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Berlin, Educational
05/09/2022
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Artist Spotlights

 
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ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS

 

aaajiao
Featured in States of Emergency

MARINA BELIKOVA
Featured in TAKING FLIGHT – Birds & Bicycles Berlin



 

CLAUDIA CHASELING
Featured in States of Emergency

MARGRET EICHER
Featured in States of Emergency



 

NEZAKET EKICI
Featured in States of Emergency

THOMAS ELLER
Featured in States of Emergency



 

AMIR FATTAL
Featured in States of Emergency

HANNU KARJALAINEN
Featured in States of Emergency



 

ALEXEI KOSTROMA
Featured in TAKING FLIGHT – Birds & Bicycles Berlin

DAVID KRIPPENDORF
Featured in States of Emergency



 

DOMINIK LEJMAN
Featured in TAKING FLIGHT – Birds & Bicycles Berlin

MILOVAN MARKOVIĆ
Featured in States of Emergency



 

CHRISTIAN NICCOLI
Featured in States of Emergency

KIRSTEN PALZ
Featured in States of Emergency



 

NINA E. SCHÖNEFELD
Featured in States of Emergency

DAVID SZAUDER
Featured in TAKING FLIGHT – Birds & Bicycles Berlin


MARIANA VASSILEVA
Featured in TAKING FLIGHT – Birds & Bicycles Berlin


 

Berlin, Educational
05/11/2021
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Points of Resistance 3 – Birds & Bicycles Symposium

 
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POINTS of RESISTANCE III

 

 

Birds & Bicycles: Paradoxes of Freedom

 

SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

9 November 2021

The 32nd Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

 

11:00 – 13:30 & 18:30 – 23:00

At Zionskirche, Zionskirchplatz, Berlin Mitte

 

Curated by Constanze Kleiner & David Elliott

 
 

Morning Program – 3G rules apply: proof of vaccination, recovery, or negative test required.

11:00 – 11:30

Unveiling of the new monumental sculpture Why I Bear by Stefan Rinck

Stefan Rinck in discussion with David Elliott [in English and German]

11:30 – 12:00

Film Screening – Heart of Stone, by Sonja Baeger on the work of Stefan Rinck
[in German with English subtitles]

12:00 – 13:00
Panel Discussion – Birds & Bicycles: Paradoxes of Freedom [in English]

Moderated by David Elliott, with Tatiana Arzamasova, Thomas Eller, Dominik Lejman, Zsuzsanna Petró, Rachel Rits-Volloch

13:00 – 13:40
Film Screening – Allegoria Sacra by AES+F

 

Evening Program – 2G rules apply: proof of vaccination, or recovery required.

18:30 – 19:00

Unveiling of the new monumental sculpture Why I Bear by Stefan Rinck
[in English and German]

19:00 – 19:30

Film Screening Heart of Stone, by Sonja Baeger on the work of Stefan Rinck
[in German with English Subtitles]

19:30 – 20:30
Lecture – The Church, the Resistance and the Bear – Philosopher, historian, and publisher

Christian Posthofen addresses the Zionskirche as a heterotopia.
[in German]

21:00 – 22:00
Concert – TRES MOMENTOS by Sven Helbig, conducted by Wilhelm Keitel

To Buy Tickets for TRES MOMENTOS – CLICK HERE >>

22:00 – 22:40
Film Screening – Allegoria Sacra by AES+F

 

Symposium Concludes with a Drinks Reception

 

MORE INFO > >

 




This program is prompted by two recent exhibitions: Points of Resistance, shown earlier this year at the Zionskirche (4-26 April 2021), and Taking Flight: Birds & Bicycles Berlin, currently at MOMENTUM in the Kunstquartier Bethanien (4 September – 14 November 2021). Both are concerned with paradoxes of freedom. While the works in these exhibitions reflect on the limits of memory, history, politics, progress, and desire, the cultural infrastructure seems to be becoming increasingly incompatible with the requirements for interaction. Too often, freedoms for some are dependent upon the servitude of others.

The Zionskirche was a centre of resistance itself in many different ways. When the pandemic suspended normality, the references of the works shown there in Points of Resistance ranged from the specific to the global through different times and places. What brought them together was their moral imperative and political and social need to preserve and promote difference as a fountainhead of creativity.




Birds & Bicycles adopts a more metaphorical approach by examining ideas of freedom that focus on borders – mental and actual, physical and figurative – as characterized by the mechanical technology of the bicycle and the poetic symbol of birds in flight. This exhibition assembles the work of 12 artists from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, most of whom live in Berlin. In various ways, their work reflects on the analogy of flight in different paradoxes of rooted mobility.

The starting points for the Birds & Bicycles: Paradoxes of Freedom discussion panel, which takes place on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, are both historical and current issues concerning the crisis in democracy. The panelists, both artists, and curators will talk concretely about how they think art and culture express and reflect the truths of our time. Why I Bear, the sculpture of the bear carrying a heavy burden by Stefan Rinck, being unveiled on this day, is a monumental version made for public space of the work shown in Points of Resistance. The program is accompanied by lectures, film screenings, and a concert by renowned composer Sven Helbig. Tres Momentos describes a section of the infinite spiral, in which disorder and structure, the sacred and the profane, life and death are mutually dependent.



 

 

Unveiling of the monumental sculpture Why I Bear by Stefan Rinck

Stefan Rinck in discussion with David Elliott





On November 9, 2021, the monumental sandstone sculpture Why I bear /Grosser Lastenbär by sculptor Stefan Rinck is installed adjacent to the Zionskirche in Berlin-Mitte. The large sculpture hewn from sandstone, measuring 185 x 170 x 120cm, is a new version of the small Lastenbär by Stefan Rinck from 2007. This work was on display in April 2021 in the exhibition Points of Resistance at the Zionskirche in Berlin and touched a particularly large number of people, becoming a surface for projections of private, social and political issues. “A bear that is actually too small, but nevertheless carries its load that is actually too big. It evoked spontaneous empathy among the viewers, and its indomitability amazed and inspired them,” says Constanze Kleiner, the initiator of the project. This is where the idea originated: to create a large, symbolic version of Stefan Rinck’s Lastenbär for public space. Within six months, the idea became reality. Inspired by the great attention of visitors, subsequently conceived for public space and erected in this context, Stefan Rinck’s large “Lastenbär” at the Zionskirche in Berlin-Mitte, becomes an example of relevant, effective everyday culture. Works of art are gateways to memory, but above all to new spaces of thought and the future. The sculpture Why I bear / Großer Lastenbär can accomplish this. The title for the large version of the bear was extended by the artist – just as playfully as light-footedly. Why I bear / Grosser Lastenbär plays with the dual definition of the word “bear”; both the animal, which is also the symbol of Berlin, and the endurance of hardships. What is special about handwriting of Stefan Rinck is an unmistakable gracefulness of a sculptural language that is at the same time monumental. The simplicity with which he turns his creations into creatures and the humor with which he releases them into the world – perfect and incomplete at the same time – are unique. From his works speaks a quiet tenderness for all living things and at the same time an unwavering “I can do it.” This artistic oeuvre is also the origin of the work Why I bear / Grosser Lastenbär as an archetype for excessive pressure and resistant, individual power; a stony universe that carries empathy in a fascinating way. Starting on November 9, Why I bear / Grosser Lastenbär is the artist’s first public sculpture in Germany and will be on view for two years in public space at the Zionskirche in Berlin.

 

Stefan Rinck (1973). Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.


Stefan Rinck studied art history and philosophy at Saarland University in Saarbrücken and sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. His work will be shown internationally: including in Madrid at the Arco art fair in 2020, at Art Basel Miami in 2019, and at the Jardin de Tuileries for FIAC in the same year. He will show his latest works, over 5m high, at FIAC in Paris this year. He is represented in the following public collections: CBK Rotter- dam (NL), Musée de la Loterie (BE), Krohne Collection (DE), FRAC Corse (FR). In 2019 Stefan Rinck was featured in the Thames & Hudson publication “2100 Sculptors of Tomorrow”. Stefan Rinck has been realizing public sculptures since 2008. Already during his participation in the Busan Biennale 2008 in South Korea, the granite sculpture “The Division of Woman and Man” was commissioned. In 2018, the work “The Mongooses of Beauvais” was permanently installed in the Beaupassage in Paris. Other monu- mental limestone sculptures were realized in France in 2010 and 2020. Recently, at the FIAC in Paris, he showed two new sculptures, more than 5 meters high, to learn more about the artist and the history of its creation.



 

 

Panel Discussion – Birds & Bicycles: Paradoxes of Freedom


 

Moderated by David Elliott
Curator, Writer, Art Historian, Museum Director (Oxford, UK / Berlin)

Tatiana Arzamasova
Artist from AES+F (Moscow, Russia / Berlin)

Thomas Eller
Artist and Curator, Artistic Director at Taoxichuan China Arts & Sciences, President of Randian Magazine, Director of THEgallery (Mürsbach, Germany / Berlin)

Dominik Lejman
Artist and Professor at the University of the Arts Poznan (Poznan, Poland / Berlin)

Zsuzsanna Petró
Curator at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, formerly at the Ludwig Museum Budapest (Budapest, Hungary / Berlin)

Rachel Rits-Volloch
Curator of Birds & Bicycles Berlin and Founding Director of MOMENTUM

 

The Birds & Bicycles exhibition adopts a metaphorical approach by examining ideas of freedom that focus on borders – mental and actual, physical and figurative – as characterized by the mechanical technology of the bicycle and the poetic symbol of birds in flight. This exhibition assembles the work of 12 artists from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, most of whom live in Berlin. In various ways, their work reflects on the analogy of flight in different paradoxes of rooted mobility.

The starting points for the Birds & Bicycles: Paradoxes of Freedom discussion panel, which takes place on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, are both historical and current issues concerning the crisis in democracy. The panelists, both artists, and curators will talk concretely about how they think art and culture express and reflect the truths of our time.
 

READ REFLECTIONS ON PARADOXES OF FREEDOM by DAVID ELLIOTT > >

 

 

Film Screening: Allegoria Sacra by AES+F


 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Artist Statement]

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

 

 

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

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



 

 

Lecture – The Church, the Resistance and the Bear
by Christian Posthofen

Philosopher, historian, and publisher Christian Posthofen discusses the historic Zionskirche in terms of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia – as a realized, actually built utopia on which social relations can be read in a special way. For their part, the three relational elements: church, resistance, and bear each possess a disturbing and empowering imaginative potential. Material and immaterial, mental-emotional structural elements meet here and create situations for special spaces of possibility in this place. Christian Posthofen lives and works in Berlin, and teaches philosophy at the ETH, Technical University, Zurich.

 

 

Concert – TRES MOMENTOS
by Sven Helbig, conducted by Wilhelm Keitel

Tres Momentos describes a section of the infinite spiral in which disorder and structure, the sacred and the profane, life and death are interdependent. The lightness of an inexplicable, fleeting idea or affection is followed by unconditional will. Mechanical habit turns first into compulsion and later into uncontrollable violence, which finally collapses and dissolves into a melancholic, whimsical waltz. German composer Sven Helbig created the work on commission from the Moritzburg Chamber Music Festival. With it, he leaves the previously preferred strict harmonics and also allows electronic parts to come more to the fore. For the concert on the occasion of the Birds & Bicycles Symposium on the 32nd Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sven Helbig collaborates once more with the conductor Wilhelm Keitel, who previously conducted the choral work “I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain” by the composer and performed it among others at the Bolshoi Theater in Minsk.

 
 
 

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


 

In partnership with


 

Berlin, Educational
21/01/2021
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Art Nomads Symposium

 
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Symposium


How Culture Builds Cities: Berlin and Abu Dhabi

 

10 December 2016 @ 3 – 4:30pm

At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien

 
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The Symposium is part of the Exhibition

Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates

At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien

9 – 22 December 2016

 

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

 



 

MORE INFORMATION ON ART NOMADS HERE >>

 

SPEAKERS:

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

 
 

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE SYMPOSIUM HERE:


 
 

Abu Dhabi and Berlin: two capitol cities redefining themselves through art; cultural capital at work in two radically different cultures; two places which voraciously ingest influences from abroad, yet produce cultural outputs inextricably linked to the identity of each city. Abu Dhabi builds the Louvre and the Guggenheim with the world’s top architects, while Berlin rebuilds its Stadtschloss, re-homes its museums, and brings famous museum directors from London to run its theaters. Is Abu Dhabi going for the “Berlin Effect” of cultural capital? Is this a parallel trajectory, or is there something else at play here? We invite art professionals working in and with the UAE to discuss this and other questions linking the two cities.

Berlin. Home to countless galleries and museums. Adoptive home to countless artists. Berlin has come to be known internationally as the Art Capitol of Europe, attracting artists from around the world. And not only artists. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin acts as a vortex, sucking in the cool young things of art, fashion, media, music, professionals and tourists, migrant laborers and refugees.

Berlin is a city of nomads where everyone is always from elsewhere, somewhere anywhere but here. It is a city of mobile people and moving images. In willful defiance of its painful history, Berlin, the perpetually evolving city, welcomes everyone. In this age of displacement, Berlin is a city constantly rebuilding itself. On a mission to outgrow its legacy of war, Berlin redefines and rebuilds itself through art and culture.

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


 
 

SPEAKERS:

 

JANET BELLOTTO

Janet Bellotto is an artist, educator and curator from Toronto, who splits her time teaching in Dubai as an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University. She was the Artistic Director for the 20th International Symposium on Electronic Art in Dubai and engages in projects of cultural exchange. Water, documented events and personal narratives are elements that have shaped Bellotto’s sculpture/installation practice, including mediums of photography, video and performance, while exhibiting internationally in a variety of collective, group and solo exhibitions.

DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott sits on the Advisory Boards of both MOMENTUM and The Sovereign Art Foundation, and he served as one of the judges for the inaugural The Sovereign Art Foundation MENA Art Prize in 2016, selecting the three finalists shown in Art Nomads – Made In The Emirates. David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001); Founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006); the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007); Artistic Director of The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art).


JENI FULTON

Jeni Fulton is Art and 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 currently completing her PhD Thesis on “Value and Evaluation in Contemporary Art” at the Faculty for Cultural Theory at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung Berlin. Her PhD thesis examines how different systems of art evaluation (economic, symbolic and institutional) interact in the field of contemporary art to create a concept of contemporary artistic value. She has written catalogue texts for artists including Christian Jankowski. She is bilingual in German and English and is fluent in French.

jasmina-petkovic

VANINA SARACINO

Vanina Saracino is a Berlin-based independent curator. Since 2013 she is in charge the contemporary art program on the experimental, non-narrative TV channel ikonoTV and is responsible of external projects with museums and institutions; in 2014, she co-founded the curatorial project OLHO in Brasil, exploring the relationship between contemporary art and Cinema. Other projects include Un lugar habitable es un evento (former museum MAMM, Medellín, Colombia, 2012), Vertical World – approaching gravity (General Public, Berlin, 2012), and the environmental project Art Speaks Out, for ikonoTV (shown at Istanbul Modern, 2015, and COP22, Marrakesh, 2016). Graduated in Communication with a thesis in semiotics of the arts, she holds a masters degree in Arts Management (GIOCA, Università di Bologna) and in Philosophy and Art Theory (UAB, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona). She is a member of the IKT, international association of curators.



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Berlin, Educational, Exhibition
23/06/2020
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mutopia5

 
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mutopia 5

 

Claudia Chaseling

Spatial Painting

 

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

Design by Emilio Rapanà

 

30 June – 30 October 2020

At the Australian Embassy Berlin

Wallstrasse 76-79

 

[Currently restricted public access due to COVID-19 regulations]

 


 
 
 

 

Splashes of bright colors in biomorphic forms. Shapes and hues redolent of crackling, explosive energy. Large format works overflowing the gallery walls. Visitors to an exhibition of Claudia Chaseling’s work are confronted with a psychotropic saturation of visual information interlaced with occasional text and the URLs of source materials for Chaseling’s research. For what seems initially to be pure abstraction, is in fact so much more. Chaseling began her “mutopia” series in 2011, honing her technique of Spatial Painting to focus on visualizing the nuclear chain that leads to radioactive contamination and its mutative effect on living things. Chaseling’s inquiry into the ways that abstract, non-representational painting can communicate narratives with a socio-political meaning – namely, the radioactive contamination of depleted uranium munitions – became the subject of her practice-based PhD, awarded by the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra in 2019. Chaseling’s body of work, informed by her dissertation, is on show at the Australian Embassy in her own home city of Berlin – a tribute to her 21 years of living between Australia and Germany and the Embassy’s commitment to highlighting Australian-German artistic links, even in these precarious times.. This exhibition was realized during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and resulting lockdown, at a time when most other cultural institutions were canceling or postponing their programs. The new site-specific work made especially for this exhibition was able to be completed in time only because the artist obtained her materials the day before shops closed for the lockdown. And while the eyes and hearts of the world were focused on the viral threat and aftermath of COVID-19, Claudia Chaseling, working in her studio throughout the lockdown, was addressing another kind of insidious invisible killer: radiation and its repercussions.

“mutopia 5” is an exhibition of Spatial Painting featuring 15 works, ranging in media from painting to watercolor, sculpture, print, and video. Encompassing a decade of Claudia Chaseling’s artistic practice, this body of work takes us on a psychedelic journey through the nuclear chain leading to depleted uranium and its toxic aftermath. Chaseling’s preoccupation with the mutations caused by radiation poisoning is somehow rendered even more relevant now, in the time of COVID-19, when suddenly we are all learning so much more about the mutations of viral strains, about the mistakes made at a cellular level, the glitches in genetic code causing mutations. As the title of this exhibition suggests, this is the 5th iteration of the “mutopia” body of work. And true to its subject matter, with each iteration, the exhibition mutates into something new, adapting to the architecture of its space with the creation of new site-specific works. “Mutopia” – Claudia Chaseling’s verbal paradox, comingling the terms mutation and utopia – has been her core subject matter since 2011, with the creation of “Murphy the Mutant”, Chaseling’s graphic novel of watercolors animated on video. This narrative work effectively describes her fixation upon the enduring environmental devastation of nuclear waste and munitions, transposing into a paradoxically sweet atomic allegory, akin to a children’s book, the horrific aftermath of the way we wage war in the modern world.

Illustrating the trajectory of her practice over the past decade, this early work – and her only video to date – is shown in this exhibition alongside Chaseling’s newest 9-meter long site-specific Spatial Painting, “mutopia 5”, made fore the Australian Embassy Berlin,. The visual language Chaseling has created and the imagery in her work consists of distorted landscapes, poisoned places, mutated creatures and plants whose deformation is caused by radioactive contamination. Her images are not predictions of some post-apocalyptic future, but rather the result of her research into historic and ongoing ways in which we continue to poison our planet with the byproducts of wars and nuclear accidents. To ground the psychedelic fantasy of her imagery in the harsh realities of the nuclear chain her work exposes, Chaseling embeds within her paintings quotations and URLs referencing her source materials, mapping the places polluted by depleted uranium, an environmental contaminant that is a derivative waste product of nuclear power and nuclear weapons technology.

The tension in Claudia Chaseling’s practice of Spatial Painting lies precisely in the gap between its form and its content. Visually striking, beautifully colorful, the work is seductive, attracting the eye to its complexity of layers; in the artist’s own words “dissolving landscapes into compositions of toxic colour that comprise negative shapes and abstract forms”. Because the topics Chaseling addresses are ugly, she strives to keep her work from becoming too aesthetic, using negative space, leaving gaps within her imagery to leave room for interpretation. Just as her work can be read on the levels of both form and content, Chaseling builds a duality of perspective into the foundations of her practice. Striving for the moment “when a painting becomes an environment”, the artist “proposes a novel understanding of spatiality, one that reaches beyond formalism, reaching into today’s political landscape…to awaken our attention to environmental damages caused by man-made radioactive radiation, which is mutating nature”. Chaseling’s terminology “Spatial Painting” refers to this technique of producing sociopolitically inflected works which are at once 2 and 3-dimensional, created in such a way that when seen from a particular point of view, the works come to appear paradoxically flat. This is no easy feat in a practice where the works tend to morph into the architecture of their exhibition space, overflowing the bounds of their canvases, exploding onto the ceilings, melting onto the floors, oozing onto the walls to bend around corners. In the past, much of Chaseling’s expanded painting has been created within the exhibition space itself, and accordingly designed to be temporary, existing only for the duration of each show. However, taking a new direction in her practice, her most recent Spatial Painting “mutopia 5” was made during the 3 months of pandemic lockdown entirely in the artist’s studio, but with the site-specific point of perspective designed for the architecture of the exhibition space at the Australian Embassy.

It took a global pandemic to stop the world in its tracks under the threat of an invisible killer which pays no heed to national borders or political will. Yet Claudia Chaseling has been painting another such invisible killer for over a decade. Why is it that no amount of media coverage and political protest – no amount of outrage at dirty bombs and weapons testing – can stop the invisible killer of radiation poisoning our planet? Why could not the global tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl or Fukushima also stop the world in its tracks? This exhibition is a warning, a wake-up-call exploding onto our retinas in poison pigments, and invading our consciousness with information we should find as terrifying as any pandemic. As the artist maintains, “mass destruction is enabled by mass distraction”. Using her visual language of Spatial Painting to both inform and protest about the fatal status quo of global energy and arms industries, Claudia Chaseling has for over a decade persevered in focusing our attention on the pernicious weapon of mass destruction which is depleted uranium. Yet in designating this body of work “mutopia”, she does so with hope for a better future. “Mutopia” – Claudia Chaseling’s verbal paradox, comingling the terms mutation and utopia, is perhaps not the oxymoron it first appears to be. Mutations in the DNA of living things caused by radioactive isotopes is the stuff of sci-fi horror. Yet, from the very beginning of life on this planet, genetic mutation has also been a survival mechanism. Without such mutations over the course of millennia, we would not exist. If we enable our planet to survive long enough, perhaps we too may change into something better.

MOMENTUM is proud to present Claudia Chaseling’s solo exhibition “mutopia 5”, as part of its 10th Anniversary Program, celebrating the foundation of MOMENTUM in Sydney, Australia in 2010. The exhibition was realized as part of the foyer exhibition program at the Australian Embassy Berlin, which hosts visual arts showcases by Australian artists and German artists connected with Australia.

[Rachel Rits-Volloch]

[All quotations are taken either from conversations with the artist, or from Claudia Chaseling’s PhD dissertation, “Spatial Painting And The Mutative Perspective: How Painting Can Breach Spatial Dimensions And Transfer Meaning Through Abstraction”, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 2019.]



 

mutopia 5 Exhibition Tour with Claudia Chaseling


 



 

ARTIST BIO:
 

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

 

The Making-Of mutopia 5:

70 Days in the Artist’s Studio

 

 
 

NOW (2020)

Claudia Chaseling in collaboration with Emilio Rapanà
digital print and 10 water colours on paper and canvas 190cm x 390cm

A new artwork made for mutopia 5, which we were required to remove from this exhibition due to it’s political content.

 

 
 

Publications by Claudia Chaseling

 




 



 

Source Material:

Selections from the Artist’s Research into Depleted Uranium

[Click on each title to follow the links.]

 

The film which launched the artist’s fixation on Depleted Uranium:
“Deadly Dust” Documentary, Frieder F. Wagner, Germany, 2006 > >

 

Deutsche Welle (DW), 20 March 2020 > >
 

The Guardian, 14 April 2017 > >
 

Medical Association for the Prevention of War, “The Nuclear Chain” > >
 

PRESS TV Documentary: “Balkan Cancer”, Agim Abdullah, Macedonia, 2014 > >

RT News, 22 September 2015 > >
 

Wise Uranium Project, 29 November 2018 > >
 

World Socialist Website, 26 September 2015 > >
 

RAWA News, March 2002 > >



 

 
 
 

This exhibition was realised thanks to the generous support of:

 

 
 
 
And thanks to our Media Partners:


 
 

INSTALLATION PHOTOS
by Ruppert Bohle

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Berlin, Educational, Residency
31/01/2020
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Shaarbek Amankul

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 
 

Shaarbek Amankul

Website – Portfolio

 

12 January – 12 February 2020

 


 

SHAARBEK AMANKUL

ARTIST TALK &
VIDEO SCREENING

9 February 2020 @ 4pm

@ MOMENTUM

Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, 10997, Berlin

MORE INFO BELOW

PROJECT PRESENTATION

22 January 2020 @ 7pm

The Land where Horses Run Free

Artist Talk by Shaarbek Amankul

@ TOP – Transdisciplinary Project Space

Schillerpromenade 4, 12049 Berlin
 

MORE INFO > >



 
 

Shaarbek Amankul (b. 1959. Lives and works in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) is a curator and interdisciplinary artist working with a variety of media: ceramic, sculpture, installation, performance, video and photography, in addition to conceptual research projects. Amankul holds art and history degrees from Frunze Art College, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (1980) and Kyrgyz National University (1989), respectively. Amankul founded the international artist group Art Connection (2001-2006), the first the art initiative in Kyrgyzstan focused on environmental issues. Amankul’s conceptual and curatorial work also includes the extensive art platform B’Art Contemporary, which he founded in 2007 to instigate a critical arts dialogue between the communities of Central Asia and the global art world.

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

Scroll Down for Extended Artist Bio

 


Watch the video of the Shaarbek Amankul’s artist talk at MOMENTUM:


 
 

SCREENING PROGRAM

 

Flight of the Blind Eagle
2019, video performance, 1’ (designed to loop)

Kyrgyzstan has gone through a difficult path of searching for happiness and selfhood. Having passed through many historical ages, the Kyrgyz people still have not found an autonomous and holistic vision of themselves – as individuals, a people, a society, a state – and a path toward their future development. Today, such rethinking is a paramount task for society. Eternity has a special grace – it opens its veils even when we are blind and blind others. It gives freedom of choice even when we deprived ourselves and others of freedom. [Shaarbek Amankul]

Untitled
2019, video performance, 1’ (designed to loop)

As one hypothesis, suggests that in order to move forward, visions of historical identification must be critically examined as the phantoms of consciousness they are. These figures, literally burdened by different headwear, are dressed in the color worn by woman exploring new universes and ghosts from another time or mind, their movements bound to one another in a counter-argument to the nomadic symbol of impossible autonomy. Both a figurative image and a literal image, whose very body is visually fragmented, becoming part of the landscape itself. [Shaarbek Amankul]


Drinking the Wind
2020, 5’

For centuries, the nomadic people coexisted with animals; they were indispensable helpers living in symbiosis. Intercutting film footage from 1965 taken from the Kyrgyz State Film Archive, with a video performance shot by Amankul, this work investigates mythologies of the figure of the nomad, both in Kyrgyz culture and global ideology. How can Central Asia continue to draw from the traditional idea of the nomad so crucial to cultural history, while moving past clichés and into transformative models about contemporary identity? What to do locally for survival in the globalizing world? Does breaking with old archetypes necessitate the loss of history? [Shaarbek Amankul]

End of Nature
2010/2020, 3 channel video, 3’

Designed as a 3-channel video installation, this project reminds us of our dependence on nature – destroying it we destroy our habitat and thus destroy ourselves. Our sense of omnipotence is a myth; as humans, our well-being depends on the well-being of nature. The work is a manifesto calling for the preservation of biological and cultural diversity as a part of our identity. In a country riddled with Uranium mines, and a legacy of selling its natural resources to support foreign interests, the destruction on the screen can be seen as but a chilling preface to the devastation ahead. With original footage shot in 2010, however, this work was made after the Kyrgyz government ban on Uranium mining in 2019.


