What does it mean to exist as a woman in our society? C/O Berlin is seeking the answers in two of their exhibitions. The main exhibition pays tribute to a pioneer of feminist art. Since the 1960s, Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT has challenged traditional gender roles and analyzed human behavior through performance art, film and photography. Her early performances, in particular, caused a sensation that has remained throughout the decades. Particularly “Tapp- und Tastkino” and “Aktionshose: Genitalpanik”, which criticized the “male gaze” in pornography. Export’s work criticizes misogyny in a visually powerful and humorous way. Her strength lies in her skillful exposure of social contradictions. Meanwhile, Catalan artist Laia Abril’s work addresses sexualized and systemic violence against women. At C/O, she presents a comprehensive research project on the power dynamics that enable rape. For her project “On Rape — And Institutional Failure”, she doesn’t directly reproduce stories of survivors but approaches them emphatically via archive material, legal texts and myths. From these fragments, she creates a haunting examination that has a lasting impact. Artist Aladin Borioli has also made a name for himself with a long-term project. This year, the young Swiss artist received the C/O Berlin Talent Award for “Bannkörbe”. He depicts how humans and bees co-exist through text, images and objects. For his extensive field research, he worked with bee researchers, scientists and beekeepers. In all three shows, the curators provoke political discussion, which there can never be enough of in Berlin.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credits: Military Rape, 2019, Laia Abril, Courtesy Les filles du calvaire Paris; Aktionshose-Genitalpanik, 1969, Valie Export, Photo: Peter Hassmann; Exhibition view, Photo: David von Becker
C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstr.22–24, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg; map
Valie Export. Retrospektive, until 21.05.2024
Laia Abril. On Rape – And Institutional Failure, until 21.05.2024
Aladin Borioli. Bannkörbe. C/O Berlin Talent Award 2023, until 21.05.2024
@coberlin
For a long time, the rooms of Auguststraße’s Kunst-Werke have exhibited many small exhibitions, rather than a singular, large body of work. That all changed in mid-February. Poetics of Encryption is the name of the current show, curated by Nadim Samman, which transports viewers to the landscapes of the digital world and its hidden mechanisms. Inspired by the book of the same name, it explores a landscape characterized by black sites, black boxes and black holes — secret places and opaque systems. Three chapters present work from more than forty international artists who explore the aesthetics and politics of encryption. In the “Black Site” chapter, the artwork addresses feelings of being trapped in a digital world. The work demonstrates strategies of search and recovery and negotiating the decryption and unlocking of technology, while “Black Box” explores the intellectual inaccessibility of omnipresent tech products and control systems. The artwork included in this chapter illustrates the tension between the visible interface and the invisible backend. Finally, “Black Hole” deals with the effects of compact digital archives and algorithmic processes on cultural space-time. Here, the consequences of “total datafication” are explored, while artists sound out the event horizon of the digital era. The exhibition offers a fascinating and surprisingly analog insight into the world of digital encryption and invites visitors to explore the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly digitized society.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Credits: Andrea Khôra, Rapture, 2024, Photo: Frank Sperling; Carsten Nicolai, anti, 2004, Photo: Uwe Walter; Êmilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Idle, 2023.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
@kwinstituteforcontemporaryart
After January comes February, and February is followed by Berlin’s MaerzMusik. Organized by the Berliner Festspiele for 22 years as the successor to the Musik-Biennale Berlin, the festival for experimental music has firmly established itself internationally. From 15.–24.04.2024, concerts, performances and artistic interventions will grace the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues around Berlin. Installations, music theater and discourse formats invite exploration and discovery of the art and theory surrounding the multimodality of hearing. The program is so jam-packed and diverse that you’ll want to attend every single event. Audrey Chen and Hugo Esquinca, explore the limits of physical expression and technological manipulation of human sounds with their new work “Your Mouth Limb Dismembered, The Gradual Tongue Dissected” in the “Topographies of Hearing” series. Simon Steen-Andersen and Les Percussions de Strasbourg reinterpret Karlheinz Stockhausen’s astonishing composition “Musik im Bauch” for six percussionists and twelve music boxes. Erwan Keravec dedicates his concert to the aesthetic potential of the bagpipes, featuring pieces by Heiner Goebbels and Éliane Radigue, complemented by Philip Glass’s “Two Pages”. And these are just a few highlights from this year’s program.
