ongoing

Neil Bartlett is contributing a sequence of eight short texts, a new instalment of which will appear each month. He is a British author, theatre-maker and performer with a forty-year career as an out queer artist. The texts can be read from the street.

July 2025 — January 2026

If you are interessted in the full text, please send us a message.

past

Ludwig Kuffer

Neu Cöln at Stoffpavillion Möller, Hahnenstraße 8, 50667 Cologne

05 – 09 November 2025

Installation views by Mareika Tocha

Susan Cianciolo, Jürgen Drescher, Jean-Luc Moulène, Fernanda Rueda, Ulrike Scheffler-Rother

26 October – 8 November 2025

There is a guy standing in front of a fan reminiscing about the past.

Rosa Aiello, The Artist‘s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement, The Hun, Swan Lee, Suzan Pitt, Ian Waelder, Quay Quinn Wolf

06 — 20 September 2025

The exhibition is based on a story by Haris Giannouras.

Never underestimate the beauty of fiction;
there is power in telling stories.

Apricity is the feeling of the winter sun on your face. It means feeling a quick touch of warm in an otherwise sea of cold, a quick rush of lobster red splashes across your cheeks while sitting in a waiting room or right after getting the bill for having your brakes of your car checked. This has to be a funny piece of information to keep in mind when you’re feeling blue. I sometimes miss a lot of things and happen to miss all of them at the same time. Nostalgia is a weird game, a trickster’s conduit he thought rather unruly to himself. How do you get out of it? Should you even? How can you burst out of this swamp? Am I going to miss apricity when the summer comes along?

He was just standing there, not doing much other than sticking his belly out of the comfort of his slightly elevated cotton blend T-shirt. He rather dangerously came closer to the fan that was standing in the middle of the living room. It was one of those plasticky, squeaky white fans you get at Saturn for no more than 20 euros until the heatwave hits and the prices skyrocket. Then they die without even saying goodbye and then you have to go through them out and get a new one before the next sun strokes come bashing through your door.

Visiting a swimming pool might make things better. There are a lot of funny little beings lurking near stable bodies of water; creatures from the blue lagoon that hide inside the water and do their very best to catch your attention and your wallet. I mean it’s bound to happen, we are bound to come across these otherworldly beings since we’ve abandoned the havens of the moving sea. And yet, he was still there, standing with apathy and serenity in front of the mesmerizing movements of the fan’s blades.

I’ve missed the smell of concrete under the sun, I’ve missed the sound of hairy men arguing on the street, I’ve missed clothes sticking to your skin like you owe them money, I’ve missed drinking wine with lunch, I’ve missed crossing the street as if it’s one of the last things you will ever do, I’ve missed two euro books at midnight slipping next to ruins from a past era, I’ve missed office buildings with abandoned front desks, I’ve missed the smell of flowers in the city, I’ve missed stray dogs sleeping on the side lines, I’ve missed the sound of cats yelling, I’ve missed the waves crashing on the shore, I’ve missed crickets singing out loud for a change, I’ve missed overzealous coffee culture, I’ve missed chairs crossing their legs. I’ve missed them. I’ve missed this.

All these thoughts came crashing down on him, all while the fan was doing its things, dancing around the messy living room, swirling the winds, twisting fates, mixing sentiments.

Scenes as if looking out of a driving cab came flashing before his eyes, dreams of asparagus, of cinema dates and theater kids. Nightmarish fights between lovers taking place inside messy kitchens. With a can of beans spilled all over the floor, staining everything, security deposits flying all over the place.

The fan kept spinning, getting louder by the minute, dancing on its tippy toes, demanding his attention, screaming on the top of its lungs.

Suddenly, this weird pandelirium of flashing images that had completely taken him over, sequences of legged asparagus, trembling kitchen tiles, holiday greeting cards, or even bureaucracy monsters, it all came to a halt.

He blinked, once or twice, pulled his shirt back down and turned the fan off. It is a universally understood fact that summer heat is never good for your emotional state.

A smell of tipsy flowers fils the room as the door slowly opens.

Ulla von Brandenburg, Anna Budniewski, Michael Dikta, Mirjam Thomann

10 – 23 August 2025

Josey Brett, Fabian Heitzhausen, Sara MacKillop

12 – 26 July 2025

Invitations

We asked friends and artists to join us with a contribution to this envelope — some we already have collaborated with in the past and others we look forward to working with in the course of this year. It now contains a variety of works in the form of a greeting.

In case you come by, you can get a copy. We still have a few left and are happy to share.

Nura Afnan-Samandari
1 out of 150 retracings of a pencil drawing
on Fabriano Accademia drawing paper, 150g/m2

Ulla von Brandenburg
Billodrome
Stofflager
Laserprint, folded

Anna Budniewski
Mit den Fäusten das Kinn hochdrücken, Kopf in den Nacken. Den Blick hat sie steil nach oben gerichtet. Sie sucht den Stern in sich, als wäre der Himmel ihr Spiegel. Der Bass dröhnt.
Laserprint on Chromolux

Michael Dikta
Morning View
Laserprint

Jürgen Drescher
Konzentriere Dich
Entscheide Dich
Laserprints

Buket Isgören
Blätter
Laserprint, folded

Thomas Neumann
Paper model after a yellow shelf
Canary yellow copy paper and installation manual