Kok Boru / Grey Wolf (Capricornus AUTHORITIES)
2011, 1’09” (original 5’)

Kok Boru, the national game of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, has its origins in traditional nomadic culture, when hunters and shepherds would go after the wolves decimating their livestock. According to legend, having caught up with the pack, they would pick up running wolves from the ground, throwing them between each other almost playfully. The game today requires teams on horseback to throw a dead sheep or goat into their opponent’s goal on the playing field. The cultural origins of the game are combative. While playing Kok Boru, men and horses were taught to be fearless, courageous, and daring; qualities needed by warriors. ‘Kok Boru’, translated as ‘Grey Wolf’, is viewed by many today as their primary link to the cultural legacy of their forebears as nomads.

Duba
2006, 3’05″ (original 6’56″)

Shamans are healers who use traditional practices to cure people of ailments, triggering natural forces on a subconscious level to help overcome illness. On screen, there’s only a close-up of a face – the fascinating physiology of a trance – a shaman performing a ritual. The title of the work ‘Duba’ means ‘cleaning the soul’. In Kyrgyz culture scientific explanations can be ineffective since many people do not trust logic. The realm of informal medicine and inexplicable phenomena is often more convincing than science. This era of complex conditions of social upheaval and rapid changes within the fields of technology and communication lead to feelings of inadequacy and a loss of identity. People therefore turn to shamans to obtain treatment for their illnesses. The irrational is a form of restoration lost identity. [Shaarbek Amankul]


Sham
2007, 4’20″

Like “Duba”, this work documents a cleansing ritual. The unconventional appears most likely to gain a foothold in the Post-Soviet Era of no fixed paradigms. In this place, they believe in and hope for miracles. And only the shaman can enter a trance. In this state of mind, they read prayers, they yawn and cry from excitement; they scream and belch from sicknesses of both body and mind. Strange how they meditate, scratching and beating one another. And afterwards, according to credible sources, they often don’t remember what happened to them. They will conclude that everything happened by the will of higher powers. Once they’re purified and blessed like this, they can live on more peacefully.

Circumcision
2011, 3’43″ (original 4’10″)

Documenting the traditional circumcision ceremony of the artist’s nephew, this work is another chapter in the portrait of his nation, which Shaarbek Amankul unblinkingly captures on film, from intimate familial moments to explicit scenes viscerally impossible to watch. During the modernization of Kyrgyzstan in Soviet times, the tradition of circumcision was banned, but was nevertheless performed in secret in often unsanitary conditions without appropriate medical instruments. Today this right of passage is performed in official institutions by countless families free to practice their cultural and religious traditions.


Song
2007, 4’35″

This work is yet another chapter in Shaarbek Amankul’s portrait of life in his culture; everyday moments, both fleeting and eternal, abstract and real, poetic and commonplace. It is both a portrait of the many normally invisible, a cleaning lady polishing the floors, and a strikingly individual close-up of an idiosyncratic character.

New Society
2006, 1’

The video New Society shows poor villagers on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, emptying aid packages of bottled water onto the arid ground so they can recycle the plastic for cash. The devastating irony by which the normally environmentally sound practice of recycling results in the wastage of water is a reflection upon the economic privation and shortsightedness wherein a population comes to prefer the quick cash from recycling to the water itself. This twisted take on the water economy is devoted to the search for social identity on the part of thousands of residents of the suburbs of Bishkek. This work looks at the population who left their villages after the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to remain marginalized to this day by the city infrastructure through unemployment and poverty.


Artist
2011, 1’ (original 9’40″)

This is a documentary portrait of a disabled street artist in Bishkek. Unable to use his arms, Tolon paints with his legs, selling his work in underground passages around the city. Not a prurient glimpse of the carnivalesque, rather this is an homage to one individual’s strength of will. Surviving through the dexterity of his legs – eating, drinking, drawing pictures, calculating money – he paints lusciously colorful pictures of popular stars and singers. A figure both abject and heroic, there is in his work something really original.

We Need To Live
2007, 4’33″

Editing documentary footage within a poetic structure, Amankul’s videos have tracked the fundamental social, political and cultural changes that have taken place in Kyrgyzstan since it gained independence from the USSR in 1991. During this time there has been considerable civil unrest and a move from a secular to an Islamic state culture. The two-channel film examines, in brutal counterpoint, the tragic discrepancies between propaganda and reality, as well as the ludicrous faces of state power, inhumanity, wastage of resources and civil unrest.


VATAN / Homeland
2007, 4’34″

Another work in the series of video-portraits of Kyrgyzstan, capturing the many contradictions of a culture ravaged by political and religious colonization, regime change, and modernization, still in search of its post-Soviet identity. Expanding upon the tragic, and at times absurd counterpoints of the human condition in Kyrgyzstan, Amankul shows us an Eastern Bazar, passers-by and cripples, traders and beggars; dancing girls and a border post; demonstrations and moments of revolutionary turmoil; the beating of “enemies of the people” at rallies; and acts of self-immolation; celebrations and riots, the dark and light sides of life; and a lullaby to appease the passions, a mother’s request for clemency.

Lenin Stands – Lenin Fell Down
2003, 1’30″

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


Puzzle of Identity
2020, 1’30″ (designed to loop)

The collapse of the USSR with its idea of communism has led to a new renaissance of Islam in post-soviet Kyrgyzstan. Every year during the holy month of Ramadan, thousands of Muslims – many of whom in the past were devoted custodians of communist ideology – gather for a collective holiday prayer on the central square near the Lenin monument and the Parliament of the Kyrgyz Republic. Historically, the square hosted grand Soviet parades glorifying socialism. Today it is a space for strictly framed religious practices. The influence of Islam is growing at an enormous speed. On one hand western civilization replaces socialist values, on the other hand traditional values and spirituality based on religion have revived. [Shaarbek Amankul]

Transformation
2005, project documentation video, 12’14″

Transformation is a project curated by Shaarbek Amankul as part of his Nomadic Art initiatives, inviting international artists to examine the social and political issues of Central Asia: the movement from a totalitarian crisis of public and political life to open civil society. The project took place 2005 amidst the derelict buildings of a former secret soviet military base which produced uranium from the waters of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. Here the ruins of the architecture represent not merely potential ecological catastrophe, in their echoing of Chernobyl, but in the casting off of a place through the implacability of capitalism. This contradiction, the history and reason for the existence of the buildings opposed to the natural surroundings, embodies inspiration for investigations of topics such as spirituality, globalization, international terrorism, and dictatorship. [Shaarbek Amankul]



 

Selected Group Exhibitions

Beyond numerous exhibitions held in various countries of the Soviet Union, he has exhibited in US, Europe, Asia like World Contemporary Art 98, Los Angeles, 1998; Art in Action, Oxford, 1999; No Mads Land, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2002; Transforma, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2002; 43rd Premio Suzzara, Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea di Suzzara, Italy, 2003); Central Asian Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale/videoarchive, 2005; Intersection, Modern Art Gallery, Ulan Bator, 2007; 2nd Singapore Biennale, 2008; Zindan/Vatan/Duba, Kunsthalle/Spiegel, Lothringer13, München, 2009; Biennale Cuvée, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, 2009; The View from Elsewhere, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, 2009; Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, 2009; Changing Climate: New Media and Video Art from Central Asia, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, 2009; 22nd Les Instants Vidéo Festival, Marseille, 2009; Video and Performance Art Festival, Ramallah, 2011; Between Heaven and Earth: Art from the Centre of Asia, Gallery Calvert 22, London, 2011; Introspection, Ya Gallery, Kyiv, 2013; Crossroad: Contemporary Art from Central Asia & Caucasus, Sotheby’s, London, 2013; Video from Elsewhere, Edinburgh, 2013, Edinburgh; Call and Response with George Steinmann, Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland, 2014; Balagan! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Others Mythical Places, Kühlhaus-Berlin, 2015; Flight of a Blind Eagle, Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, 2017; Posttotal, Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek; Collection, Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, 2019; Water(Proof), MOMENTUM, Kunstquatier Bethanien, Berlin, 2019; Planet Art Festival of Nature, Kühlhaus-Berlin, 2019; Water(Proof), Federation Square Melbourne, 2019; Shamanism and Contemporary Artists, Gallery 46, London, 2020; Waldwolfwildnis, Museum Villa Rot, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 2020; Project Stoa 169, Polling, Germany (Sculpture Park opening to the public 2022).

International Artist Residencies

House of Art Foundation USSR (1989-91, Latvia); Berkshire Artist’s Settlement (1998, NY); International Artist in Residence Krems (2003, Austria); Print Graphic Academy (2005, Austria); Vermont Studio Center (2005, USA), CECArtslink Global Art Lab (New York / San Francisco); International Artist Residence Villa Waldberta (2011, Germany); MOMENTUM (2020, Berlin, Germany).

 

Conferences & Symposiums

Urban Ceramic (1996, Tashkent, Uzbekistan); Ceramic in Artchtecture UNESCO (1997, Samarkand, Uzbekistan); 10th Istanbul Biennale Conference “International Discourse vs. Local Vibrancy: Challenges and Opportunities in the Practice of Art in Central Asia” (2007, Istanbul); CIMAM Annual Conference “Contemporary Institutions as Producers in Late Capitalism” (2007, Vienna); Intersection: Contemporary Art (2007, Ulan Bator, Mongolia); Art Hub / New Silk Road (2009, Bangkok, Tailand); International Sculpture and Land Art (2009, Bad Tolz, Germany); CIMAM Annual Conference “Common Ground for Museums in a Global Society” (2010, Shanghai); International Terracotta Art (2010, Eskishekir, Turkey); General Assembly of International Academy of Ceramic (2014, Dublin); Culture Summit (2017, Abu Dhabi); International Colloquium in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture “Home & Journey around the Globe” (2019, Bishkek), Asia Art Space Network Forum (2019, Gwangju).



 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT

 


 

ABOUT TMU

The Trust for Mutual Understanding was established in 1984 by an anonymous American philanthropist as a private, grantmaking organization dedicated to promoting improved communication, closer cooperation, and greater respect between the people of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe. TMU’s program reflects her conviction that grantmaking can make a contribution to that process by supporting international face-to-face contact and professional interaction. TMU’s mission has been shaped by the belief that creative international collaboration encourages global harmony. TMU continues to support East-West exchanges in the arts and environment, reflecting the founder’s appreciation of the importance of culture and ecology in people’s lives. Before 1985, there was relatively little American funding for such activities, and what support there was — mainly governmental — was often restricted by political considerations. It remains TMU’s goal to enable talented people to come together from different countries to freely share ideas and stimulate creativity in a nonpolitical context.

Berlin, Educational
11/01/2020
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Double Agents VI-VII

 
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DOUBLE AGENTS VI & VII

 

Between Artists/Curators/Collectors
Rethinking Roles and Practices in the Arts

 

12 January 2020 @ 1 – 11pm
At KleinervonWiese, Villa Erxleben
Douglasstrasse 28, 14193 Berlin

 

 

We are happy to invite you to the launch of “DOUBLE AGENTS” – our new series of Salon Discussions co-hosted by:
Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE and MOMENTUM.

 

PROGRAM:

13:00
Opening of the outdoor kinetic light sculpture by
David Ariel Szauder “Light Space Modulator”
Homage to Moholy-Nagy
Introduction: Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch, MOMENTUM
MORE INFO HERE >>

14:00
DOUBLE AGENTS, Talk VI
Dr. Dorothee Bauerle-Willert
art historian, dramaturge and curator
Lecture on “Creation and Imaginary Paradise”

16:00
DOUBLE AGENTS, Talk VII
onformative studio for digital art and design
Cedric Kiefer, artist and founder
Lecture on the topic: “Digital Art and Real Estate – creating room for the future
www.onformative.com
MORE INFO HERE >>

18:00
“KOHLE” live in concert
Bitch Coin aka Chérie from Warren Suicide and the String Theory,
The Capital aka Hannes Marx from Marx und Pitchtuner,
Yany Money Cashflow aka Yaneq from RADIO ARTY
and Dany Cash aka Daniel Gahn
KOHLE jams with exclusively GEMA-free grooves.
MORE INFO HERE >>

 

Double Agents brings together accomplished players on the international art stage to address a diversity of professional strategies and mechanisms for success in today’s competitive art word. The traditional dynamic between artist and gallery is changing as rapidly as new communications platforms, societal norms, and economic incentives arise. We all have to wear multiple hats in order to keep up with the explosion of knowledge and opportunity across multiple fields – to play more than one role in the perpetually shifting dynamics of today’s art world.

Be it artist, curator, collector, art dealer, publisher, professor, institutional, corporate, non-profit, governmental, or private interest – the lines between roles need to blur to enable diverse and experimental approaches to artistic production and consumption. Double Agents is an ongoing series of discussions each bringing together exceptional people who work across many fields at once in order to tell their stories and share ideas. The first Double Agents discussion takes place in the context of “bonum et malum”, the inaugural exhibition of Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE at the Villa Erxleben.


 

 

FEATURING:

Anita Ackermann, Nasser Almulhim, Chrissy Angliker, Oded Arad, Inna Artemova, Max Beckmann, Andreas Blank, Anina Brisolla, Karol Broniatowski, Claus Brunsmann, Thomas Leo Chapman IV, Claudia Chaseling, Antonina Denisiuc, Kerstin Dzewior, Amir Fattal, Mafalda Figueiredo, Doug Fishbone, Daniel Grüttner, Mariana Hahn, Janes Haid-Schmallenberg, Stefan Hain, Chris Hammerlein, Simon Heser, Monika Immrova, Miru Kim, Franziska Klotz, Wanda Koller, David Krippendorff, Milan Kunc, Jani Leinonen, Via Lewandowski, Sarah Lüdemann, Paul Maciejowski, Milovan Destil Markovic, Sara Masüger, Almagul Menlibayaeva, Tracey Moffatt, Jennifer Oellerich, onformative, Ulrich Panzer, Françoise Pétrovitch, Otto Piene, Aurora Reinhard, Gerhard Richter, Stefan Rinck, Kerstin Serz, Jörg Schaller, Maik Schierloh, Thomas Schütte, David Ariel Szauder, Dagmar Uhde, Mariana Vassileva, Elisabeth Wagner, Michael Wutz, Zakharov Vadim, Jindrich Zeithamml

MORE ON THE “BONUM ET MALUM” >>

 
 

 

FEATURING:

Anita Ackermann, Nasser Almulhim, Chrissy Angliker, Oded Arad, Inna Artemova, Max Beckmann, Andreas Blank, Anina Brisolla, Karol Broniatowski, Claus Brunsmann, Thomas Leo Chapman IV, Claudia Chaseling, Antonina Denisiuc, Kerstin Dzewior, Amir Fattal, Mafalda Figueiredo, Doug Fishbone, Daniel Grüttner, Mariana Hahn, Janes Haid-Schmallenberg, Stefan Hain, Chris Hammerlein, Simon Heser, Monika Immrova, Miru Kim, Franziska Klotz, Wanda Koller, David Krippendorff, Milan Kunc, Jani Leinonen, Via Lewandowski, Sarah Lüdemann, Paul Maciejowski, Milovan Destil Markovic, Sara Masüger, Almagul Menlibayaeva, Tracey Moffatt, Jennifer Oellerich, onformative, Ulrich Panzer, Françoise Pétrovitch, Otto Piene, Aurora Reinhard, Gerhard Richter, Stefan Rinck, Kerstin Serz, Jörg Schaller, Maik Schierloh, Thomas Schütte, David Ariel Szauder, Dagmar Uhde, Mariana Vassileva, Elisabeth Wagner, Michael Wutz, Zakharov Vadim, Jindrich Zeithamml

MORE ON THE WEINACHTSFEIER >>

 

 
 

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Berlin, Educational
18/10/2019
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Double Agents

 
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DOUBLE AGENTS

 

Between Artists/Curators/Collectors
Rethinking Roles and Practices in the Arts

 

@ Salon Villa Erxleben
Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE
Douglasstrasse 28, 14193 Berlin

 

 

We are happy to invite you to the launch of “DOUBLE AGENTS” – our new series of Salon Discussions co-hosted by:
Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE, FREEHOME, and MOMENTUM.


 

Speakers:

Roman Korzhov & Nelya Korzhova
artists, curators, directors of the Shiryaevo Biennale
Roman Korzhov is also director of National Center of Contemporary Art (NCCA) Samara

Constanze Kleiner
founder of Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE, co-curator ‘bonum et malum’

Via Lewandowsky
artist ‘bonum et malum’, professor

Rachel Rits-Volloch
founder of MOMENTUM, co-curator ‘bonum et malum’

Inga Rück
art historian, co-founder of Art Affairs, real estate dealer

Maik Schierloh
artist ‘bonum et malum’, curator, co-founder of Autocenter and Bar Babette

Zakharov Vadim
artist ‘bonum et malum’, curator, founder of FREEHOME

 

Double Agents brings together accomplished players on the international art stage to address a diversity of professional strategies and mechanisms for success in today’s competitive art word. The traditional dynamic between artist and gallery is changing as rapidly as new communications platforms, societal norms, and economic incentives arise. We all have to wear multiple hats in order to keep up with the explosion of knowledge and opportunity across multiple fields – to play more than one role in the perpetually shifting dynamics of today’s art world. Be it artist, curator, collector, art dealer, publisher, professor, institutional, corporate, non-profit, governmental, or private interest – the lines between roles need to blur to enable diverse and experimental approaches to artistic production and consumption. Double Agents is an ongoing series of discussions each bringing together exceptional people who work across many fields at once in order to tell their stories and share ideas.

The first Double Agents discussion takes place in the context of “bonum et malum”, the inaugural exhibition of Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE at the Villa Erxleben. MORE INFO >>


 

Nelya Korzhova – The Shiryaevo Biennale


 

Constanze Kleiner – Die Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin

Via Lewandowsky – Der Sozialismus Siegt


Rachel Rits-Volloch – Making MOMENTUM

Inga Rück – Art Affairs


Maik Schierloh – Autocenter & Bar Babette

Vadim Zacharov – Artist Us Institution 1978 — 2019



 

Speakers’ Bios

 

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

CONSTANZE KLEINER

Constanze Kleiner has more than 20 years of experience in the field of art and culture. After majoring in Slavic  Studies and German Language and Literature, she devoted herself to initiating cultural  projects. Kleiner started her career as a founder and managing partner of the White Cube Berlin GmbH, together with her partner, the artist Coco Kühn. In partnership with the artist Thomas Scheibitz, and the curator Heike Föll, she realized the exhibition project 36x27x10 in Berlin’s former “Palace of the Republic”. The success of this exhibition  led to the conception and realization of the Temporary Kunsthalle, a privately funded,  ephemeral exhibition hall for contemporary art. Constanze Kleiner  headed the Temporary Kunsthalle as managing partner and  was responsible for the concept and implementation from 2007 to 2009. In 2009, she was offered to become a partner of White Cube Productions Ltd, a company that was mainly focused on contemporary art production.

Since then, Constanze Kleiner was supporting several international exhibition projects as curator and adviser. In 2012, she curated Gregor Schneider’s STERBERAUM in partnership with the National Museum in Szczecin. In the same year, she was invited to become a partner of the Polish company  Baltic Contemporary SPZOO, which won the competition, announced by the city of Szczecin, to determine the operating partner for the new municipal exhibition-venue for contemporary art. From November 2012 until October 2013 she was building up this new institution – TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art – in the role of Artistic Director, responsible for the exhibition and educational programming. During this time, Kleiner realized five international exhibitions at TRAFO, with partners such as the Musarara School of Art and the MusararaMix Festival; in Jerusalem, Israel, the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, and MOMENTUM, as well as solo exhibitions by renowned artists such as Christian Jankowski and Ryszard Wasko.

Since 2014, she has been Chairperson of the TRAFO art foundation, and founder of Schlachthaus Fresh&Fine Art Gallery. In 2019, Constanze Kleiner established Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE, opening in its new location at the Villa Erxleben in September 2019 with the inaugural exhibition, bonum et malum

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

ROMAN KORZHOV

Artist and curator Roman Korzhov (born in 1964) was from 1997 to 2014 the organizer (together with Nelya Korzhova) and the chairman of the Samara Regional Public Charitable foundation “Center for Contemporary Art”. This was the first profile institution in Samara, actively engaged in the search for new forms of communication of contemporary art in the social environment and the development of international dialogue. From 1999 to the present, he is the founder (together with Nelya Korzhova) and the commissioner of the international Shiryaevo Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Roman Korzhov has initiated many projects and programs: “Open Spaces”, “Independent Artistic Scholarship” (within the program of sister cities Samara and Stuttgart), “The Art of Communication” (Institute for International Relations of Germany, IfA, Stuttgart, Germany), “Ecology of Perception”, “Visionology”, “Street as a Museum — a Museum as a Street”, “Volga. Zero”, amongst others.

Korzhov was the Nominee of the National Innovation Prize in 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2017. He has worked at the Volga branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) since 2007. And since 2015 he has served as Director of the Central Volga branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art / ROSIZO. Roman Korzhov lives and works in Samara.


NELYA KORZHOVA

Artist and curator Nelya Korzhova (born in 1963) works in the media of painting, photography, objects, installations, with her practice based on the principle of distant contemplation. Her curatorial projects, emerging from a focus on social sculpture, eschew the concept of art as
a ready-to-consume object. Rather, she identifies with the concept of “no man’s land”, where the viewer is invited to become part of the event in order to see what it’s for.
From 1997 to 2014, Nelya Korzhova was the organizer (together with Roman Korzhov) and art director of the Samara Regional Public Charitable Foundation “Center for Contemporary Art”. Together with Roman Korzhov, in 1999 she founded the international Shiryaevo Biennale of Contemporary Art, initiating the concept of the “Nomadic Show” — a processional exhibition engaging the public with art while moving through space. From 1999 to the present, Nelya Korzhova is the curator of the main project and artistic director of the Shiryaevo Biennale.

Korzhova has curated many projects and programs, including: “Cover
of Daily Routine”, “Fascism Now”, “Nine Months of Feelings”, “Another Freedom”, “Visiology”, “Wonders of Idleness”, “Street as a Museum — Museum as
a Street”, “Volga. Zero”, amongst others. She is the author of articles on contemporary art, a compiler of catalogues, and a lecturer.

Nelya Korzhova was the nominee of the State Innovation Prize in 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2017. She worked at the Volga and Central Volga branches of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) / ROSIZO from 2007 to 2017. Nelya Korzhova lives and works in Samara.

VIA LEWANDOWSKY

Via Lewandowsky studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden from 1982 until 1987. Starting in 1985, he organised subversive performances together with the avant-guarde group, Autoperforationsartisten, that undermined the Communist art authorities of Eastern Germany (GDR). In 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall, he left the GDR and subsequently moved to West Berlin. Since then, he has traveled extensively and has lived for extended periods in New York, Rome, Peking, and Canada. He now resides in Berlin.

Via Lewandowsky works in diverse artistic media, predominantly sculptural-installation works and exhibition scenographies with architectonic influences. By the 1990s his work had already begun to incorporate elements of Sound Art; this has since become an important and integral part of much of his performance work. Lewandowsky’s interest in a nation’s construction of identity exposes a political dimension in his work, especially notable in his installations in public spaces and in his performances.

Dominant recurring themes in Lewandowsky’s body of work include: misunderstanding as a failure of communication and the deformation and deconstruction of meaning. Lewandowsky’s practice often represents the process behind his ideas. The artist is neither looking for something conclusive, a definitive ending, nor complete destruction, but rather for the constructive moment within a process of destruction. This identification of the in-between moment is highlighted by the work’s inherently satirical content, which does not try to elicit pathos from its audience. His working method and the effectiveness of its artistic results are often characterized by opposites. Elements that are controlled, staged and constantly emerging also have spontaneous, unexpected, and thus lively qualities. Humoristic, seemingly lighthearted works viewed a second time contain gruesome, brutal moments that can turn the comedic into the disturbing. His preference for tragicomedy, absurdity and paradox as well as the Sisyphean drama of continuous repetition and futility of action link Via Lewandowsky’s art with Dadaism, Surrealism and Fluxus. The ironic breaks with everyday life, the intrusion of the strange into the familiar, often domestic realm take place in his work by using the detritus of the German bourgeoisie: cuckoo clocks, DIY garden sheds, parakeets or bureaucracy.


RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Rachel Rits-Volloch is the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, the Global Platform For Time-Based Art. Launched in 2010 in Australia as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney, MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in 2011. She is currently also the Chief Curator of photoBERLIN, an annual professional workshow launching in Berlin in 2020. In 2016-2017, she was Visiting Professor in art theory and curatorial studies at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program in Public Art and the PhD program in Artistic Research. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Literature, and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. Born in USSR, she grew up in the US, and worked in UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney, and now Berlin.

MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Program and Archive, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 100 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, showing the work of over 600 artists, as well as over 60 Education Events, in addition to an ongoing program of Artistic Research Residencies which has so far hosted 45 international artists, alongside a diversity of related programming.

INGA RÜCK

Inga Rück has a Masters in Art History, Psychology, and Sociology. After working as Sales Manager of Michael Fuchs Galerie and Director of the Schinkel Pavilion, amongst other things, she is now the co-founder of the art consultancy Art Affairs.

Art Affairs works predominantly with corporate clients. Corporate art contributes to an innovative and cosmopolitan organizational culture and shapes a modern working environment. Contemporary art can be put into play to emphasizes the objectives of a company. Art as a medium of corporate culture draws attention to a creative working environment but also conveys openness, higher risk tolerance, and corporate cultural responsibility. Art Affairs merges business and art into a sustainable unit, developing customised art concepts for economic and financial groups and the tourism industry. Artworks by German and international artists are carefully selected by a team of architects, artists, and curators to develop well-conceived and aesthetically coordinated art concepts to reflect the architectural premises and professional focus of companies. Visual Arts in company context supports creative work processes and encourages communication and discussion. The effect of contemporary art is an essential factor of external representation and can symbolize cosmopolitanism or regional solidarity. 


MAIK SHIERLOH

Maik Schierloh is an artist/curator, born in 1968 in Wilhemshaven, Germany. After his apprenticeship as Organ Builder, he studied Art at the University of Applied Science Ottersberg, Germany, in 1993 – 1996. Until 1996 we was a member of the ARTiV Artist Group. In 1997 Schierloh moved to Berlin and began planning, organising and executing cultural and art projects and exhibitions. His early initiatives include Club Project Lovelite, a venue for concerts, exhibitions, theatre, whch he ran in 1998 – 2008. From 2001 – 2018, he was also the co-founder of Autocenter, in collaboration with Joep van Liefland, one of Berlin’s most iconic project spaces. [www.autocenter-art.de/exhibitions/program – www.autocenter-rediscovery.de] In 2009 – 2016, Schierloh initiated the education initiative, Autocenter Summer Academy [www.autocenter-summeracademy.de], engaging experts from the Berlin art scene to lecture on their practice. Since 2003, Maik Schierloh also runs the bar and art space Kosmetiksalon Babette [www.barbabette.com]. In 2017, he began an ongoing initiative to restore a historic building in the countryside near Berlin for arts usage [www.gutshaus-philadelphia.com].

VADIM ZAKHAROV

Vadim Zakharov was born in the USSR in 1959. He is an artist, editor, archivist of the Moscow Conceptual art scene, collector. Since 1979 he has participated in exhibitions of unofficial art and collaborated with such artists as: V. Skersis, S. Anufriev, I. Chuikov, A. Monastyrski, Y. Leiderman. In 1982–1983 he participated in the AptArt Gallery, Moscow. Since 1992 till 2001 he has published the “Pastor” magazine and founded the Pastor Zond Edition. In 2006 he edited book “Moscow Conceptualism”. His retrospective was held at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2006. He represented Russia at the Venice Biennale in 2013 with the project “DANAE”. Since 2016 he organized exhibition space “FREEHOME-Artist to Artist” in Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin.

FREEHOME – The Artist to Artist project is the brainchild of an artist who uses his modest resources – his own apartment, his personal and professional relationships, and his own money – to start an open exchange of opinions among artists, critics, gallery owners, curators, art collectors, and people of other professions. The idea is to boost this communication through additional means, such as working out a model of “activity”, offering ways of “functioning in culture”, and using the artist’s creative energy to find a way out of the routine patterns of contemporary art.


