Wild Frictions: The Politics and Poetics of Interruption

Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien recently opened Wild Frictions: The Politics and Poetics of Interruption, a group exhibition produced in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, where an iteration of the exhibition is on view through September 19. Bringing together works by 19 artists using installation, performance, sculpture, sound, and video, the exhibition examines some of the ways in which artists interrupt, confuse, scramble, and sometimes obstruct as a means of critiquing grand narratives, and the unconscious, sometimes violent, rituals and habits that structure everyday life. The exhibition is on view at Kunstraum Kreuzberg through August 22 and is accompanied by a suite of public programming.

A special issue of the periodical The Third Rail functions as an accompanying reader, and offers the opportunity to engage with the exhibition’s themes in print and online. Issue 14 features contributions by a selection of the participating artists, as well as newly commissioned texts by literary theorist Emily Apter on the art of impasse, design polymath Prem Krishnamurthy on “bumpiness,” director and curator Legacy Russell on “digital virality and intimacy,” and a conversation between curator Ana Janevski and artist Nora Turato. In a cooperation with the platform Contemporary And (C&), three co-commissioned articles published on C& and Kunstraum Kreuzberg’s websites explore adjacent topics.

“Gesucht: die Lücke im Ablauf, das Andre in der Wiederkehr des Gleichen, das Stottern im sprachlosen Text, das Loch in der Ewigkeit, der vielleicht erlösende Fehler.”
(Heiner Müller, Shakespeare’s Factory 1, 1985, S. 13)

New commissions by Félicia Atkinson, Nora Turato, and Banu Çiçek Tülü, and existing works by Nikita Gale, Steffani Jemison, Christine Sun Kim, and Laure Prouvost use sound and spoken or written language to challenge linguistic and sonic conventions. Through decontextualized speech and fragmented writing, “filler” words and punctuation devices—as well as free jazz and white noise—they present the interstitial as a zone from which new meaning may emerge. Ceramic sculpture, furniture, and video works by Trisha Baga, Ani Kasten, Janette Laverrière, and Ouecha use various materials and technologies to interrupt and question physical and virtual environments. Cameron Downey, Anna Ehrenstein, keyon gaskin, Birgit Hein, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Jimmy Robert, and Pilvi Takala wield movement and social encounter as tools for disobedience and mischief-making, inserting and presenting their own or other bodies and objects into normative and patriarchal spaces to examine the ways in which the human body can resist societal norms and enact alternative futures. 

“We have reached the sea but there is nothing to sea. (…) Looking and Looping till the end.”
(Laure Prouvost, Metal Man - Where do we go, 2019)

Participating artists: Félicia Atkinson, Trisha Baga, Cameron Downey**, Jesse Darling*, Constant Dullaart*, Anna Ehrenstein**, Nikita Gale, keyon gaskin**, Birgit Hein**, Steffani Jemison, Kahlil Joseph, Ani Kasten**, Christine Sun Kim, Janette Laverrière**, Klara Lidén*, Hanne Lippard*, Jesse Ly*, Ouecha, PressForPractice*, Laure Prouvost, Lili Reynaud-Dewar**, Jimmy Robert, Sable Elyse Smith*, Pilvi Takala, Banu Çiçek Tülü**, Nora Turato.

*participating in Cincinnati only
**participating in Berlin only

Organized by Amara Antilla, Senior Curator, Contemporary Arts Center and Sandra Teitge, curator and researcher, Berlin, with research assistant Casey Bergman.

Public programming
A series of public programs and performances presented on the occasion of the exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg includes two soundwalks led by Banu Çiçek Tülü; readings with Jimmy Robert and Félicia Atkinson; one panel and two workshops organized by Anna Ehrenstein with Ayşe Güleç, Suza Husse, Yen Le (Nails Education Centre Berlin), and Thams Does Nails; as well as new performances by keyon gaskin and Nora Turato.

Soundwalk #1: “Finding the Aural Rupture” with Banu Çiçek Tülü
Thursday, July 1, 2021, 6pm

Soundwalk #2: “Rhythmic Encounters” with Banu Çiçek Tülü and Samuel Perea-Díaz
Sunday, July 11, 2021, 4pm

Reading with Jimmy Robert
Thursday, July 15, 2021, 6pm

N*A*I*L*S Panel with Ayşe Güleç and Suza Husse, featuring Yen Le (Nails Education Centre Berlin)
Thursday, August 5, 2021, 6pm

N*A*I*L*S Workshop with Thams Does Nails (QT*I*BIPoC)
Sunday, August 8, 2021, 4–7pm

N*A*I*L*S Workshop with Thams Does Nails (public)
Sunday, August 15, 2021, 12–3pm

Sonic reading with Félicia Atkinson, “A Forest Petrifies”
Thursday, August 19, 2021, 6pm

Performance by Nora Turato, “What Is Dead May Never Die” 
Sunday, August 22, 2021, 2pm

Performance by keyon gaskin
Sunday, August 22, 2021, 3pm

The exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien is generously supported by the Capital Cultural Fund and the Senate Department for Culture and Europe: the Fund for Municipal Galleries, and the Fund for Exhibition Payments for Visual Artists.

The exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center is generously supported by the CAC Exhibition Fund. It is made possible in part by The Exhibition Funding Programme of ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway.