Updates

  • 20.02.2024 - 24.05.2024
    Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale

    Artistic Director: Ute Meta Bauer
    Co-Curators: Wejdan Reda (SA), Anca Rujoiu (RO) and Rose Lejeune (UK)
    Adjunct Curator: Rahul Gudipudi (IN)

    https://biennale.org.sa

    The title, After Rain, opens up a moment of revitalization and renewal, introducing the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale as a nurturing entity, filled with life, while acknowledging the necessity of water for all forms of life that dwell and seek shelter on our planet. Unfolding as a combination of practices such as inhabiting, cultivating, harvesting, searching, and sharing, this Biennale presents works that engage with the human-nature continuum, examine the built environment, observe the state of our surrounding landscapes, recount histories, and encourage us to listen more closely. Conceived as a vital entity rather than a static framework, the Biennale welcomes processes, dialogues, performances, and communal meals. The Biennale is a process shaped by first-time meetings and collaborations

  • 02.02.2024 - 13.04.2024
    …that creeps from the earth

    curated by Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou

    TAVROS

    www.tavros.space

    A historical beginning is a cut—a cut in the flow of history that sections out a before and an after. In histories of the nuclear age, the cut lies in the summer of 1945, on July 16, in a desert in New Mexico, when the first atomic bomb exploded. That cut is resolutely precise. Yet it fails to account for beginnings and ends that are more fleeting, volatile. Turning our attention to the material foundation of nuclear technologies—uranium—opens the possibility for more historical open-endedness. Fathoming the very materiality of nuclear technologies takes us toward terrains of uranium extraction and their lingering aftermaths. That is, not toward the scene of exception—aka the bomb—but rather closer to what Lauren Berlant (although unconcerned in this case with nuclearity) deems “crisis ordinariness”: when an environmental phenomenon does not engender “the kinds of historic action we associate with the heroic agency a crisis implicitly calls for.”[1] To places and times where “closing is not closure.”[2] Simply put, the closing of nuclear facilities, especially mines, does not equal the closure of the workings of nuclear matter. Histories of the nuclear age should also be studied via less linear conceptualizations of time, taking into account flows, longevity, sequences, loops, open-endedness. This not only allows one to veer from canonical narratives of nuclear history; it also lays bare the longer history of nuclear violence as explored in the exhibition …that creeps from the earth.

    Text: Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou

    [1] Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2015), 101. With the term “crisis ordinariness”, Belrant, writing from the US and the UK, refers to how decades of neo-liberal governance have worn deep grooves of precarity and inequality.
    [2] Jens Ashworth, Notes Made While Falling (London: Goldsmiths Press, 2020), 95.

    Artists:
    Inas Halabi, Susanne Kriemann, Sandra Lahire, Sharon Stewart, Valinia Svoronou. The exhibition is accompanied by archival material from the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam).

  • 31.08.2023
    Hemdflannel “G” (Shirtflannel “P”)

    talks and discussion

    Floating University
    Lilienthalstraße 32
    10965 Berlin

    18.00 Arrival
    18.15 Introduction (DE/EN)
    18.30 Dominique Hurth (EN)
    18.50 Bethan Hughes (EN)

    19.10 Break

    19.20 Dr. Insa Eschebach: Lost Environments? Fallows in the Surroundings of the Ravensbrück Memorial Site (DE)
    19.40 Susanne Kriemann (DE)
    20:00 Discussion

    Starting from Berlin Artistic Research fellow Dominique Hurth’s long-term artistic research on the female guard uniform, her own weaving experiments, and the intertwined histories of forced labor and violence within the production of fabric and yarn in Ravensbrück, this public event will bring together inputs by artists Susanne Kriemann and Bethan Hughes as well as by historian Dr. Insa Eschebach (former director of the memorial of Ravensbrück). Continuities between the agricultural experiments of the SS and environmental movements of the post-war period will be discussed as well as shadows within ecological and biodynamic practices, the presence and visibility of creeping violence in landscapes, herbs and plants and current practices of memorial politics.

    Free admission

  • 16.09.2023 - 18.01.2024
    Image Ecology

    curated by Boaz Levin

    C/o Berlin

    co-berlin.org

    Images of the impact of the climate crisis reach us daily: flooded valleys and coasts, burnt homes, melting glaciers, devastated industrial landscapes, often taken from a birds-eye perspective. Nevertheless, climate change remains strangely hard to grasp. A new generation of photographers is therefore looking for new ways to address the climate-damaging consequences of a global technical profit-oriented system. For the first time, they are also examining the ecological consequences of photography itself. Photographic images not only show waste, but produce waste themselves. Photography itself consumes resources and does not only depict resource consumption. It presents ecological problems in images, but is itself partly an ecological problem as a network of consumption, labor, energy, material, transport. With a global perspective, the exhibition Image Ecology provides an overview of the current artistic approaches involving the environment and photographic practices that are related to it. The presented works are not only objects of representation but also reflect the ecology of making pictures.

