Time and Space: Drawing on the Earth interrogates what we mean by time-based practice. As a platform for time-based art, MOMENTUM is showcasing this body of work in order to ask the question: What is time based art? How do we as an institution, and arts professionals more broadly, define time-based practice? Do we privilege the medium, or the viewer and the durational experience of watching a work unfold across time? Or does time-based practice encompass the means and process of the creation of an artwork?
Showing land art is a departure from MOMENTUM’s usual focus on video and performance art. And yet land art is integrally time-based. Andrew Rogers’ durational interventions on the surface of the earth are in many ways the direct opposite of Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral moments with nature, yet both bodies of practice privilege time in the same way. Where one is meant to disappear without a trace, the other is designed to degrade slowly over millennia. Rogers’ practice is the essence of monumentality. Working with local communities, researching and reaching back to the ancient, primal symbols of each host culture, he refashions them in the present for endurance into the future. Though built of stone, each structure erodes back into the landscape, crumbling into the different earths from which they were made. It is this process of change over time, inherent to all land art, which renders it time-based.
In Andy Goldsworthy’s practice, icicles melt and dry leaves crumble in a matter of minutes. But Andrew Rogers’ Geoglyphs erode over hundreds of years to form both traces and monuments of the cultures that imagined them. In his consideration of time Rogers is working on a scale usually only considered by Geologists, Astronomers, Mathematicians and Physicists, or perhaps by the ancient peoples who built structures such as Stonehenge.
Land art is not easily transferable into a gallery setting. In dealing with works on this scale, MOMENTUM is showing digital documentations of vast building projects across remote and inaccessible global settings. Along with photographs of the works themselves, the process of their creation has been documented in several television series that will be screened in sequence during the exhibition. This show is timed to coincide with the September opening in Cappadocia, Turkey of Time and Space, the largest land art park in the world and the current culmination of Rogers’ Rhythms of Life project. Located in Kunstquartier Bethanien at the heart of Berlin’s Turkish community, MOMENTUM is happy to brings these monumental interventions in Turkey’s most beautiful landscape to Berlin.
This show opened with a Salon discussion amongst art professionals, including Eleanor Heartney (art critic and writer for Art in America) whose essay on Rogers’ work can be read on this site, Adam Nankervis (a Berlin-based Australian artist and curator), Mark Gisbourne (internationally acclaimed writer and curator), David Elliott (writer, curator, director of the previous Biennale of Sydney, and of many museums across the globe), Anne Maier (of Berlin’s Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt), Caroline Stummel (art consultant), Mamoru Tsukada (artist and curator, also with Berlin’s Tokyo Wondersite), Norbert Palz (professor of digital architecture at UDK), Kirsten Palz (conceptual artist), Yishay Garbasz (photography and mixed media artist), Larry Litt (NY-based performance artist), Shonah Trescott (painter), Osvaldo Budet (video artist and documentary filmmaker), Mariana Vassileva (video and mixed media artist), Johann Nowak (gallerist, DNA Gallery), Cassandra Bird (of Duve Gallery and MOMENTUM), Maxime van Haeren (researcher, art and culture), and Rachel Rits-Volloch (director, MOMENTUM). This Salon showed that the question of what is time-based art, and Rogers work addressed in this context, both give rise to heated debate. This discussion will be available on this website in due course, but in the meantime we invite you to come and experience for yourselves this wide ranging documentation of Andrew Rogers’ drawings on the earth.
A WAKE: STILL LIVES AND MOVING IMAGES OPENING 29 OCTOBER 19.00 – 23:00
Followed by an afterparty at the Goodnight Circus Costume Ball at 3 Schwestern,
Downstairs from MOMENTUM Berlin
Exhibition: 30 OCTOBER THROUGH 20 NOVEMBER 2011
On October 29th MOMENTUM Berlin celebrates the Day of the Dead, Los Dios de los Muertes, with A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images. This exhibition combines, video, cinema, and photography in a co-mingling of media which bring the still into motion, and the motion into emotion. The exhibition takes the form of a processional of monitors leading into the gallery itself, which will be oversaturated with projections. In the tradition of inviting the dead to a party with the living, we crowd the gallery with the conversations of flickering ghosts; a saturation of images in dialogue with one another. Reflecting upon our daily inundation by images of death, where news programs sensationalize death no less than the fictions of TV shows and feature films, A Wake addresses the media as the Vale of Tears, the surface between now and the hereafter, as well as the past. Co-mingling archival films with contemporary art, we enact a conversation across mediums and generations to celebrate life as well as death.
A Wake is consciousness with an eye on an open coffin. A gathering in celebration as well as mourning, it is humor as much as horror. As a platform dedicated to interrogating time-based art, with A Wake, MOMENTUM explores what happens when our time runs out.
A wake is a ritual viewing of the body after death; a coming together to observe the end of time, to celebrate the transition through the vale. It is also an emergence into consciousness, as well as a consequence or result. Taking this transitional point between being and representation as our title, A Wake confronts us with the process and the presence of death in order to wake us up to the inevitable result of the passage of time.
The works in this show all use video, digital media, and film to address the mediation of death; where media itself becomes the vale/veil through which we pass, the translucent surface between observer and observed, between now and the hereafter. All the works in this show manipulate media forms in some way, whether in mobilizing still images into motion, or in bringing together past and present, fiction and reality, re-editing found footage, re-visiting rituals, or re-living the horrors of war.
All cultures acknowledge the Day of the Dead. Some celebrate, others mourn, but the ineluctable culmination of life is a part of every belief system, and of every personal journey. Opening the weekend of All Saints Day, Los Dios des Muertes (The Day of the Dead), A Wake is held in the once upon a time infirmary within the former cloisters of Bethanien House Berlin. Originally built as a hospital, a space both battling and housing death, Bethanien has long been transformed into a place where art through the process of creation manifests the victory of life over death. We fill this space with a labyrinth of screens which illuminate still lives and moving images. A Wake is a passage through time, a processional which is our “offerenda”, an offering to visiting souls awakened on this day every year.
In this city responsible for making so many ghosts, through the translucent veil of time-based media, past, present and future meld into one in this metaphysical meditation on the passing of being into representation.
“Défilé” (2000-2007), dig projection, 7 dig photos. “Who Wants To Live Forever” (1998), 6:25min. In «Défilé» we explore the way individuals deal with the concept of mortality by juxtaposing images of death with images of beauty, in this case high fashion. In pairing fashion with death, we have found a modern-day counterpart to the traditional juxtapositions of love and death and beauty and death. An obsession with fashion, symbolizing temporality, can be seen as a way to deal with the fear of death. It is an ancient preoccupation, as can be seen in the elaborate rituals in Western and non-Western cultures associated with death. Humans have always attempted to «decorate» death, based in part with a desire to ward off death. “Who Wants To Live Forever” is a critique of the global media, addressing not only the media, which uses the sexual scandals and the death of the celebrities but also the exhibitionistic behavior of the media star. The career top of a media star, who produces nothing but his face on the screen, is death.
“Creative Wakes” (2011), dig video, 10 mins. Puerto Rico – In the fall of 2008, Angel Luis Pantojas told his family that in the case of his death, he wanted to be presented at his wake in a standing position. Two weeks later, he was fatally shot. His family fulfilled his death wish, and this triggered the beginning of a movement of themed and theatrical wakes in Puerto Rico. Osvaldo Budet explores the possibilities that this new trend has awoken. With his documentary-based practice, Osvaldo Budet consistently blurs the line between reality and representation.
“The Great Good Place” (2010), dig video. This video shows the life of a community of abandoned indoor cats living in a park in Istanbul. “The Great Good Place” was shot in Istanbul, documenting the street cats who live in dwindling numbers throughout city. A regular urban presence, when removed from their environment they appear eerie, floating in darkness. In the context of this exhibition, they seem like creatures of the night; familiar sights on the streets of Istanbul, becoming familiars of a more supernatural kind. But perhaps they remain, after all, simply cats upon which we project our own realities.
“N 37° 25′ 20″, E 141° 1′ 58″” (2011), dig video. This piece comes out of the reactions of the artists to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and devastation. The piece invokes elements of life and death via the sounds and visuals of surgery as well as fire and the human body. The risk involved in the actions depicted helps set the scene. There were no special effects used in doing the fire performance. This is the first collaboration between Yishay Garbasz, a photographer working with the body and the mobilization of images, and Nikola Lutz, a musician and sound artist. The piece is dedicated in gratitude to the memory of Dr. Johannes D. Lutz, who passed during the making of this work.
“Passagens n.1″ film converted to digital media, 1974
Passagens n.1, is a video from the series I titled Situações-limite. The point of the piece is to bring visually, through repetitive movements of my climbing stairs – a sense of unfinishable path. Changes of scenery, going through narrow and broad steps, inside – outside, bringing a sense of continuity/ discontinuity, the difficulty of crossing. In my three repetitions (inside and outside stairs scenes) I perform slight differences, and the tiresome effort increases. In this and other videos from the same period I deal with the symbolic and also with the specific language of video. For instance, the movement of the artist crossing the cathodic tube in its 4 corners, creates an invisible center of the image.
“Schlaflied” dig. 720p HD-Video, 3:54min. (Berlin, 2011). Premier. Schlaflied is a German lullaby sung to children at bed time. Projecting a diapositive on the backyard walls of Wedding, the most war ravaged area of Berlin in World War II, the slide shows a cemetery of soldiers in France. Halter, through this performative action explores a futility. A futility in the loss of life. The futilities of war.
“Sachsenhausen” (2009/2010) dig projection, 14 photographs. Premier. Predominantly a painter, the starting point for my paintings is always photography and it is now for the first time that I’m showing a series of photographs that were taken at the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, during a three month residency period in Berlin, in the winter of 2009/2010. Taken with a Lomo camera and presented digitally, the result merges the painterly, the photographic, and the cinematic. Thus blurring of media creates a timelessness most jarring in this tragic location situated shockingly close to Berlin.
“The Testimony of Hiroshima a Fotofilm” (1999) 1:54min.
Among other atomic bomb survivors, Matsushige Yoshito continuously tells his story at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In 1945, at the time of the dropping of the atomic bomb, the 32 year old journalist was at home at a distance of 2.7 kilometers from the bomb hypocenter. ‘The Testimony of Hiroshima’ is an hommage an Matsushige-san, who passed away in 1995. The film describes the three hour lapse of time in his life when he was unable to photograph death and pain.
“The Ghost of Isaac Newton in Another Vacant Space” (2011), video performance. David Medalla presents a video impromptu. Eienstein is walking on the road of Biesentalerstrasse Berlin when he sees the ghost of Isaac Newton, eating an apple, addressing an empty room in another vacant space. A dialogue ensues…. David Medalla is constantly shifting his strategies and media; when one thinks one has him pinned down as a situationist, a surrealist, or a conceptualist, one is stumped as he continues to endlessly conceive other fantastic, often unrealisable schemes. He is an icon of an artist who has made no clear distinction between his art and his life in a body of work stretching back to the sixties.
“Doomed” (2007) video, (Tracey Moffatt collaboration with Gary Hillberg), 10mins. This fast-paced montage of film clips takes Hollywood’s fixation with death and disaster to its ultimate cinematic end. “Doomed” comprises cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and blackly-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory – the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Moffatt plays with the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations. Looking at the forms of filmic entertainment, as well as ‘art as entertainment’, she addresses what it is about death and destruction that we invariably find so entertaining. Music manipulates. The soundtrack builds and peaks – emotive, and a central device in journeying through the sequence to climactic effect. It is important that the title ‘Doomed’ has the quality of the not yet destroyed. It is a description that is applied to individuals, families, lovers, politics, and nations – an observation made from the outside and yet containing the possibility (read hope) that situations can be salvaged.
“We Dream of Gentle Morphius” (2011), from “Organic” dig projection of the photo series “Still Lives”
Fiona has been working in a still-life format within museums, recording taonga (Māori ancestral treasures) and other historic objects such as hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now extinct huia bird. In these works, she brings to a contemporary audience an awareness of traditional and forgotten objects. Her art practice occupies itself with both memory and mourning, and the ineffability of the photographic image. Her photographs demonstrate a mastery of analogue darkroom technique combined with the digital. Presented for the first time as a digital projection, these combined images, says Fiona Pardington, “work on a number of levels – once again my whakapapa/genealogy – random items that belong to beloved family members and important family members i had little contact with – like a child’s silver christening cup found by chance in a skip by my aunt when my grandmother’s house was cleared after sale- it belonged to my father…silk scarves found in french flea markets, shells taken from beaches important to ngai tahu because they are mahinga kai/traditional food gathered from the sea….seaweed, bottles dug out of the sand, midden shells from the beach the ngai tahu cheif tangatahara lived near. paua shells from otakou- paua shells are important food but also the shell can be seen as a tourist cliche and is sitting in a strange NZ cultural limbo presently. crystal wine glasses from op shops, native flowers and introduced weeds and pest plants introduced from overseas by the colonizers….”
