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.

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.

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.