Last summer, artist Yael Bartana had three performers dance on the banks of the Wannsee. Now, you can see the outcome at the Wannsee Contemporary gallery: in white dresses, their faces hidden behind animal masks, the three women look like mythical creatures – like messengers from another time. In a certain way, they also transport a fragment of the past: their dance movements are based on choreography by the Hungarian Rudolf von Laban, who opened an institute for dance in the Grunewald almost a hundred years ago. Bartana, known for uncovering alternative narratives in the layers of the past, also looks to the future. In the window, she has mounted a collage that reinterprets a copperplate engraving by Frenchman Gustave Dorés: instead of praying to Christ, people are praying to a spaceship for salvation. With billionaires like Bezos and Musk in the space race, the fantasy of the scene becomes strangely real. Leiko Ikemura, on the other hand, is interested in the surreal at the Georg Kolbe Museum: the artist has transformed the former studio building in Westend into a haven for fairytale creatures and hybrid beings.

At the entrance, an oversized bronze sculpture – half woman, half rabbit – welcomes visitors. Her perforated skirt is just wide enough for a child to hide under. Hybrid beings and talismans also populate the exhibition rooms. There are enchanting head figures made of frosted glass from which trees sprout and ceramics that oscillate between cat and man. Ikemura has dedicated the exhibition to the “Witty Witches”: the rebellious patron goddesses who accompany the changes in the world. The subversive potential of the feminine is also not foreign to the artist Margaret Raspé. In honoring the soon-to-be 90-year-old, the Haus am Waldsee has made a grandiose discovery. For instead of taking refuge in fantasy, Raspé always worked with what lay before her: her everyday life as a housewife and mother. Her video pieces from the seventies, in which she filmed herself washing dishes, cooking and baking with a homemade camera mounted on her head, are impressive testimony to this. But it was not only as a video pioneer that Raspé addressed the separation between male and female spheres that was common at the time. She also playfully explored role models and patriarchal structures in photo series and installations. One of her pared-down text works, for example, ends laconically with the question that housewives had to hear from their husbands for decades: “What did you do all day?” In Raspé’s case, the answer was simple: “I worked.”

Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Yael Bartana exhibition view / Photo: Jens Ziehe; Heiner Ranke; Leiko Ikemura exhibition view / Photo: Enric Duch

Wannsee Contemporary, Chausseestr.46, 14109 Berlin–Wannsee; map
Yael Bartana: Rehearsal for Redemption, until 22.04.2023 Fri & Sat 14–18h, Sun 14–16h

Georg Kolbe Museum, Sensburger Allee 25, 14055 Berlin–Westend; map
Leiko Ikemura: Witty Witches, until 01.05.2023 Wed–Mon 11–18h

Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin–Zehlendorf; map
Margaret Raspé: Automatik, until 29.05.2023 Tue–Sun 11–18h

@wannsee_contemporary 
@georgkolbemuseum   
@hausamwaldsee

Directed, we are told, by “K.U.N.S.T.”, Jonathan Meese’s play Die Monosau is having a short run at the Volksbühne this month and next. Describing it is a challenge: is it a play? Performance art? A sort of wistful revue? A fantasy that combines West Berlin’s 80s underground culture with warmed-up Dadaism? The script, which is taken from Meese’s book of the same name, is so confused and diverting as to be impossible to follow. The actors seem to feel the same way: even the theater’s prompter is forced to take to the stage. Everything is fast, loud, confused and constantly changing, yet at the same time repetitive, monotonous and long. How we might unite all these opposites is the riddle of the evening. Nothing makes sense, but perhaps the meaning is hiding in the nothing. Stanley Kubrick, Rasputin and the Urkasper? Not a clue.

The stage becomes a catwalk and runs right through the audience, who seem confused yet for the most part amused. It’s no wonder: telling the chaos, improvisation, and acting apart is near impossible. It also makes the cast’s performance all the more impressive. You sit and marvel at the extreme coolness of a dancing Martin Wuttke and at Benny Claessen’s knack for self-awareness even when reciting the script for the umpteenth time. Then there’s the touching vocals of Kerstin Grassmann and the reinterpreted ventriloquism of Franz Beil who plays a “high-frequency shell” (no, me neither). What is outstanding are the costumes, stage design and composition. It’s debatable whether Germany is, as Meese thinks, a Gesamtkunstwerk. But this evening certainly is. Take it as a whole and you’ll immediately forgive some of Meese’s low points. “We must become the proles of art,” the author demands. With Monosau, he has succeeded in a very entertaining way. 

Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Apollonia T. Bitzan

Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr. 227, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map

Die Monosau showing Sat 25.02, Sun 05.03 & Sun 19.03
Tickets are available here.

@volksbuehne_berlin