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Parallel Worlds

EXHIBITION:
18 October – 16 November 2021

@ Nadir-Divan-Begi Madrasah

in Samarkand, Uzbekistan

In Cooperation With
Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art, Samarkand, and the Samarkand State Museum,
Part of the Culture in Motion Program of the Goethe Institute

Project Participants

Video art from the MOMENTUM Collection Berlin:

Almagul Menlibayeva (Germany, Almaty, Kazakhstan), Theo Eshetu (Berlin, Germany), David Krippendorff (Berlin, Germany), Amir Fattal (Berlin, Germany), David Szauder (Berlin, Germany), Shahar Marcus (Tel Aviv, Israel ), Qiu Anxiong (Shanghai, China);

In dialogue with artists from Uzbekistan:

Khulkar Yunusova (France, Uzbekistan), Ozod Negmatov (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Sohiba Khudayorova (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Behzod Toshpulatov (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Kamoliddin Rakhmatov (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Ramil Niyazov (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Aziz Fattayev (Andijan, Uzbekistan), Uktam Isirgapov (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Tokhir Sharafiddinov (Bukhara, Uzbekistan), Lola Akhatova (Jizzakh, Uzbekistan).

Curators: Normurod Negmatov, Rachel Rits-Volloch

ART from ELSEWHERE: Samarkand

Video Art from the MOMENTUM Collection, Berlin

Presented In

Parallel Worlds

Featuring:

Theo Eshetu (ET/DE) – Amir Fattal (IL/DE) – David Krippendorff (US/DE) – Shahar Marcus (IL) – Almagul Menlibayeva (KZ/DE) – Qiu Anxiong (CH) –
David Szauder (HU/DE)

PROGRAM:

Screen 1 – Running Time: 67 min.

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

Qiu Anxiong, Cake (2014), HD Video Animation with Sound, 6 min. 2 sec.

David Szauder, Light Space Materia (2020), HD Video & Digital Animation with Sound, 8 min. 27 sec.

Amir Fattal, ATARA (2019), HD Video with Sound, 15 min. 20 sec.

Shahar Marcus, Seeds (2012), HD Video with Sound, 5 min. 3 sec.

Theo Eshetu, Festival of Sacrifice (2012), HD Video with Sound, 18 min.

Screen 2 – Running Time: 38 min. 22 sec.

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

For the Culture in Motion Program of the Goethe Institute, Normurod Negmatov, Director of the Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art in Samarkand invites MOMENTUM, Berlin’s Global Platform for Time-Based Art, to present a selection of video works from the MOMENTUM Collection in the exhibition «Parallel Worlds». Shown in parallel with exceptional artists from Uzbekistan, curated by Normurod Negmatov, MOMENTUM’s selection is a program of seven video artworks by artists as diverse as Berlin itself. Presenting artists from China, Ethiopia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, and the US – they are nearly all also Berliners. At the geographical center of Europe, Berlin is a city of mobile people and moving images, where art and artists alike are often from elsewhere. In this post-pandemic era of travel restrictions Art from Elsewhere: Samarkand is a video program about otherness – a way of seeing the world without travelling. Moving images move us, and artworks serve as windows onto the world. As we now emerge carefully after months of isolation, and learn how to negotiate the new realities of a post-pandemic world, it becomes more important than ever to have such windows through which to gaze. In these uncertain times, they remind us that, for all our differences, we are all in this together. The works shown in this program focus on global issues, equally relevant to us all, no matter where we live or where we have come from. They reflect on the social and environmental repercussions of globalization and its impact on the transformation of cultural identities; they interrogate issues of identity, inequality, and poverty; they scrutinize the environmental traumas we inflict on our planet and its creatures; and they ponder the (un)quiet poetry, conflicts, and beauty of how we must live from day to day.

– Rachel Rits-Volloh

Theo Eshetu
 

Theo Eshetu, Festival of Sacrifice (2012), HD Video Art, 18 min.

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

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

[Theo Eshetu]

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

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

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

 
 

Amir Fattal
 

Amir Fattal, ATARA (2019), HD Video Art, 15 min. 20 sec.