     

  • 21.09.2023 - 21.01.2024
    MINING PHOTOGRAPHY. THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF IMAGE PRODUCTION

    curated by Esther Ruelfs and Boaz Levin

    Gewerbemuseum Winterthur

    https://www.gewerbemuseum.ch

    At the exhibition, historical photographs, contemporary artistic positions and interviews with experts tell the story of art photography from the perspective of its industrial production. Where, for example, did the copper come from that was used for Hermann Biow’s famous daguerreotype of Alexander von Humboldt? Showcasing 170 works, the exhibition impressively illustrates how, ever since its invention, the medium of photography has contributed to man-made changes in nature – and continues to do so to this day. From the very outset, the production of photographs has depended on the extraction and exploitation of natural raw materials. In the 19th century, salt, copper and silver were used to create the first images on copper plates and for salt prints. Following the advent of silver gelatine prints, the photography industry became the most important consumer of silver in the late 20th century, accounting for more than half of global consumption. Today, in the age of smartphones and digital photography, image production relies on rare earths and metals such as coltan, cobalt and europium. The storage of images and their dissemination also produce large quantities of CO2.

    Ignacio Acosta, Eduard Christian Arning, Lisa Barnard, Hermann Biow, F&D Cartier, Klasse Digitale Grafik – HFBK Hamburg (Mari Lebanidze, Miao ‘Cleo’ Yuekai, Leon Schweer und Marco Wesche), Oscar und Theodor Hofmeister, Susanne Kriemann, Honoré d’Albert de Luynes und Louis Vignes, Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt, Mary Mattingly, Charles Nègre, Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Tristan Duke und Richard Nielsen), Madame d’Ora, Lisa Rave, Hermann Reichling, Alison Rossiter, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Robert Smithson, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe, Tobias Zielony

Archived updates

  • 09.03.2023 - 29.05.2023
    MINING PHOTOGRAPHY. THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF IMAGE PRODUCTION

    curated by Esther Ruelfs and Boaz Levin

    Kunst Haus Wien

    kunsthauswien.com

    At the exhibition, historical photographs, contemporary artistic positions and interviews with experts tell the story of art photography from the perspective of its industrial production. Where, for example, did the copper come from that was used for Hermann Biow’s famous daguerreotype of Alexander von Humboldt? Showcasing 170 works, the exhibition impressively illustrates how, ever since its invention, the medium of photography has contributed to man-made changes in nature – and continues to do so to this day. From the very outset, the production of photographs has depended on the extraction and exploitation of natural raw materials. In the 19th century, salt, copper and silver were used to create the first images on copper plates and for salt prints. Following the advent of silver gelatine prints, the photography industry became the most important consumer of silver in the late 20th century, accounting for more than half of global consumption. Today, in the age of smartphones and digital photography, image production relies on rare earths and metals such as coltan, cobalt and europium. The storage of images and their dissemination also produce large quantities of CO2.

    Ignacio Acosta, Eduard Christian Arning, Lisa Barnard, Hermann Biow, F&D Cartier, Klasse Digitale Grafik – HFBK Hamburg (Mari Lebanidze, Miao ‘Cleo’ Yuekai, Leon Schweer und Marco Wesche), Oscar und Theodor Hofmeister, Susanne Kriemann, Honoré d’Albert de Luynes und Louis Vignes, Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt, Mary Mattingly, Charles Nègre, Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Tristan Duke und Richard Nielsen), Madame d’Ora, Lisa Rave, Hermann Reichling, Alison Rossiter, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Robert Smithson, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe, Tobias Zielony

  • 15.07.2022 - 31.10.2022
    MINING PHOTOGRAPHY. THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF IMAGE PRODUCTION

    curated by Esther Ruelfs and Boaz Levin

    Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

    https://www.mkg-hamburg.de

    “Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production” is dedicated to the material history of key resources used for image production, adressing the social and political context of their extraction and waste and its relation to climate change. Using historical photo¬graphs and contemporary artistic positions as well as interviews with restorers, geologists, and climate researchers, the exhibition tells the story of photography as one of industrial production, showing the extent to which the medium has been deeply intertwined with human change of the environment.

    With Ignacio Acosta, Lisa Barnard, F& D Cartier, Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Tristan Duke, Richard Nielsen), Klasse Digitale Grafik HFBK (Mari Lebanidze, Cleo Miao, Leon Schwer und Marco Wesche), Susanne Kriemann, Mary Mattingly, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Lisa Rave, Alison Rossiter, Robert Smithson, Simon Starling, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe, Tobias Zielony

    In cooperation with Kunsthaus Wien, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur and the HFBK Hamburg.

