KV - LEIPZIG, LEIPZIG (DE)
With Johannes Bendzulla, Jennifer Bennett, Miklós Erhardt, Adelita Husni-Bey, Mutter/Genth, Alexander Rischer, titre provisoire, Anna Lena von Helldorff, YES! Association/Föreningen JA!, Heimo Zobernig
Curated by Krisztina Hunya, Daniel Niggemann
The exhibition Performing Relationships is concerned with the conditions of and possibilities for collaborative processes within and beyond the artistic field. The exhibited artistic positions approach collective structures in a variety of ways ranging from scrutiny and experiment to testing and proof. The diverse strategies on display extend from the performative and pedagogical to the photographic-speculative and archival.
"What comes to mind when I hear the word Kunstverein,“ ponders the artist Heimo Zobernig in a poem written in 1992, referring to the collaborative model of art sponsorship through the traditionally bourgeois initiative of the German art association. The exhibition Performing Relationships debates questions about artistic and institutional collaboration; thus KV – Leipzig serves as both exhibition space and research inquiry. Which roles, alliances and differences emerge through these working approaches and how can they be maintained and kept fluid at the same time? Can a non-hierarchical model for collective decision-making be established in a way that is sustainable? Where do the interests of active members and the public meet within an art association whose work straddles professional projects, ambitious leisure activities and growing responsibilities?
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In the framework of the exhibition:
Mutter/Genth
The soul of a place is full of holes
9.8.2017 20:00–23:00
Round table discussion initiated and led by Mutter/Genth, with Diana Ayeh, Dr. Joan Bleicher, Dr. Enrico Hochmut and Manu Washaus
In German language
What is the most appropriate way to raise awareness for historic events and which events are remembered while others are doomed to be forgotten? Mutter/Genth depart from the entangled history of the Clara Zetkin Park to talk about collective memory as well as past and current displays of exoticism.
In 1897, Leipzig held the Saxon-Thuringian Industry and Trade Exhibition in the newly developed 400,000m2 area of Clara Zetkin Park. 3,027 participating firms presented their industrial and commercial achievements. Various forms of entertainment were provided with exhibitions covering art, history and ethnography; visitors could experience the Thuringian village and Leipzig’s old fair district or simply relax in the bar and leisure quarter. A noteworthy attraction was the colonial exhibition with its so-called „Völkerschau“ - an anthropological display showing people from foreign lands along with their tools in a simulation of their environment.
The German East Africa Exhibition was meant to advertise German colonial politics and foster private economic activity in the colonies. The questionable display, whose subjects were recruited from the colonies, hoped first and foremost to satisfy the German public’s need for sensation, but also established a dichotomy between the achievements of the industrial period and the „archaic of the foreign.“
Censor ⇒ to the Curator: Every time You Select I am Active
Round table discussion with Dr. Marika Kuźmicz and titre provisoire (Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage), presented by Krisztina Hunya and Daniel Niggemann
In English language
Titre provisoire’s film A small exaggeration (2016) deals with the impact of censorship and control on art production in 1980s Poland and examines what currency these strategies might have today. Alternating roles, three performers demonstrate the correlative relationships between a fictional artist group, a curator and the censor. Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage (titre provisoire) will discuss the research processes behind the video work from selecting props to developing a complex choreography.
The research of art historian Dr. Marika Kuźmicz offers a detailed insight into artistic strategies originating in Poland in the 1970s. What repressive mechanisms affected art’s development under the PZPR-regime (Polish United Workers’ Party) and how do they relate to the contemporary political and social situation? How have roles been made more flexible or more stable and in what ways can the effects of control and censorship be researched and explored?
Marika Kuźmicz graduated in art history from the University of Warsaw, PhD at the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She is head of the Arton Foundation in Warsaw, a non-profit organisation whose main focus is research into and exhibition of 1970s Polish art. She is a curator of contemporary art exhibitions, such as Conceptualism. Photographic Medium (Łódź, Poland, 2010), Conceptual Photography from Poland (Berlin, 2011), Doing the Impossible Light (in cooperation with Florian Zeyfang, Warsaw, 2015) and many others as well as the co-author and co-editor of books devoted to 1970s Polish art. She also lectures at the University of Warsaw.
titre provisoire is a collaboration between Marcel Dickhage and Cathleen Schuster. Their works have previously been shown at Kunsthalle Darmstadt, SAVVY Contemporary, GfZK Leipzig, Kyiv Biennale, Ludlow 38, Berlinische Galerie, Kunstpavillon Innsbruck, NGBK Berlin, and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf among others. Schuster was awarded the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff-Grant in 2010. Dickhage and Schuster received the GWK-Award in 2012. They studied Photography and Media at HGB Leipzig, took part in the Fellowship Program Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen and completed the Jan van Eyck Academie and Whitney ISP. They live and work in Berlin.