Babette Semmer
Babette as a rose. Coming up with a plan.
Laserprint on archival paper

Mari van Stokkum
Krater deiner
Essay

Sophie Isabel Urban
Pfeile auf Papier
Vernis mou and oil on handmade paper

Simon Wienk-Borgert
Study for emotional budgets (Expenses, Income, Debt, Balance)
Laserprint on projection film

Ieva Raudsepa, Olga Hohmann, Chantal Kaufmann, Jonida Laçi, Carl-Oskar Jonsson, Fiona Connor, Gregor Peschko, Matthias Noggler, Valentina Triet, Eleni Wittbrodt, Regine Ehleiter, Johanna Terhechte, Polo, Ludwig Kuffer, Tabea Marschall, Lukas Panek, Manuel Wetscher, Adelaide Ivánova, Samuel Bich, Philipp Farra

oxfordberlin editions/Editionen

23 March — 5 April 2025

Installationviews by L.K.

They are putting out apples, it must be fall.
Nura Afnan-Samandari, Geta Brătescu, Michael Franz, Gabriel Kuri,
Paul Niedermayer and Michel Wagenschütz in collaboration with Theodor Dathe

Kunstverein Bielefeld, Welle 61, 33602 Bielefeld

23 November 2024 — 9 February 2025

Installationviews by A.R.

Fear not dear shopper, for there’s a way.
Alina Rentsch
curated by Franca Zitta

8 — 21 December 2024

If the dramatic action is divided into three subsections, namely the information about the preconditions, the esca- lation of the conflicts up to the climax, and the solution or the catastrophe, the division into three acts is obvious.

Tatjana Doll, Philipp John Arck, Phung-Tien Phan and Inge Mahn

30 August — 7 September 2024

I am not searching for the positive energy, I am only looking for things which I have either lost or misplaced, and I do that often. I try to keep track of my thoughts and to understand. Once I have understood something, I can express it and hope that someone can get something out of the observation, and if this has a positive effect, then that is not bad.

Elke Denda, Kim Stolz

23 June — 6 July 2024

Both show new paintings, new pictures.

archive, as eversince

Leonard Horres, Manfred Paul and Lucia Sotnikova

18 May — 2 June 2024

The garden may not be entered with flowers in hand. This ban can be linked to care and concern for the garden. The logic of this model location should be maintained. It is assumed that something you bring with you does not belong in this garden if it is similar. In order to enter, you have to lay down anything you might see there – including the idea of it.

The Egg and I, Great Expectations
Jürgen Drescher, Buket Isgören, Victoria Tarak, Sophie Thun and works by the group caring for the project

18 February — 2 March 2024

A greengrocer’s apostrophe, an incorrectly used apostrophe to form the plural of a noun, indicates a process of marking; one of plurality or possession. This confusion can sometimes accompany the extending of an invitation. An invitation manifests the figure of the guest. This idea could include a projection with great expectations for both ends.

archive, as ÆdT — Am Ende des Tages

GONNG*

Sophie Isabel Urban, Simon Wienk-Borgert

December 2023

Schneckenhaus (t.o.m.)
Tim Diedrich & Moritz Englebert, Paul Galas, Viktoria Hoffmeier, Leckhaus, Svea Mausolf, Midnight Sun, Valeria Oggioni, Julius Reifen, Babette Semmer, Sophia & Josephine, Tumble Weeds, Vomit Heat
organized in collaboration with Sebastian von der Heide
DC-Open Galleries

September 2021

A large room with a little Headrest

Kitty Maria & Alban Karsten

August 2021

In A Large Room with a Little Headrest, Alban Karsten and Kitty Maria investigate the position and value of sleep and retreat for the working human, resulting in a series of headboards and headrests that hint at distinct characters.
In this process, they experimented with the ancient craft of intarsia, an obsolete technique that has recently been revived by hobbyists and YouTube woodworkers.
The decorative nature of this (woodworking) technique, draws an analogy with the position of rest and sleep as a decorative side activity in an increasingly active 24-hour economy.

Kitty Maria‘s work is an ongoing investigation into the automated production site and the new labourer. Alban Karsten explores the history of fences, horse jumping and disaster prevention.

This Response is to his Horns

Fernada Rueda

June 2021

Incapable of realizing who the source of his pain is, the bull jumps in the direction of the cape and the bullfighter pierces its body with his rapier. Bullfighter and bull merge in one same body and a new character is formed: the Patriarch-minotaur. Next, the Patriarch-minotaur strikes against the cape, tearing her to shreds. Suddenly a magical energy can be felt, and from the threads of the cape a giant razor-edged braid with the voice of a woman emerges!

Installationviews by Kai Werner Schmidt

Ampeln auf Augenhöhe

Paul Niedermayer

May 2021

Ich gehe auch bei Rot über die Straße. Gelegentlich verstehe ich mich als jaywalker.
Auf vielbefahrenen Straßen mache ich von grünen Ampelphasen gebrauch.
Kündigt Gelb den Übergang von einer Phase in die andere an, dann fühle ich mich gemeint.

Die erste Verkehrsampel wurde mit roten und grünen Gaslichtern betrieben.
Bei Rot darfst du gehen, bei Grün bleibst du stehen. Da die Ampel nach kurzer Zeit explodierte, wurde sie wieder abgeschafft.