 
 

This event also serves as a preview for the forthcoming exhibition at MOMENTUM,
curated by Roman Korzhov & Nelya Korzhova,
directors of the Shiryaevo Biennale
 

A program of videos from the Shiryaevo Biennale archive is on show at Salon Villa Erxleben
19 October – 2 November 2019
 

Shiryaevo Biennale: Central Russian Zen
Opens at MOMENTUM on 27 October 2019 at 4:00 – 8:00pm

@ MOMENTUM Kunstquartier
Bethanien Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

Realised with thanks to:

 

 
 

About SHIRYAEVO BIENNALE >>

 

 

Founded in 1999 by artist/curators Roman Korzhov & Nelya Korzhova, the Shiryaevo Biennale is the oldest active international biennale of contemporary art in Russia, and is also the largest cultural event in the Central Volga region. The main project is held in the ancient Russian village of Shiryaevo, while the parallel program takes place in sites across Samara, on the opposite bank of the Volga river. One of the most important components of the biennale’s structure is the International Creative Laboratory, which conducts a kind of contemporary art experiment within a traditional Russian village. Over the course of two weeks, the artists live directly in the locals’ homes, immersed in the local culture, creating works responding directly to the local environment. The results of these encounters is itself a creative act, offered to the wider public over the course of one day, in the form of a collective, performative procession: the “Nomadic Show.”

From its original founding up through 2013, the Shiryaevo Biennale was organized by the Samara Regional Public Charity Fund. Since 2007, the Volga Regional Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) has served as co-organizer. Starting in 2016, the biennale is organized by the Volga Regional Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) and ROSIZO, with support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture of the Samara Region. From 1999 through 2018, Roman Korzhov has served as the commissioner of the biennale, while Nelya Korzhova has served as the curator of the main project. Over 180 international artists have participated in the Shiryaevo Biennale since its inception.



 

 

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Berlin, Educational, Residency
20/06/2019
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Elena Shtromberg

 

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MOMENTUM AiR

 

Curator-in-Residence

24 June – 13 August 2019

 

Elena Shtromberg

Website – CV

 


 

18 July @ 7 – 9pm

Encounters in Video Art from Latin America

Reception & Curator’s Talk

with screening of Defiant Bodies

 

19 – 28 July @ 1-7pm

PACIFIC STANDARD TIME:
Video Art In Latin America

Video Program Screenings

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanein
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin 10997

 

Watch the video of the Elena Shtromberg’s curator’s talk at MOMENTUM:


 
 

CLICK ON THE IMAGES BELOW TO READ THE PROGRAMS:

 


19 July @ 1-7pm
ECONOMIES OF LABOR
SONIA ANDRADE (Brazil, XIMENA CUEVAS (Mexico), LUIS GÁRCIGA (Cuba), KARLO ANDREI IBARRA (Puerto Rico), GLENDA LEÓN (Cuba), JESSICA LAGUNAS (Nicaragua), CINTHIA MARCELLE (Brazil), ADRIÁN MELIS (Cuba)
JASON MENA (Puerto Rico), PATRICIO PALOMEQUE (Ecuador), MARTÍN SASTRE (Uruguay), TATYANA ZAMBRANO (Colombia)

20 July @ 1-7pm
DEFIANT BODIES
GERALDO ANHAIA MELLO (Brazil), JAVIER BOSQUES (Puerto Rico), UNIDAD PELOTA CUADRADA (Ecuador), ERIKA & JAVIER (Paraguay), ADRIANA GARCÍA GALÁN (Colombia), MARIANA JURADO RICO (Colombia), LETICIA PARENTE (Brazil), BERNA REALE (Brazil), COLECTIVO ZUNGA (Colombia)

21 July @ 1-7pm
THE ORGANIC LINE
ANALÍVIA CORDEIRO (Brazil), DONNA CONLON & JONATHAN HARKER (Panama), SANDRA DE BERDUCCY (Bolivia), REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO (Guatemala), CAO GUIMARÃES AND RIVANE NEUENSHWANDER (Brazil), MAGDALENA FERNÁNDEZ (Venezuela), LUIS MATA & JUAN CARLOS PORTILLO (Venezuela), LOTTY ROSENFELD (Chile), REGINA SILVEIRA (Brazil), ANTONIO PAUCAR (Peru)



24 July @ 1-7pm
BORDERS AND MIGRATIONS
ALEJANDRA ALARCÓN (Bolivia), LUCAS BAMBOZZI (Brazil), JAVIER CALVO (Costa Rica), JOSÉ CASTRELLÓN (Panama), DONNA CONLON & JONATHAN HARKER (Panama), MARIA LAET (Brazil), RONALD MORÁN (El Salvador), MIGUEL ANGEL RÍOS (Argentina), ALEX RIVERA (US), MARIO GARCÍA TORRES (Mexico)

25 July @ 1-7pm
STATES OF CRISIS
PÁVEL AGUILAR (Honduras), ANGIE BONINO (Peru), GLORIA CAMIRUAGA (Chile), ANNA BELLA GEIGER (Brazil), GABRIELA GOLDER (Argentina), DIEGO LAMA (Peru), CARLOS MOTTA (Colombia), OSCAR MUÑOZ (Colombia), JOSÉ ALEJANDRO RESTREPO (Colombia), NICOLÁS RUPCICH (Chile), CHARLY NIJENSOHN (Argentina)

26 July @ 1-7pm
MEMORY AND FORGETTING
PATRICIA BUENO & SUSANA TORRES (Peru), ALEJANDRA DELGADO (Bolivia), JUAN MANUEL ECHAVARRÍA (Colombia), ADELA GOLDBARD (Mexico), ALEJANDRO LEONHARDT & MATÍAS ROJAS (Chile), CLEMENTE PADÍN (Uruguay)
ENRIQUE RAMÍREZ (Chile), ERNESTO SALMERÓN (Nicaragua)


On 27 – 28 July @ 1-7pm

All the Video Programs will be Screened Back-to-Back

 
 

BIO

Elena Shtromberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Utah. She specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American visual culture, with a specific focus on Brazil and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Her book, “Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s” (University of Texas Press, 2016) explores visual forms of critique and subversion during the height of Brazilian dictatorship by tracing how the encounter of artistic practice with information and systems theories redefined the role of art in society. Her interdisciplinary research interests extend to gender and media studies, cultural studies, as well as communications, geography and postcolonial theory. She has been the recipient of grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and DAAD, among others. During her research leave in 2011-12 she was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She has also curated a number of exhibitions, the latest among them a co-curated survey entitled “Video Art in Latin America” which opened in September 2017 at LAXART (an alternative art space in Los Angeles), part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative PST: LA/LA. She is now working on a co-edited volume, “Encounters in Video Art of Latin America” (Getty Publications, 2020) and a scholarly monograph on the role of historical memory in video art titled “Fugitive Memories”.

 

PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Video Art In Latin America

MOMENTUM is proud to bring to Berlin the outstanding body of research presented in “PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: Video Art In Latin America”. The program of video screenings will be opened and introduced by Elena Shtromberg on 18 July at 7-9pm, to be followed by daily screenings of the individual programs, ending with all the programs shown together on the weekend of the 27-28 July.

More than 60 works of video art from Latin America, many never before seen in the U.S., were presented in a landmark exhibition at LAXART from September 17 through December 16, 2017 as part of the Getty’s city-wide art initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Organized by LAXART in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute (GRI), Video Art in Latin America surveys groundbreaking achievements and important thematic tendencies in Latin American video art from the 1960s until today.

“We have worked with hundreds of artists, curators, and scholars in more than a dozen countries to trace historical narratives of the field,” said Glenn Phillips, head of modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute and co-curator of the exhibition. “Very few museums and research collections in the United States contain video work from Latin America. Through this exhibition and our ongoing research, we seek not only to expose audiences to an important medium of artistic expression from Latin America, but also to provide resources and access for future research and scholarship.”

The exhibition is part of an ongoing Getty Research Institute research project undertaken by the exhibition curators Glenn Phillips (GRI) and Elena Shtromberg (University of Utah) on projects related to video art in Latin America since 2004. Since 2013, Shtromberg and Phillips have been conducting extensive research in Latin America, visiting with artists, curators, and scholars and organizing several major public screenings.

The emergence of video art in Latin America is marked by staggered and multiple points of development across more than a dozen artistic centers over a period of more than 25 years. The earliest experiments with video in Latin America began in Argentina and Brazil in the 60s and 70s, respectively. In the late 1970s artists in Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico began to use video. Artists in Chile, Cuba, and Uruguay took up the medium in the 1980s and the 1990s and 2000s saw video art movements emerging in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

“In the latter part of the 20th century, early portable video equipment, in particular the Portapak, represented a decentralized media outlet for voicing opposition. At this time, video artists positioned the body as the site of expression in traumatic political contexts,” said co- curator Elena Shtromberg. “Contemporary video artists in Latin America are continuing to pursue social themes, exploring ideas about gender, ethnic, and racial identity as well as the consequences of social inequality, ecological disasters and global violence.”

At LAXART, in Hollywood, visitors encountered several immersive video art installations in the center of the exhibition space as well as three galleries featuring single channel videos arranged in six thematic programs which include: The Organic Line; Defiant Bodies; States of Crisis; Economies of Labor; Borders and Migrations; Memory and Forgetting. An important feature of the exhibition was a specially curated library adjacent to the gallery spaces. This publicly accessible library functioned as a Video in Latin American Art study room featuring dozens of books on the subject, including many books that are out-of-print or otherwise hard to find in the U.S.

The Getty Research Institute is an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust. It serves education in the broadest sense by increasing knowledge and understanding about art and its history through advanced research. The Research Institute provides intellectual leadership through its research, exhibition, and publication programs and provides service to a wide range of scholars worldwide through residencies, fellowships, online resources, and a Research Library. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu.

MORE INFO HERE >>

 

Berlin, Educational
01/06/2018
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Andi and Lance Olsen Kunst Salon

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

 

Kunst Salon with Andi and Lance Olsen

 

Sunday, 22 April 2018

 

Screening: 22 – 29 April 2018

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

 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin
 
 

 

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

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

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


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


 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CV – WEBSITE

 

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

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CV – WEBSITE

 

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


 

MORE INFORMATION:

CLICK HERE for MOMENTUM AiR Artist Residency > >

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

 
 


KUNST SALON VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni and Sean Gallup

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Berlin, Educational, Exhibition
11/01/2018
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Station Paradox

 
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STATION PARADOX

A dialogue between artists from Korea and the MOMENTUM Collection.
 

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

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

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

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

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

EXHIBITION: 27 January – 11 March 2018
 

@ MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanein
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin 10997
 

 

 

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

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

 

 
 

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


 
 

ARTISTS and their WORKS

 

aaajiao

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

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

aaajiao – BIO

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

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

JANG JAEROK

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

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

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

JANG JAEROK – BIO

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

 
 
 

ZINU KIM

Take a Docent Tour (2018), site specific performance

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

ZINU KIM – BIO

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

DAVID KRIPPENDORFF

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

Nothing Escapes My Eyes is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being. Inspired by the texts of Edward W. Said, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Verdi’s opera Aida, the film depicts in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from Aida whose lyrics express the difficulties of being loyal to one’s country and cultural identity. The personal and urban transformation tackles on issues of identity, loss and disorientation as a result of historical colonialism and contemporary globalization.

DAVID KRIPPENDORFF – BIO

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

HYE RIM LEE

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

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

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

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

HYE RIM LEE – BIO

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

 
 

JIHYE PARK

Rumination (2017), HD video, 6’30”

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

JIHYE PARK – BIO

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

CLAUDIA CHASELING

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

Claudia Chaseling’s practice is characterised as Spatial Painting. At once 2- and 3-dimensional, her work encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation; the works leaping off the gallery walls. Chaseling creates swirls of organic from, upside down landscapes with reversed perspective and bright fluorescent wave structures with political content. The imagery of her Spatial Paintings consists of distorted landscapes, estranged places, mutated creatures and plants whose deformation is caused by radioactive poisoning. Her images, often including text and URLs referencing her source materials, are not predictions of some post-apacalyptic future, but rather the result of her research into historic and ongoing ways in which we continue to poison our planet with radioactive materials. yesterday is tomorrow (2018) is a new site specific work made especially for this exhibition. This spatial painting has a particular view point from which the work is composed. Seen from this single point, optically, the work looks paradoxically flat. Yet stepping out of this particular persecutive, the work explodes off the gallery walls, melting onto the floor, oozing onto the adjacent wall. Contained within the 2 small oviform paintings within the work, are two links to online sources for the artist’s research into depleted uranium. One leads to the documentary by Frieder Wagner about the use of depleted uranium munitions:

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

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

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

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

CLAUDIA CHASELING – BIO

Claudia Chaseling is a German artist, born in Munich in 1973, currently living and working between Berlin, Germany and Canberra, Australia. She is known for developing the practice of Spatial Painting, comprised of canvases and sculptural paintings with mixed media on objects, walls and floors. The artist has exhibited her works in over fifty solo and group exhibitions, notably in the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, and beyond. Recent exhibitions in 2017 include solo exhibitions at Magic Beans Gallery in Berlin, and the Wollongong Art Gallery, Australia, as well as a group exhibition at Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York. The “Verlag für zeitgenoessische Kunst und Theorie” published her first extensive monograph in 2016.

Claudia Chaseling studied at Academy for Visual Arts in Munich, Germany, and Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, Austria, before graduating in 1999 from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin, Germany. She received her Masters degree in Visual Arts from both the University of the Arts Berlin, in 2000, and the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, in 2003. The artist is currently completing her PhD in Visual Arts at the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Major grants and scholarships received in Australia and Germany include the DAAD; the Samstag Scholarship; the Studio Award of the Karl Hofer Society; the Australia Council for the Arts Grant in 2014; and the 2015/16 artsACT Project Grant. She has taken part in various international visiting artists programs and artists residencies, including Texas A&M University; Yaddo in New York; the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City; the Australian National University (ANU); amongst others.

 
 
 

KIRA KIM + HYUNGKYU KIM

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

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

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

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

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

KIRA KIM + HYUNGKYU KIM – BIO

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

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

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

 
 
 

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ

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

 

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

Milovan Destil Marković’s series of Transfigurative Paintings are the result of intensive research and the attempt to develop and expand the idea of the portrait. In his ongoing series of Barcode Paintings, Markovitch uses barcodes to signify written words through colourful, bright stripes on his canvases. Every text can be translated into a barcode that is the product of a systematic process of codification, at the end of which only a rhythmic series of vertical lines remains. This abstraction allows for an international rationalized system of merchandise management, the organisation and distribution of commodities. In Marković’s work, there is a tension between the image as an abstract painting and the barcode as algorithmic script. The content of each image is revealed through the title of the painting. His works contain short text quotations from pornographic literature, politics and banking; representations of the world of power and oppression. Marković’s barcode paintings veil their content behind a normalised form; at once the language of commerce, and a kind of digital calligraphy. They can be understood either as an impish joke on the part of the artist, or as a critique of the opaque structures of markets that mask their global deficiencies and injustices. As a sly comment on the possibility of art as commodity, printed on the side of each painting is a barcode: the normal-sized, black and white version of the content of each barcode painting. In the case of the two works shown in this exhibition, Sunset! is a landscape painting, taking as its subject the date and location of a sunset witnessed by the artist while on an Artist Residency in Bundanon, NSW, Australia. While It Really Fills My Mouth / Morning is a quotation from The Sexual Life of Catherine M., the infamous autobiography of Catherine Millet (the French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press).

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ – BIO

Milovan Destil Marković was born in 1957 in Yugoslavia/Serbia. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1986. Having studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts, Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983. Markovic’s works can be found in numerous public and private collections throughout the world: in between others in the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto/Japan; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin/Germany; Museum of the City of Belgrade/Serbia; Istanbul Art Museum Foundation, Istanbul/Turkey; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade/Serbia; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf/Germany and Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz/Austria, The Artists’ Museum Lodz/Poland. Markovic has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia and in the Americas. His work was featured at 42nd Venice Biennial Aperto, 4th Istanbul Biennial, 46th Venice Biennial, 6th Triennial New Delhi, 5th Biennial Cetinje, Sao Paulo Biennial, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center New York, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Ludwig Museum for Contemporary Art Budapest, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken, The Artists’ Museum Lodz, National Museum Prague, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Landesmuseum Graz, Kunstmuseum Duesseldorf, Art Museum Foundation – Military Museum Istanbul, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunstvoreningen Bergen, Galleri F15 Oslo, Nishido Contemporary Art Tokyo, Fei Contemporary Art Center Shanghai, the 56th October Salon Biennial in Belgrade, and many others.
 
 
 

ABOUT the CURATORS

 

JUNG ME CHAI

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

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

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


CURATORS TEXTS

 

Jung Me Chai

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

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

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

Rachel Rits-Volloch

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

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


 

WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

 

IN COOPERATION WITH

Berlin, Educational
21/07/2017
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Beating the Meat

 
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BEATING THE MEAT

ARTIST TALK with CONCEPTUAL COOKING

 

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

 

13 July @ 7-10pm

At Momentum, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

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

 

Part of the Exhibition

FLESH on FLESH

7 July – 6 August 2017 @ MOMENTUM Berlin

More Info Here>>

 

In Cooperation With


FOOD ART WEEK

 


 

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

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

 


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

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Berlin, Educational
25/06/2017
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The Intermedial Moment

 
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ARTIST TALK

 

The Intermedial Moment

Andi & Lance Olsen
in conversation with
Cécile Guédon

 

Sunday 28 May @ 3 – 4pm

At Momentum, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

Part of the Exhibition

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

By Andi & Lance Olsen

 

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

 
 

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBITION >>

 

 

ANDI OLSEN

 


 

CV – WEBSITE

 

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

LANCE OLSEN

 


 

CV – WEBSITE

 

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


CÉCILE GUÉDON

 

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

CÉCILE GUÉDON

 

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

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

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

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


Berlin, Educational
25/06/2017
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Emily Geen Kunst Salon

 
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Emily Geen
in conversation with
Maria Kossak
 

21 June 2017

 

 

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

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


 

MORE INFO ON EMILY GEEN RESIDENCY AT MOMENTUM HERE >>

 


KUNST SALON VIEWS
Photo Credit: Leslie Ranzoni

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Berlin, Educational, Exhibition
13/01/2017
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(UN)SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

 
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[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD

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

 

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD
 

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

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

Curated by: Bojan Vuletić, Anke Hannemann, Ina Weise

Coordinated by: Jirka Reichmann

In cooperation with Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

EXHIBITION:
 

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

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

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

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

With Live Performance by Vienne Chan

@ MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

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

MASTERCLASS:

29 January 2017 @ 1:00 – 6:00pm
 

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

Artist & Curator Talks:

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

WATCH HERE THE VIDEOS OF THE MASTERCLASS >>

 

Introduction:
 

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

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

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

Prof. Danica Dakić
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

Curatorial Statements:
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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


 

THREADSUNS

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

Paul Celan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Bojan Vuletić
Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar


 

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

Angelica Baron & Rafaella Constantinou
Vincent Brière
Vienne Chan
Sophie Foster
Kathryn Gohmert
Anke Hannemann
Feng Runze & Yihui Liu
Matthew Lloyd
Nasir Malekijoo

Mila Panić
YunJu Park
Mariya Pavlenko
Denise Rosero Bermúdez
Malak Yacout
Saša Tatić
Ina Weise
Joephy Sze Ting Wong
Yi Weihua


 

 

 

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

Artist & Curator Talks:

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


Clark Beaumont

Marek Claasen



Amir Fattal

Mark Gisbourne



Sharon Horodi

Elana Katz



David Krippendorff

Anne Meier



Angela Schneider

Stephan von Wiese



Irina Yurna

 
 

EXHIBITION PHOTOS
Photo Credit: Vincent Briere

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WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

 

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

Symposium & Performance
 


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

 

The Symposium is part of the Exhibition

Love, Actually…

At MOMENTUM

9 October – 27 November 2016

MORE INFO HERE >>

 

PARTICIPANTS:

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

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

 

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

PANELS:

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

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

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

Exhibition Viewing: 18:15-19:00

 

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

 
 

PERFORMANCE @ 3:00 – 3:30pm

Return of the chthonian – This Is My Land

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

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

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

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

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

– Sarah Lüdemann


 

 
 
 

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


 

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


 

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


 

SPEAKERS

 

David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001); Founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006); the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007); Artistic Director of The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.

Portrait - Bojana Pejic

Bojana Pejić

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


jasmina-petkovic

JASMINA PETKOVIĆ

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

Rachel Rits-Volloch - Portrait

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

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

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



mariana-hahn

MARIANA HAHN

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

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

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

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

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

Leiko Ikemura

LEIKO IKEMURA

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

www.leiko.info

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

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

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


david-krippendorf

DAVID KRIPPENDROFF

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

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

franziska-klotz

FRANZISKA KLOTZ

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

www.franziska-klotz.de

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

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

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


johanna-kandl

JOHANNA KANDL

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

www.galerieandreasbinder.de

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

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

Freedom&Independence_Still_150dpi (5 von 12)

BJØRN MELHUS

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

www.melhus.de

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

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


via-lewandowsky

VIA LEWANDOWSKY

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

www.vialewandowsky.de

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

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

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

SARAH LÜDEMANN

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

www.sarahluedemann.com

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

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

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


milovan-destil-markovic

MILOVAN DESTIL MARKOVIĆ

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

www.markovic.org

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

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

Kirsten-Palz-Works-On-Paper_Smaller

KIRSTEN PALZ

Kirsten Palz, born Copenhagen 1971. Lives and works in Berlin.

She holds a degree in Computer Science from the IT-University in Copenhagen and a degree of Fine Arts/ Painting from School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2007, Kirsten Palz initiated her ongoing archive of manuals. The archive is a work in progress consisting today of 317 manuals, including objects, prints on paper and drawings. The manuals engage with various topics, such as dreams, memories, myth, sculpture and social space. Kirsten Palz has shown her works in spaces in Germany and abroad. Recent works were presented in F******* -Towards New Perspectives on Feminism, Neue Berliner Kunstverein (nbk), Berlin and ff /Temporary Autonomous Zone /2/ in Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin. Palz’s performances frequently take place non-officially in the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg – outside the institution’s listed program – and include readings and experimental guided tours for audiences.


mariana-vassileva

MARIANA VASSILEVA

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

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

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

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

Aleksandar Jestrović

ALEKSANDAR JESTROVIĆ

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

jamesdin.wordpress.com

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

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



Berlin, Educational
08/06/2016
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Hero Mother Symposium

 
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Let’s Conclude
 

The HERO MOTHER Symposium & Finissage
 


12 June @ 1 – 9pm
 

 

The Symposium is part of the Exhibition


HERO MOTHER
Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism

Curated by Bojana Pejić and Rachel Rits-Volloch

14 May – 12 June 2016

MORE INFO HERE >>

 

 

Guided Tour with Bojana Pejić and Rachel Rits-Volloch:

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

 

Symposium Videos:

RESISTING THE LIMITS OF NOW
By Bojana Pejić

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


BACK TO BALAGAN!!!
By David Elliott

MOTHERS, HEROES AND HISTORY’S PLAYGROUND
By Laima Kreivyte


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

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


 

Closing Performance You Have No Idea by Selma Selman:

 

Speakers:

Marina Belikova

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

Nezaket Ekici

Nezaket Ekici’s video, installations and performances are often process-based and ask viewers to derive their own emotional and intellectual interpretations. Activated by the audience, the use of her body as a means of expression becomes a vital material in her work, where complex, often controversial topics are countered by their aestheticizing presentation. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies are central to Ekici’s works. By highlighting these themes in everyday life and placing them in a new context, she aims to interconnect every element to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk.

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


David Elliott

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England (1976-1996); Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001); Founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006); the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007); Artistic Director of The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival for a Precarious Age, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008–2010); in 2012 he was Artistic Director of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12); he was Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Moscow Biennale of Young Art (2014). David Elliott was the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. In 1996 he was co-curator of Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktatoren 1930 bis 1945 at the Hayward Gallery, London and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and in 2000-2001 was Artistic Director of the exhibition After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2011 he curated Between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia at Calvert 22, London. He is the Chief Curator of BALAGAN: Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places, organized by MOMENTUM.

else (Twin) Gabriel

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


FEMEN

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

Laima Kreivytė

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


Nguyen Thrin Thi

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

Bojana Pejić

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


Sasha Pirogova

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

Selma Selman

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


Mariana Vassileva

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


 


PHOTOS OF THE SYMPOSIUM AND FINISSAGE
Photo Credit: Camille Blake

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Berlin, Educational
05/03/2016
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Talk Ma Li Elana Katz

 
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ARTIST TALK

 

Migrating artists – How does it impact their practice?

A dialogue between Ma Li & Elana Katz

Moderated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

In cooperation with USArtBerlin

 


 

Monday February 29 @ 18.00 – 20.00

At Momentum Worldwide, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

 

 

Due to the increased globalisation of the art world and the rising opportunities for Artist Residencies all around the world, artists are compelled to be mobile and flexible. Moving to evolve their art has become a crucial part for most artist’s practice. However everyone grew up somewhere and carries their cultural heritage. How do the two things work together? What can be gained? Is the artwork changing due to the setting in which it is created or exhibited?

Ma Li a Chinese born artist, living in San Francisco and currently completing her Residency here in Berlin with MOMENTUM will discuss with artist Elana Katz, an American artist based in Berlin, whose recent work is concentrated in the Balkans. Katz is a board member of the organisation USArtBerlin, working with artists emigrated to Berlin. Both share the experience of migrating to different places for their art practice and their work. In the dialogue they will talk about these experiences and reflect on how they are influenced by their cultural heritage, their migration background but also the possibilities inherent in a mobile lifestyle.

Elana Katz is a conceptual artist working primarily in the medium of performance art. Katz’s work confronts cultural conventions, critically examines the complexity that lies within contradictions, and thus aims to create an experience of unlearning the assumed. Her grants have included the DAAD Graduate Studies Grant for Germany (2010), Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2011), and her ongoing work Spaced Memory (2011-present), has been realized in cooperation with the U.S. Embassy of Kosovo, the Embassy of Israel in Serbia, and the Goethe Institute of Bucharest. Katz has exhibited/performed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (2011), Diehl CUBE Berlin (2013), P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York (2013), Gallery 12 HUB, Belgrade (2014), Kunstwechsel, Aachen (2015), and DNA Berlin (2015). She studied in New York at the Parsons School of Design and earned a Meisterschülerin title from the Universität der Künste Berlin (Klasse Katharina Sieverding) in 2010. Katz has been based in Berlin since 2008.


Berlin, Educational
28/02/2016
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Balagan ICI Lectures

 
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BALAGAN!!! LECTURE SERIES

At ICI Institut for Berlin Cultural Inquiry Berlin

Christinenstr. 18-19, Haus 8, 10119, Berlin

 

Trickster Art: Celebrating Chaos, Challenging Misrule
With David Elliott, Preciosa De Joya,
Hillel Schwartz & Hans Scheuer
19th November 2015

What is to be Undone? Trickery as Political Resistance
With Rosa Barotsi, Katarzyna Kozyra,
Via Lewandowski & Helena Bassil-Morozow
26th November 2015


 

Tricksters are folkloric figures found in numerous cultures, seeming- ly dreamed up – or springing out of nowhere – to provide ways of un- dermining, ridiculing or resisting everything that is wrong, fucked up, unfair in the world, from the tyranny of gods and sovereigns, to social inequality, to the existential injustice of mortality and suffering. As “the creative idiot, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby” (Lewis Hyde), trickster crosses every boundary and confuses every distinction. Michel Serres took the tricksy god Hermes – patron of communication, but also of theft, interruption and secrets – as his guiding figure and alter ego, in order to weave together and traverse disparate cultural spheres with randoneés, “expeditions filled with random discoveries.” Trickster circumvents the logic and techniques of power through a mixture of cunning and naivety, discovering new possibilities as much through foolishness and error as through devious shifts of identity and perspective.