     

  • 10.06.2022 - 14.08.2022
    Takeover

    curated by the children of 48. Grundschule, Pankow , Carl-Humann-Grundschule, Prenzlauer Berg , Heinrich-von-Stephan-Gemeinschaftsschule, Moabit

    guided by Julia Moritz and Jennifer Streter

    Gropius Bau Berlin

    https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de

    Takeover invites children to take on the role of curators. Featuring works by international artists, the exhibition curated and realised by Berlin primary school students is now on view on the ground floor of the Gropius Bau.

    With Vanessa Farfán, Jan Peter Hammer, Khansa Humeidan, Susanne Kriemann, Michelle-Marie Letelier, Lisa Rave, Egill Sæbjörnsson. The first iteration took place in 2021 with Roberta Busechian and Tue Greenfort, .

     

  • 10.09.2021 - 24.04.2022
    Mind Bombs. Visual Cultures of Political Violence

    Curated by Dr. Sebastian Baden

    Kunsthalle Mannheim

    https://www.kuma.art

    RAF, NSU and IS are names of terrorist groups whose extremist propaganda and political violence challenge the visual arts to react decisively. The exhibition “MINDBOMBS” at the Kunsthalle Mannheim opens up a highly topical artistic perspective on the history and political iconography of modern terrorism. For the first time, the effects of social revolutionary, right-wing extremist and jihadist terrorism on visual culture will be examined together in three sections. 20 years after September 11, 2001 and 10 years after the discovery of the NSU in Germany, the exhibition is dedicated to the fighting term of terrorism and its changes in history from the French Revolution to the present.

    Artists:  Hiba Al Ansari, Khalid Albaih, Morehshin Allahyari, Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, Walter Dahn & Jiří Dokoupi, Jacques-Louis David, Christoph Draeger, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Forensic Architecture, Chloé Galibert-Lâiné & Kevin B. Lee, Gregory Green, Johan Grimonprez, Richard Hamilton, Omar Imam, Initiative 19. Februar Hanau, Christof Kohlhöfer, Susanne Kriemann, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Almut Linde, Georg Lutz, Édouard Manet, Paula Markert, Olaf Metzel, Henrike Naumann, Wolf Pehlke, Ariel Reichman, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Ivana Spinelli, Klaus Staeck, J.M. Voltz

    Intervention „Brick by Brick“: Francesca Audretsch, Vanessa Bosch, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun, Charlotte Eifler & Clarissa Thieme, Anna Knöller, Isabelle Konrad, Judith Milz, Nis Petersen, Johanna Schäfer, Natalia Schmidt, Karolina Sobel, Janis Zeckai.

  • 13.09.2020 - 31.12.2022
    In the SS-Auxiliary – The Female Guards of the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp

    co-conceived by Dominique Hurth

    www.ravensbrueck-sbg.de

    Permanent artistic intervention at the Mahn‑ und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück

    The exhibition focuses on the following themes: the women’s background; the power and violence relationships that prevailed at the camp; the career opportunities of female guards; and the site of Ravensbrück as a principal training and recruitment center for female guards. In addition, it addresses the victims’ attempts of seeking justice as well as the “silence that speaks volumes” on the part of their perpetrators. Last but not least, the fascinating appeal of the figure of the ‘SS female guard’ in popular culture is also put up for discussion.

    Under the title “Pictures, Voices, and Clichés”, five artists have developed interventions in cooperation with the exhibition project. They approach the topic of the SS female guard from a perspective relevant to the present day. The traces of violence in architectural relics and landscapes, the dichotomy of home and crime scene, the role of music within the context of forced labour, the ‘brutal cosiness’ of the interiors of the guards’ accommodation, the educational methods within the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (‘people’s community’) – these are all focal points of the artistic strategies.

    The artistic contributions of Marianna Christofides, Arnold Dreyblatt, Moritz Fehr, Dominique Hurth and Susanne Kriemann are embedded within the historical exhibition.

     

     

  • 01.12.2021 - 18.03.2022
    BEUYS OPEN SOURCE

    Belmacz

    45 Davies Street, London

    Not an exhibition in homage, Beuys Open Source treats the legacy of Joseph Beuys as something of a publicly accessible data set. Working with this twenty-first century metaphor involves seeing the Artist not as a political figure but as someone with far more social sway in our contemporary age: the startup CEO. That is, the founder of something innovative; the boss with skittish determination; the convener of bodies, who together can defy normalcy to materialise fantasy. Here, we are reminded that epistemologically both mysticism and symbolism – two words steeped in Beuysian associations – have common roots in that which is collectively agreed, believed, and followed.

    Artists: Carla Åhlander, Mikael D. Brkic, Dan Coopey, Rafael Pérez Evans, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Johanna M. Guggenberger, Steph Huang, Daniel Huss, Susanne Kriemann, Elisabeth Molin, Joel Tomlin and Abbas Zahedi.

    http://belmacz.com