Heute fühle ich mich wieder wie eine Zahl. Während ich in Warteschleifen hänge, scrolle ich durch das Leitbild der Berliner Verwaltung:

Der Verwaltung passt ihr Angebot der wachsenden, sich stetig wandelnden, dynamischen Stadt an und versteht sich als deren Dienstleisterin. Sie bezieht die Bedürfnisse und Lebenslagen der Mensch in der Stadt ein. Sie hört ihnen zu, ist offen für ihre Anliegen und reagiert situationsgerecht. Ein barrierefreier Zugang zu den Leistungen der Verwaltung ist die Voraussetzung für Teilhabe. Barrieren stellen sich je nach Zielgruppe unterschiedlich dar. Die Beschäftigten der Berliner Verwaltung erkennen vorhandene Zugangshindernisse und wirken aktiv darauf hin, diese abzubauen.

Zur Sicherung der Servicequalität können einzelne Gespräche mitgeschnitten werden. Lassen Sie uns ganz offen sprechen, so von Hinterzimmer zu Hinterzimmer.

In den beiden Serien Ampeln auf Augenhöhe und Back End bezieht sich Paul Niedermayer spielerisch auf die Ideen einer dokumentarisch-objektiven Fotografie:
In betont subjektiven, intimen Ansichten von Lichtsignalanlagen wird das Verhältnis von Individuum zu gesellschaftlichen Ordnungssystemen beleuchtet. Aus überraschenden Perspektiven und in atmosphärisches Licht getaucht, erscheinen die anonyme Gestaltung des Apparates und seine Funktion zart und bestechlich.
Die fortlaufende Serie Back End zeigt Detailaufnahmen aus den Büros von Gleichstellungsbeauftragten unterschiedlicher Institutionen in Berlin. Geschickte Inszenierungen von Bildelementen ( z.B. von Textfragmenten auf Schlüsselbändern) funktionieren wie codierte Verweise auf unsichtbare Kontexte und erweitern so das Bilddokument um mögliche Lesarten.

Zwischen Ampeln auf Augenhöhe und Back End entsteht ein Dialog über gesellschaftliche Handlungsräume, künstlerische Strategien und deren ästhetische und politische Dimensionen.

Text by Michel Wagenschütz

Safety in Numbers (SIN)

Michael Dikta, Philip Markert

May 2021

¹ When I was a kid my parents took me to this musical called „Starlight Express“, I wasn‘t into Musicals back then, and still, I‘m not.
The only thing I remember is being on the way to the musical by bus with many other people and a lady sitting to my left, talking very loudly about ... I don´t know, things and other things and what‘s worth standing up for. At one point the inside of the bus became very bright and the lady, together with all the other people, became completely quiet. Her eyes focusing on the little table in front of her, the body frozen and the knuckles of her hands white from holding onto the armrest. It was the passing of a huge bridge and the sudden silence in the bus that struck her.

Just a few years later after the starlight incident, I had a girlfriend, the first one, and she loved to watch „Westside Story“ on VHS over and over again, mostly when we came home drunk. So I passed out to a guy singing about „somethings coming“ but I never found out what he meant.

² He had his shoes tied in a certain way and barely cleaned the kitchen and I thought it was cool how he and his flatmate would compete in who made the best frozen pizza and for all I knew he has always been a radical. In his beliefs as much as in his actions.
One day I was playing board games with him and the guys who, as I would only find out years later, were something like his black-block friends. We were hanging out in his room, smoking weed, which still felt very special at that time and we played one specific game in hour long sessions, where someone would always attempt to conquer Europe while it normally was someone else’s task to eliminate one of the other players and we talked about riot porn. (note: glorifying cut-ups of riot-video snippets)

In the now iconic video-tape recording of a gig by the band Atari Teenage Riot at the 1st of May demonstrations 1999 in Berlin we see them playing their greatest hits in a crowd that gets brutally beaten up by the police until the band gets gets arrested. The video goes on for 2 minutes and 51 seconds and is saved near the top of my YouTube favorites playlist followed by a video called „Maine Coon Cat in a Swimming Pool“.

³ Back then light wasn´t such a thing and I watched my father turning bulbs in and out just casually. His idea was to go bright, brighter, brightest. Of course, back in my teens, for me, it was somewhat dark, darker, darkest. Since I moved out it changed and got more distinguished.Today it´s 28 degrees and the hot pavement makes me sweat in fear, empty parking lots and shopfronts that seem so outdated as if they have been left behind for some time already.Then nighttime is rolling in and the low temperature of the new street lights let me think about the light spots in my parent‘s home again.Laying on their couch and looking up onto the ceiling, they look like a dwarf version of that Starlink project, where a huge number of satellites are being expelled into the sky, forming a chain and turning star signs into weird arrangements. After dusk and before dawn, when the sun has dipped just below the horizon, the satellites reflect the sun’s light back onto the ground, making them shine quite brightly as they move together through space.