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

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

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

Fattal is a conceptual artist whose practice is one of historical reflection grounded in the history of aesthetics and cultural schisms. Working in the media of video, photography, sculpture, and installation, his work forms a focused response to the diverse questions raised by his adoptive city of Berlin, where the memory, culture, architecture, indeed every thread in the fabric of this city is problematized by its history. Alongside his art practice, Fattal is the curator of Tape Modern Berlin, an acclaimed series of group exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists. Amir Fattal was distinguished with the GASAG Art Prize in 2008 and graduated from Universität der Künste, Berlin, in 2009. Fattal has participated in numerous international group exhibitions. Acclaimed solo exhibitions include: Mesopotopography, Anna Jill Lüpertz Gallery, Berlin (2015); From the End to the Beginning, Kunstquerier Bethanien, Berlin (2014); Parallel Lines, Teapot Gallery, Cologne, Germany (2013); Goral Ehad, St-art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012); Shadow of Smoke Rings on the Wall, Artitude Kunstverein, Berlin (2011); Tomorrow Gets Me Higher, Wilde Gallery, Berlin (2010). Selected group exhibitions include: Collection Enea Righi, Museo Fortuny, Venice (2016); Interior / Exterior / Sculpture, Belenius/Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); A Naked Singularity, Studio Garaicoa, Madrid, Spain (2015); Fragments of Empires, MOMENTUM, Berlin (2014-15); A Letter From Dr. Faustus, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2014); Fundación Botín, Villa Iris, Santander, Spain (2014); Dahlstrøm & Fattal, Beers Lambert Contemporary, London (2013); III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2012); Body Without Body, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin (2011).

 
 

David Krippendoff
 

David Krippendorff, Nothing Escapes My Eyes (2015), HD Video Art, 14 min. 9 sec.

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

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

[David Krippendorff]

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

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

 
 

Shahar Marcus
 

Shahar Marcus, Seeds (2012), HD Video with Sound, 5 min. 3 sec.

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

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

[Shahar Marcus]

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

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

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

 
 

Almagul Menlibayeva
 

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

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

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

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

 
 

Qiu Anxiong
 

Qiu Anxiong, Cake (2014), HD Video Animation with Sound, 6 min. 2 sec.

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

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

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

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

 
 

David Szauder
 

David Szauder, Light Space Materia (2020), HD Video Art & Digital Animation, 8 min. 27 sec.

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

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

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

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About the MOMENTUM Collection:

https://www.momentumworldwide.org/collection/

MOMENTUM is a platform for time-based art, active worldwide, with its home in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. In 2020-2021 MOMENTUM celebrates its 10th anniversary, having been founded in Australia as a parallel event to the 17 Biennale of Sydney in 2010, and having opened its doors in Berlin in 2011. Devoting this 10th anniversary period to its Collection, MOMENTUM is proud to present Art from Elsewhere – a nomadic exhibition series, presenting works from the MOMENTUM Collection at various institutions worldwide.

The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 and has, since then, grown to encompass over 150 outstanding artworks by 48 artists from 26 countries worldwide. Representing a diversity of media – video, performance, photography, painting, collage, and text – the MOMENTUM Collection ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, 
Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the UK, and the US.

MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining international art communities. Since its inception, MOMENTUM has presented over 250 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, through a program composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, Performance programs, and Education events.

MORE INFO: www.momentumworldwide.org

About the Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art, Samarkand:

The Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art was founded by Normurod Negmatov, composer and writer, in Samarkand Uzbekistan, on February 28, 2017 at 00:00. Since then, the museum has expanded and today houses over 2,000 outstanding works of art by 104 artists from 51 countries. Representing a variety of media: video, performance, photography, painting, books, collages and texts, the Ruhsor collection includes from the most famous to emerging artists from Uzbekistan and other countries of the world.

Since 2019, the Museum of Contemporary Art “Ruhsor” began to interact with other art institutions, museums of Uzbekistan, the Republic of Karakalpakstan and France, jointly creating historically very important contemporary art projects such as “Life” (2017) in Samarkand, “Imitation” (2019 ); “Dialogue” (2019); “Immitation”, festival of Experimental Theater in Samarkand (2019); “Living Thoughts” (2020) in Museum of Fine Arts of Bukhara; “Second Life” (2020) and “Connections” (2021) at Karakalpak branch of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan; “Experience” (2021) Regional Museum of Local Traditions in Samarkand, “Message”(2021) Palace Jacques Coeur, Bourges, France”.

The Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art’s mission is to develop a new creative art environment in Uzbekistan and to construct a bridge connecting international art communities. Since its inception, Ruhsor has presented over 60 exhibitions and events throughout Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan through a program of local and international exhibitions, artist residences, performance programs and educational events.