The Whole Life: Archives & Imaginaries
Talks, installations, performances, screenings, online platform
Berlin 10557
Germany
T +49 30 397870
F +49 30 3948679
info@hkw.de
Online platform
wholelife.hkw.de
In an exhibition of installation-based case studies and a three-day congress, The Whole LIfe: Archives & Imaginaries illuminates the multifaceted relations between archives and society and reflects archives as sites for counter-narratives. From March 24 to 26, art installations and a diverse program transform the entire HKW into an alternative archival space.
On a material and structural basis, archives work to constantly construct shared realities in and across different temporalities. Therefore, archives not only provide knowledge about the past, they rather determine future knowledge itself in its social, political and cultural contexts. During the congress, artists and scholars will present alternative narrative forms and research strategies in experimental formats. They demonstrate how comprehensively archives, as infrastructures of preservation, perpetuate hegemonic thinking. At the same time, they propose methods and practices that make archives accessible as a resource for reflecting contemporary questions and for future knowledge production. How does this change the meaning of archives? And what are the social and cultural implications?
In eight installations, artists unfold their specific strategies for engaging with archival material. Alongside others, Assaf Gruber’s docufictional film Transient Witness provides insight into a world-famous art collection from a dog’s perspective. Based on the archives at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Charlotte Eifler and Clarissa Thieme’s film installation reveals the ways in which digital technologies, witnessing and processes of reconciliation are related in societies traumatized by war in the former Yugoslavia. Tony Cokes extracts fragments from literary sources and witness accounts of explicit violence during specific historical moments, including World War II and the Rwandan genocide, and makes it possible to experience what this means for the politics of memory today. On HKW’s roof terrace, the Mobile Academy Berlin and Markus Öhrn with Death, Destruction & Dodos place a shredder for the ceremonial disposal of archival material.
The congress is the final event of The Whole Life: An Archive Project, which is conceived by Arsenal—Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. / Archive außer sich, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Pina Bausch Foundation and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). In May 2019, a week-long kick-off congress and the international Whole Life Academy explored contemporary methods, orders and conditions of archives in Dresden. Since then, the Academy has been developing and practicing a nomadic curriculum which recently unfolded in ten online workshops. The website wholelife.hkw.de maps the research and compiles essays, photographs and videos from the project network in an online repository.
More information here.
Detailed program here.
Installations by Bini Adamczak, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Chto Delat, Tony Cokes, Charlotte Eifler & Clarissa Thieme, Assaf Gruber, Mobile Academy Berlin, Olaf Nicolai with Nina Akhvlediani
Lectures by and talks with Mieke Bal, Amanda Boetzkes, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Başak Ertür, Avery F. Gordon, Doreen Mende, Monika Rinck, Rasha Salti, Ines Schaber, Shela Sheikh, Cornelia Sollfrank, Oxana Timofeeva, Kathryn Yusoff among others.
Performances by Salim Bayri, Chto Delat, Euripides Laskaridis, Paula Montecinos Oliva, Markus Öhrn with Death, Destruction & Dodos
Screenings with films by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, Mario Marret, Yugantar among others.
A collaboration between Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video Art / Archive außer sich, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Pina Bausch Foundation, and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). Part of HKW’s project The New Alphabet, supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and by the Federal Foreign Office.
Press Contact
Jan Trautmann, Head of Press and PR, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
T +49 (0) 30 39787-192 / presse@hkw.de