“Loom” (2010) dig animation, 5:30mins.
Loom tells the story of a successful catch. A moth being caught in a spiders web. Struggling for an escape, the moth’s panic movements only result in less chance of survival. What follows is the type of causality everyone is expecting. The spider appears, claims its prey and feeds on it. The way nature works. But it’s the point of view that creates an intense relationship between the hunter and its victim. There is much more to explore, much more to feel if one takes the time to really experience the content of a split second. Polynoid uses digital animation to heighten the senses, turning the natural into the hyper-real with a virtuosity of technique blurring the line between the digital and the science of life and death.
“Crash” (2009) Series, 3 Videos #1
“Crash” is a car accident scene that continously reveals one picture forward and at the same time continues to repeat itself. Gradual picture exposing strengthens the curiosity of what would happen next, multiplication intensifies the brutal tension, which can emanate with outrageous beauty. Finally, tension and tempo can bring on a visual catharsis. In drawing out a moment of film to manipulate the media and the viewer, Paul Rascheja confronts the basis of our fascination with violence. Too horrified to look, yet too mesmerized to look away, we are caught in this endless moment at the cusp of life and death.
“Night and Fog” (Nuit et brouillard) 1955, 32 minutes
Knowledge and memory change with time – this is one of Resnais’ thematic concerns, in this film and elsewhere. “Nuit et brouillard” is a remarkable documentary made 10 years after the end of WWII, constructed and reconstructed out of a blending of archival footage and then-contempoary sequences. The contemporary (colour) sequences were shot at Auschwitz and Maïdanek, authorised and financially supported by the Polish government. The past, in black and white, was reconstructed from documentary material and stills gathered from concentration camp museums. It is precisely Resnais’ obsession with and mastery of form that gives Nuit et brouillard an emotional power unequalled by any fictional reconstruction of the Holocaust. The near-digressions of the subtly orchestrated and edited filmic narration and the ironies of the commentary capture and focus the viewer’s attention, ensuring that the most horrible images (those shots of corpses, for example, that the censors objected to) are seen with clear eyes, and that therefore their human meaning cannot be avoided. The juxtaposition of past and present ensures that the final question (“Alors, qui est responsable?”/”Well, then, who is responsible?”) is directed at the viewer, any viewer, the viewer of 1956 (when, Resnais admits, the growing war in Algeria was much on his mind) and the viewer today, living in an era of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and state violence differing perhaps on target but not in effect from those that came before. West Germany became the first country to purchase and distribute “Nuit et brouillard” when it came out. In the context of this show, it is important to bring it back.
Known as a forefather of both Czeck surrealism and animation, it is ironic that this is perhaps Svankmajer’s only documentary, yet it could so readily be misconstrued as one of his elaborately constructed fictions. One of the masterpieces produced during Švankmajer’s early career, Kostnice (The Ossuary, 1970), is shot in one of his country’s most unique and bleakest monuments, the Sedlec Monastery Ossuary. The Sedlec Ossuary contains the bones of some 50 to 70 thousand people buried there since the Middle Ages. Over a period of a decade, they were fashioned by the Czech artist František Rint with his wife and two children into fascinating displays of shapes and objects, including skull pyramids, crosses, a monstrance and a chandelier containing every bone of the human body. Their work was completed in 1870, and these artifacts have been placed in the crypt of the Cistercian chapel as a memento mori for the contemplation of visitors. Well-known for his appreciation of the macabre, Švankmajer found in Sedlec a subject sufficiently grim not to have to add very much to it. The theme of ageing, ruin and death appears right from the beginning. yet we are saved from morbidity by the elaborate, contrast-rich editing, alternating static images and leisurely camera pans with bursts of rapid-montage, swish-pans and tilts reminiscent of the impressionist technique of the pioneer of early French film Abel Gance. At other times, a long shot of the chapel’s interior, a sculpture or a camera pan is intercut with close-ups of a skull or another poignant detail, producing an atmosphere of nervous tension. A subtle detail in the concluding images of the film links the macabre atmosphere of death with the oblivion of the living: adolescent initials scratched into the skulls and bones by anonymous visiting vandals. A silent commentary on the eternal forgetting of humans—or perhaps their effort to laugh at death?
Hye Rim Lee’s work questions new technology’s role in image making and representation. Her work is consistent with recent international developments in contemporary art, e.g., 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).
Lee has positioned her work at a progressive interface between East and West by exploring areas of computer gaming, cyber culture, contemporary myth-making and animamix. She has exhibited in major international exhibitions, including the Incheon Women Artists Biennale (2009), Glasstress, 53rd Venice Art Biennale (2009), Kukje Gallery, Max Lang Gallery NY, MoCA Shanghai, Millennium Museum, Beijing, Art Basel, and the Armory Show NY.
OBSESSION / LOVE FOREVER
2007, Eight individual High Definition 3D Animation Pieces with Sound, Total duration: 11 min 27 sec
“Obsession,” named in part after a Calvin Klein perfume by the same title, reflects on two ideas also common to the perfume market: love and eternity. Subversively humorous, these 3D animations avoid cliché, mass-market depictions of obsession in favor of unsettlingly simplistic designs. By interweaving the pop and fashion industry’s vision of beauty with modern myths created through gaming and cyber platforms, Lee tackles technologized modes of perception in contemporary culture.
As digital tools and scientific progress alter the visual vocabulary of beauty standards, how might our language concerning time-tested concepts like love simultaneously evolve?