⁴ The Rule of Production and Sales (Fifty-seventh Chapter), The craftsman at the gallery.
When craftsmen are invited to the gallery, let them practise their craft in all humility, if the artist permits it. If, however, one of them exalts himself on account of his skill in the craft because he appears to be of benefit to the artwork, such a one is to be removed from that craft and not to be let return to it unless he humbles himself and the artist specially commissions him again.But if anything is to be sold from the work of the craftsmen, those by whose hand the business is to be transacted must see that they do not presume to cheat. They should always remember Ananias and Saphira, so that they themselves and all those who have committed any fraud with the things of the gallery do not suffer in their souls the death which they endured in their bodies.In the prizes themselves, however, the evil of covetousness does not creep in, but one always gives a little cheaper than others, the worldly, can give, „so that in everything Art may be glorified“.

⁵ However, Atari Teenage Riot remained a constant part of my music collection up until now. Sometimes when I get upset I will put their „60 Seconds Wipe Out“ album on my headphones and go for a walk and feel like I want to smash a window in or someone’s face and I’m trying to figure out excuses for how that would be a reasonable thing to do. I never came up with any.

Someone once told me it might be better to get bad attention instead of no attention and how much grandeur there is to causing damage and how it’s just the most arbitrary thing one could talk about as an expression of their anger.

Back in my friend’s room in what is considered the leftist district of a city where I used to live, I’ve had one of the very first panic attacks of my life, at least as far as I can remember. I started to hate every person in the room and had the strong feeling that no-one could be worthy of my presence and the other way round while sitting all huddled up in the deepest corner of the couch. I think it was summer and I was really sweating and so sure I would die of a heart attack any second. Actually I’m sure it was summer because I remember that I took my bike home later that night after I had lost all my territories to the green army and had almost lost my consciousness twice.

⁶ I’m not exactly having a plea for or against radicalism here, even if I’d like to, or for a specific taste in music or ways of coping with anxiety.
During the preparation of this show I came to think that something like a set of experiences that we may have acquired at one point in our 20-30 somethings is, what will be reoccurring for the rest of our lives in all different kinds of variations and that’s why things start to feel inevitably dull at times and probably that’s why people eventually want to become parents or become a part of something bigger than themselfes, but that’s just an assumption.

I have not yet considered becoming a parent.

written by: 1,3 Michael Dikta, 2,5,6 Philip Markert, 4 Anna Budniewski

Installation views by Michael Dikta

Three interrupted Trials

Alessandro Cugola & Joseph Rigo

April 2021

Three Interrupted Trials is the aftermath of three unrealised projects by Alessandro Cugola and Joseph Rigo. If we assume that a design’s hypotheses are verified only through its realisation, the meaning of any unbuilt project can only be supposed. The three designs are shown as 1:1 models that embody the physical dimension of the original projects, but while losing their contextual resonance, they stand as ambiguous objects.

1 Column

To read the landscape is to read its temporality. Geology is its stillest time:
by revealing its strata, as in a sort of carottage, those macro times, or epochs, become vulnerable. Yet there are unpredictable temporalities, connected to the atmosphere, or to our subjectivity, marking subtle changes between moments. Those cycles are intertwined, describing an environmental chronology. The different natures of these cycles are inscribed in the column, which measures how they are woven with our subjective experience, altering our perception of the place.

The project was submitted on the 29th of May 2020 to the Municipality of Camerota, Salerno.

2 Bench

Designing a bench in marble results in a rather evident contrast between such a precious and yet rigid material, and an act – to sit - ordinary and civic.
This duplicity is further explored in the composition, exploiting a property of the material, its plasticity. The curves play with an abstract anatomic geometry, while the marble, when sculpted, softens as to resemble skin.

The project was submitted on the 27th of June 2020 to Fondazione Centro Arti Visive di Pietrasanta, Lucca.

3 Garden

The garden as hortus conclusus is the result of a selection of comforting elements from the plant world. ‘Other’ natures, difficult ecosystems where life is forced to compromise, are excluded. A new language is defined to include hostile nature: two piles of matter describe a nature in transition, where there is no boundary, but a set of changing spaces. The garden represents a form of liminality, becoming an ambiguous space, not based on categories, but on interpretations.

The project was submitted on the 30th of November 2020 to Biennale del Giardino Mediterraneo, Catania.

This timeless Time of the Year
Lucia Bachner, Anton Engel, Barbara Kregiel, Sarah Ferreira dos Santos, Akinori Tao
invited by Lisa Klosterkötter and Elena Malzew

October 2020

AN EASY METHOD OF REPRESENTING NATURAL OBJECTS ACCORDING TO THE RULES OF ART

Lisa Klinger & Malte van der Meyden

October 2020

Easy Method or Natural Objects according to the rules of art or Showroom objets d’art

Find the upper edge of a wall and observe carefully how the edge appears to angle down. Follow that edge line with your straight edge all the way to your Eye Level line and you will have found a vanishing point. You will find other edges that will end at the same point. Now each item in the flock is a coordinate of earth and sky, enumerating space.

The candle recedes into the distance.

A candle is made of paraffin wax, made of petrol. By heating in the absence of air the amorphous carbon is converted into polycrystalline graphite.

Light up again. A candle is a spine that holds all our bodies. Bend your arms, according to the rules of art — deep — it is a moulding. Light up again.
Our bones are the last to melt away.

Black-lead covered columns and plateaus in ashes form the axis, (would) appear edge-wise no more than a line. Straight lines and curves, the almost cubist tension between 2D and 3D reaches its apogee in what looks like a sculpture, until its used as a tableaux. Remotely illuminating bodies in space. Dip your hand in a palette of graphite, applying the soft pigments with a fingertip.

