In June, the Performing Exiles interdisciplinary festival will take place across several Berlin locations. From 15th to 25th, a program of artistic performances will question, explore and reflect on the concept of exile. Berlin is a place well suited to the topic: a city from which artists were forced into exile in the last century, it now draws artists from all over the world. This is reflected in the festival’s diverse program: its artistic references to exile occur against the backdrop of the Russian war in Ukraine and crises in Iran and Lebanon. In their play Hartaqāt, Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué tell the stories of three authors driven to leave Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iranian director Amir Reza Koohestani deals with the acute situation in Iran in his work Blind Runner, which describes constant struggles against social conditions in the country. Also in the line-up is Stas Zhyrkov and Martín Valdés-Staubers’ Ukrainian-German play News from the past, which considers how we can document violence without reproducing it.

The subject is all-embracing, and the contributions far-reaching: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s search for pan-African identity in his debut production Ancestral Visions of the Future, the Exile Promenade performative walk by director Ada Mukhína, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas’ choreography idiota, which is dedicated to Pandora’s box and comprehensive questions about evil and death. Curious? The festival takes place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele as well as various other venues across the city. Particularly recommended is the opening concert by Zhadan I Sobaky followed by a party in the Kassenhalle, where the Senegalese curator and multidisciplinary artist Alibeta resurrects the Pinguin Bar after more than 70 years. It was a place for jazz, resistance and black activism for a short time in 1949. The line-up is curated by Matthias Lilienthal with curatorial advice from Rabih Mroué.

Text: Hilka Dirks / Credit: “Exile Promenade” von Ada Mukhína, Grafik von Nikoleta Markovic, Foto von Mathias Drücker ; “Blind Runner” von Amir Reza Koohestani, Mehr Theatre Group, Benjamin Krieg; “Depois do silêncio” (Nach der Stille) von Christiane Jatahy, Nurith Wagner-Strauss, Wiener Festwochen

Performing Exiles (15–25.06.2023)

Check out the full program here.

@berlinerfestspiele

The reciprocal relationship between man and nature has always preoccupied the artist Julius von Bismarck. In his new exhibition, with which the Berlinische Galerie reopens today after a three-month closure for renovation work, he combines his studies of nature with biographical questions for the first time: an oversized cloth with drawings of a water surface leads visitors into the show. It shows the so-called Bismarck Sea in the Pacific Ocean and symbolizes the wide circles Bismarck’s family history draws in the German colonial past. Climate change and its consequences are also omnipresent in the work. His new series “I like the flowers” deals with the colonial practice of the herbarium, in which dried, pressed plants define the space as sculpture. The work is reminiscent of houseplants with which we decorate our homes. It is also to be understood as a commentary on the exoticizing representation with which some places in this world are stylized into places of longing.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a life-size giraffe and a scaled-down version of Bremen’s equestrian statue of Otto von Bismarck. Like the children’s toy of the spinning figurine, both figures are composed of individual limbs that allow the figures to collapse in on themselves and rise up again. All of the works are thus connected by the question of how man deals with nature, and which plants, animals and parts of the earth he considers worth protecting and which he does not. With his exhibition, Bismarck provides us with refreshing food for thought, allowing us to take a critical look at the Anthropocene without lecturing – always aware that in the end it is nature that has the upper hand.

Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Julius von Bismarck; alexander levy, Berlin, and Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstr.124-128, 10969 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map

“Julius von Bismarck: When Platitudes Become Form” 26.05.–14.08.2023 Wed–Mon 10–18h. Admission 10 Euro/6 Euro reduced.

@berlinischegalerie

Humans are not the ideal audience for Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s artwork: her Pollinator Pathmaker is primarily aimed at bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects. In collaboration with scientists from various disciplines, she has developed an algorithm-based tool that creates works of art made from plants. The planting plans are geared not to human tastes, but the needs of pollinators. LAS Art Foundation is now bringing a Pollinator Pathmaker Edition to Berlin for the first time following editions in the UK. The LAS edition is being realised in cooperation with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. From 20.06.2023, it will be open to the public in full bloom on the museum’s forecourt. The selection of the plants was coordinated with scientists of the museum to be in keeping with the local characteristics of the city.

The Pollinator Pathmaker is not only a colorful symbol of the fight against species extinction, but also a call to action: hobby gardeners are invited to plan and create their own DIY editions of the artwork on the website. Taking into account the size of your own flowerbed and light and soil conditions, the free online tool creates planting plans that protect the flight paths of respective pollinators. Ginsberg thus playfully demonstrates how art can change the way we look at our surroundings – if only by seeing some gardens through the eyes of a pollinator.

Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Digital Render of Pollinator Pathmaker LAS Edition, 2023, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg; Nathalie Théry; Nathalie Théry

Forecourt of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Invalidenstr.43, 10115 Berlin–Mitte; map

LAS Art Foundation hosts Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg with Pollinator Pathmaker, from 20.06.2023. Open 24h.

Pollinator Pathmaker was originally commissioned by the Eden Project and funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation. The project is also funded by the Gaia Art Foundation and developed in cooperation with Google Arts & Culture.

@las_artfoundation
@pollinatorpathmaker