Initially exhibited at MOMENTUM Sydney, “Obsession / Love Forever” has since been donated and shown on Sky Screen Berlin, the Collegium Hungaricum and Istanbul. -Josephine English Cook
Obsession/ Love Forever aspires to come to terms with our contemporary vision of beauty by examining the crossover between the fashion industry’s construction of norms and contemporary myth created in cyber culture and computer gaming. My project is continuation of my on going series TOKI/Cyborg Project (2003~) which questions new technology’s role in image making and representation. My digital character TOKI parodies the idealisation of female form in Asian manga and anime, computer gaming and cyber culture. TOKI’s body has been cut into pieces – posing coyly to sit, move and beckon in the perfume bottle. The parts of the body become a product of beautification and commodity conflating power and seduction. The animated body parts parody the obsession with beauty created by phallic motivations in cyber culture and gaming, with the work referencing critical contributions from contemporary mythology, psychoanalysis, technology, cybernetics, aesthetics, plastic surgery, feminism, consumerism and eroticism.
The project features digital 3D animations consisting of 8 DVD projection installations and experimental sound connected to a surround sound system. Each DVD features an animation sequence of different parts of TOKI’s body captured and reacting with particles in a collection of perfume bottles. Each DVD is QuickTime DV PAL/NTSC format. The duration of DVD is approx 2 minutes.
Each DVD of animation conveys ideas and concept behind the project. The animated body parts express, with a slightly ironic turn, commenting male desire and voyeuristic fantasy as well as female fantasy of presenting body as a commodity. Each DVD plays with and accentuates the slippery separations between dominance and desire, fantasy and fear, and birth and death.
The DVDs are:
DVD 1. Hand in Moschino perfume bottle
DVD 2. Lips in Chance perfume bottle Eye in perfume bottle
DVD 3. Eye in Chopard Wish bottle
DVD 4. Breast in Lou Lou perfume bottle
DVD 5. Eye in J’adore perfume bottle
DVD 6. Legs and shoes in Channel No. 5 perfume bottle
DVD 7. Bottom in Poison perfume bottle
DVD 8. Genitalia in Comme des Garcons perfume bottle
All the perfume bottles are modelled to look slightly different from the reference of the actual model of commercial designer perfume.
Conceptual background
“Between love and madness lies obsession.”
Charles Levin, Obsession, A scent of style: Some Thoughts on Calvin Klein’s Obsession (four 15 second commercials on video)
In the title of the project Obsession is named after perfume by Calvin Klein and love and forever are common words/themes for perfumes. Touching on the humorous or surreal, the works have significantly steered clear of clichés of the psychological definition of obsession; rather they explore the theme with a mixture of seriousness and delicacy.
The project aspires to come to terms with our contemporary vision of beauty by examining the crossover between the fashion industry’s construction of norms and contemporary myth created in computer gaming and cyber culture. In the age of computer, online-games and the internet, digitalization and computerization have changed our environment, our viewing habits, modes of perception and fashion in contemporary pop culture. Digital technology and scientific progress have tried to create the absolute perfect vocabulary of beauty. The project seeks to investigate ideas about the relationship between beauty, perfection, and technological progress.
The project features 8 DVD animations of parts of TOKI’s body captured in the collection of perfume bottles; an obsessive collection of fetishes. Fetishized beauty trapped in perfume bottles, is the fascination that holds the desire for closure, power and logical perfection, is closed and ritualized.
Manic fantasy follows psychotic simulacra of bodily images. Parts of the body in the line of gazes signify woman as the colonized subject. Cutting up the body into pieces could lead to an idea of glamour going beyond the perfection of the body; cutting leading toward death itself.
Hye Rim Lee’s perky Manga and computer game heroine inspired doll-like TOKI has cut her body into pieces, posing coyly, sitting, moving and beckoning in the perfume bottle. These “body parts” are a departure from the clean lined and highly stylized female figure, revealing the smoothness and awkwardness of plastic, synthetic and fantastic 3D animation modeling techniques, thereby commenting on the creation of a contemporary mythology and the representation of the female body form. The parts of the body become a product of beautification and commodity, conflating power and seduction. The artist uses a popular vocabulary of the fetishized female body to complicate notions of the erotic with a very vulgar modeling of the figure. The body parts parody obsessive beauty created by phallic directions in cyber culture and gaming. The animated body parts express, with a slightly ironic turn, comments on male desire and voyeuristic fantasy as well as female fantasy; of presenting the body as a commodity. The works involve critical contributions from contemporary mythology, psychoanalysis, technology, cybernetics, aesthetics, plastic surgery, feminism, consumerism and eroticism.
Eyes (DVD 3 and 5) can be a projection of desire and give the sole power of the gaze from the viewer taking in woman’s power. Long fingernail (DVD 1) and high heels (DVD 6 and the sound of the exhibition) are the masculinization of the woman’s desire to satisfy the viewer’s desire. The dynamic interplay of looks is confrontational and has a darker vision than just mere parody of the male gaze; alluding to the impending victimization or fantasization of women’s desires – implementing pleasure of passivity and of subjection, thereby reinforcing a phallic economy of desire. Each DVD plays with and accentuates the slippery separations between dominance and desire, fantasy and fear, and birth and death. The video installation is made of the body, of desire, of the sexual, of the fluid, of movement and of sound, and my ongoing motif.
TOKI/Cyborg Project (2002~)
Obsession/ Love Forever is continuation of my on going series TOKI/Cyborg Project. The project questions new technology’s role in image making and representation. I provocatively interpret the way in which popular culture promotes the myth of transformative processes that offer the attainment of a virtual and constructed physical perfection. My digital character TOKI parodies the idealisation of female form in Asian manga and anime culture, computer gaming and cyber culture. The project explores the contemporary myth created in cyber culture and computer gaming. The project scrutinises the links between video games and popular culture and presents a discussion on the impact of games on popular culture.
My project focuses on the creative process of computer game design and explores the artistic development of game concepts. The project explores the link between new technology – its role in production and content – and popular culture. It aims to produce innovations by seeking to fuse the use of new media with unexplored areas of popular culture and the inner worlds of the private individual. The viewer will be led into a fantasyland and an imaginary space where a journey will be explored through psychologically and sexually charged sites. The imaginary space starts from alternative realities and moves to a virtual dreamy fantasy world where desire, happiness and anxiety are explored in many different ways. My project aims to deepen game concepts by merging them with art and life. By taking the game off the console and into an installation space an intimate connection between the viewer and game characters will be produced and the subsequent emotional and psychological responses explored. – Hye Rim Lee
Gabriele Leidloff works with video, film, photography and image generating techniques. Having directed a discussion platform for science and art for over 10 years, Leidloff’s installations combine medical apparatus for producing and processing images and advanced visual technologies used by electronic media. She explores the relationship between art and medical technology – the image on the retina, in memory, in language and on material carriers. Leidloff collects documentation of exhibitions, lectures, video conferences and debates that exemplify the gradual fragmentation of the scientific field under the influence of special research interests. Her mise-en-scene is designed to counter this process while simultaneously questioning common practices of the visual arts.