The representation and appearance of any given object, as we see nothing but through those mediums, all we see is in perspective. The practice of becoming or an easy method of bringing-to-life. Designing truly, without departing from the rules of art — without understanding any rules at all. To give room, for the hid figures to be seen: which is to overturn both art and nature at once.¹

For the exhibition at ÆdT Lisa Klinger and Malte van der Meyden build a creative union between respective backgrounds in image-making and object-making. They quickly discovered they had much in common in terms of material fantasies and obsessions. The concept was initially inspired by the baroque technique of ‚practice of perspective‘ a guideline for how to draw a three-dimensional space, with rules for the proportion and position of objects and figures in space and practical methods of drawing after nature. This concept and technique intermingles with the interest in transplanting natural phenomena — draught from their bodies — to design and art. The outcome forms an equation between product, some kind of functional item that has a use value, and an object d’art. Therefore the drawings contributed by Lisa are seen as a sculptural process of bringing-to-life, embodied in graphite. But also reflecting on the malleability of how objects are produced and mediated today. For the visual display the duo produced paravents-style interior made of simple plywood forms, covered in a graphite-pigment-solution unfolding through the exhibition space which simultaneously function as passage, paravent and display.

¹frei nach deBreuil (paraphrasiert)

text by Simone Curaj

I AM ALL YOURS

Ekaterina Reinbold, Michel Wagenschütz
DC-Open Galleries

September 2020

I AM ALL YOURS is an attempt to leave behind a rhetoric of negotiation that is permeated with economic logic and to draft relations imbued with sharing and desire. The displayed interweaving of friendship, devotion and work is made aesthetically tangible through the intimate format of the double exhibition.

Notes:
Beziehungsweisen ≈ Produktionsweisen

Freundschaft als Quelle der Beunruhigung
die Idee des intimen Formates ... die Einsamkeit einer Sprachnachricht? Aufmerksamkeit schenken
there is no superiority in making things or in re-making things...

Under any Sea lies a Desert

Nicola Baratto & Yiannis Mouravas
curated by Haris Giannouras

August 2020

The Diver

Water doesn’t make us whole. We were never really broken.

Coming back from the swift moving dream, in which he had been wrapped, he found himself awake lying in the bottom of what seemed to be a deep never-ending cave. Opening his eyes didn’t really make much of a difference. The darkness spewed all over, mounting everything up until the furthest point the eye can see. A tiny opening, a narrow slit cutting through the rocks was the only visible point of orientation. An indicator for where was upwards and where was downwards.

Squatting on all fours, dangling around, dragging his feeble body across the dirt that covered the floor, he startled. She was still asleep taking one deep breath in at a time, before allowing her mouth to release the pressure of a miscalculated first introduction and exhale by putting her lips together and by forcing the wind out of her body. Filling the void of her cave, making a loud screeching sound, one that both amazed and stroke fear in the hearts of untamed men. The scenery was a dark and powerful wetland. Diving deep under the surface of the known there is always an unsolicited factor waiting to come alive. With waves breaking on the shore there is a certain amount of truth that comes from within, or histories about pasts that have long been proclaimed untouchable and future relics from the zone of Orion.

The head was tilted sideways; her eyes piercing and glistening even as they remained hidden underneath her eyelids, while her hair was spread all over. Scaled, broken, rough, he could already picture how it must have felt to run his hand through this forest of snakes and bubbles. What a stupid boy. Nymphs of the flowing waters are dangerous creatures he thought to himself, because the man he was, dictated the way he dealt with the Others.

What is this image I’m looking at? He thought to himself. It is the morning sky or a mirror that stopped working?

She was painted, she was created, someone might have made her long time ago and put her there to scare passersby and smile while dreams crossed her mind. Gorgons are otherworldly creatures that, according to various mythologies, are equipped with the power of their God-given curse.

She turned around and simply decided to ignore this tinny funny intruder, who on that day ventured into the unknown of her rightfully owned cave, the place she was basically forced to call home in her attempt to get away from the crashed dreams that is life above. Gorgon simply kept her powerful eyelids shut and kept on dreaming, making sure none of her dreamlands would spill out of her head and make their way to the menacing hands of the intruder. Even if he wasn’t there to take them away. Even if his sole imperative throughout his mission that lead him on that dark cave was something completely different. Even if that reason would change the course of history forever.

The diver never stood a chance.

The Occulus Rifter

Stretched open, cracking, she trembles under his eye. Her skin is scaled, her fins tired from her long travels, her tail large enough to break apart an entire airplane. She breathes in, exhales out. Her body swings back and forth, dancing between the waves. Exhausted from the migrating movements her foremothers blessed her with, she has to take a brave leap of faith towards the surface and then run back again towards the darkened abyss. She holds her breath and swallows her pride. Playing a game of push and pull through the big blues she will continue her choreography until her days come to an end. But for now, she will just continue sifting through and against the tender cheeks of water formations, allowing for new codes and structures of order to form. But sometimes nostalgia takes over.

The whales used to be fierce warriors of the skies. Armed with weapons from Venus herself they could race across the universe and defeat almost any kind of enemy. They would just appear out of nowhere and swiftly yet precisely conquer their foes. Yet this one appeared defeated, broken, tender; tethered to the pride of her past lives she remained out there swimming across the ocean, whilst attempting to stay alive.