The festival is complemented by various contexts, exhibitions and, of course, music. You can explore the entire program here. And if there’s one thing you shouldn’t miss, it’s the second part of the research project “Contemplations into the Radical Others” about the work of intermedia composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, who passed away in 2000. This follows last year’s presentation, opening historical, contemporary and future perspectives on the work of an impressive artist whose life was as contemporary and diverse as this year’s festival edition itself.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Christina Kubisch, Camille Blake & Christophe Urbain
MaerzMusik will take place from 15-24.03.2024 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other locations in Berlin. Tickets and further information are available online.
@berlinerfestspiele
Once upon a time, there was a dress. Designed in 1986 by French couture designer Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy, who also founded the House of Givenchy in 1952. The dress is long, made of velvet and silk, with a bow and everything else that comes to mind when you think of the words “dress” and “haute couture” — the dress of all dresses, so to speak. Perhaps it was this that attracted the West Berlin cult couturier and former UdK professor Uli Richter so much so that he reinterpreted the dress himself a few years later. His interpretation from 1989 sets the tone for the exhibition “Past Intelligence: Givenchy, Uli Richter, Students”, which can be seen at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in the Kulturforum until 26.05.2024. The focus of the discussion is: What can young fashion designers learn from the past? Based on the designs of two of couture’s godfathers, young students from Atelier Chardon Savard at Macromedia University Berlin explored this very question. Reconstruction, deconstruction, new construction for cut, material, and role models. The result is an entertaining and approachable exhibition, with samples to try on and an upcoming workshop entitled “I’m sewing my own Givenchy dress”, where you can sew a dress with help and guidance, and reflect on the question of where Givenchy ends and your unique design begins.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Franka Dehmel, Lola Schreiner, Noa Lesche
Kunstgewerbemuseum, Matthäikirchplatz, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map
Tue–Fri 10–18h, Sat–Sun 11–18h
Past Intelligence: Givenchy, Uli Richter, Students until 26.05.2024.
One of Berlin’s most curious sculptures can be found on the roof of the Philharmonie. The sculptor Hans Uhlmann installed his Phoenix — a stylized bird with two broad metal wings — here in 1964. While artwork on buildings usually catches the eye, Uhlmann’s sculpture almost entirely eludes it. His Phoenix nestles so closely to the architecture that it’s nearly unnoticeable, symbolizing the artist’s work. Uhlmann’s works blend seamlessly into the Berlin cityscape. His steel spirals and columns wind towards the sky in the Hansaviertel, in front of the Deutsche Oper, and at the University of the Arts. Yet his name is unknown to most people today. The Berlinische Galerie aims to change that with the first comprehensive retrospective in 50 years. With around 80 sculptures and graphic works, the museum traces Uhlmann’s life and work from his artistic beginnings in the 1930s to his death in the 1970s. After studying mechanical engineering, the Berlin-born artist repeatedly tried his hand at sculpting, discovering wire early on as the main material for his works. When he was arrested in 1933 during an anti-fascist leaflet campaign and sentenced to one and a half years in prison, he filled his time in custody with the only activity left to him: drawing.
His artist friend Jeanne Mammen smuggled pencils and notepads into prison. After his release, he exhibited the ideas of the time. He created heads made of metal and iron wire. Uhlmann described his imprisonment as the “most important period” in his artistic development. Even if the fine wire figures later gave way to massive metal sculptures, the linear aspect always remained part of his formal language. While teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts in the 1950s, Uhlmann developed his own style further. Figurative explorations receded into the background; instead, Uhlmann was interested in how he could depict movement in space with reduced forms. His abstract formal arrangements made him one of the most sought-after artists in the young Federal Republic of Germany. Invitations to the Venice Biennale and documenta followed. In addition to elaborate art-in-building projects, he returned to drawing in his old age. In black chalk, he traced the permeability of his structures on paper and discovered the dynamism and spontaneity that were so important to him throughout his life. Uhlmann achieved what many are denied. His works emit a quiet power. Even if, like the Phoenix on the roof of the Philharmonie, they sink in the background at first glace.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Anja Elisabeth Witte & Clemens Poloczek / Credit: Legal successors Ewald Gnilka/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023; Margot Schmidt, Hamburg, for the work by Hans Uhlmann: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art, Alte Jakobstr.124–128, 10969 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Hans Uhlmann: Experimental Forming until 13.05.2024 Wed–Mon 10–18h.
@berlinischegalerie