Leidloff’s works are included in a number of museums and universities, including the Museum for Contemporary Art | ZKM Karlsruhe, the Berlin Academy of Arts, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Georg Kolbe Museum, Goethe-Institut Berlin, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, National Centre for Contemporary Arts Moscow, Yale University Digital Media Center for the Arts, Columbia University, New School University and New York University Faculty of Arts and Science. Reviews and essays on her art have been published in numerous books, such as Video, ergo sum, video cult/ures, Theater der Natur und Kunst, Bild und Einbildungskraft, as well as in catalogues and magazines, e.g. Kunstforum, CIRCA, Gehirn&Geist, Deutschland and NY Arts. Gabriele Leidloff lives in Berlin.
IN PURSUIT
2007, Video, Digital Loop, Silent, 17 min 17 sec
Though starting from the point of diagnostics, Leidloff’s aesthetic content largely resides in her editing processes. Her donated digital-video installation “In Pursuit” is based on official eye-tracking software. Using her own eye, she seeks to escape the track as it follows her movements.
This in turn generates a sense of anxiety for the viewer, not least because of the concentration on the eyeball, which at time is reminiscent of Bunuel’s famous pre-incised eyeball in “Un Chien Andalou.” Leidloff’s tracking machine, borrowed from the Center of Human-Machine-Systems, stresses both the immediacy of technical engagement and the “escaping eye” as the source of artistic perception.
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.”
Mariana Vassileva is an an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, having shown in major institutions including: Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Canada); Tate Britain (UK); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Kunsthalle zu Kiel (Germany); Edition Block (Berlin, Germany); The Stenersen Museum (Oslo,Norway); Total Museum (Seoul, Korea); Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hong Kong).
Mariana Vassileva has participated in several international Biennials, including: the 1st Biennal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (2007); the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty and the Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (Australia, 2010); the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rewriting Worlds (Russia, 2011); Biennale Vento Sul in Curitiba, (Brasil, 2012); the 56th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale, The Pleasure of Love, (Serbia, 2016). Vassileva’s works are held in international Collections in: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Rene Block Collection (Berlin, Germany); Koc Museum (Istanbul, Turkey); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel); La Caixa, Caja de Ahorros de El Monte y Fundacion el Monte (Spain); Lemaitre Collection (London-Paris); Kunsthalle Emden (Germany); Lidice Memorial, and in private collections.
MORNING MOOD
2010, Video, 17 min 10 sec
Morning Mood (2010) was shot in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, at the time of Vassileva’s participation in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty and the Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (2010), and in MOMENTUM’s inaugural event in Sydney. 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, Video, 4 min 15 sec
The Color of the Wind (2014) was made during Mariana Vassileva’s residency at the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in St. Petersburgh / Kronstadt, Russia, in March, 2014. In this video-performance, Vassileva conjoins 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 wonder 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 here the Spotlight interview with Mariana Vassileva
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?
Martin Sexton has participated in group exhibitions at: Tate Britain (London), Benaki Museum (Athens), Wolfsonian Museum (Miami), Venice Biennale (2003, 2005, 2007, 2015, 2017), Poetry Library South Bank (London), Hydra Museum (Greece), and The Economist Plaza (London) with the Contemporary Art Society, and MOMENTUM (Sydney & Berlin). Solo exhibitions include: Sex with Karl Marx (2015) at the Gervasuti Foundation, collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by James Putnam.
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. Together, these works fall within Sexton’s series of “Truth Machines“. 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.
“With my writing practice I somehow feel the books or poems I want to read do not yet exist, so somehow like the fabulist of old – I have to write them in order to read them. The same conditions apply to the art that I create – with this one exception – that if they do exist in poetry or literature but NOT in art – then I must create them. Sometimes my practice converges and takes the form of say a sculptural poem or an invocation or play. I have to confess that the notions of Time & Love play powerfully within me and inhabits much if not all of my explorations.
BLOODSPELL (MEXICAN UFO)
1973-2012, Video (found footage), 10 min 46 sec
With its low-fi analogue aesthetic and jerky zoom shots, Martin Sexton’s “Bloodspell (Mexican UFO)” (1973-2012) at first appears to be a travelogue constructed from grainy home videos, only to turn into a transcendental journey into science fiction. 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.
INDESTRUCTIBLE TRUTH (TIBET UFO)
1958/59-2012, Video (found footage), 13 min 44 sec
Indestructible Truth (Tibet UFO) (1958-59) begins with a text written in the first person that describes the narrator’s experience with the Lama of Mahayana, who appears to him as a child in a garden and promises transcendental wisdom. Despite the work’s title, which lays claim to a greater truth, the narrator doubts himself for “accepting such folly. How could one have this direct, short path to liberation?” Film and text are employed to test the limits of both mediums’ claims to truth-value. As the narrator is mired in self-doubt, he counters with, “But now, reflecting back, there is this film.” The film footage, which purports to have been shot in Tibet in 1958, is simultaneously document and self-conscious construction.
After claiming to have seen a UFO, the narrator quotes the Swiss psychonanalyst C.G. Jung: “We always think that UFOs are projections of ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections. I am projected as the magic lantern of C.G. Jung. But who manipulates the apparatus?” Much as this paradoxical formulation applies to UFO sightings and other otherworldly phenomena, it applies just as well to what we have before us: the film proffered by a protagonist neither seen nor heard. [Jenny Tang]
Working in a variety of media – primarily performance-for-video – internationally recognized artist and part-time provocateur TV Moore loosens the underpinnings of historically determined stock characters. Whether engaging magicians or explorers, vagrants or bohemians, Satanists or Prime Ministers, Moore divulges and redetermines the roles we expect these figures to play. By exploring the fantastic or the outlier on theatrical grounds, he calls into question the distillation of human nature into categorized neuroses. And by splicing anachronisms, he examines the very concept of the “stock” character, revealing and reframing the familiarly chronological narratives from which they come. Thus, Moore’s characters often feel like cyphers of shifting, nearly-knowable storylines, stand-ins for or transgressions from a new, distorted cultural geography.
