The Future Archive
3 June–29 July 2012
Julieta Aranda
n.b.k. Showroom
5 June–27 July 2012
Opening: Saturday 2 June, 7pm
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)
Chausseestraße 128 / 129
10115 Berlin, Germany
www.nbk.org
3 June–29 July 2012
The Future Archive
Projects and contributions by: Maryanne Amacher, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Muriel Cooper, Olafur Eliasson, Florian Hecker, György Kepes, Richard Leacock / Jon Rubin, Amanda Moore, Otto Piene, Micah Silver / Robert The, Aldo Tambellini, Urbonas Studio / Nader Tehrani NADAAA, Markus Weisbeck
Curator: Ute Meta Bauer
The exhibition project The Future Archive picks up on artistic research projects of the 1970s and 1980s from the environment of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), which was founded in 1967 by György Kepes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge / USA. The groundbreaking artistic approaches of a generation of CAVS Directors and CAVS Fellows, such as György Kepes and Otto Piene, influenced by Bauhaus and postwar modernism, were ahead of their time. Even today, these radical ideas and collective projects of the so-called Techno-Social Movement are the starting point for contemporary art production. Along with historical and contemporary documentary material from the environment of the CAVS, the exhibition brings together current artistic and creative works. The Future Archive is an ongoing visionary project and shows how artists, architects, and designers in their interdisciplinary approaches adopt these historical standards and update them with new issues. The visual communication of this “archive in progress” draws on experiments by Muriel Cooper, designer and director of the Visual Language Workshop (1975–1994) at MIT. The design of the exhibition space refers to Aldo Tambellini’s Electromedia-Performance Black (1965) and Piene’s light works. Other historical references in the exhibition include the projects initiated by Kepes for the Boston Harbor (1968–1970, 1973–1976) and the Charles River (1971–1974), Maryanne Amacher’s Ear Tone compositions, as well as the multi-media installation Centerbeam (1977 / 1978) developed under the direction of Piene, which was first shown at Documenta 6 (1977). Parallel to the exhibition, video works by CAVS Professors and CAVS Fellows from the collection of n.b.k. Video-Forum can be viewed. In this interplay of past and future, the The Future Archive at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein unfolds its potential, understanding the world as a complex structure and challenge. The exhibition, performances, lectures, and discussions show the historical significance of the CAVS for interdisciplinary collaborations of artists today and fundamentally point out the possibilities that are opening up at research-oriented academies and universities and as a result, are consistently expanding our understanding of art. In 2009 the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the Visual Arts Program merged to become the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and Ute Meta Bauer served as Founding Director.
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) in cooperation with the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Program
Saturday 2 June 2012, 8pm
Becoming Archive
Multimedia-Performance by Amanda Moore (Artist, Cambridge, ACT Alumna)
Tuesday 12 June 2012, 7pm
The Future Archive: Archival Practices
Conversation with Prof. Caroline A. Jones (Art History, MIT, Cambridge), Prof. Sven Spieker (History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara), moderated by Sophie Goltz (curator n.b.k.)
Tuesday 19 June 2012, 7pm
The Future Archive: Environmental Form and Monumentality
Exhibtion talk with Luis Berríos-Negrón (Architect, MIT Alumni, Berlin), Erik Ellingsen (Co-director Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin)
Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7pm
The Future Archive: Center for Advanced Visual Studies
Conversation with Prof. Bernd Kracke (President, HfG Offenbach, CAVS Alumni), Prof. Antoni Muntadas (Art and Public Sphere, MIT, Cambridge, CAVS Fellow), moderated by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (MIT, Cambridge)
Tuesday 3 July 2012, 7pm
The Future Archive: Visible Language Workshop
Exhibtion talk with Prof. Markus Weisbeck (Graphic Design, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Tuesday 17 July 2012, 7pm
Directions in Kinetic Art in the mid-20th Century
Lecture by Prof. Alexander Alberro (Art History, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York), moderated by Helmut Draxler (Art historian and critic, Berlin)
Sunday 29 July 2012, 8pm
Music-Performance
Florian Hecker (Artist, ACT Research Affiliate, Vienna)
5 June–27 July 2012
n.b.k. Showroom
Julieta Aranda
Curator: Sophie Goltz
In the work Multifamiliar (2012), specially developed for the Showroom of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Julieta Aranda uses as a point of departure a social studies textbook for children, titled Living as Neighbors. The book—published in 1963—follows two families of different racial background, in a story line that revolves around one of the families moving into Starret City, the first low-income housing project in New York. These architectural solutions to urban housing problems—bulding complexes called Multifamiliares, Plattenbauten, Projects—have in common both a formal grandiosity (brutalism), as well as a patent disconnect to the realities of every day life within the constructs that they propose. Aranda’s installation establishes a dialogue between the formal determination of housing projects, and the mundane exchanges that take place within their grid.
Julieta Aranda (*1975 in Mexico-City) works and lives in New York and Berlin. She studied at School of Visual Arts, New York, and at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, New York.
Neue Berliner Kunstverein is financed with funds from Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin with the support of the Governing Mayor of Berlin—Senate Chancellery—Cultural Affairs.
The Future Archive is made possible with the additional support of:
MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT)
Schering Stiftung
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein is partner of ARTE Creative.