There was a time she accidently got stuck inside a cave. In a sad attempt of feeding herself she lost track of her route and ended up inside a peculiar rocky underwater area. One small rift looked as her only chance of salvation. A sleek crack between the surfaces would perhaps make it possible to break free. Because perhaps she could be able to free herself from the unworthiness of her daily activities, the hollowed-out truth of her sad ritualistic recollections.

The Dreamer

At the bottom of any sea, there lies a desert. One that’s supposed to be walked on, trembled on. The politics surrounding bodies of water trace the outlines of a violent mapping. Following the jug’s form and function (in its’ conventional conception as an object, as well as in its’ state of thingness) the sea becomes a vast wetland, an ecology, that both fills the void and is at the same time filled by all. Yet the ghosts of the desert still remain, regardless of what state of matter they might be in, their pervasiveness strikes as a horrifying machine. The languages of archeology have long been used as a vehicle towards nationalism of many sorts, cracking myths and legends open, slapping Benjamin’s bloody angel right across the face, they bring tears to his troubled eyes. “The Face Of The Angel Of History Is Turned Toward The Poet (sic)” the last dreamer thought to himself; And it was all for noting, because it is all going to remain lost forever. Like tears in the ocean. He forced his eyes open and rushed to the seashore.

The Vessel

Exploring the ‘Thingness’ of things on the case of the jug Heidegger begins with the following description: ‘something of the kind that holds something else within it. The jug‘s holding is done by its base and sides. This container itself can again be held by the handle. As a vessel the jug is something self-sustained, something that stands on its own...’1 What happens if the jug is dropped into the ocean? How does its unattainable and unapproachable nature change to adapt into the vastness of the water filling it in? How is the act of holding by its base and sides changed, and the jug transposed from “the past of a thing” to “a thing of the past”? How does the holding both from the sides and the inside take place now that the transcendence of water washes away its carnal sins?

A relic. A timekeeper.

Description (i.e. the act and intention of describing something): The base has a round, circular shape with a diameter of around 30 cm. It supports a long neck that moves from the bottom upwards and ends to a cup-form that opens and creates a hollow part composed by thinly made walls that slightly tilt towards the insides. Both of these side parts (i.e. side in relation to a fixed standardized point of view) are framed by elongated round shaped holders that bear resemblance to a human ear, or eye.

A fish broken down in two parts, split in the middle, cut in two halves; a male head turned upside down. If the vessel forms and shapes that past, history is bound to follow.

Conrad Müller, Philip Ullrich

August 2020

Installationviews by Philip Ulrich

Saure Äpfel

Jana Kurashvili, Björn Knapp

April 2020

nothing close enough

Alyce Ford, Rebecca Grundmann, Matthias Hoch, Tobias Hohn & Stanton Taylor, Moritz Krauth, Florence Lam & Tim Löhde, Lukas Langguth, Arisa Purkpong, Damian Rosellen, Josephine Scheuer, Kerry Downey & Joanna Seitz, Christoph Wiedemann
düsseldorf photo+

March 2020

FAST VTL SOGAR AUCH

Zoe Dittrich-Wamser, Nina Nadig, Majd Suliman, Pia Litzenberger

December 2019

HALLT DAS ECHO DER SCHMIEDEHAEMMER DURCH DIE STRAßEN OBERBILKS.

Eine Aufstellung:
Lassen schichtweise verschiedene Phasen ineinander sickern und sacken. Unser Ort ist temporär, improvisiert, gewachsen, verzahnt. Am Ende des Tages findet sich, bei Licht und im Dunkeln.
My body, my choice.

GIORGIO/TOWER

Karoline Dausien
curated by Marie Himmerich

October 2019

Karoline Dausien entwickelt ihre Arbeiten aus gefundenen Motiven und Formstrategien, die sie ihrem alltäglichen Umfeld sowie den Traditionen von Hochkunst, Mode- oder Produktdesign entnimmt. Hieraus entstehen zumeist seriell angelegte Werkzyklen, für die die Künstlerin, ausgehend von den Gegebenheiten des Ausstellungsorts, jeweils neue Formate der mise-en-scène erarbeitet.

„Giorgio/Tower“ spielt vor diesem Hintergrund auf die Geschichte und das Eigenleben sozialer und funktioneller Räume an, wie sie sich bereits in der Umnutzung eines alten Gemüseladens zum Ausstellungsort ÆdT abzeichnen. „Giorgio“ lautete der Rufname eines italienischen Wirts, bei dem Dausien als Kind mit ihren Eltern in Bremen regelmäßig Essen ging. Nach dem Wegzug der Familie Ende der 1990er Jahre wurde aus dem Restaurant eine Diskothek. Zur Irritation Dausiens bezogen sich alte Freunde auf ihren Erinnerungsort fortan als „Tower.“

Dausiens Ausstellung erzählt von solchen öffentlichen und privaten Orten, ihrer Bestimmung und dem atmosphärischen Nachhall, den sie erzeugen. Aber auch von ihren formalen Auffälligkeiten oder handlungsbezogenen Details, die als Formkürzel in Skulpturen und genähten Zeichnungen wiederkehren: der maritimen Deckengestaltung einer Wiener Pizzeria, dem Beckenverlauf eines kalifornischen Hotelbrunnens – abgezeichnet aus einem Reiseführer – oder Plastikketten aus dem Baumarkt.