Currently represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Moore graduated with an MFA from the Californian Institute for the Arts and has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, CAC, Lithuania, Iaspis, Stockholm, Contemporary Art Space, Osaka, Japan and the first Torino Triennale at the Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Italy. TV Moore was commissioned to make a major new work for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney and was included in the 2008 Busan Biennale. Born in 1974 in Australia, Moore currently lives and works in Sydney and New York.
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS
2009, Video, 7 min 13 sec
Following an installation of several of his performance-for-video works at MOMENTUM Sydney, Moore donated five editions of “Magick Without Tears” (2007) to the gallery’s founding collection. Concerned with exploiting reality by way of multiple camera angles and jarring, broken drumming, Moore here uses the clown’s ability to freely mock ruling systems as a statement for contemporary fictions. Just as a clown uses distortion to reveal truth, so to does today’s media create truth through narrative manipulation.
“In times past, clowns represented a freedom that was rarely granted in society. They could subvert authority and mock the rule of the day by blaspheming the very system in which they operated. By setting up a single scene and recording it through the gaze of several cameras, I am attempting to exploit reality and truth and expose these tropes as bizarre documented fact, just as the media represents images of truth that are obviously distorted.
The strange rhythm of the melancholic and almost broken drumming, in tandem with the cuts become trance like, which is a dark salute to the very seductive and manipulative inner structures of commercial moving image culture.
…Just keep watching…
The drummer plays his instrument with nonchalance, a comedy / tragedy – taking place in an unfamiliar make – shift universe. Two realities are being reinforced here while an unorthodox performance unfolds.”
(b. 1978 in Finland. Lives and works in Helsinki.)
Hannu Karjalainen is an award winning visual artist, filmmaker photographer, and composer based in Helsinki, Finland. Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School at Alver Alto University, Finland. Karjalainen’s experimental films, video installation work, photography and sound art have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Finland andinternationally, including UMMA University of Michigan Museum of Art, International Biennale of Photography Bogota, Scandinavia House New York, Fotogalleriet Oslo and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki. Karjalainen won the main prize at the Turku Biennial in 2007, and was chosen as Finnish Young Artist of the Year in 2009. Karjalainen’s latest album LUXE was released by Berlin based Karaoke Kalk in late 2020. Karjalainen has collaborated with Simon Scott (of Slowdive), Dakota Suite and Monolyth & Cobalt among others.
Woman on the Beach is one of Karjalainen’s early video works – more like 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.
WOMAN ON THE BEACH
2009, Video, 13 min 6 sec
Woman on the Beach, which was shown in MOMENTUM’s inaugural event in Sydney in 2010, is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. We see a woman, filmed with a focused on her immobile face, as she lies motionless on wet sand. The illusion of a still image is broken only by the intermittent rush of waves washing over her. The moving image then reverts into stillness. In this tableau vivant, Hannu Karjalainen subverts conventions of classical portrait photography to creating a striking tension between the still and moving image.
– Rachel Rits-Volloch
Nanjing Grand Theatre
2012, Video, 5 min 10 sec
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.
Watch here the Spotlight interview with Hannu Karjalainen
Mark Karasick, born in 1959 and raised in Canada, attended Art College in Toronto. He was introduced to encaustic painting in 1983 and has since continued to experiment with this Greco-Roman technique, mostly known through the Egyptian mummy portraits from Fayum and Hawara. In 1989, during his first visit to Italy, his work came to the attention of Swiss-Italian collector Signor Carlo Monzino, who sponsored Karasick to remain in Italy for five years of continued research and practice.
Karasick has exhibited his works in solo and group exhibitions across North America, Asia and Europe. He has exhibited alongside artists such as Anish Kapoor and Bill Viola at Sublime Embrace at the AGH (Ontario, Canada) and Nobuyoshi Araki and Matt Collishaw in London. He currently lives and works in the UK.
MICHAEL
2004, Video, 2 min 52 sec
As Karasick’s first foray into video, Michael examines the visual reflections of changing psychological states, here expressed by the young son of a museum director acquaintance. Karasick, who works primarily with painting, made this video as a study for a series of portraits. Similar to Bill Viola’s video works that depict series of evolving emotions, Michael uses close-ups, slow motion and black-and-white to emphasize an intimate, home video-like relation with the film’s emotive protagonist.
Originally shown as part of MOMENTUM Sydney’s 2010 program, curated by James Putnam, Michael was later donated and included in the gallery’s inaugural benefit exhibition.
(.b 1961 in Windsor, UK. Lives and works in London and Italy.)
James P. Graham is a multi-media artist working in film, photography, drawing and sculpture. He is autodidactic, having left Eton College at 18. He began his career in photography while working in Paris, and transitioned to TV and cinema when he left for London in 1994. Within this period he completed international commissions in editorial and advertising photography as well as television commercials. 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.
James P. Graham’s work has been shown in major museums and biennales around the world, including: Eleventh Plateau, Historical Archives Museum, Hydra, Greece (2011); Busan Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea (2010); Locus Solus, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2010); Volcano: from Turner to Warhol, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK (2010); Searching for Empedocles, Islington Metalworks, London, UK (2009); Space Now!, Space Gallery, London UK (2007); Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg (2007), amongst many others.
