NEW GHOST ENTERTAINMENT-ENTITLED
December 10th, 2006-February 18th, 2007
Opening: Saturday, December 9th, 2006, 8 p.m.
Kunsthaus Dresden Municipal Gallery for Contemporary Art
Rähnitzgasse 8 | D-01097 Dresden
T. 49-351-8041456
F. 49-351 8041582
E. office@kunsthausdresden.de
www.kunsthausdresden.de
Ghosts are in great demand these days: Not only have they haunted the theoretical discourse, most famously in the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida – numerous dissertations and publications from literary and film scholars as well as the fields of postcolonial, queer and gender studies look at the social meaning of specters and phantasms from multiple perspectives. Also within the realm of art ghosts have experienced a renaissance, and ghosts appear frequently in exhibition titles, articles and art publications. The mythological or literary figure of the ghost is by no means a novelty. At least since antiquity ghosts have been invoked as symbols for the discomforting resurgence of past events into the present and since the Enlightenment ghost have been brought into play within the different arts as a catalyst for the critical reflection of social events.
This led to the idea to bring together writers and artists, whose works seem to conjure up ghosts as a point of reference. New Ghost Entertainment-Entitled poses the question if the engagement with mediumism, spiritualism and ghost stories can be a contemporary approach to invent – or reinvent – artistic and political forms of expression and if ghosts as a medium can add a dimension to the critical engagement within social and political realities.
The medium of film itself some kind of material ghost is central to the project and a film program by Madeleine Bernstorff presents films in a new ghost mood. Its about another world, specters being symptoms of unresolved relationships, of disorder and injustice. Regarding the many attempts to represent the nonrepresentable the program does not concern questions of authenticity or false representations of realities in the past, but how history became a battlefield of representation, which constitutes the current symbolic, economic and political realities.
A variety of specters make their appearance in the beginning of the 21st century in the Western industrial nations and often they seem to go hand in hand. The specter of security, the specter of oil shortage, the revival of nationalism, the new right and an increasingly neoconservative stance regarding international politics to name but a few. At the same time military and geopolitical phantasms of power determine the current political debate. While it is not the goal of the project to give a full account of these complex problems, these frightening social developments provide the context for New Ghost Entertainment-Entitled.
Artists:
David Askevold, Stephan Dillemuth, Paul Gellmann, Frauke Gust, Judith Hopf, Annette Kelm, Alice Könitz, Dirk Lange, Cristobal Lehyt, Julie Lequin, David Maljkovic, Marriage (James Tsang/Math Bass), Reza Monahan, Arthur Ou, Katrin Pesch, Fredrik Strid, Stephanie Taylor, Michaela Wünsch as well as Lisa Marie Auer, Bernd Imminger & Nadja Schütt for STAFETA
Filmprogram:
Films by David Askevold and Shohei Imamura as part of the exhibition.
Films by Ken Jacobs, Shindo Keneto, Alan Klima, Karlheinz Martin (with music selection by Julian Göthe), Monica Rubio, and Joyce Wieland.
Film Screenings: January 6th and 7th, 2007 & February 9th-11th, 2007 at Kunsthaus Dresden.
Along with the exhibition a magazine will be published with contributions by Madeleine Bernstorff, Sladja Blazan, CHEAP and Vaginal Davis, Doris Chon, Molly McGarry, Josef Strau, Odila Triebel, Jan Tumlir, the artists, and others.
Curated by Katrin Pesch.
New Ghost Entertainment-Entitled is a project in cooperation with OR Gallery Vancouver, Canada, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