The exhibition BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places – taking its name from a popular ex- clamation used in contemporary Russian to indicate a farce, a mess, chaos – features works that in one way or another engage with such unruly states. Might it be that today’s tricksters are to be found in the creative political activity of artists and cultural practitioners attempt- ing to respond to the oppressive mess they find all around them? Could the disarming, oblique ways in which the trickster takes on states of misrule that cannot be challenged face-on be a particularly apt strategy for resistance in times of turbo-capitalism: embracing chaos to turn it against itself? Are hegemonic oppressive forces a necessary condition for the emergence of tricksters – in fact, do the tricks and machinations of power themselves form the prototype and genesis of the trickster? As opposed to its traditionally embodied and most often male form, is the trickster of today more a mode than a figure, fragmenting and multiplying into an array of inanimate and collective forms?


Two connected events at the ICI Berlin will follow these and other leads. This first event looks for tricksters and their traces, both human and nonhuman, in contemporary art and culture. The second considers the concept of trickery in artistic and mediatic practice, and the ways it may open up alternative possibilities for resistance and deflection of power.

Berlin, Educational
20/02/2016
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Fang Lu Kunst Salon

 
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Fang Lu
in conversation with
Rachel Rits-Volloch
 

15 October 2015

At Sammlung Hoffmann


 

Chinese Video Artist Fang Lu was in Berlin as the Artist-in-Residence of the BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAM, initiated by GEKA e.V. – Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesischen Kulturellen Austausch Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange – and BMW, on this occasion coordinated by MOMENTUM, with the support of Sammlung Hoffmann.

Fang Lu (b. 1981 in Guangzhou China) received her BFA from Graphic Design department at the School of Visual Art in New York in 2005, and MFA from the New Genres department at the San Francisco Arts Institute in 2007. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing (2013); Pekin Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2013), Arrow Factory, Beijing (2012), Space Station, Beijing (2010), Borges Libreria Institute of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou (2011); and in group exhibitions such as The 8 of Paths, Uferhallen Berlin (2014), My Generation in Tampa Museum (2014), 28 Chinese in Rubell Family Collection Miami (2013/14), On/Off in Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2012), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (2012), CAFAM Future Exhibition (2012), We Remember the Sun in Walter & McBean Gallery in San Francisco (2008). She lives and works in Beijing.

Fang Lu is also the Co-Founder of Video BureauVideo Bureau, a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform to exhibit, organize and archive video art. It has two spaces: one in Beijing and the other one in Guangzhou. The mission of Video Bureau is to collect and organize artworks of video artists in order to build a video archive that welcomes research and viewing. As an institute open to the public, every two months Video Bureau features a new artist added to the archive, and hosts related events.

 

MORE INFO ON
FANG LU RESIDENCY
AT MOMENTUM
HERE >>


Berlin, Educational
17/07/2015
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The Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker Kunstsalon

 
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The Queen, the Rose and the Farmworker,
A Tale on Free Climbing Society
 
Luana Perilli in conversation with Sumugan Sivanesan
 

27 June 2015


 

 

ABOUT LUANA PERILLI

CV – Website

Luana Perilli (b.1981, Roma) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 2010, where she currently lives and works in Rome. She was awarded with several residency grants: Pan Studios Program, Pan Museum, Napoli (supervised by Daniel Buren) in 2010; Art Omi, New York, grant by Dena Foundation in 2008 and Cité Internationale des Arts, grant by Incontri Internazionali D’Arte, Paris, in 2008 and 2004. Recent shows include: ‘Q.I vedo’, Napoli (), ‘Solitary shelters’ at The Gallery Apart, Roma, IT; ‘All for one’ at Medium Galerie, Bratislava, SK; ‘Roommates-Coinquilini Luana Perilli /Carola Bonfili’, MACRO, Roma, IT. Perilli has contributed to numerous group shows, including the 2014-15 Kochi Muziris Biennale in MOG Goa Museum, India; Internaturalità in PAV, Torino; Patria Interiore-interior homeland Golden thread Gallery, Project Space, Belfast; ITALIENISCHE KUNST HEUTE, Stadtgalerie, Kiel; Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen; RE-generation, MACRO, Roma; Omaggio a Graziella Lonardi Buontempo , PAN, Napoli; An intimate story – Cotroneo Collection, MAMM Multimedia Art Museumof Moscow, Moscow.Perilli is currently professor of Multimedia Installation at Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and professor of Art Sudio and Drawing at Cornell University in Rome.

Learn more about Luana Perilli’s Terna Prize Artist Residency at MOMENTUM >>

ABOUT SMUGAN SIVANESAN

CV – Website

Sumugan Sivanesan is a self-described ‘anti-disciplinary’ artist and a transcultural radical. His eclectic practice is concerned with the legacies of colonialism, the experience of cultural difference, and diaspora. Sivanesan often engages with the theory of ‘necropolitics’ coined by the Cameroonian philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe. Building upon and going beyond the Foucauldian notion of biopower, the domain of life over which power has taken control, ‘necropolitics’ asserts that contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death has reconfigured the relationships between resistance, sacrifice, and terror.


Berlin, Educational
14/07/2015
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Beyond the Image Sound on IkonoTV

 
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BEYOND THE IMAGE: SOUND

MOMENTUM Carte Blanche program broadcast on

IkonoTV

3 June – 3 July 2015

IkonoTV Logo

Featuring:

Lutz Becker // Amir Fattal // Gülsün Karamustafa
Hannu Karjalainen // Janet Laurence

 

On screening also at LOOP Art Fair 2015 >>

 

Since the 70s, Berlin has attracted some of the most avant-garde musicians from around the globe, with a strong upsurge of experimental music in the 90s set within the rich atmosphere of possibility that marked the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, Berlin’s sound-scene continues to take a leading role on the international stage, with key yearly events such as Atonal, MaerzMuzik and CTM and permanent platforms such as N.K. Projekt, Ausland and Errant Bodies that stand at the forefront of their field. Sound in Berlin has maintained its status as a realm of emancipatory, political and artistic potential. Its current focus, however, has shifted from music to sound-art, though the line distinguishing these is thin and fluctuating. Increasingly, Berlin’s music venues offer installations and auditory experiments with space and new technologies, rather than what one might conventionally describe as a ‘concert’.

Within this backdrop and inspired by recent events in the city, as well as the rich discourse that they have engendered, for the past year MOMENTUM has been engaging more closely with sound. This has been marked by various new acquisitions to the Collection that redefine and expand our very understanding of time-based art. It has also entailed a revaluation of some of the older works in our Collection, in which the sonic elements have proven highly deserving of more focussed attention. In this sense, our explorations into sound are also exemplary of the way in which we engage with our collection; keeping it alive by continuously revisiting it from different perspectives and continuously questioning the nature and relevance of time-based art.

 

For LOOP 2015 and specifically within its strand Beyond the Image: Sound, MOMENTUM proposes a programme that represents 6 distinct artistic strategies is which sound takes on a decisive role. In them, the relationship of sound to the moving image is highly diverse, ranging from its imaginative or mnemonic potential in the absence of imagery, to sound as a powerful means to arouse empathy in direct relation to the moving image, to sound as the main content, superseding the primacy of that which is depicted on the screen. It is due to the rich diversity within its delimited focus that this programme is aimed to foment a critical reconsideration of the agency of sound within time-based art: an element that is often overseen or taken for granted, especially within the moving image, but that has immense emotive and even physical effects on the viewer/listener.


Artists and Works

 

Lutz Becker, After The Wall, 2000

CV – Website

Lutz Becker was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany and now lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated under Thorold Dickinson and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001).

Becker re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999 and subsequently in Berlin in 2000 at the Hamburger Bahnof, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. MOMENTUM presents the sound sculpture After The Wall in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Wall 25 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of the idealogical empire of Communism.

Amir Fattal, From the End to the Beginning, 2014

CV – Website

Amir Fattal was born in Israel in 1978, and is currently based in Berlin. Fattal graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009, and is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Fattal’s overarching concerns are the cultural connections between Germany and Israel – countries inexorably linked through their history, memory, culture, architecture, and the geographical diaspora which resulted in mass migrations, transposing cultures to new and different nations. The territory of Israel was once part of the Ottoman Empire, and then later administered by the British, yet the very creation of Israel is the legacy of the failed attempt to start the new Third Reich.

From the End to the Beginning is based on a live performance of Richard Wagner’s Vorspiel und Liebestod sequence played in reverse order. The video version of this performance was filmed in the big hall of the Berlin Funkhaus, built in the late 1950s as East Berlin’s new radio station, after musicians could no longer travel freely between the two sections of the city. Following the process of abstraction in music, theatre and light installation, this work is also a reflection on cultural taboos and historical memory. Wagner’s works remain banned from public performance in Israel and have become a symbol for the catastrophic ramifications that anti-Semitism can cause. Rewriting Richard Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ line by line, fragmenting it to copy the last note as the first note, much as the Hebrew alphabet is read, the performance creates a new conceptual work challenging contemporary perceptions of historical and cultural readings to illustrate how culture is always an assemblage of the fragments of others.


Gülsün Karamustafa, Personal Time Quartet, 2000

CV – Website

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). She was refused a passport for sixteen years until the mid-80s and, unlike other Turkish artists, could not emigrate or travel. This enforced isolation led her to an analysis of her own situation and context: the city of Istanbul, interior migration and nomadism within Turkey, and the ideological and psychological ramifications of identity. Like a sociologist or anthropologist, Gülsün Karamustafa explores the historical and social connections of oriental cultures in her works, often using materials that express the hybrid character of different cultures and religions. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

The four-part video Personal Time Quartet is concerned with the point of in- tersection between the artist’s own personal biography and the history of her home country. Having been invited to an exhibition of German domestic inte- riors from various periods in the twentieth century at the Historical Museum in Hanover, Karamustafa was inspired by what she saw there to take a closer look at the similarities between her own childhood reminiscences and these muse- ological German living spaces. The timeframe (or ‘personal time’) covered by these four video’s begins in the year of her father’s birth and ends in the early days of her own childhood. A video screen placed in each of the rooms shows the same young girl – the artist’s alter ego – engaged in various activities. We see her skipping with a skipping rope (dining room, 1906), sorting and folding laundry (kitchen, around 1913), opening cupboards and drawers (living room and parents’ bedroom, around 1930) and painting her nails (room from the 1950s).

Hannu Karjalainen, Nanjing Grand Theatre, 2012

CV – Website

Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist Hannu Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School. Woman on the Beach is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. In subsequent work Karjalainen uses the medium of the moving image to reflect back upon painting and the material qualities of paint. Colour is an elusive subject matter. It is intangible and abstract as much as it is coded, branded and harnessed for different purposes. Hannu Karjalainen is particularly interested in how meaning is attributed to a colour, and how this mechanism can be exploited by re-contextualization, using colour and its supposed meaning as a critical tool to investigate the world around us. In an ongoing series of works that turn classical portrait photographs into moving color palets, Karjalainen again mobilizes the traditionally still image. Looking at painting through photography, its role becomes reversed.

Nanjing Grand Theatre explores the memory inherited in an architectonic site. The Nanjing Grand Thetre, a western classical style building designed by Chinese architects originally housed western cinema in the 1930s Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution the building was dedicated to Beijing Opera and temporarily called Revolution Concert Hall. Now renamed Shanghai Concert Hall, the building is a prime location for classical music concerts. The massive construction plans in the Shanghai city centre called for the demolition of the building several times, as it was both in the way of a highway and a metro line. Finally a different solution was found: in early 2000s the building was moved from it’s original location by lifting the whole 5650 ton building up 3.38 meters and dragging the building to a new location some 70 meters southeast. The video work is shot on the original site of the concert hall, where an elevated highway now passes through the city. Passing lights and shadows take human forms as we hear snippets from the soundtrack of the very first film screened in Nanjing Grand Theatre, Broadway (1929). The film adaptation of the musical is now deemed lost in its original form, with only an edited version made from separate silent and talkie versions existing.


Janet Laurence, Vanishing, 2009/10

CV – Website

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

Vanishing is Janet Laurence’s first video work, made during a residency at the Toranga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. After working primarily in photography and installation, Laurence began an ongoing filmic study of animals both in the wild and in nature reserves. She has developed a filming technique in which she uses infrared night cameras – similar to those used by naturalists, as many animals are primarily active at night – in order to achieve a negative effect and distorted, ghostly coloration. Originally shown as a two-screen installation, this single channel version was specially released for the MOMENTUM Collection following the artist’s involvement on a MOMENTUM panel on art and science.

About IkonoTV

Founded by Elizabeth Markevitch, IkonoTV is a unique television channel broadcasting art and only art 24/7 on HD. Offering a pure visual experience, an ever-changing playlist of art films is produced in close collaboration with more than 400 international artists, over 200 collections, archives and the most important museums of the world. All productions are free from additional sound or commentary, allowing an international audience to be exposed to a completely new approach to the arts of all epochs, from antiquity to contemporary art. Your television screen is transformed into a lively painting, a window straight into the worlds leading museums and galleries.  In the conviction that everyone should have access to art in their homes, IkonoTV is viewable in more than 30 countries worldwide (average technical HD reach: 37 million households) through IPTV’s in Germany and France, through IPTV and ArabSat in the MENASA region, and internationally on our HD web stream.

Watch IkonoTV: www.ikono.tv

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Berlin, Educational
13/05/2015
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #12 with David Medalla

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #12 with David Medalla

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #12

 

Physical Ghosts and other Tales:
A Virtual Impromptu by David Medalla

 


 

David Medalla in dialogue with Shi Handao

17th MAY 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

With work ranging from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance, David Medalla constantly shifts between situationist, surrealist and conceptualist tactics. Admitted to Columbia University at the age of 12, he studied and performed alongside some of the most preeminent scholars, artists and critics of the twentieth century, including Marcel Duchamp, who once honored him with a “medallic” object. Medalla’s work has been included in such exhibitions as Harald Szeemann’s Weiss auf Weiss (1966) and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969), as well as 1972’s DOCUMENTA 5. Medalla has a longstanding history as a founder and director of various projects, ranging from the Signals Gallery in London in 1964, which exhibited international kinetic art, to the Exploding Gallery in 1967, an international group of multi-media artists highly influential in counterculture circles. While much of his work is deeply rooted in the underground, avant-garde scene in London, he became increasingly known for his series “Cloud Canyons”: thick bubbles that form random shapes and patterns against the light. Medalla additionally founded the Mondrian Fan Club in New York in 1994 with Adam Nankervis, co-curator for MOMENTUM’s joint exhibition A Wake, and founded and directed the London Biennale in 1998, a makeshift free arts festival concocted through word-of-mouth invitation. Medalla has lectured at the Sorbonne, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, MoMA, the University of the Philippines, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Warwick and Southampton and the Slade School of Fine Art, St. Martin’s. In 1997 he was awarded the DAAD artist grant to work in Berlin, and he has recently exhibited at the New Museum in New York, where the curator hailed his “Cloud Canyons No. 14” as an iconic sculpture of contemporary art. He lives and works in New York, London and Paris.

Shi Handao holds an MA degree from SAIC and is currently artistic director at Ray Art Center, as well as curator and critic.

 

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Berlin, Educational
10/04/2015
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11 with Zuzanna Janin

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11 with Zuzanna Janin

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11

 

Zuzanna Janin’s Poetics of Combat:
Beyond Victory and Defeat

 


 

Zuzanna Janin in dialogue with Lin Yu

19th APRIL 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Zuzanna Janin, born in 1961 in Poland, is a visual artist and former teen actor. Having at one time starred in the Polish serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron), Janin now uses her theatrical background to create sculpture, video, installation, photography and performances. Her work has been shown in a variety of spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Foundation Miro, Barcelona, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw, Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Jeu de Pomme, Paris, Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthalle, Bern, Hoffmann Sammlung, Berlin, and TT The THING, NY. Janin has also taken part in the Sydney Biennale, Istanbul Bienniale, Liverpool Biennale, and the 54th Venice Biennale.

Lin Yu is a writer and art critic, editor of ArtReview Asia. Since she starts to work with the British art magazine ArtReview in 2013, she has founded its sister magazine ArtReview Asia, a critical magazine distributed in pan-Asia area. Prior to this position, she was the founding editor of LEAP (2009-2012). Her practice ranges from writing, editing, art and culture criticism to curating. Her recent curatorial project ‘Timur Si-Qin: Biogenic Mineral’ is now on show at Magician Space, Beijing until 17 May 2015. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.

 

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Berlin, Educational
19/03/2015
Comments Off on Times of Passage: on the Decorative and its Rites

Times of Passage: on the Decorative and its Rites

 
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Kunst Salon
 
Times of Passage:
on the Decorative and its Rites

22 March 2015
12.00-14.00

Guido Nosari

At the main dome of the Neue Synagoge,
Oranienburger Straße 28-30, 10117 Berlin

Only by invitation


 
The Kust Salon is a part of the artist’s residency at MOMENTUM,
more information here >>

 

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Guido Nosari (MADRE) (b. 1984, Bergamo) is a Berlin/Milan-based artist mainly working with textile. Originally a painter and draughtsman, after receiving his degree in Fine Arts from Brera Art Academy in 2010, his artistic production underwent a two-year long period of intermission. This was broken in 2012, when he resumed his practice by sewing fabrics and weaving threads onto his canvasses. For Nosari, the act of sewing manifests an enclosing and trapping of temporalities within the non-navigable chaos of unmediated time. This process holds a ritual quality that allows him to approach the otherwise inaccessible zones of his thought. Nosari has had various solo-exhibitions in galleries including Maria Cilena (2014-15) and Casa Testori (2011) and his work has been acquired by various museum and private collections in Italy. He has been selected for the 2015 Berlin Textile Biennale and is currently pursuing an Artist Residency at MOMENTUM, Berlin, in which he researches the implications of decontextualizing his practice.

The idea that we all share an emptiness that I do not know, unnerves me. My research is focused on following this absence that escapes me every time I try to grasp it. To understand how much is common amongst human beings. In sewing I feel safe, because it creates a space and a time that is determinate. A way to follow. My thoughts are wrapped and tied, close to my dead.


The chaos grinds silences.

– Guido Nosari


This project is made possible by the generous support of:
 

Berlin, Educational
19/02/2015
Comments Off on Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon

Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon

 
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Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon #2

 

25 January 2015

David Elliott in conversation with
Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal and Sophia Pompéry


 
The Kunst Salon is a part of the Fragments of Empires Exhibition,
read the full information about the Exhibition here >>.


 

 

Fragments of Empires is an exhibition of contemporary art that addresses issues of memory, identity and the impact of migration through three different time-based media: sound, film and photography. Throughout the exhibition ‘fragments of empires’ are revealed through the notion of ‘object memories’ as artists examine how objects, and associations related to them, have been transferred and re-imprinted through historical processes of colonisation and migration, moving in this way from one culture to another. Although originally circumscribed by imperial ambition, the work made by the artists in the exhibition shows different ways in which these fragments have been woven into new lives or realities to establish other meanings and identities in the present.

Berlin in the 21st Century sits on the intersection of many immigrant cultures and nations, as people from all over the world flock to the city. In recent years, Berlin has come to be especially known for attracting the world’s leading artists. Equally, Berlin is famous for the wealth of cultural artifacts housed in its museums. This convergence, in this capital city, of creative and historical culture with the world’s migrant cultures is often remarked upon, but it has not yet been closely considered in terms of the convergence of the different colonial legacies of the many populations that inhabit Berlin. Fragments of Empires is thus a timely reflection on the hybridization of cultural practices, and the fact that not only in Berlin, but everywhere in the world, we can all find roots somewhere else.

Reflecting upon the lasting legacies as diverse as the British, Byzantine, French, Ottoman, Roman Empires within the context of Berlin’s particular struggle with the painful histories of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, this exhibition extends the remits of history through artistic innovation. Fragments of Empires brings together artists who have dissected the historical legacies of their particular cultures to rebuild them into contemporary statements about how cultures, by absorbing one another, defy established borders and concepts of nationhood that have been drawn and re-drawn by political force. The opening of the exhibition in Berlin in early November will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The work by the artists in the exhibition – Kader Attia, Lutz Becker, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, and Sophia Pompéry – encapsulates a wide range of different approaches to experiences of empire, migration, cultural transformation and appropriation. All strongly reflect the viral, diasporic symbolisms of contemporary culture across the world and the different contexts within which they are perceived. In Fragments of Empires, MOMENTUM is bringing these seven artists together for the first time.

This exhibition accordingly invokes time-based art practices to explore the legacies of cultural histories that have constantly changed through the passing of time. As Berlin’s only platform focusing exclusively on time-based art, MOMENTUM focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural backgrounds also re-frame different historical moments.
 


Berlin, Educational
11/02/2015
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #10 with Doug Fishbone

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #10 with Doug Fishbone

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #10

 

The Contemporary Jester
Humor, satire and role-play in Doug Fishbone’s politics of mass-media representation

 


 

Doug Fishbone in dialogue with Shen Qilan

22th MARCH 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Doug Fishbone, an American artist based in London, often uses satire and humor in his films, performances and installations to critically examine consumer culture, mass media, relative perception and context. His work frequently forces the viewer to confront his-or-her own interpretive backgrounds. By combining a variety of found images from Google Image Search, Fishbone illustrates and undermines his own confrontational, repulsive and funny monologues on contemporary media and its corollary, the underground and avant-garde. Fishbone is best known for his project 30,000 Bananas, a mountain of ripe bananas installed in the middle of London’s Trafalgar Square and later given away to the audience for free. In 2004, his work was included in the British Art Show 6, a national touring exhibition held every five years in celebrate of the best of contemporary British art. Fishbone had his first major solo project at Gimpel Fils in London in 2006, and he performed at the Hayward Gallery in 2007. He has since performed live at the ICA, exhibited at Rokeby, London, Tate Britain, the 2008 Busan Biennale and in Switzerland, Japan and Korea. He was heralded as one of the art world’s “Future Greats” by Art Review magazine. Most recently, Fishbone has recently produced a feature-length action film, Elmina, that connects two vastly different audiences of the Western art world and the African home video market. Filmed in Ghana with major Ghanaian celebrities, the movie’s only artistic intervention is the insertion of Fishbone, a white American artist, as the lead role in a completely African production. The work fully adopts Ghanaian film making conventions, taking advantage of the shared language used and the low cost structure of the Ghanaian home video industry. In this new project Fishbone continues to examine the complex relationship between perception and reality and the politics of representation while simultaneously asking wider questions about race, globalization and notions of a shared visual language. (Rokeby Gallery, London). Born in New York in 1969, Fishbone earned an MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College in 2003 and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004.

Dr. Shen QilanD is an expert on arts and culture and a member of the editorial board of BOOKTOWN Magazine. She holds a master of philosophy from Fudan University and obtained her Ph.D. at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. Prior, she was Director of the editorial department of Art World magazine (2010-2011), and later Chief Editor of Arts and Director of International Projects at Shanghai Insight Media (China South Publishing & Media Group). Qilan is dedicated to cultural projects between Europe and China and became chief advisor, editor, and co-author of Europe-China Cultural Compass — Orientation for Cultural Cooperation between China and Europe. She organizes events and gives lectures at different cultural institutions. Qilan was invited as “Kulturvermittler”, a scholarship awarded by the Goethe-Institute to visit Berlin, and was invited as a speaker to the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Melbourne, Australia.

 

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Berlin, Educational
09/01/2015
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #9 with Kate McMillan

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #9 with Kate McMillan

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #9

 

Un-forgetting History:
The Liminal Spaces of (Dis)Appearance in Kate McMillan’s Paradise Falls

 


 


Kate McMillan in dialogue with Wu Guanjun

15th JANUARY 2015

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Kate McMillan has exhibited throughout Australia and overseas since 1997. In 2013 she relocated to London from Australia, where she has spent much of her life, to undertake a number of projects, which include the filming of four ambitious new works funded in part by one of two Creative Development Fellowships awarded annually across all artforms by the Department for Culture and the Arts, Western Australia. The work will be presented by Performance Space, Australia in Sydney, Tasmania and the United Kingdom in 2014 and will include a major monograph on McMillan’s practice. >McMillan is a Phd candidate at Curtin University under the supervision of Dr Anna Haebich (author of Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000). She has been funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award to complete her Phd which examines the forgetting of the history of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island. She currently holds an Academic Post with Open University, Australia. Previous solo exhibitions include Lost at the John Curtin Gallery in 2008, Broken Ground in 2006 at Margaret Moore Contemporary Art and Disaster Narratives at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts for the 2004 Perth International Arts Festival. She has been included in various group exhibitions over the last few years including at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Gertrude Street Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.

Guanjun Wu is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics at East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China. He also serves as Vice President of Department’s Academic Board and Executive Editor-in-Chief of ECNU Review. He is the author of a number of books including The Great Dragon Fantasy (2014), The Eleventh Thesis (2014), The Philosophy of Living Together (2011), The Hauntology of Love and Death (2008), The Perverse Core of Reality (2006), and Multiple Modernities (2002).

 

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Berlin, Educational
10/12/2014
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #8 with Hannu Karjalainen

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #8 with Hannu Karjalainen

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #8

 

SITE • BODY • ARCHITECTURE

Mobilizing The Still Image In Hannu Karjalainen’s Video Art

 


 

Hannu Karjalainen in dialogue with Hu Sang

14th DECEMBER 2014

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist Hannu Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School. Woman on the Beach is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. In subsequent work Karjalainen uses the medium of the moving image to reflect back upon painting and the material qualities of paint. Colour is an elusive subject matter. It is intangible and abstract as much as it is coded, branded and harnessed for different purposes. Hannu Karjalainen is particularly interested in how meaning is attributed to a colour, and how this mechanism can be exploited by re-contextualization, using colour and its supposed meaning as a critical tool to investigate the world around us. In an ongoing series of works that turn classical portrait photographs into moving color palettes, Karjalainen again mobilizes the traditionally still image. Looking at painting through photography, its role becomes reversed.

Hu Sang is a Shanghai-based poet and critic. Currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy from Tongji University, Hu has published in various journals and books, including Shan Hua, Shu Cheng, Poetry Journal, Poetry Monthly, Shanghai Literature and Shanghai Cultural.

 

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Berlin, Educational, Exhibition, InsideOut
20/11/2014
Comments Off on Fragments of Empires Opening Weekend

Fragments of Empires Opening Weekend

 
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Fragments of Empires


Opening Weekend

 

8 – 9 November 2014

@ .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
Dorotheenstrasse 12, 10117, Berlin Mitte

Eshetu_ROMA_grab
 

Fragments of Empires Opening Weekend at .CHB

will follow the exhibition vernissage at MOMENTUM Berlin

7 November @ 19:00

Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997, Berlin Kreuzberg

More Info about the Exhibition here >
 

 

PROGRAM

Saturday 8 November

Symposium
@ .CHB Panoramahall
17:00 – 19:00

With:

Lutz Becker, David Elliott, Theo Eshetu, Mark Gisbourne,
Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, Bojana Pejic, Sophia Pompéry

 

Saturday & Sunday 8,9 November


Sound Installation
After the Wall by Lutz Becker
Outside .CHB, 12:00 – 19:00

 

MOMENTUM_InsideOut Screening
On .CHB Media Facade
19:00 – 24:00
Featuring Theo Eshetu and Sophia Pompéry

 

 

On the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall:


Sound Sculpture

After the Wall by Lutz Becker, 1999/2014

8 & 9 November @ 12:00 – 19:00

Outside .CHB

For Fragments of Empires, Lutz Becker re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. After its installation in Stockholm it travelled subsequently to Budapest and Berlin. MOMENTUM presents the sound sculpture After The Wall in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of Communism. It was a moment in history that promised to the people of Germany and other Europeans a new beginning. The significance of the Berlin Wall extended far beyond the city, beyond the borders of Germany. It epitomised the Cold War confrontation between the Warsaw Pact and the NATO alliance. The Wall separated the spheres of interest between Communism and Capitalism. On 13. August 1961 the government of East Germany, the GDR, began to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles. The underground and railway services of Greater Berlin were severed and West Berlin was turned into an island within GDR territory. A solid wall gradually replaced the provisional fence. It was made up of concrete segments of a height of 12 feet and was 165 miles long.