Graham’s first large scale work Iddu (2007) was made over 5 years on the landscape of the active volcano Stromboli in Italy and jointly funded through the Arts Council of England and the NESTA Foundation. This 360 degree multi screen film installation was first exhibited at MUDAM Guest House, Musee d’Art Moderne (MUDAM) Luxembourg in 2007 in the form of a 9m diameter, 3m high tent .and subsequently at the Busan Biennial, South Korea 2010, curated by Takashi Azumaya. In 2010 It was adapted into a two screen work Iddu – study in 60 degrees for thecritically acclaimed exhibition Volcano: Turner to Warholat Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK. In 2008 he made the first of his Suspended Animation sculptures, where Graham ‘enhances the living qualities of stone.’ Every flint contains a naturally made hole which ancients believed possessed healing qualities. The sculptural forms resemble warped skeletal frames imperceptibly hovering above the ground. This is not unrelated to his film Losing Seahenge (1999) which clearly laments the sacrilegious removal of a 4000 year old burial site to a sterile ‘geological zoo’, a site now lost for ever as a result of its autopsy and excavation. Some of his projects like Albion (2006), and the ongoing Voyageprint series, have been made uniquely using polaroid film, which is believed to be the only visual medium to successfully capture the energetic field of a place or person. His first solo show in Italy took place in 2015. The title ‘Calling for the Infinite Sphere‘ refers to a series of sculptures which uses the satellite dish, a modern everyday object, and transforms it from receptive to reflective portal. The title references a famous quote attributed to the ancient Egyptian philosopher, priest and alchemist Hermes Trismegistus. ‘God is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere’. His latest project carries a more grave ecological tone, concentrating on negative energy generated by environmental damage and conflict in the Middle East. ‘Desacration’ (2018) is a series of works on paper which oscillate between 2D and 3D, using pen, watercolour, cut out paper, and plastic.
CHRONOS
From the Series “The Cycle of Life”, 1999, Video, 6 min 20 sec
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. The joyful soundtrack accompanies fast-paced images of street-side barber shops providing momentary respite from the ceaseless movement of a bustling city.
Seen now in light of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in India due to the ravages of the pandemic, Chronos acquires a painfully wistful poignancy, harking back to more carefree times. Originally commissioned by Channel 4 Television UK in 1999, Chronos was selected by and later donated by renowned curator James Putnam for screening in the MOMENTUM Sydney exhibition (2010).
(b. 1969 in New York, USA. Lives and works in London.)
Doug Fishbone, Described as a “stand-up conceptual artist”, Doug Fishbone’s work is heavily influenced by the rhythms of stand-up comedy. Fishbone examines some of the more problematic aspects of contemporary life in an amusing and disarming way, using satire and humor in his films, performances and installations to critically examine consumer culture, mass media, and the relativity of perception and context. In his video and performance practice, he uses images found online to illustrate and undermine his own confrontational monologues on contemporary media and its corollary, the underground and avant-garde. Fishbone’s conceptual practice is wide-ranging, using many different forms of popular culture in unexpected ways. He earned a BA from Amherst College in the US in 1991, and MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London in 2003, and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004. Fishbone teaches and performs at major international and UK venues, including: the Hayward Gallery, ICA London, the Southbank Centre, Hauser and Wirth Somerset, and the Royal Academy. Fishbone is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Yinka Shonibare Foundation, an organization which fosters international cultural exchange.
Selected solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2010-11), Rokeby, London (2010-11, and 2009), Gimpel Fils, London (2006) and 30,000 Bananas in Trafalgar Square (2004). Selected group exhibitions include Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain (2010), Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2008); Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery (2008), London; British Art Show 6, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester (2006). Fishbone’s film project Elmina (2010) was premiered at Tate Britain in 2010, and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. Other notable projects include: the Mayor of London’s Thames Festival, London, UK (2013, 2014), and the Look Again Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland (2016). He curated Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and realised his solo project Made in China at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2015). Artificial Intelligence was commissioned by Werkleitz Festival, Halle, Germany (2018); and he showed a specially commissioned video The Jewish Question in the exhibition Jews, Money, Myth at the Jewish Museum, London (2019).
COMMUNISM
2008, Video Performance, 13 min 53 sec
A documentation of a performance lecture, Communism uses found and open source images to illustrate Fishbone’s essays on contemporary culture. Part stand-up performance, the work is in ongoing production, with MOMENTUM and Fishbone in collaboration on a future live performance. It was donated following its exhibiting in MONETUM’s inaugural benefit show in Berlin.
Elmina
2010, Feature Film made in collaboration with Revele Films, Accra, Ghana
Doug Fishbone has 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 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. Elmina was premiered at Tate Britain in 2010, and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. The film was voted #35 on Artinfo’s list of the 100 most iconic artworks of the last 5 years.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Elmina is a full-length feature filmed entirely on location in Ghana, in which I play a local Ghanaian farmer fighting corruption and the exploitation of the community by a Chinese multinational corporation. Written and produced by one of Ghana’s leading production companies, with a cast of well-known Ghanaian and Nigerian actors, it is a whopping melodrama full of witchcraft, murder, greed and intrigue. The film aims to bring together two groups and cultural economies that might normally have little overlap – the Western art world, and the West African popular film industry. What allows it to cross over between the two worlds is my unexplained and totally inappropriate presence in the lead role of a domestically produced African feature – a white Jewish man from New York playing a role that would normally be played by a black West African actor. No reference is ever made to this oddity of casting, which in a quietly radical way completely overturns conventions of race and representation in film, and offers a new perspective on globalization, neo-colonialism, Eastern influence in Africa, and the relativity of audience engagement.
Nezaket Ekici (b. 1970 in Kirsehir, Turkey. Lives and works in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Istanbul.)
Nezaket Ekici holds a degree in Fine Arts, an MA in Art Pedagogy, and an MFA degree, having studied Art History and Sculpture at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and Fine Arts Academy Munich (1994-2000). From 2001 to 2004 she studied Performance Art under Marina Abramović at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig.
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 tackled with humor in highly aesthetic compostions. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, authorial bodies, art history, religion, culture and politics are central to Ekici’s works. By highlighting these themes in everyday life and placing them in a new context, she aims to interconnect every element to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk. Nezaket Ekici has presented more than 250 different performances in more than 170 cities in over 60 countries on 4 continents.
Ekici was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cultural Academy Tarabya, Istanbul (2013-14), and was the recipient of the Rome Prize for an Artist Residency at the German Academy, Villa Massimo, Rome (in 2016-17). She received the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Award (2018), and received the Berlin Culur Senate prize for her Artist Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York (2020).
Selected international exhibitions since 2000 include: Museum Haus der Kunst in Munich; The Irish Museum of Modern art in Dublin; 25. May Museum Belgrade; PAC Milano; Venice Biennale; P.S.1 New York; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam; Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei/ Taiwan; Poznan Biennale; Curiciba Biennale; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Istanbul Modern; Marta Herford; Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai; Haus am Waldsee Berlin; KunstWerke Berlin; Oslo Museum; The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi; Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Total Museum Seoul, and many more.