„Giorgio/Tower“ ist aber auch Auseinandersetzung mit dem Potential der Farbe Rot in den Medien Kunstleder und Keramik und den Assoziationen, die diese Farbwahl je nach Verarbeitungs- oder Gebrauchstraditionen (Kunst, Pop, Porno, Design, Trash) hervorruft. Die größtenteils für die Ausstellung entstandenen Objekte scheinen diese Assoziationen in einem Antäuschen bestehender Objektkategorien vom Lackmöbel zum Dekoartikel durchzuspielen. Ihre unbekümmert ungelenke Mimikry fliegt dabei schon von Weitem auf.

Installationviews by A.R.

The dilated Body

Roman Schramm
DC-Open Galleries

September 2019

A body-in-life is more than a body merely alive.
A body-in-life dilates the actor’s presence and the spectator’s perception.

Faced with certain actors, a spectator is attracted by an elementary energy which seduces without mediation, even before he has deciphered the individual actions or questioned himself about their meaning and understood it.

For an Occidental spectator, this experience is obvious when he watches an Oriental actor-dancer about whose culture, traditions and theatrical conventions he often knows little. Faced with a performance whose meaning he cannot fully understand and whose execution he cannot competently appreciate, he suddenly finds himself in the dark. But he must admit that in spite of everything there exists in this void a power which holds his attention, a “seduction” which precedes intellectual understanding.

But seduction alone or comprehension alone cannot endure for very long without each other: the seduction would be brief, the com- prehension would lack interest.

The Occidental spectator who watches an Oriental actor-dancer is but an extreme cxample. The same situation occurs every time theatre is well done. But when the observer is faced with his “own” theatre, all that he already knows, the questions which he recognizes and which tell him where or how to look for the answers, create a veil which hide the existence of the elementary power of the “seduction”.

We often call this power of the actor “presence”. But it is not something which is, which is there in front of us. It is continuous mutation, growth, taking place before our very eyes. It is a body-in-life. The flow of energies which characterize our daily beha- viour has been derailed. The tensions which secretly govern our normal way of being physically present, come to the surface in the actor, become visible, unexpectedly.

The dilated body is a hot body, but not in the emotional or sentimental sense. Feeling and emotion are only a consequence, both for the actor and the audience. It is above all a red body, in the scientific sense of the term: the particles which make up daily behavi- our have been excited and produce more encrgy. they have undergone an increment of motion, they move further apart, attract and oppose each other with more force, more speed, take up more space.

If one questions masters of Oriental and Occidental theatre and compares their answers. one notes that underneath the different techniques lie certain similar principles. These can be combined into three lines of action:

1. the alteration of daily balance in the search for a precarious or “luxury” balance;
2. the dynamic of opposition;
3. the use of incoherent coherence.

Eugenio Barba, The Dilated Body, Rome: Zeami Libri, 1985

Installationviews by Roman Schramm and ÆdT

Music through the silver Channels

NASSSAU

August 2019

no images available

ALL IS ONE - LA CITTÁ INVISIBILI

Philipp Boshart, Paul Galas, Natalia Drabik, Bernd Glaser, Manuel Gröger, Paulina Hoffmann, Yuni Hwang, Hanna Kuster, Edmée Laurin, Teresa Linhard, Jacob Madel, Christoph Matthes, Florian Moldan, Philippe Nilles, Murat Önen, Damian Rosellen, Fridolin Schoch, Andreas Steinbrecher, Max Wetter
Büdchentag

August 2019

I am a City of Habits

Albin Bergström, Jackie Graßmann, Irina Lotarevich, Bruno Mokross, Evelyn Plaschg, Siggi Sekira, Dan Vogt
organized by Inga Charlotte Thiele

July 2019

it is June and I am rejecting to work on the things that I should be working on until this semester is done. instead, I fantasize about three exhibitions showing the same artworks by people whose work I think other people should see and make out with someone at 5 am in the grass next to the Donau. I like when things are simple, but well made. when there is a subtle intelligence to them, when they make a clear point but it’s not on the surface, when they’re playful, humorous, not self-indulgent. maybe this feeling comes more strongly at me now after having visited the Venice Biennale two weeks ago and it sucked so much; and people were throwing the high tech and effects basically in your face. we leave Arsenale, we scream, and run. this is when aesthetic experience becomes so bodily that your emotions just burst out in a stream of uncontrollable physiological expressions. William James and Carl Lange suggested in 1884 that what we commonly refer to as the physiological expressions of emotions are in fact identical with emotions. the sweat in the palm of your hand is the excitement.¹

when Vernon Lee and her lover Kit at the beginning of the 20th century started thinking about the bodily and affective responses they observed with one another while looking at artworks („quick breaths, sensations of movement, muscular tensions“²), they conclude, that these effects were not in relation to the subjects depicted in the artworks, but merely about their form: lines, curves, rhythm. finally, they state a similar proposition compared to James’ and Lange’s: the experience of pleasure while looking at an artwork could be the effect, not the cause, of such bodily expressions. or: our physiological responses would constitute beauty and pleasure (or in our case revulsion) in the first place. one might think that there is something missing here, and I think it’s true: what about our internal psychological processes? after Kit and Lee were broken up, Lee revisited their writings. she comes to find that the bodily responses she had found so compelling in Kit were probably secondary expressions of an essentially mental phenomenon: „empathy“, or Einfühlung, as described in German aesthetic theory. when looking at an artwork we might come to say that it has ‚rhythm‘, because it reactivates memories of former movements our eyes have witnessed. this connection between bodily phenomena and the observation of artworks is drawn by Lee one more time: probably, we can never fully explain why we like one artwork and not another (and of course contemporary art comes along with a whole new evaluation system than what Lee and Kit were engaging with). also, there might be days on which we are moved by a work and remain untouched the next. Lee finally proposes an aesthetic theory that is based on a theory of the self, taking into account sensations and moods like boredom, the weather, crowds, being hungry, and having a broken heart.