A trench ran parallel to it to prevent vehicles from breaking through. There was a patrol corridor behind it, watch towers, bunkers and electric fences. It appeared to the population of Germany that the split of their country and of Berlin would last forever. In 1989, as a reaction to Gorbachov’s reforms in the Soviet Union and massive unrest in their country, the government of the GDR decreed the opening of the Wall on 9. November 1989. In the following days and months demolition workers began with tearing it down. On 1. July 1990 the GDR gave up her statehood and merged with West Germany. For the Germans the demolition of the wall was an act of liberation. It gave hope for a future in which unhindered communication and freedom of movement would be everybody’s natural right. Within days of the ‘opening’ of the wall its terrifying symbolism lost its power. Millions of people came to Berlin to look at the now defunct wall and to take a piece of it with them to remember this moment of history. Hundreds of people attacked the graffiti covered surfaces of the Wall, eroding it bit by bit. The so called ‘Mauerspechte’, wall-peckers as opposed to woodpeckers, worked on the Wall day and night; their hammering, knocking and breaking sounds travelled along the many miles of Wall. The high density concrete of the structure worked like a gigantic resonating body; its acoustic properties created eerie echoes driven by the random percussion of the hammering.


Limited Edition Record Release with The Vinyl Factory
Vinyl Cover_Lutz Becker

AFTER THE WALL

A Sound Sculpture by Artist Lutz Becker (1999 / 2014)

For the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
 
 

And So That Everyone Can Join In On The Day:
 

A FREE DOWNLOAD TO CELEBRATE THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE!

DOWNLOAD IT AND PLAY IT LOUDLY ON 9 NOV 2014!
 

WE WANT EVERY CITY WORLDWIDE TO RING WITH THE UNCOMPROMISING SOUNDS OF FREEDOM.

The Berlin Wall was first breached on 9th November 1989, as the result of popular mass meetings and demonstrations within the GDR. It was not demolished at a single stroke, but over days and weeks was slowly chipped away as people from East and West joined together to obliterate a hated symbol of oppression. This was the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain. Europe was freer than it had ever been before! And the ramifications spread the world-over!

In 1989 the whole of Berlin rang and rocked to the liberating sound of hammers and pickaxes as the Wall was demolished. It was intended to build a better world without any walls.

Artist and film-maker Lutz Becker made a montage of these percussive sounds as the opening work in After the Wall, a large exhibition of art from the post-communist countries of Europe, that opened in 1999 on the 10th anniversary of this world-changing event. Now for the 25th anniversary, to coincide with the opening of Fragments of Empires at MOMENTUM Berlin, we encourage you to download any of the 5 tracks of this sound sculpture, resonating through time into the present and future.

Remind politicians today that it was the power of the people that brought down the Wall in 1989 and that ideals of freedom have still to be protected!

Wherever you are in the world, download the Wall and play it loudly on Nov 9!!!

  

AFTER THE WALL – Potsdamer Platz
Strong athmosphere. It is the basis of the installation. Hammering and distant voices.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Invalidenstrasse
Dramatic close-up percussion of hammers.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Checkpoint Charlie
Heavy percussion. Massive rhythmical sound bundles.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Brandanburger Tor
Relaxed, regular beats quite close.

  

AFTER THE WALL – Night
End piece with dominant echos.

 

MOMENTUM_InsideOut Program

8 & 9 November @ 19:00 – 24:00

On .CHB Media Facade

 

ARTISTS AND WORKS

Theo Eshetu, ROMA, 2010

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. Forging a hybrid language to merge practices of video art and documentary filmmaking, Eshetu explores perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. He draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context. Though essentially conceptual, Eshetu’s work is often focused on cultural displacement, and is always grounded in compelling aesthetic components, often achieved through fractal repetition, such as kaleidoscopic mirroring, multi-screen projections, or mosaic-like patterning of images.

Fragments of Empires features Eshetu’s video ROMA (2010). As Fellini himself pointed out despite the imperial, papal, fascist nature of Rome in reality it is an African city. This was Theo Eshetu’s starting point for ROMA, a vision of the city in which the sacred and profane dialogue with its ephemeral and eternal qualities to reveal a city full of the ghosts of its imperial past. Rome is a place of layers of history and the accumulation of mental states that this implies. At its core Rome is the root of a specific aspect of western civilization and classical Antiquity – not in the Arts, which are in Greece, or in the Sciences, which are in Egypt – but in the aspect of its Power. A monumental power once spanning continents, now residing in the memory of monuments. ROMA portrays this through the eyes of unidentified foreigners that come to visit Rome bringing with then their diversity, art and culture only to find them absorbed into the city’s own fabric. We see the city through marvelled eyes and ultimately it’s the city itself that creates a loss of identity.

Sophia Pompéry, Atölye / Atelier, 2013

Sophia Pompéry is a Hungarian artist (born 1984 in Berlin) whose family roots extend both through the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires from brothers separated by the politcal re-drawing of national borders. Pompéry studied from 2002 to 2009 at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. In 2009 and 2010, she participated in the Institute for spatial experiments by Olafur Eliasson at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. In 2011 she was awarded with the Toni and Albrecht Kumm Prize for the promotion of fine arts and in 2012, became a fellow of the DAAD art program with a six-month stay in Istanbul. She lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul.

For Fragments of Empires, Pompéry re-edits her 2013 site-specific installation, Atölye / Atelier. The film was shot in a traditional Armenian-Turkish workshop for stucco work in Istanbul. Handed down over 5 generations of craftsmen, the expertise in this atelier provided the décor for some of the best known buildings in Istanbul, such as the Dolmabahce Palace. This atelier today is an historical memory of Istanbul, the representative capital of the Ottoman Empire. A multitude of ornamental fragments of representational buildings in a diversity of historical and cultural styles mingle here in an eclectic way. One has the impression of standing in an archive of architectures and histories, entangling western Orientalism and the Ottoman version of European Rococo.


 

Symposium

8 November @ 17:00 – 19:00

@ .CHB Panoramahall

 

With:

Lutz Becker, David Elliott, Theo Eshetu, Mark Gisbourne,
Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, Bojana Pejic, Sophia Pompéry

 

[fve] http://vimeo.com/114563560 [/fve]

 

Speakers

Lutz Becker

Lutz Becker was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany and now lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated under Thorold Dickinson and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001).

For Fragments of Empires, Becker re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999 and subsequently in Berlin in 2000 at the Hamburger Bahnof, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. MOMENTUM presents the sound sculpture After The Wall in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Wall 25 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of the idealogical empire of Communism.

DAVID ELLIOTT

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


Theo Eshetu

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. Forging a hybrid language to merge practices of video art and documentary filmmaking, Eshetu explores perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. He draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context. Though essentially conceptual, Eshetu’s work is often focused on cultural displacement, and is always grounded in compelling aesthetic components, often achieved through fractal repetition, such as kaleidoscopic mirroring, multi-screen projections, or mosaic-like patterning of images.

Photo Credit: Oliver Mark

Mark Gisbourne

Mark Gisbourne: Stratford-on-Avon, in England (1948). Educated in Rome, and Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he was a tutor. Lecturer Master’s Programme, Slade School of Art, University College, University of London, and Senior Lecturer Sotheby’s Institute, Masters Programme(s) (accreditation University of Manchester), where he supervised numerous contemporary art dissertations, many of his students have become directors and curators of museums and galleries across the world. He is a former Treasurer and twice President of the British Art Critics Association (AICA), an International Vice-President AICA, and he co-organised the World Congress of Art Critics, Tate Modern following the museum’s opening in 2000. Recent Visiting Professorships include the University of Sassari, and the Alvar Aalto University, Helsinki.

His concentration today is an international curator of exhibitions across Europe, and as a writer of more than a dozen books and nearly three hundred catalogue publications, these having been published variously in over twenty languages. For the last ten years he has curated the international exhibition Rohkunstbau in Brandenburg (the last being Rohkunstbau XX ‘Revolution’, July-September, 2014) that included many international artists and produced extensive catalogues. He is currently involved in a series of exhibition projects with German artists in both Zagreb and Berlin. As a contemporary critic he has written numerous articles and reviews over the last thirty years. His latest book publications in English, English/German, English/Spanish, English/Russian published in 2013-14, include among others a Collector’s book ERZGEBURTSTAG “ERZKUNST” (Kerber Verlag, Berlin, 2013), a new three hundred page publication Berlin Art Scene (Becker Joest Volk Verlag, February, 2014), and several monographic publications on Titus Schade (Distanz Verlag, 2013) Paule Hammer (Kerber Verlag, Berlin, 2013), Markus Keibel (Berlin, Distanz Verlag, 2013), Adrian Ghenie (Berlin, London and New York, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2014), Bosco Sodi (2014, Mexico City and New York), Anne Wolff ‘Persona’ Glass Sculpture (Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, October, 2014) and Philipp Fürhofer ‘Diaspheres’ (Hatje Cantz, May, 2014), and most recently monographic essays in Via Lewandowsky, Christoph Steinmeyer, Rayk Goetz (Kerber Verlag, October 2014) and Kames Lee Byars (curator and catalogue, Nicolai Verlag, Berlin). His recent international touring exhibition with an extensive catalogue was I Am A Berliner: Eighteen Positions in Berlin Painting (Zagreb, Kunsthalle of the Artist Association, 2012; Helena Rubenstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv Museum; Sassari Modern and Contemporary Museum, Sardinia, 2013). He currently lives and works in Berlin.


Gülsün Karamustafa

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). She was refused a passport for sixteen years until the mid-80s and, unlike other Turkish artists, could not emigrate or travel. This enforced isolation led her to an analysis of her own situation and context: the city of Istanbul, interior migration and nomadism within Turkey, and the ideological and psychological ramifications of identity. Like a sociologist or anthropologist, Gülsün Karamustafa explores the historical and social connections of oriental cultures in her works, often using materials that express the hybrid character of different cultures and religions. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

Fiona Pardington

Fiona Pardington was born in 1961 in Devonport, New Zealand, of āi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent. She lives and works in New Zealand. She is recognized as the leading woman artist working with photography in New Zealand. Her work examines the history of photography and representations of the body, taking in investigations of subject-photographer relations, medicine, memory, collecting practices and still life. 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. Re-examining the history of portraiture in more recent work, she addresses the New Zealander traditional idea of the photograph as a stand-in for an actual person – a way of looking at portraits that western minds associate with traditions of Maori animism that imbue photographs of loved ones who have passed away with their actual presence and characteristics. Applying this tradition to a still-life format, Pardington portrays ancestral Maori carvings alongside objects redolent of the colonial history of an island nation at the outer edges of empire.


Bojana Pejic

Bojana Pejić has organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. In 1995 she organized an international symposium, The Body in Communism, at the Literaturhaus in Berlin. She was chief curator of the exhibition After the Wall–Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe, organized by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999), which was also shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art ­Foundation Ludwig in Budapest (2000) and at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2000-2001). Pejić recently curated Gender Check–Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe at MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna). Pejić lives and works in Berlin.

Sophia Pompéry

Sophia Pompéry is a Hungarian artist (born 1984 in Berlin) whose family roots extend both through the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires from brothers separated by the politcal re-drawing of national borders. Pompéry studied from 2002 to 2009 at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. In 2009 and 2010, she participated in the Institute for spatial experiments by Olafur Eliasson at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. In 2011 she was awarded with the Toni and Albrecht Kumm Prize for the promotion of fine arts and in 2012, became a fellow of the DAAD art program with a six-month stay in Istanbul. She lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul.



THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRES Symposium
(photos by Camille Blake)

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INSIDE_OUT SCREENING
(photos by Camille Blake)

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WITH THANKS FOR GENEROUS SUPPORT IN REALIZING THIS EXHIBITION

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Berlin, Educational
14/11/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #7 with Fiona Pardington

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #7

 

RECOLLECTION • REPRESENTATION • REFLECTION

 


 

Fiona Pardington in dialogue with Zhang Hui

23rd NOVEMBER 2014

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

Live-streamed with Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

Fiona Pardington was born in 1961 in Devonport, New Zealand, of āi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent. She lives and works in New Zealand. She is recognized as the leading woman artist working with photography in New Zealand. Her work examines the history of photography and representations of the body, taking in investigations of subject-photographer relations, medicine, memory, collecting practices and still life. 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. Re-examining the history of portraiture in more recent work, she addresses the New Zealander traditional idea of the photograph as a stand-in for an actual person – a way of looking at portraits that western minds associate with traditions of Maori animism that imbue photographs of loved ones who have passed away with their actual presence and characteristics. Applying this tradition to a still-life format, Pardington portrays ancestral Maori carvings alongside objects redolent of the colonial history of an island nation at the outer edges of empire.

Zhang Hui, PHD from University of California, Los Angeles, who is currently a lecturer in the Institute of Anthropological studies, School of Social Development at East China Normal University. Zhang’s research mainly focuses on cultural theory, intangible heritage protection, museum studies, anthropology of media and anthropology of education. Here’s a link of Zhang Hui at East China Normal University: http://faculty.ecnu.edu.cn/s/2770/t/29709/main.jspy

 

WATCH THE TALK:

Berlin, Educational
22/10/2014
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Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon

 
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Fragments of Empires Kunst Salon
 

26 October 2014
KUNSTSALON AND ARTIST WORKSHOP
 NATURALLY

 


 
Janet Laurence and Fiona Pardington


The artists develop ideas and frameworks for the upcoming project with MOMENTUM.


The workshop will follow the Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #6
More information HERE

 

 


 

ABOUT FIONA PARDINGTON

CV – Website – Fiona Pardington in MOMENTUM Collection

Fiona Pardington’s work investigates the history of photography and representations of the body, examining subject-photographer relations, medicine, memory, collecting practices and still life. Her deeply toned black-and-white photographs are the result of specialty hand printing and demonstrate a highly refined analogue darkroom technique. Of Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent, Pardington’s practice often draws upon personal history, recollections and mourning to breath new life into traditional and forgotten objects. Her work with still life formats in museum collections, which focuses on relics as diverse as taonga (Māori ancestral treasures), hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now-extinct buia bird, calls into question our contemporary relationship with a materialized past as well as the ineffable photographic image.

Pardington holds an MFA and PhD in photography from the University of Auckland and has received numerous recognitions, including the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic in 2006, a position as Frances Hodgkins Fellow in both 1996 and 1997, the Visa Gold Art Award 1997, and the Moet and Chandon Fellowship (France) from 1991-92. Born in 1961 in Devonport, New Zealand, Pardington lives and works in Waiheke Island, New Zealand.

Fiona Pardington’s still live series Organic is part of MOMENTUM Collection. More info here.


 

ABOUT JANET LAURENCE

CV – Website – Janet Laurence in MOMENTUM Collection

Australian artist Janet Laurence‘s work explores a poetics of space and materiality through the creation of works that deal with our experiential and cultural relationship with the natural world. Her work echoes architecture while retaining organic qualities and a sense of instability and transience. It occupies the liminal zones and meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory.

Laurence’s practice includes both ephemeral and permanent works as well as installations that extend from the museum/gallery into both urban and landscape domain.

Her work, centered on living nature, bleeds between the architectural and the natural world, physically and metaphorically dissolving these boundaries.

Her spaces are immersive and reflective, creating a play between perception and memory. Alchemical transformation, history and perception are underlying themes. Laurence’s work is represented in major Australian and international collections and has been included in many national survey exhibitions.



THE PHOTO GALLERY OF THE EVENT
(photos by Camille Blake)

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Berlin, Educational
22/10/2014
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Pandamonium Kunst Salon

 
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Pandamonium Kunst Salon

29 May 2014

 


 

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

 

Since China Avant-garde, with its iconic German debut at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1993, Chinese contemporary art has shown a completely new face to the contemporary art world. After 1979, when the first avant-garde art groups showed their work after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese art has undergone a transformation from demanding artistic freedoms to a more complex and nuanced response to both its domestic and global context. This year marks the 35-year anniversary of the beginning of this transformation.

Zhang Peili started his first experiments with video art in 1988, moving from painting to an engagement with the specific aesthetics and politics of new media. Video art in China today not only contributes to the mainstream of new media art and aesthetics, but has also rooted itself deeply in practical research into technological development as well as into the experience of daily life.

PANDAMONIUM, the title of this exhibition, suggests two conflicting ideas: the soft, cuddly, diplomatic, almost clichéd, image of the Panda, one of the great symbols of China to the outside world, and the wild, fertile, noisy disorder of Pandemonium, the place of all demons in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. The birth of this new word represents the chaotic energy of Chinese artists’ efforts and experiments in new media art over the past decade. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that Chinese contemporary art has not yet, other than through the art market, engaged globally during this time. This lack has been veiled by the speed of Chinese social and economic development and further masked by the impact of politics and the media.

PANDAMONIUM focuses on the work of Shanghai artists who create openly, distant from the country’s political center in Beijing. The group of artists shown here are all engaged in experiments with new media, introducing into Chinese art new creative ideas and aesthetic approaches. This exhibition addresses the first three generations of media artists in China. Starting with pioneers like Zhang Peili and Hu Jieming, working since the 1980s to break new ground with the technologies of media art, to the successes of the next generation, such as internationally acclaimed artist Yang Fudong, and moving on to their students, who are developing their own visual languages in response and in contrast to their pioneering teachers. Most of the works of this youngest generation of artists is premiered in Berlin for the first time. Berlin-based artists Thomas Eller and Ming Wong, both with strong links to China, present works responding to these themes.

Focusing on single-channel video, the work selected for this show presents minimal and subtle expressions that offer a view not only of some of the strongest work now being made in Shanghai but also of the scale of transformation that is now running through the whole of Chinese contemporary art. PANDAMONIUM is especially proud to premiere a new work by Qiu Anxiong, made for this exhibition.

* Special thanks for support from CAC | Chronus Art Center, WTI and CP, and also to the .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin.



Berlin, Educational
18/10/2014
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Form As Being Finissage Weekend

 
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FORM AS BEING

FINISSAGE WEEKEND

At MOMENTUM Berlin

Kunstquartier Bethanien 134
Mariannenplatz 2, Kreuzberg, 10997 Berlin

 

IN DIALOGUE with Omar Chowdhury &
Mark Gisbourne

Sat 4th Oct at 19:00 – 20:00

@ MOMENTUM Berlin

 

 
 

Chowdhury

 
 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

MOMENTUM is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Berlin of the lyrically cinematic video works of Australian-Bangladeshi artist Omar Chowdhury.

Made in a deep, two-year immersion into spiritual sites and spaces in Dhaka, this ambitious body of works explores the processes, materials, and theologies of spiritual practice in a formalist yet rhythmic accumulation of imagery, sounds and meanings.

Encompassing the places, rituals, music, lives, and beliefs of holy and lay-believers, the artist has created a complex, absorbing series of works that combine and re-purpose fictional, documentary, and experimental techniques to create a rich, philosophical and phenomenological enquiry into religious practice and its representation.

This exhibition originated at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney, Australia, in May – August 2014 under the title of WAYS. With gratitude to 4A, the Keir Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts, and the EMK Centre in Dhaka, MOMENTUM is very pleased to bring this stunning exhibition to Berlin, and to show for the first time in Berlin the work of this extraordinary emerging talent.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

In 2014 Omar Chowdhury has current and upcoming solo exhibitions at Shepparton Art Museum and Galleries UNSW. He is the recent recipient of a Bengal Foundation Commission (2014), a finalist for the John Fries Award (2014), received an Australia Council Skills and Development Grant (2014), an Edward M. Kennedy Grant for the Arts (2013), and an Australian Cinematographer’s Society Gold Award. He has shown works in galleries, institutions, and festivals in Australia, Asia, and Europe. He was born in 1983 and studied at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He currently lives and works both in Sydney, Australia and Dhaka, Bangladesh.



 

EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

 


READ THE CATALOGUE OF FORM AS BEING


READ THE ESSAY BY MARK GISBOURNE



 

ABOUT MARK GISBOURNE
In Dialogue with Omar Chowdhury on Oct 4th at MOMENTUM Berlin

MARK GISBOURNE: Stratford-on-Avon, in England (1948). Educated in Rome, and Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he was a tutor. Lecturer Master’s Programme, Slade School of Art, University College, University of London, and Senior Lecturer Sotheby’s Institute, Masters Programmes (accreditation University of Manchester). A former President of the British Art Critics Association (AICA), and an International Vice-President who co-organised the World Congress of Art Critics, Tate Modern at its opening in 2000. He is an international curator of numerous exhibitions, and a writer of more than a dozen books and over two hundred and fifty catalogue essays, having been published in over twenty languages. His latest publications in 2013/14 include among others monographic essays and publications on Bosco Sodi (Berlin, Mexico City and New York, 2014), Adrian Ghenie (Berlin, London and New York, with Hatje Cantz, 2014), Markus Keibel (Berlin, Distanz Verlag, 2013), Philipp Fürhofer ‘Diaspheres’ (Berlin, Hatje Cantz, 2014), James Lee Byars: The Secret Archive (The Dieter Hacker Collection) (Berlin, Nikolai Verlag, 2014), Rayk Goetz (Kerber Verlag, 2014). In 2015, Jakob Straub: Rome Rotunda (Hatje Cantz, 2015). There are forthcoming monographs on the Leipzig painters Johannes Rochhausen, and Markus Matthias Krueger, and on the deceased American painters Patrick Angus (1953-92) and Alice Neel. He continues to curate the international Rohkunstbau (Brandenburg) international summer exhibitions (2004, XI to XXI, ‘Apocalypse’ June, 2015). His large touring museum exhibition publication I am a Berliner: Eighteen Positions in Berlin Painting (Zagreb HDLU, Tell Aviv Museum, and MASEDU, Sassari, Sardinia) appeared 2012-13. In Planning is a large exhibition of post-war and contemporary art to take place in Riga, Latvia, later this year 2015. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

 
THE GALLERY:

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Berlin, Educational
17/10/2014
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Fragments of Empires Symposium

 
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SYMPOSIUM

 

Fragments of Empires

8 November 2014: 17:00 – 19:00

 

Accompanied by MOMENTUM_InsideOut screening

@ .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin


 

With:

Lutz Becker, David Elliott, Theo Eshetu, Mark Gisbourne,
Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, Bojana Pejic, Sophia Pompéry


The Symposium and the screening are a part of
Fragments of Empires exhibition opening weekend
@ .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
More info here >

 

Made possible by the generous support of:

Haupstadtkulturfonds_Logo

 

 

Speakers:

Lutz Becker

Lutz Becker was born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany and now lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated under Thorold Dickinson and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001).

For Fragments of Empires, Becker re-visits a sound installation commissioned for the exhibition After the Wall held at the Moderna Museet Stockholm in 1999 and subsequently in Berlin in 2000 at the Hamburger Bahnof, also curated by David Elliott. Its five constituent sound montages are based on original recordings made at the fall of the Berlin Wall. MOMENTUM presents the sound sculpture After The Wall in the context of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Wall 25 years ago, in November 1989, symbolised the end of the separation of the City of Berlin, as well as that of Germany into an Eastern and a Western state. It marked, for everybody to see, the final collapse of the idealogical empire of Communism.

DAVID ELLIOTT

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


Theo Eshetu

Theo Eshetu was born in London 1958, and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, Belgrade and Rome. He now lives and works in Berlin. Forging a hybrid language to merge practices of video art and documentary filmmaking, Eshetu explores perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. He draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context. Though essentially conceptual, Eshetu’s work is often focused on cultural displacement, and is always grounded in compelling aesthetic components, often achieved through fractal repetition, such as kaleidoscopic mirroring, multi-screen projections, or mosaic-like patterning of images.

Photo Credit: Oliver Mark

Mark Gisbourne

Mark Gisbourne: Stratford-on-Avon, in England (1948). Educated in Rome, and Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he was a tutor. Lecturer Master’s Programme, Slade School of Art, University College, University of London, and Senior Lecturer Sotheby’s Institute, Masters Programme(s) (accreditation University of Manchester), where he supervised numerous contemporary art dissertations, many of his students have become directors and curators of museums and galleries across the world. He is a former Treasurer and twice President of the British Art Critics Association (AICA), an International Vice-President AICA, and he co-organised the World Congress of Art Critics, Tate Modern following the museum’s opening in 2000. Recent Visiting Professorships include the University of Sassari, and the Alvar Aalto University, Helsinki.

His concentration today is an international curator of exhibitions across Europe, and as a writer of more than a dozen books and nearly three hundred catalogue publications, these having been published variously in over twenty languages. For the last ten years he has curated the international exhibition Rohkunstbau in Brandenburg (the last being Rohkunstbau XX ‘Revolution’, July-September, 2014) that included many international artists and produced extensive catalogues. He is currently involved in a series of exhibition projects with German artists in both Zagreb and Berlin. As a contemporary critic he has written numerous articles and reviews over the last thirty years. His latest book publications in English, English/German, English/Spanish, English/Russian published in 2013-14, include among others a Collector’s book ERZGEBURTSTAG “ERZKUNST” (Kerber Verlag, Berlin, 2013), a new three hundred page publication Berlin Art Scene (Becker Joest Volk Verlag, February, 2014), and several monographic publications on Titus Schade (Distanz Verlag, 2013) Paule Hammer (Kerber Verlag, Berlin, 2013), Markus Keibel (Berlin, Distanz Verlag, 2013), Adrian Ghenie (Berlin, London and New York, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2014), Bosco Sodi (2014, Mexico City and New York), Anne Wolff ‘Persona’ Glass Sculpture (Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, October, 2014) and Philipp Fürhofer ‘Diaspheres’ (Hatje Cantz, May, 2014), and most recently monographic essays in Via Lewandowsky, Christoph Steinmeyer, Rayk Goetz (Kerber Verlag, October 2014) and Kames Lee Byars (curator and catalogue, Nicolai Verlag, Berlin). His recent international touring exhibition with an extensive catalogue was I Am A Berliner: Eighteen Positions in Berlin Painting (Zagreb, Kunsthalle of the Artist Association, 2012; Helena Rubenstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv Museum; Sassari Modern and Contemporary Museum, Sardinia, 2013). He currently lives and works in Berlin.


Gülsün Karamustafa

Gülsün Karamustafa was born in 1946 in Ankara, Turkey. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she is recognized as one of the most important and pioneering Turkish contemporary artists. Her work addresses questions of migration, displacement and military dictatorship (during the 1970s she was imprisoned by the Turkish military). She was refused a passport for sixteen years until the mid-80s and, unlike other Turkish artists, could not emigrate or travel. This enforced isolation led her to an analysis of her own situation and context: the city of Istanbul, interior migration and nomadism within Turkey, and the ideological and psychological ramifications of identity. Like a sociologist or anthropologist, Gülsün Karamustafa explores the historical and social connections of oriental cultures in her works, often using materials that express the hybrid character of different cultures and religions. Ostensibly reverting to historical lore, Karamustafa’s artistic comments oscillate actually between sensual meta-narratives and ironic-critical stories about the present situation, addressing themes of identity and migration, cultural difference and acculturation within the contexts of orientalism and post-colonialism. Since the end of the late 1990s, she has often used already existing materials and images of oriental or occidental origin that she fragments, dismantles and reassembles in order to contrast ‘private’ with ‘public’ by referring to every-day life, culture, art history, and the media.

