ÜBER WUT / ON RAGE
exhibition, film, talks
14 March – 9 May 2010
Opening: Saturday, 13 March, 6 pm
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
Germany
From March14th to May 9th the Haus der Kulturen der Welt examines a range of aesthetic and philosophic questions centered on the concept of rage. Is there a new “culture of rage” in the current economic and political crisis and states of emergency? How can we process in positive and creative ways instances of war, repression, mass migration, poverty or urban bankruptcy? What new geographies and phenomena emerge from rage provoking events? How do different cultural spheres take control or become empowered when greed and power dominate? Throughout the exhibition and discursive program of ÜBER WUT / ON RAGE, artists, writers and cultural historians probe the psychological, social, political, and economic consequences that effect a population in the aftermath of dramatic and violent changes. The strategies and intellectual processes used to deal with rage are the theme of the exhibition and discursive program co-curated by Valerie Smith, Susanne Stemmler and Cordula Hamschmidt from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, who together have conceived a thematically and medially interlinked project.
Jimmie Durham’s installation “Building a Nation,” which arose during a series of live performances in 2006, examines the history of systematic genocide against the indigenous peoples of North America. Injurious quotes from powerful Americans appear between the detritus of a North American landscape. Within her monumental architectural drawings, Seher Shah makes a direct relationship to the body, using space as a metaphor for an interior world that mines the urban history of solids and voids, memory and its absence. Shoja Azari’s coffee house painting, “Final Judgment,” is a video projection, focusing on how all media is used to perpetuate myths and political agendas, in this case, the exploitation of religious fundamentalism. The death or the deadening of culture is a theme that runs through of Tadeusz Kantor’s (1915-1990) prolific works. In “Klasa szkolna dzielo zamkniete/The Classroom – Closed Work,” spectators watch as a boy confined to his school desk, slowly but surely, acquiesces to indoctrination.
A work of assembly architecture specially developed by the ifau collective (institute für angewandte urbanistik) creates a setting – the “spatial heart” of the accompanying program – for discursive negotiations within the exhibition.
The exhibition includes four commissioned works: The international artists’ collective reloading images, whose work begins at the interface between aesthetic and discursive practices, has developed a new piece for the exhibition that revolves around the need for the international community to take responsibility for their fate. In “on how to appear invisible: the negotiation,” they create a symbolic replica of the United Nations Security Council and fictional deliberations. The project will be variously represented in three cities: Berlin (HKW), Beirut (Homeworks V), Cairo (Townhouse Gallery). In Regina José Galindo new piece “Looting,” she translates the continuation of the history of colonial exploitation into a performance. Her work is created on-site during the opening and will leave behind a video document and the affects of her performance. The Berlin-based Swedish artist Klara Lidén, whose work explores the body’s relationship to architecture as well as intimate forms of resistance to socially accepted norms and role conceptions, installs up in the balcony of the exhibition hall an environment amidst objects and video works with music. “May the Arrogant Not Prevail,” follows on an earlier work in which Michael Rakowitz dramatized the looting of the Baghdad Museum as an imperialist paradigm. For HKW he will create replica of the current replica of the Ishtar Gate that has turned into a tourist attraction for American soldiers stationed in Baghdad. His “copy of a copy” is constructed from Arab packaging materials found in Berlin, the surrogate city of the “original” Ishtar Gate now at the Pergamon Museum.
Lectures, Artist Talks and Performances (including Discoteca Flaming Star, Mick Taussig, Yana Milev, Abdelwahhab Meddeb, Jean Ziegler, Stefan Weidner) examine the topic of rage along with an extensive film program. The event includes a three-day open seminar led by Georg Seeßlen – conceived and organized by the Guardini Stiftung in partnership with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt – and Documentaries and Feature Films which take up the themes of the lectures and talks. In the educational program “Learn and Experience” artists take school classes and senior groups into “Wuträume” to search for traces of relics and the witnesses of social, political and emotional states of emergency.
During the Gallery Weekend Berlin the Haus der Kulturen der Welt features a special program, introducing Oreet Ashery + Larissa Sansour and author Stefan Weidner on April 28, followed by Jimmie Durham in conversation with Mick Taussig on April 29. Discoteca Flaming Star will perform on May 1, before Klara Lidén + Tvillingarna will match performance and music. (www.hkw.de,