VEILING AND REVEILING
2010, Video, 24 min 17 sec
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.
Following an exhibition of another of Ekici’s works, Atropos, at MOMENTUM Sydney in 2010, the artist donated Veiling and Reveiling to the gallery’s permanent collection. MOMENTUM continues to work with the artist and looks forward to future, collaborative performance programming.
Watch here the Spotlight interview with Nezaket Ekici
(b. 1986 in Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia. Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and Wahgi Valley, Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea.)
Eric Bridgeman was born 1986 in Redcliffe, Queensland, and lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and Wahgi Valley, Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Bridgeman is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Australia and Papua New Guinea, working with photography, painting, installation, video and performance in a variety of applications often to do with masculinity, portraiture, culture and politics. His relational art works are framed by personal connections to his maternal Yuri Alaiku clan, from Omdara, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, and his paternal upbringing in the suburban landscape of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The dominant focus of his work involves the discussion of social and cultural issues, often using the theatre of sport as a springboard for his ideas, addressing notions of masculinity as expressed in sporting culture and in the realm of ‘tribal warfare’ in the PNG Highlands, which mimics the drama, color and trickery seen in its national sport, Rugby League. Challenging the hardwired stereotypes of centuries of colonialist ethnographies, Bridgeman uses reconstruction, slap-stick, and parody, to interrogate his own cultural and sexual identity in a broader context of belonging. In doing so, his work also seeks to address and subvert the harsh social realities of both his homeland cultures.
Bridgeman holds a Bachelor of Photography from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (2010), where he developed his seminal work “The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules” (2008-2010). Significant solo exhibitions and commissions include: “Kala Büng”, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, AU (2018); “My Brother and the Beast”, Gallerysmith, Melbourne, AU (2018); SNO 145, Sydney Non-Objective, Sydney, AU (2018); “The Fight”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “All Stars”, Carriageworks, Sydney, AU (2012); “Haus Man”, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, AU (2012). Recent group exhibitions include: “Nirin”, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, AU (2020); “Just Not Australian”, Artspace, Sydney, AU (2019); “Australians in PNG”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “Number 1 Neighbour”, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, AU (2016); The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane, AU (2015–2016).
ARTIST STATEMENT
My name is Yuriyal Awari Muka. I am the son of Raymond George Bridgeman, descendent of English convict and Australian Joe Bridgeman, and Veronika Gikope Muka, daughter of Muka Alai of the Yuri Alaiku clan, Omdara, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. I grew up in the contested land of Australia, and down under I respond to the Anglo-Saxon name Eric Bridgeman. Aside from my cultural identity, I am an artist. I use a range of materials to produce photographic portraits, performances, designs, multimedia video and sculptural installation between my homes in Australia and PNG. Over the past decade I have been spending time living, making and cruising up and down and around the Okuk ‘Highlands’ Highway in PNG. After my second visit as an adult in 2009, my family invited me back and offered to build me a house. In the years that followed, I became entrenched within the community in Kudjip, Jiwaka Province, comprising of Yuri Alaiku hauslain (relatives) from Simbu, many tambu (in-law) and local papa graun (custodial land owners). I began creating multimedia work in partnership with family members as a point of personal exchange. My role as Yuriyal (Man of the Yuri), community member, art maker, producer and messenger emerged through times of hamimas (happiness), hevi (trouble), lewa (love), longlong sikarap (illness), taim no gut (death), singsing (celebration) and planti samting bagarap (politics).
– Eric Bridgeman
[Excerpted from Eric Bridgeman’s photo essay “Wait man kam (White man is coming)” at 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia.
The performance video Triple X Bitter enacts a deranged pub scenario in psychedelic colors, involving Boi Boi the Labourer, a group of boisterous pub-goers, two pseudo-black babes and an inflatable pool. With Bridgeman taking center stage as Boi Boi the Labourer, the artist constructs and deconstructs the unfolding events, allowing the participants to explore their own perceptions, fears and understandings of rules of behavior in Australian pub culture, and its pervasive role in Australian cultural identity.
Triple X Bitter is one of seven performance-for-video works produced as part of Bridgeman’s interdisciplinary project The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules (2008-2010). Drawing subversive parallels between the theatres of sport and ethnography, this body of work explores cross-cultural identity through the playful deconstruction of sex, gender and race politics. Bridgeman seeks to subvert race and gender stereotypes that underpin the foundations of national identity within contemporary Australia and Papua New Guinea. Using typical symbols from both nations, Bridgeman makes environments and scenarios in which fictional characters interact and explore tasks and activities inspired by the divergent ways of life from both his home countries.
Performed in both public and private spaces, and referencing ethnographic studies of tribal identities during periods of colonization, these carnivalesque acts are based on the paradoxical and improvised performances of its participants. Using blackface, whiteface, slapstick, and parody, Bridgeman irreverently constructs a bizarre amalgam between the symbologies, stereotypes, and socio-cultural roles in Australia and Papua New Guinea, situating his works in environments that simulate constructed rules of behavior, such as sporting arenas, pubs and work sites.
First exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2008, Bridgeman’s The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules has since been shown in various forms at the Australian Centre for Photography; the University of Queensland Art Museum; Gallery 4A, Sydney; Next Wave Festival, Melbourne; the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; and others.
THE FIGHT
2010, Video, 8 min 8 sec
In 2009, Eric Bridgeman traveled through remote parts of the Chimbu Province in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, his maternal homeland. Having been born in Australia, he became increasingly conscious of his own “white” Australian presence in his native land. The Fight is based on ethnographic conventions, from National Geographic to Irving Penn, which once aided in the promotion and consumption of Papua New Guinea as Australia’s next frontier. By means of acting out Western stereotypes of tribal war, The Fight parodies the history of ethnographic representation and the subsequent impact on the national and cultural identity of Papua New Guinea.
The Fight documents two groups of men from Bridgeman’s own clan, the Yuri Alaiku, playfully attacking one another with spears and shields painted with artworks inspired by the bold, colorful motifs traditional to this region. Shields have been used in times of battle as potent symbols of power to attackers. Bridgeman, however, sees this icon of warfare as a protector of untold stories, undocumented histories and fading cultural practices, which have come to be integral to his subsequent practice.
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