Fiona Pardington

Fiona Pardington was born in 1961 in Devonport, New Zealand, of āi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent. She lives and works in New Zealand. She is recognized as the leading woman artist working with photography in New Zealand. Her work examines the history of photography and representations of the body, taking in investigations of subject-photographer relations, medicine, memory, collecting practices and still life. 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. Re-examining the history of portraiture in more recent work, she addresses the New Zealander traditional idea of the photograph as a stand-in for an actual person – a way of looking at portraits that western minds associate with traditions of Maori animism that imbue photographs of loved ones who have passed away with their actual presence and characteristics. Applying this tradition to a still-life format, Pardington portrays ancestral Maori carvings alongside objects redolent of the colonial history of an island nation at the outer edges of empire.


Bojana Pejic

Bojana Pejić has organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. In 1995 she organized an international symposium, The Body in Communism, at the Literaturhaus in Berlin. She was chief curator of the exhibition After the Wall–Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe, organized by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999), which was also shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art ­Foundation Ludwig in Budapest (2000) and at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2000-2001). Pejić recently curated Gender Check–Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe at MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna). Pejić lives and works in Berlin.

Sophia Pompéry

Sophia Pompéry is a Hungarian artist (born 1984 in Berlin) whose family roots extend both through the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires from brothers separated by the politcal re-drawing of national borders. Pompéry studied from 2002 to 2009 at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. In 2009 and 2010, she participated in the Institute for spatial experiments by Olafur Eliasson at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. In 2011 she was awarded with the Toni and Albrecht Kumm Prize for the promotion of fine arts and in 2012, became a fellow of the DAAD art program with a six-month stay in Istanbul. She lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul.



FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRES SYMPOSIUM
(photos by Camille Blake)

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Berlin, Educational
15/10/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #6 with Janet Laurence

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #6

 

ART • SCIENCE • IMAGINATION • MEMORY

 


 

Janet Laurence in dialogue with Hu Xudong

26th OCTOBER 2014

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

Live-streamed with Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.

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

Hu Xudong is a chinese poet, critic, essayist and translator. Born in Chongqing, lives now in Beijing. M.A. in Comparative Literature and Ph.D. in Chinese Contemporary Literature from Peking University, where he now is as an associate professor at the Institute of World Literature. He has published 7 books of poetry (From Water’s Edge, Juice of the Wind, Amor en los Tiempos del SARS, What Time Is It There？, The Strength of the Calendar, The Eternal Inside Man, Travel/Writing), 3 books of essays (Random Words of A Random Life, the Hidden Passion in Brazil, Random Thought after Random Eating), as well as a number of translations. In 2007 Hu Xudong was hailed as one of the ten present Top New Poets in China. He writes poetry and essays but also works as a columnist, translator and TV presentor. Xudong holds a doctorate in modern literature and lectures at Peking University. In his highly narrative poetic style he manages to put across elaborate stories couched in concise phrasing. Xudong is able to command a wide range of linguistic modes in his poems. He knows, for instance, how to incorporate provincial dialects but also how to include references to the Chinese literary classics or to the idiom of the world of advertising.

 

Janet Laurence in Dialogue with Isabel de Sena:


 

Janet Laurence screening and response by Hu Xudong:


 

Berlin, Educational
03/10/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #5 with Hye Rim Lee

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #5

 

Sex・Politics・Cross-Cultures:
Hye Rim Lee’s Video Images and
Multidimensional Exploration

 


 

HYE RIM LEE in dialogue with ZHOU YI

12 OCTOBER 2014 at 15:00

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 

Video Screening:
Obsession/Love Forever (2007), Crystal Beauty Electro Doll (2006-08), Crystal City Spun (2008) and Strawberry Garden Lucid Dream (2011)

Followed By
Hye Rim Lee in dialogue with Zhou Yi

 

At Minsheng Art Museum
Address: bldg F, NO.570 West Huaihai Road, Shanghai

Live-streamed from Hye Rim Lee’s Studio in Auckland, New Zealand

 

Video arts have been impacting the modern high-speed movements of various kinds since its birth as well as reshaping the art history of 20 century with its moving images. To embark on an effective,open and updated exchange between the east and west seems to possess a great importance to accelerate and boost the contemporary video art. This time, with a lasting and fine cooperation with MOMENTUM Germany, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum will witness the Fifth Phase of “Time·Art·Impact” dialogue project: Sex ·Politics · Cross-culture: Hye Rim Lee’s Video Images and Multidimensional Exploration. Artist Hye Rim Lee and Yi Zhou would be invited to give the audience a talk upon the modern movement of video art, sexuality, and politics under a intercultural perspective. During this event, Hye Rim Lee’s video work Obsession/Love Forever (2007) from MOMENTUM Collection will be screened, along with three other works, Crystal Beauty Electro Doll (2006-08), Crystal City Spun (2008) and Strawberry Garden Lucid Dream (2011).

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.

Yi Zhou is a Chinese media artist, film director, actress and speaker, who has lived in Rome from the age of ten and studied between London and Paris with degrees in Political Science and Economics. Since 2010 she has relocated back to China and founded her studio and production company in Shanghai. An image maker and muse, switching from the front to the back of the camera, Yi Zhou is a modern-day Chinese Hitchcock, Yoko Ono and Cindy Sherman, described by Vogue China. Currently, Yi Zhou is also Tudou.com’s(Chinese would-be YouTube) art-director and serves as art and fashion advisory member at Sina.com (which owns Chinese twitter), which owns Chinese twitter(Sina Weibo). Yi Zhou was also selected as part of the Women’s Forum and aspeaker at TEDxParis. Her work has been shown at Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.
 

[Work Descriptions by Hye Rim Lee]

 

Obsession/Love Forever (2007)

 

 

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.

Further text here



 

Crystal Beauty Electro Doll (2006-08)

 


 

Crystal Beauty Electro Doll is a part of the ongoing series TOKI/Cyborg Project: game, pop and cyber world, a project which focuses on character modelling. It considers how boy game culture encourages the fantasy of the perfectly constructed female body. The animation is edited screen recordings of the 3d animation modelling process which concentrates on the process of modelling and modification of TOKI’s body – lips, eyelashes, finger nails, hair, breast, bottom, high heels, and genitalia – in relation to plastic surgery. Crystal Beauty Electro Doll examines the recent boom in plastic surgery in Korea and its underlying psychological impulses. The artist, as creator of TOKI, takes over the role of re-defining and re-creating a female form to fit the requirements of the desirable body promoted by advertising and the media. Such images conventionally draw on white or Eurasian models thus promoting a western ideal of beauty that can only be achieved by Korean women through extreme modification. Using a 3D modelling process, Lee challenges the existing male dominated fields of both plastic surgery and 3D animation. TOKI goes under the knife to expose the radical surgical procedures undergone by women in order to achieve an ideal beauty. She is the product of the technologised perfection and commodification of the female body.

The artist examines the psychology behind the obsession to be beautiful, young and perfect, questioning the myth of technological perfection and by association, the contemporary obsession with bodily transformation. Beauty is now is a mass-produced commodity that can be purchased.

TOKI positions herself as both desiring and desirable subject. The eight parts of body also are a reminiscent of male fetish and masculine gaze that segregate women’s bodies into their various parts.

Lee examines the traditional male gaze which seeks erotic pleasure from the spectacle of the female body. The audience is presented with a sexuality that referenced the female body’s role as a fetish object constituted by and for an erotic and predominantly male gaze. The project suggests the twisted erotic desire and creates the voyeuristic/ non-participative fascination to the audience. The evolving poetics of beauty is accelerated by the multiple mouse clicking sound layered and synced by 8 scenes.

TOKI, the pretty doll-like cyborg, has all the conventional attributes of a clichéd femininity valued in Korean culture. The ultra-sexy TOKI is the embodiment of fantasy, sensuality, and seduction. Here the modelling process lures the audience by inviting the (male) viewer into a fantasy, suggesting that she possesses the power to fulfil his desire in the creation of an ideal, virtual beauty. TOKI’s white body epitomise the powerful image of an ideal beauty, and the ability of digital and surgical construction to create a ‘plastic’ fantasy world.

The digital protagonist TOKI stars in her own video game, which challenges boy game culture and creates new relations between images, bodies, identities and artefacts through the media in relation to girl game culture. In so doing it provokes questions about relationships between the body and technology, male and female, and inner and outer states. The artist presents an awareness of powerful gender stereotypes whilst acknowledging that eroticism and sexuality are important dimensions in life. Global western values of ideal body form, shape, and beauty are dissected in a critique that involves cybernetics, plastic surgery, aesthetics, ethics, genetics, gender power relations and identity.



 

Crystal City Spun (2008)

 


 

Crystal City Spun is a spectacle of sexually charged stimuli, which opens with a cityscape of spinning dildo towers. Out of the landscape emerges Dragon YONG, a vehicle for fantasy exploration by, TOKI, a highly stylized curvaceous, warrior-cum-vixen who draws upon the Japanese tradition of Manga, Korean animamix and Western ideals of sexuality and beauty. TOKI exists in a fantasyland ripe with testosterone-driven energy. To sadistically erotic effect, YONG taps TOKI’s exposed nipple with the tip of his pointy claw. This titillation sends TOKI into a pirouette. She stops only when YONG whips her with his whiskers which sparks the crystallization of both the landscape and its characters.

The video has a playful, childlike quality alluding to fantasy and toys such as pink bunny rabbits and digitally exaggerated reflections. But at the same time, Lee explores sexual innuendo, and plays with varying degrees of sexuality and sexual expression both with imagery and color.

The video utilizes the latest techniques in 3D digital technology creating some characters in “crystal” structure, lending the work a delicacy and elegance. Crystal City is a fantasyland where dream and reality mix. While Lee is humorous and nostalgic, she does not shy away from the darker side of fantasy, the worlds of obsession and addiction.

Although the artist’s work is rooted in the challenges facing the community of Asian diaspora who have once settled in New Zealand, the work speaks to the manipulation and perception of female sexual identity worldwide. Furthermore, Lee challenges the conventions of the traditionally male-dominated worlds of game structure and 3D animation, specifically when it comes to virtualized images of women. Crystal City is a project in which cyberculture and contemporary myth-making intersect.



 

Strawberry Garden Lucid Dream (2011)

 


 

Throughout my adulthood I have been dealing with the significance of shifting identity. My work reflects on my surroundings and deals with issues created by and from my understanding or confusion of contemporary pop culture around me. My work deals with cyberculture and cyberfeminism by representing TOKI as a vehicle for fantasy, sexuality, and identity. The paradise in my fantasy recollects all the memories from my childhood to adulthood, and the big shift from Korea to New Zealand to New York and back to New Zealand. From the organic nature of my old childhood house garden to the inorganic cyber world of fantasy and dream, my paradise exists in between these two worlds.

Strawberry Garden Lucid Dream is a fantasy world that evokes nostalgia for childhood. The project, an artistic project “in progress”, is a reflection on how the female sexual identity is perceived and used at a global level.

Through an exploration of cyberculture dynamics, intended for a male public, and a fascination with new technologies, I use a different outlook to analyze some aspects of popular culture, globalization and especially femininity in relation to the media.

My idea of locating my paradise in between the organic world of my childhood house and garden and the inorganic cyber world of fantasy and dream. It’s zone that exists between the analog and the digital, between dream and reality; and is of course beautifully encapsulated in my project title – the Lucid Dream.



 

Guest Translator: Jin Wen, associate professor of School of Foreign Language and Literaturein Fudan University, and doctor in Northwest University of America. Having been a teacher in the Departments of Comparative Literature and English of Columbia University since 2006, she mainly lectures upon courses in American literature, Asian American Literature, theories of Western culture and literature criticism.

 

WATCH THE TALK:

Berlin, Educational
28/09/2014
Comments Off on Xu Zhen Book Presentation

Xu Zhen Book Presentation

 
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ON THE OCCASION OF BERLIN ART WEEK 2014

 

MOMENTUM together with present:

 

Xu Zhen: From Inside His Skin

 

A Presentation of Xu Zhen: The Catalog

 

In Dialogue with Chris Moore And David Elliott

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

 

 
 

 

21 September 17:00

@ .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Dorotheenstrasse 12, 10117, Berlin Mitte


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

 

THE BOOK

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

XU ZHEN

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


CHRISTOPHER MOORE

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

DAVID ELLIOTT

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


THE PRESENTATION WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY TWO WORKS BY XU ZHEN

 

8848-1.86
2005, 8:11 min

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

Rainbow
1998, 3:50 min

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


THE BOOK LAUNCH AT ART BASEL HONG KONG

 


PICTURES FROM THE TALK
(photos by Marina Belikova)

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Berlin, Educational
21/08/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #4 with Mariana Vassileva

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #4

 

Instant Poetry:
Semantics and Politics Expression of Mariana Vassileva

 


 

MARIANA VASSILEVA in dialogue with LIU XUJUN

23 AUGUST 2014

13:00 at MOMENTUM Berlin

Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany

&

19:00 at Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai

 
 

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #4 takes place simultaneously via live-stream between Shanghai and Berlin.

The discussion will be accompanied by the screening of Mariana Vassileva’s Morning Mood (2010), and the newest addition to the MOMENTUM Collection, Vassileva’s The Color of the Wind (2014).

 

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.”

Liu Xujun is a cultural critic and feature editor of ‘Art World’, mainly focussing on poetry, literature and film reviews and with a specific interest in the theories of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and in semiology.

Interpreter: Jinwen, Associate Professor of the School of Foreign Languages at Fudan University.

 

Mariana Vassileva in dialogue with Isabel de Sena:


 

Mariana Vassileva screening and response by Liu Xujun:

Berlin, Educational
17/07/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #3 with Thomas Eller

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #3

 

Exploration and Hybridization:
Thomas Eller’s Experience and Practice of Embodiment

 
Time_Art_Impact #3_FLYER_Thomas Eller+Hu Jieming
 

THOMAS ELLER in dialogue with HU JIEMING

19 JULY 2014

13:00 at MOMENTUM Berlin

Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany

&

19:00 at Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai

 
 

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #3 takes place simultaneously via live-stream between the Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai and MOMENTUM,Berlin. Bringing together the two groundbreaking artists Hu Jieming and Thomas Eller, the discussion will be accompanied by the screening of Thomas Eller’s THE white male complex (endgames), and the newest addition to the MOMENTUM Collection, Thomas Eller’s The white male complex, #5 (lost), both premiered in 2014 at MOMENTUM and Chronus Art Center’s collaborative exhibition PANDAMONIUM: Media Art From Shanghai.

Thomas Eller (b. 1964) is a German visual artist, curator, and writer based in Berlin. In 2004 he founded the online magazine Artnet China, and in 2008 was the artistic director of the Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. Thomas Eller is the curator of Die 8 der Wege, the exhibition of contemporary art from Beijing which took place in on Berlin 29 April – 13 July 2014.

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

Interpreter: Jinwen, Associate Professor of the School of Foreign Languages at Fudan University.

 

WATCH THE TALK:

Berlin, Educational
25/06/2014
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #2 with Map Office

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #2

 

Public and Private Space: Map Office’s radical urbanization experiment

 


 

Map Office in dialogue with Li Xiangning

29th JUNE 2016

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

Live-streamed with Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai

 

MOMENTUM and Minsheng Art Museum invite artists Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix (Map Office) and Professor Li Xiangning for the second phase of Time_Art_Impact. During this event, Map Office’s Runscape (2010, 24min 18sec, MOMENTUM Collection) will be screened, followed by a discussion on the space-time abnormity, the relations and strains between individual and various environments, and how humans subvert or adjust space. The soundtrack by Roller Control, a Hong Kong rock band, adds more violent aesthetics to the video, which make it possible for the audience to experience how this work defines and applies public space in a both visual and auditory way.

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 Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design, 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 Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design.

Li Xiangning is Professor in history, theory and criticism at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, and guest editor of magazine Time Architecture. He is not only a young professor, but also an architecture scholar, architecture critic and curator. In recent years, he has been active in both academic and public circles and devotes himself to architecture design, both at home and abroad.

Interpreter: Ding Jun, Lecturer in the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fudan University.

 

WATCH THE TALK:

Berlin, Educational
23/06/2014
Comments Off on Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #1 with Nezaket Ekici

Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #1 with Nezaket Ekici

 
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Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #1

 

Mother of Performance Art:
Nezaket Ekici’s Worldwide Nomadic Performance

 

Time-Art_Impact1_Flyer

 

Nezaket Ekici In Dialogue With Dr. Lu Xinghua

25 MAY 2014

At Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai

 
Videos, as an art impact, develop rapidly and influence all the other art forms. The existent and development of moving image has changed the history of art in 20 century. Therefore, communication between the East and the West in an open and modern manner is needed.

Time_Art_Impact Project is an academic exchange and corporation between Minsheng Art Museum and MOMENTUM. Artist Nezaket Ekici and professor Lu Xinghua are invited to Minsheng Art Museum as guests for the first talk, The Last Queen: Nezaket Ekici’s Worldwide Nomadic and Performance. Before the talk, there is a two-hour exhibition of Nezaket’s works, Veiling and Reviling and The Tube. With the exhibition and the talk, audience can understand the whole process and the art piece itself with their own emotion and intellectual, meanwhile, controversial topics and complex emotion behind art, which might be twisted and embellished, will be discussed.

Nezaket Ekici (Kirşehir, 1970) is a Turkish-born performance and video artist based in Germany, who holds a Master’s degree in Performance Art from the Marina Abramovic Institute. Through performances marked by a strong and crisp visual language, Ekici confronts culturally specific attributes of femininity, contesting their agency on the body. Diligently undergoing and/or withstanding the habits dictated by these objects, she questions the opposition between confinement and concealment, public and private, safety and repression. Through a practice largely grounded in durational performance and most distinctively in psycho-physical endurance and tenacity, Ekici’s work interconnects everyday elements to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk.
To read Artist Dossier click here: NEZAKET EKICI ARTIST DOSSIER

Lu Xinghua is Associate Professor in the department of Philosophy in Tongji University. He is an expert in French philosophy with a focus on political philosophy, aesthetics and art theory. He is proficient in English, French, and German, writing on art, politics and philosophy. Entering Chinese contemporary art circles in 2009, he has given numerous speeches at art galleries and museums, in addition to planning, organizing and participating in various contemporary art exhibitions and conferences.

Interpreter: Jin Wen, associate professor in the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures

 

WATCH THE TALK:

Berlin, Educational
30/05/2014
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Intersections Panel Discussion

 
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INTERSECTION


Panel Discussion for CINEMA TOTAL

Part of the Berlinale International Film Festival
 


 

In cooperation with .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

18:00 – 20:00 on 10 FEBRUARY 2014

Venue: Panorama Hall, Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstrasse 12, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
 

Speakers:

Candice Breitz, Theo Eshetu, Zuzanna Janin, Bjørn Melhus, Reynold Reynolds

Moderated by David Elliott
 

Language: English

– Free and Open to the Public –
 

Cinema Total’s special focus in 2014 is the intersection of film and video art. This panel explores the increasingly osmotic borders between film and video art, which find more filmmakers creating gallery-based work and artists making works inspired by cinema and its methods.

In its 7th edition, Cinema Total is a 5 day series of events about Central and Eastern European film and filmakers, hosted by .CHB during the Berlinale, exploring the intersection of film and video art, alongside its usual programme for film professionals. A specially curated selection of film and video art works will be shown in the studio gallery, as well as on .CHB’s media facade. On Monday, Feb 10th a panel discussion moderated by David Elliott and co-curated by MOMENTUM will delve into the increasingly osmotic borders between film and video art, which find more filmmakers creating gallery-based work and artists making works for cinema.

The panel discussion is accompanied by a screening of video works by artists on the panel and others working on the permeable borders between art and film. The screening will take place on the media facade of the .CHB, as well as in the .CHB Studio Gallery.

 
 

PANELISTS:

Breitz_by_Rakete

Candice Breitz

Candice Breitz (born 1972, Johannesburg) is a South African artist who works primarily in video and photography. She currently lives in Berlin, and has been a tenured professor at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2007. Through her pointed and deftly edited video installations, Candice Breitz looks at the stereotypes and visual conventions in film and popular culture. These videos often explore the relationship between the god-like presence of pop stars and actors, and their awestruck fans.

Theo Eshetu

Theo Eshetu (born 1958, London) his childhood was spent between Ethiopia, Senegal and Yugoslavia, among other nations. Theo Eshetu has worked in media art since 1982, creating installations, video art works, and television documentaries. As a video maker, he explores the expressive capabilities of the medium and the manipulation of the language of television. Exploring themes and imagery from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religious iconography, he attempts to define how electronic media shapes identity and perception. World cultures, particularly the relationship of African and European cultures, often inform Eshetu’s work.


Zuzanna Janin

Zuzanna Janin (born 1964, Warsaw) is a Polish visual artist and former teenage actor in a Polish serial “Madness of Majka Skowron”. Janin has created sculpture, video, installation, photography and performative works. The central theme of artist’s works is: the space (soft sculptures from silk – Covers), memory (instalation Memory) and time (photo-sculptures Follow Me, Change Me it’s Time, cotton-candy Sculptures / Sweet Sculptures, video-installation I’ve Seen My Death).  Janin incarnates into the figures and situations and explorates the experiences making a quasi-documentation video out of it.

Björn Melhus

Björn Melhus (born 1966, Kirchheim unter Teck) is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew.


Reynold Reynolds

Reynold Reynolds (born 1966, Central Alaska) studied Physics at the University of Colorado. Changing his focus to studio art he remained two more years in Boulder to study under experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Influenced early on by philosophy and science, and working primarily with 16mm as an art medium, he has developed a film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Detailed evolving symbols and allusive references create a powerful pictorial language based on Reynolds’ analytical point of view.

David Elliott

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.


Berlin, Educational
30/05/2014
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Best of Times MAP Office Lecture

 
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TRAJECTORIES

ARTIST TALK BY MAP OFFICE

DURING THE FINISSAGE OF THE EXHIBITION “BEST OF TIMES WORST OF TIMES”

AT CAC | CHRONUS ART CENTER

 

 

Time: 3:00pm, March 1 (Sat.), 2014

Venue: Bldg.18, No.50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

Speaker: MAP OFFICE (Laurent Gutierrez, Valérie Portefaix)

Language: English (with Chinese Translation)

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

 

About the Talk

This talk will explore various territories, first through the dynamic trajectories crossing MAP Office’s production, then through a series of contingencies encountered among the philosophical references taken up by the artists. Based in a region where time fluctuates along with borders, economies, and technologies, MAP Office’s practice is read though a series of large installations articulating research material, photographs, videos, objects and archive that were collected over the course of two decades.

 

 

About the Artists

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 spatiotemporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space. Humour, games, and fiction are also part of their approach, in the form of small publications providing a further format for disseminating their work. Their cross-disciplinary practice has been the subject of a monograph, MAP OFFICE – Where the Map is the Territory (2011), edited by Robin Peckham and published by ODE (Beijing). IN 2013, they were the recipient of the 2013 edition of the Sovereign Asian Art Prize.

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. Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Currently, one of MAP OFFICE’s work The Oven of Straw is exhibited in CAC’s ongoing exhibition “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times Revisited” curated by David Elliott.

 

TALK PHOTOS:

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Berlin, Educational
30/05/2014
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Best of Times David Elliott Lecture

 
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THE ‘BEST’ AND THE ‘WORST’ IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Curator’s Lecture on the Exhibition
THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES

 

 

Time: 3:00pm, Jan 24 (Fri.), 2014

Venue: Bldg.18, No.50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

Speaker: David Elliott

Language: English (with Chinese Translation)

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

 

 

David Elliott, the founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007) is a celebrated curator on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Exhibition of “THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES”, originated from the selected video works at the 1st Kiev Biennale curated by David Elliott, is his directorial debut in China, as well as the special New Year Project of Chronus Art Center (hereafter referred to as CAC) collaborated with MOMENTUM Berlin.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, the 1st International Kiev Biennale of Contemporary Art, is the most recent of many large thematic exhibitions that David Elliott has curated in different cities and continents. All of them have examined in distinct ways and from different points of view the varying conditions of contemporary art by reflecting the cultural contexts and critical climates in which they were made. The work in them has been generated by different ideas of aesthetic quality as well as by diverse histories and experiences of life.

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 choice and circumstance. Yet, in another sense, the best and worst are embedded within the same cyclical motion. Within the “worst” redemption lies dormant, while the “best” may be an illusion that harbours the seeds of its own destruction.
The intelligence, intuition and humanity of the artists who contributed work to this exhibition give 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.

To provide a better and full understanding of the exhibition, David will talk about his curatorial concept, the theme of this exhibition as well as the artworks of seven artists by introducing the exhibition and also the 1st Kiev Biennale, to finally explore and discuss the ‘Best’ and the ‘Worst’ in contemporary art under the social context.


 

LECTURE PHOTOS:

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Berlin, Educational
29/05/2014
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PANDAMONIUM Symposium Finissage

 
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SYMPOSIUM


China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai – What’s Next?

1 June 2014: 17:00 – 19:00
 

 

Speakers:

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

GABRIELE KNAPSTEIN / Head of Exhibitions, Hamburger Bahnhof

SIEGFRIED ZIELINSKI / Chair of Media Theory, Archeology and Variantology of the Media at UDK

FENG BINGYI, QIU ANXIONG and XU WENKAI (AAAJIAO) / PANDAMONIUM Artists-In-Residence

 

17.00 – 18.00
Session 1
Discussion on Media Art in the Chinese Context
David Elliott, Gabriele Knapstein,
Li Zhenhua, and Siegfried Zielinski

18.00 – 19.00
Session 2
PANDAMONIUM Artists-In-Residence in Dialogue with the Curators
Feng Bingyi, Qiu Anxiong, & Xu Wenkai (AaaJiao)
in dialogue with Li Zhenhua, and David Elliott


 

A Collaboration with CAC | Chronus Art Center Shanghai

 

Session 1 – Discussion on Media Art in the Chinese Context


 

Session 2 – PANDAMONIUM Artists-In-Residence in Dialogue with the Curators

 
 

SPEAKERS:
 

GABRIELE KNAPSTEIN

Dr. Gabriele Knapstein (b. 1963) is an art historian, living in Berlin. Her PhD thesis on the event scores by Fluxus artist George Brecht was published in 1999. Since 1994, she is working as a curator for the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and other institutions. In 2001 together with Hou Hanru and Fan Di’an, Knapstein curated the exhibition “living in time. 29 contemporary artists from China” at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Since 2003, she has worked as curator at Hamburger Bahnhof, becoming Head of Exhibitions in 2012. Since 1999, Knapstein has been working on the realization of the ongoing series “Works of Music by Visual Artists”. Selected recent exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof: “Susan Philips. Part File Score” (2014), “Wall Works” (2013-2014), “Ryoji Ikeda. db” (2012), “Architektonika. Art, Architecture and the City” (2011-2012), “Bruce Nauman. Dream Passage“ (2010).

SIEGFRIED ZIELINSKI

Prof. Siegfried Zielinski is professor of media theory, archaeology & variantology of the media at the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK), Michel Foucault Professor for techno-aesthetics and media archaeology at the European Graduate School Saas Fee (CH), and director of the Vilém Flusser Archive in Berlin. He was co-inventor of the first course for media studies and media consulting in Germany (1982) and was Founding Rector of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (1994–2000). He is the author of numerous books and articles as well as editor of the series Variantology: On Deep Time Relations between the Arts, Sciences, and Technologies, of which six volumes have been published so far (2005–2013). Zielinski is a member of the North-Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts, the Academy of the Arts Berlin, the European Film Academy, the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain, the Kuratorium of the ZKM | Karlsruhe.