after having been in the thunderstorm of empty phrases at the Venice Biennale and after having experienced many emotional ups and downs throughout the past weeks, I desperately need to feel that there lies a practice in exhibition making that takes into account the viewer’s body. over the course of three weeks, I will have the works of seven artists traveling through four different cities with me. they will appear differently to me each time I see them in a new place, which as well will be coined with old and new memories, emotions, people, and thus me making sense of them in a different way. while having their own (hi-)story and standpoint, they at the same time mirror my own, open it up and maybe change it a little every once in a while.

these exhibitions are private in the same sense that they are public, they are as transient as they are eternal. come and have your memories speak with us.

¹ please feel free to contact me about this during the opening(s)
² Lee, Vernon: The Psychology of an Art Writer, 2018.

Fruits suspended and swaying

Ursula Böckler, Peter Fend, Hanna-Maria Hammari, Yong Xiang Li, Tanja Nis-Hansen
curated by Dennis Brzek

June 2019

In lieu of a window one looks at the ground. In lieu of a ground one looks at oneself.

Agnes Varda‘s movie “Le Bonheur“ from 1965 constitutes a nascent feminist move- ment‘s contested relation to the natural. The French filmmaker‘s pastorale, as critic Max Kozloff describes it, opens with a panning shot across a field of corn shining in dull brightness, its subdued gold specked with bloody spots of poppy flowers. Un- der the bright summer sun, it blossoms in seeming contentment, ready to become futile soil for the happy life of a young family. Their existence coalesces with the landscape’s beauty and peacefulness. Only when a tragic disaster disrupts the pic- turesque family life is the parabolic potential of its seeds and roots called to action. The iridescent imaginings of the merry botany cinematographically eat up the dead body of the mother and give shelter to her blithe replacement, presenting future as a time of unduly exhaustion.

The term resource becomes vital in its manifold variations of describing the action of harvesting and subsequent material transformation. Any connotation with a global force that afflicts violence upon those entities categorized as natural is more than evident and the inherently material aspects of the physical qualities of our surroun- ding are understood to be necessarily embedded within those terms of exchange. Any residual myth about vitalist currencies like Gaia and network theories are to be faced as mapped solely following the material agency of capitalism. In order to etch closer towards an engagement with our surrounding that creates pathways outside of those cartographies, one rather has to redraw the map of ontological existence. These methods for engagement give a new outlook on a bleak reality that is faced with continued swallowing by patriarchal myths about courses of nature already described by Varda that have ultimately resulted in a contemporary crisis too hyper-large to comprehend.

“Fruits Suspended and Swaying“ takes the affective potential of ideas about nature as its starting point, thinking about ways of interacting with landscape and its semio- tic produce as a material resource concurrently with their role as capitalistic goods within socio-economic circulation processes. The works in the space will traverse into the winter garden annex of ÆdT, creating a loose bond between the economic spatiality evoked through the remaining fruit shop architecture in the first room and processes of growth and blossoming in the subsequent spaces. The sun and its potential as a source of different kinds of energies is therefore in one way or another at the center of this exhibition.

Heute

MP GOLD

May 2019

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Felix Bahret

May 2019

Äther

Christian Theiß

April 2019

POSITIONAL PROBLEMS

Boaz Yosef Friedman

November 2018

In my recent exhibition, Positional Problems, I have had the opportunity to present a varying body of work. The works may be placed in different and overlapping thematic circles. In works such as Toaster, Cloud(s) and Gates of Hell, I examined the relationship between sculptural space and humoristic representation; what I call Comic Minimalism. Another way to form these thoughts would be: Where does daily banality meet grinding formalism?

By also presenting large scale sculptures in passport-photo format (Positional Problems), a varying graphic of ambiguous volumes (81 Variationen eines Forms), and a one-to-one draft of an oversized stencil (Entwurf einer Schablone) I wanted to address aspects of presence a nd absence in sculpture. What makes an object real? Reflecting on the general communication and discrepancy between my works, I came to realize that there was an underlying problem about the artistic position*:

How wide can an artistic position be?
Can you work without a hierarchy of importance? Can every work be a position in itself?

Safety first

Phung-Tien Phan & Niklas Taleb
presented by Simone Curaj

September 2018

Think Safe, Work Safe, Be Safe. Safety starts here.

Vorne Regale, Gemüseladen, white cube, Kühlschrank, Wintergarten, Küche, Atelier. Rauchen unter Kiwis.
Dann Zimmer.

Am Ende des Tages der Anfang.

Installationviews by Niklas Taleb und ÆdT

Linienstraße

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