LI ZHENHUA

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

DAVID ELLIOTT

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


QIU ANXIONG
CV – Website

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

XU WENKAI
CV – Website

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


FENG BINGYI
CV – Website

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


Berlin, Educational
29/05/2014
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SYMPOSIUM

China Through The Looking Glass: Shanghai Meets Beijing

4 May 2014: 16:00 – 19:00
 

AT .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Dorotheenstrasse 12, Berlin
 

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

 

Speakers:

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

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

CHRISTOPHER MOORE / Publisher of Randian China

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

MARIANNE CSÁKY, QIU ANXIONG / Artists

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

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

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

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

 

Session 1 – Geography:
Making a Map of Contemporary Chinese Art
16.00 – 17.30
Moderated by Drew Hammond
With: Waling Boers, Marianne Csáky, David Elliott, Christopher Moore, Qiu Anxiong, Andreas Schmid

Session 2 – Social and Political Context:
The Market and the Practice. Where do they come together?
17.30 – 19.00
Moderated by Christopher Moore
With: Chaos Y. Chen, Colin Chinnery, Thomas Eller,
Li Zhenhua, Alexander Ochs


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

 

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


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

 

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

 
 

SPEAKERS
 

DAVID ELLIOTT

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

LI ZHENHUA

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


ANDREAS SCHMID

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

THOMAS ELLER

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


CHRISTOPHER MOORE

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

COLIN CHINNERY

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


QIU ANXIONG

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

MARIANNE CSÁKY

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


ALEXANDER OCHS

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

Waling Boers_Photo

WALING BOERS

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


Chen Yang_Photo

CHEN YANG

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

DREW HAMMOND

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


Berlin, Educational
18/05/2014
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TIME_ART_IMPACT

An Education Collaboration With

MINSHENG ART MUSEUM, Shanghai

25 May 2014 – June 2015

MONTHLY SCREENINGS & DIALOGUES
BETWEEN SHANGHAI AND MOMENTUM COLLECTION ARTISTS

 

Dialogue #1
with NEZAKET EKICI
Mother of Performance Art: Nezaket Ekici’s Worldwide Nomadic Performance
25 May 2014

Dialogue #2
with MAP OFFICE
Public and Private Space: Map Office’s radical urbanization experiment
29 June 2014

Dialogue #3
with THOMAS ELLER & HU JIEMING
Exploration and Hybridization: Thomas Eller’s Experience and Practice of Embodiment
19 July 2014


Dialogue #4
with MARIANA VASSILEVA
Instant Poetry: Semantics and Politics
Expression of Mariana Vassileva
23 August 2014

Dialogue #5
with HYE RIM LEE
Sex・Politics・Cross-Cultures:
Hye Rim Lee’s Video Images and
Multidimensional Exploration
12 October 2014

Dialogue #6
with JANET LAURENCE
Art・Science・Imagination・Memory
12 October 2014


Dialogue #7
with FIONA PARDINGTON & ZHANG HUI
Reconnection • Representation • Reflection
23 November 2014

Dialogue #8
with HANNU KARJALAINEN & HU SANG
Site • Body • Architecture
Mobilizing The Still Image
In Hannu Karjalainen’s Video Art
14 December 2014

Dialogue #9
with KATE MCMILLAN & WU GUANJUN
Un-forgetting History
The Liminal Spaces of (Dis)Appearance in Kate McMillan’s Paradise Falls
18 January 2015


Dialogue #10
with DOUG FISHBONE &
SHEN QILAN
The Contemporary JesterHumor,
satire and role-play in Doug Fishbone’s politics of mass-media representation
22 March 2015

Dialogue #11
with ZUZANNA JANIN &
LIN YU
Zuzanna Janin’s Poetics of Combat:
Beyond Victory and Defeat
19 April 2015

Dialogue #12
with DAVID MEDALLA &
SHI HANDAO
Physical Ghosts and other Tales:
A Virtual Impromptu by David Medalla
17 May 2015



 
 

MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to announce the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-streaming technology. One evening each month for thirteen months, Minsheng Art Museum will host a live web-streamed artist talk and video screening with a total of thirteen selected artists from the MOMENTUM Collection. In the case of the MOMENTUM Collection artists being Berlin-based, MOMENTUM will concurrently host a live event in the Berlin Gallery. Each dialogue will be led by a different respondent from China, including art-historians, curators, editors, artists and directors. This collaboration aims to facilitate transcultural exchange through an ongoing conversation that collapses national borders and builds on a committed mutual engagement to explore and research time-based art. The thirteen dialogues will thereafter be archived and broadcast on the websites of both MOMENTUM and the Minsheng Art Museum, as well as on that of our media-partner, online art magazine Randian China. Through this structure of live and documented dialogues, both art professionals and public audiences can connect between Berlin, Shanghai and the global art community. Time_Art_Impact Dialogues take place monthly from 25 May 2014 – June 2015.

The Time_Art_Impact Dialogues will culminate in the exhibition TIK TOK: Time-­Based Art | Beyond the Medium, taking place at Minsheng Art Museum in July – August 2015. TIK TOK, a collaboration between MOMENTUM, CHRONUS Art Center, and Minsheng Art Museum, features the MOMENTUM Collection and Performance Archive in dialogue with media art from China. Motivated by a commitment to supporting innovation in the arts worldwide, this exhibition places the MOMENTUM collection at the center of a transcultural dialogue on topics as diverse as the politics of representation, urban capitalism, the rhetoric of (post)colonialist aesthetics, gender-­ and body-­politics, to name but a few.

The launch of Time_Art_Impact takes place on May 25th at 4:00pm at the Minsheng Museum, with Berlin-based Turkish performance and video-artist Nezaket Ekici in dialogue with Dr. Lu Xinghua, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tongji University. The talk is accompanied by the screening of Ekici’s works from the MOMENTUM Collection and Performance Archive: Veiling and Reveiling (2010) and The Tube (2013).

Participating artists are:

Nezaket Ekici ◆ Thomas Eller ◆ Doug Fishbone ◆ Zuzanna Janin ◆ Hannu Karjalainen ◆ Janet Laurence ◆ Hye Rim Lee ◆ Map Office ◆ Kate McMillan ◆ David Medalla ◆ Fiona Pardington ◆ Mariana Vassileva


 

ABOUT MINSHENG ART MUSEUM

www.minshengart.com

Minsheng Art Museum is a non-profit organization sponsored and funded by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation. Formally established in September, 2008, it has become mainland China’s first public welfare organization. It is located in Shanghai’s Redtown International Art Community and boasts a total surface of 4000m2, with five exhibition halls of about 1600m2 each.Though its focus lies primarily on Chinese modern and contemporary art, Minsheng Art Museum maintains a pronounced international perspective.

Representing the most recent developments in Chinese contemporary art, it aims to actively communicate and cooperate with cutting-edge partners from around the globe. Minsheng Art Museum collects and exhibits outstanding artworks from both within and outside China and seeks to promote Chinese art and foment a variety of international collaborations in order to support cooperative academic research, while also providing its publics with a broad range of educational activities on art and aesthetics.


 

ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION

READ THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION CATALOGUE

The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists. The donation of their works constituted their investment in MOMENTUM’s then-nascent model as a global and mobile platform for time-based art. Now including works by a total of twenty-six artists, the Collection represents a cross-section of exceptional time-based artworks by established as well as emerging artists from around the globe, including work from Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, the US, the UK, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland and Germany. Still growing, the collection reflects the growth of MOMENTUM itself. While it develops and nurtures its relationship with its artists, MOMENTUM continually endeavors to bring their work to new audiences worldwide. The steady growth of the Collection through donations by artists is a direct reflection of the relationships and networks established through the strength of MOMENTUM’s exhibition programs.

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, they 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.


 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Nezaket Ekici (Kirşehir, 1970) is a Turkish-born performance and video artist based in Germany, who holds a Master’s degree in Performance Art from the Marina Abramovic Institute. Through performances marked by a strong and crisp visual language, Ekici confronts culturally specific attributes of femininity, contesting their agency on the body. Diligently undergoing and/or withstanding the habits dictated by these objects, she questions the opposition between confinement and concealment, public and private, safety and repression. Through a practice largely grounded in durational performance and most distinctively in psycho-physical endurance and tenacity, Ekici’s work interconnects everyday elements to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk.
 

Thomas Eller (b. 1964) is a German visual artist, curator, and writer based in Berlin. In 2004 he founded the online magazine Artnet China, and in 2008 was the artistic director of the Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. Thomas Eller is the curator of Die 8 der Wege, the exhibition of contemporary art from Beijing which took place in on Berlin 29 April – 13 July 2014.
 

Doug Fishbone (New York, 1969) is an American artist based in London. He was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004 and has been heralded as one of the art world’s ‘Future Greats’ by Art Review. His practice is characterized by a critical and often humorous examination of consumer culture, mass media and the politics of representation. Synching found imagery from the Google Image search-engine to his tantalizing monologues, Fishbone plays on the pervasive gullibility and misplaced good faith of the media-consuming masses.
 

Zuzanna Janin (Warsaw, 1961) is a visual artist and former teen actor from Poland, currently based in Warsaw. Her practice encompasses a variety of media, including sculpture, video, installation, photography and performance. Janin works in a quasi-autobiographical, non-narrative mode in which she creates intricately montaged videos juxtaposing personal footage and fragments from the history of cult cinema. The stratified imagery of her high-paced films is acutely demanding of the viewer and manifests the complex nature of identity-formation as a both contrived and contriving process.
 

Hannu Karjalainen (Haapavesi, 1978) is a Finnish-born, artist based in Helsinki, who graduated from the Department of Photography at the University of Industrial Arts Helsinki and The Helsinki School in 2005. Through video and sound installations, Karjalainen reflects on the contiguous nature of still imagery in photography and painting. Predominantly focused on the age-old genre of portraiture and the highly coded though elusive meaning of colours, his increasingly conceptual practice is marked by slight differences and repetitions, obliging the viewer to look with the utmost deliberation and develop an eye for details and traces of facture.
 

Janet Laurence (Sydney, 1947) is an Australian mixed-media and installation artist based in Sydney. Often creating site-specific work in collaboration with landscape architects and environmental scientists, the material textures of her subjects – always derived from nature – reflect the artist’s focus on the point of intersection between science and art. After working primarily in photography and installation, Laurence began an ongoing filmic study of animals both in the wild and in nature reserves. She has developed a filming technique in which she uses infrared night cameras – similar to those used by naturalists, as many animals are primarily active at night – in order to achieve a negative effect and distorted, ghostly coloration. Laurence is one of Australia’s most senior woman artists, with works in every major museum across the country.
 

Hye Rim Lee (Seoul, 1963) is a Korean artist based in New York and Auckland. Working predominantly with 3D animation and adopting the newest digital technologies of visualization, Hye Rim Lee’s animations invoke the slick and polished aesthetics of cyber-culture. Featuring heavily computerized cosmetic imagery such as perfume-flacons containing designer body-parts bobbing around in a swarm of gel-pearls, Hye Rim Lee’s animations invoke our tendency to love and emulate our digital avatars, though consistently abstaining from adopting a nostalgic or judgmental posture.
 

Map Office is a multidisciplinary platform initiated by Laurent Gutierrez (Casablanca, 1966) and Valérie Portefaix (Saint-Etienne, 1969), currently based in Hong Kong. Gutierrez is associate professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as well as co-leader of Urban Environments Design Lab. He is currently doing a PhD on the ‘Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta Region’. Portefaix is a visiting assistant professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Their “project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space”. Grounded in a rigorous understanding of literary history and post-structuralist theory, Map Office seeks to undermine the controlling mechanisms of capitalism by structurally sabotaging its urban structures.
 

Kate McMillan (Hampshire, 1974) is an interdisciplinary Australian artist based in London and holding an Academic Post with Open University, Australia. She is a PhD candidate at Curtin University, wherein she examines the forgotten histories of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island. Having undertaken numerous residencies in Tokyo, Switzerland, Berlin, Sydney, China and Hong Kong, McMillan incorporates sculpture, photography, film, sound and painting to explore the complex relationship between memory and place. With phantasmal figures appearing and disappearing in haunting landscapes, her works act as mnemonic devices, conveying site-specific traces of forgotten histories.
 

David Medalla (Manila, 1942) is an interdisciplinary Filipino artist based in London, New York and Paris. Having begun his studies of drama and literature at Columbia University at the age of twelve, he went on to establish a prolific career, including the chairing, founding and directing of various art initiatives, including the London Biennale, an entirely artist-run initiative of meetings and events. Medalla has lectured widely in universities around the globe and has received numerous prizes, including those from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation of America. Ranging from sculpture, kinetic art, painting, installation and performance, Medalla’s pseudo-surrealist, conceptual work is a poetic consideration on how the relationship between man, nature and machine becomes manifest through migratory motifs.
 

Fiona Pardington (Devonport, 1961) is a photographer of Ngai Tahu, Kati Mamoe (Maori) and Scottish descent, based in Waiheke Island, New Zealand and holds a PhD from The University of Auckland. Her work is concerned with the history of photography, most notably in its genealogy within still-life painting and its application as a tool to create (colonialist) scientific imagery, which itself has strong stylistic ties to the still-life genre. Her photographs demonstrate a mastery of analogue darkroom technique, and she is known for her deeply toned black-and-white images resulting from specialist hand printing. She has received many fellowships, residencies, awards and grants, including the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic in 2006, Frances Hodgkins Fellow in both 1996 & 97, Visa Gold Art Award 1997, and the Moet & Chandon Fellow (France) in 1991-92.
 

Mariana Vassileva (Dobric, 1964) is a Bulgarian artist whose practice spans a variety of media, including video, sculpture, installation and drawing. Vassileva graduated from the Universität der Künste in 2000 and continues to live and work in Berlin. Based upon her observation of daily life and with the curious gaze of a voyeur or an urban anthropologist, she inspects people and their surroundings in order to capture the poetry that lies beneath the quotidian and the routine. 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.

 

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Tracy Yu is senior assistant director of Minsheng Art Museum and in charge of art projects, business operations and media promotion. Born in 1983, she currently lives and works in Shanghai. She graduated at the College of Fine Arts, Shanghai University with a Master’s degree in Art History in 2008. In her work, she devotes herself with passion to arts and professional knowledge. She founded many public education projects, which have had great impact for the public, such as: Poetry Comes to the Museum, Minsheng Theatre and Kids Museum.

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a contemporary art curator specialized in time-based art, and is the founding-director of MOMENTUM. She is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, the UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney. She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil. and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. Having lectured in film studies and visual culture, her focus shifted to contemporary art after she undertook a residency at A.R.T Tokyo. After founding MOMENTUM in Sydney in 2010, it rapidly evolved into a global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin. Through MOMENTUM’s extensive program of exhibitions, education programs, video-art in public space initiatives, residencies and a growing collection of time-based art, she is dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists working with time-based practices.

 

MEDIA PARTNER
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Berlin, Educational
17/04/2014
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Panel Discussions

 
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PANEL DISCUSSIONS & SYMPOSIA

 


POINTS of RESISTANCE III:
PARADOXES OF FREEDOM
Birds & Bicycles Symposium
At Zionskirche, Berlin
9 November 2021

HOMELAND in TRANSIT
Video Talk with Angelika Li, Kongkee and Yukihiro Taguchi
At MOMENTUM Berlin
3 October 2020

MUTOPIA 5
Exhibition Tour with Claudia Chaseling
At the Australian Embassy Berlin
11 September 2020


 


ARTIST TALK
With Shaarbek Amankul
At MOMENTUM Berlin
9 February 2020

ENCOUNTERS IN VIDEO ART IN LATIN AMERICA
Curator’s Talk with Elena Shtromberg
At MOMENTUM Berlin
18 July 2019

FAKE NEWS AND SUPERFICTIONS
Artist Lecture by Peter Hill
At MOMENTUM Berlin
16 December 2018



 


BREAD & ROSES
Symposium
At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
30 September 2018

STATION PARADOX Explained
Artist & Curator Talk
At MOMENTUM Berlin
28 January 2018

BEATING THE MEAT
Artist Talk with Conceptual Cooking
At MOMENTUM
13 July 2017



 


THE INTERMEDIAL MOMENT
Andi & Lance Olsen in conversation with Cécile Guédon
At MOMENTUM
28 May 2017

[UN]SOUNDS OF BUCHENWALD
Masterclass: Artist & Curator Talks
At MOMENTUM Berlin
29 January 2017

HOW CULTURE BUILDS CITIES
Symposium
At MOMENTUM Berlin
10 December 2016



 


LOVE, ACTUALLY…TALKS, ACTUALLY…
Artist & Curator Talks
At MOMENTUM
26 November 2016

HERO MOTHER
Symposium
At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
12 June 2016

MIGRATING ARTISTS
HOW DOES IT IMPACT THEIR PRACTICE?
Artist Talk with Ma Li & Elana Katz
At MOMENTUM Berlin
29 February 2016



 


BALAGAN!!!
Symposium
At Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
16 December 2015

GERALDINE ONDRIZEK
Open Studio & Artist Talk
At Reinickendorfer Strasse 15, 13347 Berlin
29 November 2015

BALAGAN!!!
Lecture by David Elliott
At Brandenburger Tor Stiftung
22 November 2015



 


BALAGAN!!!
Lecture Series: Trickster Art
At ICI Institut for Cultural Inquiry Berlin
19 & 26 November 2015

FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRES
Symposium
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
8 November 2014

FORM AS BEING
Finissage Weekend
Omar Chowdury in dialogue
with Mark Gisbourne
4 October 2014



 


A PRESENTATION OF
XU ZHEN: THE CATALOG
In Dialogue with Chris Moore and David Elliott
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
21 September 2014

PANDAMONIUM SYMPOSIUM
China Through The Looking Glass:
Shanghai – What’s Next?
At Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
1 June 2014

PANDAMONIUM SYMPOSIUM
China Through The Looking Glass:
Shanghai Meets Beijing
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
4 May 2014



 


INTERSECTION
Panel Discussion for Cinema Total
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
10 February 2014

TRAJECTORIES
Artist Talk with MAP Office
At Chronus Art Center, Shanghai
1 March 2014

THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES
Lecture by David Elliott
At Chronus Art Center, Shanghai
24 January 2014



 


CURATING PERFORMANCE ART
Where does theatre end and art begin?
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
22 September 2013

HOW TO COLLECT
AND EXHIBIT VIDEO ART
At .CHB Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
28 April 2013

DINNER BEHIND THE SCREEN
16 September 2012



 


MOMENTUM in discussion with Thomas Eller
At the Berlinische Galerie
12 September 2012

MOMENTUM ⎪ SYDNEY
Collectors Panel
13 May 2010

MOMENTUM ⎪ SYDNEY
Molecular Art Discussion
13 May 2010



 


MOMENTUM ⎪ SYDNEY
China Focus Panel
13 May 2010

MOMENTUM ⎪ SYDNEY
Re-imagining Panel
12 May 2010

MOMENTUM ⎪ SYDNEY
Moving Forward Panel
12 May 2010



 


Berlin, Educational
17/04/2014
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Educational Program

 
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EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
 
Click on the icons below to access our archive of Kunst Salons, Symposiums & Panel Discussions, and Artist 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. Time-Art-Impact Dialogues was a year-long program at the Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China, featuring artists from the MOMENTUM Collection. 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.

 

Berlin, Educational
19/10/2012
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Dinner Behind The Screen

 
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DINNER BEHIND THE SCREEN

 
 

 
 

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)

MAP OFFICE – Runscape Hong Kong (2010)

MARISA MAZA – Training Sculpture #1-4 (2008)

 
 

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

ARTIST BIO/CV

 

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.)


 

MAP OFFICE
Runscape Hong Kong, 2010

ARTIST BIO/CV

 
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)

For additional text by Melissa Lam: click here.


 

MARISA MAZA
Training Sculpture #1-4, 2008

ARTIST BIO/CV

 

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.



IMAGE GALLERY: FILMING RUNSCAPE BERLIN

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Berlin, Educational
19/10/2012
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Berlinische Galerie

 
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For Berlin Art Week

 

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.

Alte Jakobstr. 124 – 126
10969 Berlin
www.berlinischegalerie.de

 

 
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Berlin, Educational
19/10/2012
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Uvia: Redefining Utopia

 
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ZUZANNA JANIN PANEL DISCUSSION

AT THE SAMMLUNG HOFFMANN

Uvia: Redefining Utopia

With Zuzanna Janin, Bojana Pejic, Mark Gisbourne, and Jakub Majmurek

20 September 2012

Coinciding with the Solo Exhibition of Zuzanna Janin at MOMENTUM | Berlin
THE WAY: MAJKA FROM THE MOVIE
 

 
 

 

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).


 

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Berlin, Educational
03/09/2012
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Conceptual Cooking

 
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CONCEPTUAL COOKING

WITH LI ZHENHUA

 

 

 
 

the CONCEPTUAL COOKING sessions

ingredients:

a cook, a concept, hunger for gathering, a gathering place and all that other raw material

goals:

gather and feed hungry artists, thinkers, curators and suchlike

types of hungers:

to be divined, whetted, abetted, fêted and fed by the COOK

a perpetuum mobilεzation by marita muukkonen and ivor stodolskyc 2012

 
 
SESSION I.
The COOK: Li Zhenhua

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

 
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Berlin, Educational
11/06/2012
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Breaking Down the Museum Walls

 
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BREAKING DOWN THE MUSEUM WALLS

A conversation with SYLVAIN and DOMINIQUE LEVY, founders of the dslcollection, about new models of exhibiting private collections.

 

 
 

 

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.



 
 

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Berlin, Educational
05/04/2012
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Sam Smith Salon | CAMERAMAN

 
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SAM SMITH

 

CAMERAMAN

 

 

KUNST SALON VIDEO PART I, “CAMERAMAN”


 

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.


 
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Berlin, Educational
05/04/2012
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Runscape | Salon

 
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MAP OFFICE

RUNSCAPE | SALON

 

 
 
ABOUT:

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.


 
 
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Berlin, Educational
05/04/2012
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Andrew Rogers | Time and Space: Drawing on The Earth

 
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ANDREW ROGERS

TIME AND SPACE | DRAWING ON THE EARTH

 

 

 
 
ABOUT:

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.


 
 
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Berlin, Educational
03/04/2012
Comments Off on If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

 
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IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT, GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

Artist STEVE SCHEPENS cooking in conversation with International Curator DAVID ELLIOTT, Artistic Director of the 1st Kyiv Biennale, 2012

 

 

 

1ST BIENNALE of KYIV:

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.

David Elliott
Berlin, January 2012

 
 
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Educational, Sydney
01/03/2011
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CHINA FOCUS PANEL

 
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CHINA FOCUS PANEL

13 May 2010

 

Speakers:

THOMAS BERGHUIS / Lecturer in Asian Art, Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney

JOHN CLARK / FAHA, CIHA, PhD, Professor of Asian Art, Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney

IAN HOWARD / Dean of College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales

ZHANG LANGHENG / Artist, Professor, RMIT University School of Art Melbourne / East China Normal University School of Art, Shanghai

CHARLES MEREWETHER / Director, ICA Singapore

WANG QINGSONG / Artist, Beijing

AARON SEETO / Director, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney

 

 

The first of a series of regional focuses, in which artists and specialists examine the condition and direction of non-object-based practices in contemporary China.

 

SPEAKERS:
 

THOMAS BERGHUIS

Dr. Thomas J. Berghuis is a lecturer in Asian Art at the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney. Starting in 2008 Berghuis is a Consultant Lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Arts in Singapore. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Gallery 4A, Sydney. From June 2007 to July 2008 he worked as Senior Research Curator with the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, College of Fine Arts/ UNSW in Sydney. He completed his PhD dissertation on Performance Art in China at the University of Sydney (Australia), following an MA in Sinology at Leiden University (The Netherlands). During the past 10 years he has traveled extensively to China for his research, and from 2003 to 2004 he was a visiting scholar at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Next to his studies he has also been involved in several curatorial projects, including Associate Curator for the 6th Sharjah International Biennale, U.A.E (2003), Curator for the 1st Dashanzi International Arts Festival at the 798 Factory in Beijing (2004), Associate Curator for the 3rd Israel Video Art Biennial in Tel Aviv (2006), and Co-Curator for Edge of Elsewhere, a three-year exhibition project with the Sydney Festival, Campbelltown Art Centre and Gallery 4A (2010-2012). Since 2007 Berghuis is a contributing editor for C-Arts, an art magazine focusing on contemporary Asian art. His writings have been published in various magazines and art publications, including in The Australian, Art Review UK, Art Asia Pacific, Artlink, Broadsheet, C-Arts, Mesh, positions and RealTime. His book, Performance Art in China, has been published in 2006 with Timezone 8, Hong Kong. Since 2006 he has been actively involved with research and curatorial projects on modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia, with special attention to art from Indonesia.

JOHN CLARK

John Clark is Professor of Asian Art History and Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow. He is working under an ARC Professorial Fellowship on a new comparative study of The Asian Modern, focussed on twenty-five artists in five generational cohorts across Asia [including Australia] from the 1850s-1980s. Among his books are Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), the co-edited Eye of the Beholder (Sydney: Wild Peony, 2006), Modernities of Chinese Art (Leiden: Brill, 2010) and Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art in the 1980s and 1990s (Sydney: Power Publications 2010).


IAN HOWARD

Trained as an artist and art educator – in Sydney (Diploma of Art Education), London (Graduate Diploma of Advanced Studies, Film and Television) and Montreal (Master of Fine Arts).
Taught visual arts at secondary and tertiary levels in Australia, England, USA and Canada,Practicing artist since 1968, concentrating on the theme of the relationship between civilian and military cultures, and their material and symbolic products. Works included in regional, state (including QAG), national and international galleries. Worked on the Berlin Wall (1973), in April 2000 completed a project on the Great Wall of China that began in 1972. Worked extensively with Australian, British, Chinese and USA defense forces, including the Pentagon, gaining access to highly secret facilities and equipment ‘for artistic purposes’. Traveled throughout Eastern Europe in 70s and 80s, undertaking research into military sites, museums and monuments. Curatorial coordinator of Vietnamese artists, and National Advisory Committee member for Queensland Art Gallery’s Asia Pacific Triennials. Since early 1990s working with artists and institutions in Vietnam and China on artist and student exchange projects including own work with Colonel Xing Junqin of the Peoples Liberation Army. Executive Producer of Art of Place Hanoi-Brisbane Art Exchange (Broadcast SBS and ATVI 1995/96), Millennium Shift – Art of the New World Order, SBS, AFC and Film Queensland sponsored APT II Documentary (1997) and Handcrafted Cinema, the Animation of Caroline Leaf (1998) for National Film Board of Canada. Subject of Central China Television documentary, Howard and the Great Wall of China, 2000 and 2002 CCTV productions on- COFA, Great Art Schools of the World and the International Drawing Research Institute. Currently Chair of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and member, Churchill Fellowship Committee (NSW).

ZHANG LANGHENG

Zhang Lansheng, born in Shanghai, immigrate to Australia in 1989. Trained as a practicing artist in Shanghai, he has exhibited in many countries and his work has been part of some major art museums’ collections internationally. He has worked in a curatorial or advisory role at the shanghai Art Museum and a number of public art museums or galleries overseas since late 1980s. He holds the academic qualifications of Master degree in Art History from the Australian National University (ANU) and now is the PhD candidate at the Humanities Research Centre in ANU. Since he temporarily moved back to Shanghai in June 2004, he has worked closely with local artists, academics and professionals in art field. He has been the Adjunct Professor with the RMIT University School of Art in Melbourne, and is now the professor and convenor of the Arts Management Course in the East China Normal University School of Art, Shanghai.


CHARLES MEREWETHER

Charles Merewether was until recently Deputy Director of the Cultural District (Saadiyat Island) in Abu Dhabi and was Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Hong Kong International Art Fair. He was the Artistic Director and Curator of the Biennale of Sydney 2006. He has taught at the University of Sydney, Universidad Autonoma (Barcelona), the Ibero-Americana (Mexico City), and University of Southern California and had been recipient of various Fellowships. From 1994 to 2004 he was Collections Curator at the Getty Rsearch Center in LA. He has published widely on modernism and contemporary art. His most recent publications include Under Construction: Ai Weiwei (2008), and Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970′ (2007) and forthcoming co-editor (with John Potts) of After the Event by Manchester University Press. Charles Merewether is currently Director of the ICA in Singapore, and he is Honorary Director of MOMENTUM | Sydney.

WANG QINGSONG

Wang Qingsong was born in 1966 in Heilongjiang Province, China, and lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1991. He has had solo exhibitions at Albion Gallery, London; PKM Gallery, Beijing; PKM Gallery, Seoul; MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, Germany; and Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous group shows, including Action–Camera: Beijing Performance Photography (Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2008), Fabricating Images from History (Chinablue Gallery, Beijing, 2008) 21:Contemporary Art (Brooklyn Museum, 2008), Beyond Icon: Chinese Contemporary Art in Miami (Art Basel, Miami, 2007) Mirror Image of Diversity (Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, Beijing, 2007); and Body Language (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 2008). Wang has also participated in the 2008 Shanghai Biennale; the Busan Biennale; and the 2006 Bucharest Biennale.


AARON SEETO

Aaron Seeto is the Director of 4A Centre For Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney. His work revolves around the Asia-Pacific region and the impact and experience of migration and globalisation on contemporary art practice. He has worked with some of the key Asian artists working in Australia. Recent major projects for 4A include Cinema Alley, Yang Fudong – Estranged Paradise (2010); Qiu Anxiong – Nostalgia (2009), and Ming Wong – Vain Efforts (2009); Dadang Christanto – Survivor (2009) and SPEAKEASY (2009) co-curated with Vernon Ah Kee charting Asian and Indigenous histories. He has also curated some large-scale projects for other cultural institutions (as co-curator) – Edge of Elsewhere (2010) at Campbelltown Arts Centre and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; News from Islands (2007) an Asia-Pacific survey exhibition at Campbelltown Arts Centre and Primavera (2006), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.


 

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Educational, Sydney
01/03/2011
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COLLECTORS PANEL

 
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COLLECTORS PANEL

13 May 2010

 

Speakers:

ANTONY BOND / Assistant Director, Head Curator of International Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

GEOFFREY CASSIDY / Director, Artbank, Sydney


RHANA DEVENPORT / Director, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ

STUART EVANS / Director and Curator of the Lodeavans Collection, Curator of the Simmons & Simmons collection, London

DICK QUAN / Collector and Physician, Sydney

JOHNNIE WALKER / Director, A.R.T. Tokyo, Japan

ANNA WALDMANN / Art Advisor, former Director of Visual Arts, Australia Council


MARK WAUGH / Executive Director, A Foundation, London and Liverpool

 

 

Institutions, private collectors and corporate collectors talk about their different perspectives on collecting non-object-based art.

 

SPEAKERS:
 

ANTONY BOND

Anthony Bond is currently Assistant Director Curatorial at the Art Gallery of NSW where he has been responsible for collecting International contemporary art since 1984. He has curated many projects at AGNSW in those years. Major exhibitions include: The British Show at AGNSW and touring (1984-85), Australian Perspecta (1985, 87 and 89). The 9th Sydney Biennale Boundary Rider (1992-93), Tony Cragg (1997), TRACE the inaugural Liverpool Biennale of Contemporary International Art 1999. He has also curated historical exhibitions such as Body 1997 and Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary for the National Portrait Gallery London and AGNSW Sydney 2005-6. Anselm Kiefer Aperiatur terra with accompanying book was launched in London in January at White Cube and in AGNSW May 2007. Mike Parr, The Tilted Stage a major survey at TMAG and Detached in Hobart November 2008. He is currently working on a survey of forty years of John Kaldor projects at AGNSW and preparing for a major series of exhibitions with the Kaldor collection and Contemporary AGNSW collections starting 2011. His major future project is Kurt Schwitters (2012) at AGNSW.

GEOFFREY CASSIDY

Geoffrey Cassidy is the Director of Artbank, a Commonwealth Government’s arts support initiative. In operation for 30 years. Artbanks brief is twofold, to provide support for living Australian artists and their practice through the purchase of their work and to encourage the wider appreciation of contemporary art practice by making this work available to the wider public through its art rental scheme. Artbanks success has enabled it to become self-funding, with profits from the scheme supporting the purchase of new work exclusively through the primary market, ensuring the maximum benefit to the artist. Prior to Artbank Geoffrey was at Sotheby’s Australia where he had over nine years experience as a senior paintings specialist, the last two as National Head of Paintings and an International Director of the company. A graduate in both Fine Arts and Law from the University of Queensland, his experience prior to Sotheby’s included managing a commercial contemporary gallery and experience as a solicitor in both the public and private sectors. Geoffrey’s particular interest and expertise is in contemporary Australian and Chinese art. He is active in industry associations and is a member of the Committee on Tax Incentives for the Arts and is often a guest speaker and lecturer for various educational and Arts organisations.



RHANA DEVENPORT

Rhana Devenport is Director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in Aotearoa New Zealand. She previously worked with the Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the Sydney Festival (2004), and was Co-curator and Senior Project Officer with the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery (1994 to 2004). Rhana has worked extensively with artists in Asia and the Pacific region as a writer, editor and curator, producing major projects with Nam June Paik, Lisa Reihana, Nalini Malani, Judith Wright, Lee Mingwei, Jin Jiangbo, Bill Culbert, Peter Robinson, Zhang Peili and John Reynolds.

STUART EVANS

Stuart Evans was a partner in the international law firm Simmons & Simmons 1981 – 2008 and curates the Simmons & Simmons Collection of Contemporary Art. He was formerly Chairman of the Patrons of New Art at the Tate Gallery and a Turner Prize juror in 2001. He has been building the Lodeavans Collection with his son John since 2006. Committed to collecting contemporary art, focusing on young artists working across varying media, the Lodeveans Collection aims to be publicly accessible by making loans and organising exhibitions.


DICK QUAN

Dr. Dick Quan is a tireless proselytizer of new talent and new forms, and a new breed of collector/patron. His early support for ‘art photography’ more than a decade ago set the scene for the rise of people like Tracey Moffatt and Patricia Piccinini while his membership on numerous arts boards around the city including Gallery 4A and the AGNSW Contemporary Benefactors means that he can summon up institutional support for his passions giving artists access to collectors and exhibition space. Dr. Quan’s vigorous support for new media art promises to break open a whole new area of serious art collecting. With a collection boasting the most recent major works by high callibre artists such as the Russian AES+F, he is at the forefront of brining the most contemporary and innovative art to Australia.

JONNIE WALKER

A.R.T., Artist Residency Tokyo, in an effort to keep alive the tradition of Japanese influence in contemporary arts and architecture has for twenty years provided spaces for exhibitions, film screenings, performances, book launchings, promotional events, and residencies. A.R.T. has produced events with little known names and institutions, to such names as Gilbert and George, Francesco Clemente, Joseph Kosuth, Tracey Emin, Tracey Moffat, Jenny Holzer, Yayoi Kusama, the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Tate Gallery, Kunsthalle Wein, the Powerplant in Toronto, the Asia-Pacific Triennale in Brisbane, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Venice Biennale. A.R.T. has provided residencies for a number of institutions, including the Tate Gallery, the de Menil Collection, the French government agency A.F.A.A., the Japan Foundation, and an architect in residency from U.C. Berkeley sponsored by the Ohbayashi Construction Co. Foundation. In addition, Johnnie Walker acts as adviser to a number of prominent collectors and gallerists, jumpstarting the careers of many emerging artists and bringing countless important international art figures to Japan.


ANNA WALDMANN

Anna Waldmann was Director of Visual Arts at the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory organisation. She has an MA in Fine Arts from the University of Sydney. Anna has been a member of numerous art and cultural committees, judged competitions, lectured to university students and published books, catalogues and articles on Australian and European art such as The Archibald Prize Retrospective, Salvatore Zofrea, Desiderius Orban and Selected Students, Women’s Imprint, Salon and Académie, Hidden Treasures – Art in Corporate Collections. Before joining the Australia Council, Anna Waldmann worked as a curator at the Art Gallery of NSW and as Program Manager (Visual Arts and Crafts and Museums and Galleries) at the NSW Ministry for the Arts. Anna was involved in numerous international exhibitions and events such as the Australian representation at the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo, Berlin, Liverpool, Kwangju and Istanbul biennales, Documenta and ARCO Madrid. She has worked with art museums, galleries, craft/design organisations, contemporary art spaces and funding agencies on policy and program development, exhibition management, research and publications. Anna is currently an art adviser and consultant, on the Editorial Advisory Board of Art & Australia; National and International Art Adviser for the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation; and Visiting Fellow at the College of Fine Arts University of NSW.


MARK WAUGH

He is currently Executive Director of A Foundation, producer of the International Curators Forum and chair of Spacex Gallery. He has produced and directed numerous artistic projects including: Power of Art (2006), Private View (2005), Preset Softwar (1998), and die lieber rausch no.1 (1997). He has also curated various symposia, festivals and exhibitions including Pan European Encounters: Venice (2007), We Love You (2004) Transmutations (1995), Pharmakon (1993), Leonardo Seduce Me (1987), Another Banana (1986). His first novel Come was published by Pulp Faction in 1997. His second novel Bubble Entendre was published by Bookworks in 2009.


 

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Educational, Sydney
01/03/2011
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MOLECULAR ART DISCUSSION

 
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MOLECULAR ART DISCUSSION

13 May 2010

 

Speakers:

ORON CATTS / Director, SymbioticA, University of Western Australia

JANET LAURENCE / Artist, Sydney


SERGE SPITZER / Artist, New York

VLADIMIR VOLLOCH / Molecular Biologist, Harvard University, Boston

 

 
 

SPEAKERS:
 

ORON CATTS

Oron Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project (which he founded in 1996) is part of the NY MoMA design collection and has been exhibited and presented internationally. In 2000 he co-founded SymbioticA, an artistic research laboratory housed within the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Under Oron’s leadership, SymbioticA has gone on to win the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art (2007) and became a Centre for Excellence in 2008.
In 2009 Oron was recognised by Thames & Hudson’s 60 Innovators Shaping our Creative Future book as one of five in the category “Beyond Design”, and by Icon Magazine (UK) as one of the top 20 Designers, “making the future and transforming the way we work”. 
Oron was a Research Fellow in Harvard Medical School and a visiting Scholar at the Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University.

JANET LAURENCE

Janet Laurence’s work echoes architecture while retaining organic qualities and a sense of instability and transience. Her work occupies the liminal zones or meeting places of art, science, imagination and memory. Profoundly aware of the interconnection of all life forms, Laurence often produces work in response to specific sites or environments using a diverse range of materials. Alchemical transformation, history and perception are underlying themes. Janet Laurence exhibits widely and has an impressive record of representation in important group exhibitions, including the 9th Biennale of Sydney (1992) and Australian Perspecta (1985, 1991, 1997). Following her solo exhibition in 1991 at Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, and since she was awarded an Australia Council studio residency in Tokyo in 1998, Laurence has exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions in Tokyo and Nagoya. She has twice been invited to create permanent installations for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan (2003, 2006). Janet Laurence is represented in major Australian and international collections and has been included in national survey exhibitions. Pesaro Publishing released a major book on her work in 2006. In 2006 Janet Laurence was awarded a Churchill Fellowship. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1996–2005) and is completing a PhD in ephemeral architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Her work is represented in major Australian and international public, corporate and private collections.



SERGE SPITZER

Serge Spitzer is an American artist who uses sculpture, site-specific installations, works on paper, photography and video to question, explore and reflect on the shared reality everywhere. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1951, and since the early 1980s has lived and worked in New York.His work has been shown in many museums and art institutions, among them Folkwang Museum Essen, 1979; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1983; Kunstmuseum, Bern, 1984 and 2006; Magasin, Grenoble, 1987; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1992; Kunsthalle and Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, 1993; IVAM Centro Julio Gonzales and Centro del Carme, Valencia, 1994; Henri Moore Institute, Leeds, 1994; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 1995; Kunsthalle, Bern, 2003; (MMK) Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 2006; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut, 2008; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2010. He has participated in many international art exhibitions and biennials such as Documenta 8, Kassel, 1987; Istanbul Biennial, 1994; Biennale de Lyon, 1997; Kwangju Biennial, 1997; Venice Biennale, 1999, Sydney Biennial, 2010.  He has also contributed works to many group and thematic exhibitions. His work is represented in many public and private collections, among them Brooklyn Museum, New York; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Kunstmuseum, Bern; IVAM Instituto Valenciano d’Arte Moderno, Valencia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon; Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt am Main; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Staatliche Museen Neue Galerie, Kassel; Staatens Museum for Kunst, Kopenhagen; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Menil Collection, Houston; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

VLADIMIR VOLLOCH

Vladimir Volloch received his education at Moscow University, USSR
 (BA, MSc) and at the Weizmann Institute, Israel (PhD). He practices
 the Arts of Biology at Harvard University in Boston, USA.


 

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Educational, Sydney
01/03/2011
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MOVING FORWARD PANEL

 
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MOVING FORWARD PANEL

12 May 2010

 

Speakers:

PHILIPPE CODOGNET / Co-director, Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics (JFLI), University of Tokyo

BARBARA FLYNN / Contemporary Art Expert and Curator, Sydney

TIM MARLOW / Director of Exhibitions, White Cube, London

MARK NASH / Professor, Head of Department, Curating and Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London

SERGE SPITZER / Artist, New York

ANITA TAYLOR / Director, National Art School, Sydney


PAUL THOMAS / Assoc. Prof., Head of Painting, CFA, University of NSW, Founding Director of Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth, Australia

 

 

In keeping with the aim of Momentum, a consideration of major developments in contemporary art, globally and locally, with a concentration on non-object-based practices.

 

SPEAKERS:
 

PHILIPPE CODOGNET

Philippe Codognet is currently visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, where he is developing research on artificial intelligence and interactive sound installations. He also holds the position of full professor in computer science at University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) since 1998. From 2003 to 2007, he was Attache for Science and Technology at the French Embassy in Japan.
 In addition to his scientific research, he worked on the relationships between art and new technologies as theoretician and critic, publishing articles in art magazines and exhibition catalogues and organizing interdisciplinary symposiums. He also curated with Hiroko Fukunaga the digital video selection “Liquid Reality” for Shanghai Electronic Arts festival (e-Arts) in 2007, which was exhibited in Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Arts and on outdoor LED screens throughout the city, and which is being shown at MOMENTUM | Sydney.

BARBARA FLYNN

Flynn was owner of galleries for contemporary and emerging art in New York (1980-94) and an executive with Gagosian Gallery, New York (1994-98), before relocating to Sydney in 1998. She traveled extensively while at Gagosian to develop new business in USA, Mexico, Europe and Asia-Pacific. She acted as liaison to several gallery artists and secured the representation for the gallery of Douglas Gordon and the David Smith Estate. In May 1999 she founded a company in Sydney to facilitate the global exchange of art and advance the work of younger Australian artists. As art consultant to UBS Australia, Flynn assembled the art collection for the UBS offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in 2006. She has put collections together for corporations ABN AMRO (RBS), DHL, and MBF, and assisted ABN AMRO to institute its ongoing Emerging Artist Award. Flynn curates an ongoing series of exhibitions of emerging art for the Sydney head office of Deloitte. From 2006-08 she acted as curator for the City of Sydney’s ‘Open Gallery’ public banner project. The siting of large-scale works of art in office tower developments is another area of Flynn’s expertise. In 2004 she authored a study on public art in private development that was commissioned by the city of Sydney. Currently, Flynn divides her time between Sydney and New York. Flynn’s experience extends to the institutional sector through early roles in two of the leading museums in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, and Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, with funding from a Yale University Murray Fellowship. She studied art history at Yale University and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and is the author of a book as well as catalogues, essays and reviews about art.


TIM MARLOW

Tim Marlow has been Director of Exhibitions at White Cube since 2003. Over the last six years he has worked with some of the most important and influential artists of our time including Chuck Close, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer and Doris Salcedo. He is also an award-winning radio and television broadcaster. He has presented over 100 documentaries on British Television and his most recent series “Marlow Meets…” is currently being broadcast on Sky Arts and BBC World. He was the founder editor of Tate magazine and is the author of numerous books and catalogues. He has lectured on art and culture in more than forty countries.

MARK NASH

Head of Department of the Curating Contemporary Art department, Mark Nash is a well-known specialist in contemporary fine art moving image practices, avant-garde and world cinema. He was co-curator of Documenta 11, (2002) and film curator of the Berlin Biennial, (2004). He has most recently curated Experiments With Truth, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, (2004-5) and a conference on Film and Ecology for the Royal Society of Arts. Prior to joining the Royal College of Art, Mark was Director of Fine Art Research at Central St Martins, He has also been a Senior Lecturer in Film History and Theory at the University of East London, and visiting lecturer on the Whitney Museum Independent Study Programme. He holds a PhD from Middlesex University.


SERGE SPITZER

Serge Spitzer is an American artist who uses sculpture, site-specific installations, works on paper, photography and video to question, explore and reflect on the shared reality everywhere. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1951, and since the early 1980s has lived and worked in New York.His work has been shown in many museums and art institutions, among them Folkwang Museum Essen, 1979; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1983; Kunstmuseum, Bern, 1984 and 2006; Magasin, Grenoble, 1987; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1992; Kunsthalle and Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, 1993; IVAM Centro Julio Gonzales and Centro del Carme, Valencia, 1994; Henri Moore Institute, Leeds, 1994; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 1995; Kunsthalle, Bern, 2003; (MMK)Museum fur Moderne Kunst , Frankfurt, 2006; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut, 2008; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2010. He has participated in many international art exhibitions and biennials such as Documenta 8, Kassel, 1987; Istanbul Biennial, 1994; Biennale de Lyon, 1997; Kwangju Biennial, 1997; Venice Biennale, 1999, Sydney Biennial, 2010. He has also contributed works to many group and thematic exhibitions.

ANITA TAYLOR

Taylor makes drawings and paintings, which explore the representation of female identities, notions of pleasure and sensuality, the private and the public, decoration and allegory, and the influence of scale on the reading of a work; this includes exploratory and realised work in the form of invented paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks, notebooks, work from the model and self-portraiture. She is also concerned with the development of the knowledge and understanding in contemporary drawing, and is the founding Director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize, the annual exhibition for drawing in the UK. Anita Taylor (b. 1961) studied at Mid-Cheshire College of Art (1980-81), Gloucestershire College of Art (1981-84) and the Royal College of Art (1985-87). She is Professor of Fine Art, Dean of Wimbledon College of Art, and Director of The Centre for Drawing at the University of the Arts London. She was Artist-in-Residence at Durham Cathedral (1987-88); Fellow in Painting at Gloucestershire College of Art (1988-89) and Artist-in-Residence in Drawing at the National Art School Sydney, Australia (2004). She has exhibited, taught and examined nationally and internationally. She was elected an Academician of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in 2005.



PAUL THOMAS

Dr. Paul Thomas, is currently the co-chair of the Transdisciplinary Image Conference 2010. In 2000 Paul instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth 2002, 2004. Paul has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space. Media-Space was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. From 1981-1986 the group was involved in a number of collaborative exhibitions and was instrumental in the establishment of a substantial body of research. Paul’s current research project ‘Nanoessence’ explores the space between life and death at a nano level. The project is part of an ongoing collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology and SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia. The previous project ‘Midas’ researched at a nano level the transition phase between skin and gold. Paul has recently completed working on an intelligent architecture public art project for the Curtin Mineral and Chemistry Research Precinct. Paul is a practicing electronic artist whose work has exhibited internationally and can be seen on his website Visiblespace.


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Educational, Sydney
01/03/2011
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RE-IMAGINING PANEL

 
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RE-IMAGINING PANEL

12 May 2010

 

Speakers:

TIM GRUCHY / Artist, Sydney and NZ

JOHN KALDOR / Founding Director, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney

JAY LEVENSON / Director, International Programs, Museum of Modern Art, New York


DJON MUNDINE / Artist and Indigenous Curator of Contemporary Art, Campbelltown Arts Center, Sydney

JAMES PUTNAM / Independent Curator, London

STANISLAV ROUDAVSKI / Lecturer in Digital Architectural Design, University of Melbourne, Australia

PIER LUIGI TAZZI / Independent Curator, Italy

 

 

A critical position towards Momentum itself, the art fair and other existing institutional structures with a view to moving forward.

 

SPEAKERS:
 

TIM GRUCHY

Tim’s extensive career spans the exploration and composition of immersive and interactive multimedia through installation and performance while redefining it’s role and challenging the delineations between cultural sectors. His performance and installation art has featured in many international and Australasian festivals and performance spaces including the 2nd Asian Art BIennial in Taiwan (2009), the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts (2009), the Festival of Visual Arts in Adelaide (1986-2008). the Auckland Arts Festival (2009); Taranaki International Arts Festival in New Zealand (2007); People’s Day in Brisbane (2006); Sydney Festival (2004). Theatre and opera credits include AIDA Sydney Opera House and touring Australia(2009-2010), Ainadamar, Adelaide Festival (2008), Season of Sarsparilla, with Sydney Theatre Company (2007-2008), The Leningrad Symphony with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (2006), Luminous with the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Bill Henson (2008 Slovenia, 2004 Australia), and HAIR (2003). His visual designs have featured in works produced by Opera Australia, OzOpera, Sydney Theatre Company, Australian Theatre for Young People, Performing Lines and Australian Dance Theatre. His video work has been exhibited in most large art institutions and cultural festivals in Australia as well as China, New Zealand, Taiwan, Holland, Belgium, the UK, the US, Japan, France and Thailand. Tim has facilitated workshops, lectured and consulted in video art and interactive digital design at creative institutions around the world including Shanghai; the Future University of Hakodate (Japan); National Institute of Dramatic Art (Sydney); University of Technology Sydney; Cambridge University Film School (Christchurch); Te Papa Museum (New Zealand) and Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane). He has also been extensively involved in museum design and various projects at the intersection of architecture and multimedia. Projection Designer Tim Gruchy studied architecture and music at The University of Queensland. His art practice is performative and as a designer of immersive interactive installations (often in collaboration with his brother Mic). He is sought-after as a designer for dance, theatre, opera, museums and a variety of other emerging mediums.

JOHN KALDOR

John Kaldor was born in 1936 in Budapest, Hungary. His family escaped in 1948 and settled in Sydney, where John attended Riverview St Ignatius College. After completing high school, he left for England to begin his textile training under Sir Nicholas Sekers, a pioneer of the British fashion textiles after World War II. In 1955 John Kaldor began a course at the Textile College of Zurich in Switzerland. John Kaldor’s interest in art began at an early age when he spent five months in Paris after leaving Hungary in 1948. This interest was encouraged by Sir Nicholas Sekers and later by Professor Itten, the Director of the Textile College of Zurich, who had previously achieved international recognition as one of the original founders of the Bauhaus movement in Germany. In 1957, John Kaldor returned to Australia and began his first job as a designer at Silk & Textile Printers, Hobart, under the guidance of one of Australia’s founding fathers of textiles Mr Claude Alcorso. In 1960, he moved to Sydney and joined Sekers Silk, which was the Australian operation of Sir Nicholas Sekers’ business, owned and run by John’s parents Andrew and Vera Kaldor. In 1970 John Kaldor launched John Kaldor Fabricmaker Pty Ltd, (later trading as John Kaldor). During the mid 1970′s John Kaldor expanded overseas, with offices in New York, Osaka, London, Sydney, and Melbourne. In 2005 John Kaldor decided to close the Australian operation to be able to devote his time to his life long passion, art. The UK branch of the company is continuing and the products are distributed in the US. John Kaldor is known as a committed supporter and patron of international contemporary art in Australia. In 1969 John Kaldor invited Christo & Jeanne-Claude to Australia and co-ordinated The Wrapped Coast, which was their first major landscape work. This work became John Kaldor’s Art Project 1, the first of a series of art projects.


JAY LEVENSON

Jay A. Levenson has since 1996 been the Director of the International Program at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he coordinates the museum’s relations with institutions in other countries. Prior to that he was Deputy Director for Program Administration at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, where he helped prepare such major exhibitions as Africa: The Art of a Continent and China: 5000 Years. He has served as guest curator for a number of exhibitions, including Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (1991) and The Age of the Baroque in Portugal (1993) for the National Gallery of Art, and Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries (2007) for the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, which was also presented at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and awarded a Ph.D. in art history by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, he has held positions both as a curator and museum administrator and as an attorney.


DJON MUNDINE

Djon Mundine is a curator and art historian, originally from the Northern Rivers area of NSW. He is currently Indigenous Curator, Contemporary Art at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Mundine is well known as the concept curator of the permanent Aboriginal Memorial installation at the National Gallery of Australia and was awarded an OAM in 1993. Previous positions have included: Senior Curator, Gallery of Aboriginal Australia, National Museum of Australia, Senior Curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Programs, MCA, and Art Adviser for the Ramingining Community of Central Arnhem Land.


JAMES PUTNAM

James Putnam is an independent curator and writer. He founded and was curator of the British Museum’s Contemporary Arts and Cultures Programme (1999 to 2003) and was formerly a curator of their Egyptian Antiquities Dept. (1985 –1998). In 1994 he conceived and curated the groundbreaking exhibition, Time Machine, which involved juxtaposing works by contemporary artists with ancient sculpture in the British Museum’s Egyptian Gallery. He also organized a different version of Time Machine at the Museo Egizio, Turin in 1995. His book Art and Artifact – The Museum as Medium, published by Thames & Hudson in 2000 & 2009, surveys the interaction between contemporary artists and the museum. He was Visiting Scholar in Museum Studies at New York University from 2003- 2004 and since 2004 has been lecturer in Curatorial Studies at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. He has curated an ongoing series of critically acclaimed projects with contemporary artists at the Freud Museum, London. He has also curated exhibitions at the Petrie Museum, University College London and was Associate Curator at the Bowes Museum, County Durham from 2004 to 2006. He was appointed curator of Arte all’Arte 9, in Tuscany in 2005 and was on the curatorial committee for the 2006 Echigo Tsumari Triennial, Japan. In 2009 he c0-curated the inaugural exhibition Mythologies at the Haunch of Venison, London with 45 international artists. As collateral events of the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009, he curated the exhibitions Distortion and Library and is currently a curator for the 2010 Busan Biennale, S.Korea.

STANISLAV ROUDAVSKI

Stanislav Roudavski has a combined qualification of Master of
Architecture / Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Arts in St.
Petersburg, a Master of Science in Computer-Aided Architectural Design
from the University of Strathclyde (UK) and a Doctorate from the
University of Cambridge (UK). He practiced in several European countries
designing across scales and applications. His creative portfolio
includes contributions to urban environments, buildings, interiors and
furniture, as well as artwork, photography and interactive applications.
 He taught and worked on research projects at the University of Cambridge
and is currently based at the University of Melbourne where his
practice-based research work integrates organizational techniques of
architecture, unpredictability and richness of performative situations,
creative capacities of computing, visual languages of the moving-image
arts, dramaturgy and spatial narrative.


PIER LUIGI TAZZI

Pier Luigi Tazzi (Colonnata, Florence 1941) is a critic, columnist, teacher and curator, currently based in Capalle, Florence, and in Bangkok. Among others, he was curator at the XLII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. La Biennale di Venezia (1988), co-director of DOCUMENTA IX in Kassel (1992), co-curator of Wounds: between Democracy and Redemption in Contemporary Art, the inaugural exhibition of the new building of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1998), and of Happiness: a Survival Guide for Art and Life, the inaugural exhibition of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2003). He is currently chairman of the Fondazione Lanfranco Baldi onlus in Pelago (since 1998), permanent curator of Spread in Prato, Prato (since 2002), and guest curator at the Aichi Triennial 2010 in Nagoya (since 2008).


 

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