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THRESHOLDS

A Program of Performance, Exhibition, and Discussion on the occasion of the second Berlin Art Week

Friday – Sunday, 20 – 22 September 2013 At Collegium Hungaricum Berlin Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

– Free and open to the public –

Commissioned, Curated, and Co-Produced by MOMENTUM and Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, MOMENTUM, the Platform for Time-based Art and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin are presenting a program of Exhibition, Performance, Discussion, and SKY SCREEN on the theme of

THRESHOLDS: CROSSING THE BORDERS BETWEEN

VIDEO, PERFORMANCE, AND THE VISUAL ARTS

Curated by: Vera Baksa Soós, Dávid Szauder, Rachel Rits-Volloch, Fanni Magyar

• Friday – Sunday, 20-22 September EXHIBITION: MAKING THE MEDIUM •
Opening Friday 20 Sept at 19:00 – 22:00, with live performance by Nezaket Ekici at 20:00

• Saturday, 21 September at 19.00 – 19.45 INTERDISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE: THRESHOLDS • 

• Sunday, 22 Sept at 16.00 – 18.00 PANEL DISCUSSION: CURATING PERFORMANCE ART – WHERE DOES THEATRE END AND ART BEGIN • 

• Saturday – Sunday, 21-22 Sept at 21:00 – 00:00 SKY SCREEN: THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES REVISITED •

 
MAKING THE MEDIUM

Friday – Sunday, 20.09 – 22.09.2013 Opening Friday, 20.09.2013 at 19:00 – 22:00, with live performance by Nezaket Ekici at 20:00

On the occasion of the exhibition opening, Nezaket Ekici will stage a live performance, re-enacting her 2008 work, TUBE (duration 30 minutes), based on the 1925 Otto Dix painting Anita Berber. Dix’s painting of Berber, a dancer and actress who was considered the embodiment of the 1920′s femme fatale, depicts her in a tight, red dress. Ekici, in turn, squirms and dances her way into a five meter long, red cloth tube with overly long arms. Behind Ekici, a projection depicts the artist in a snow-covered Canadian landscape, wearing the same red dress. The audience is thus confronted with two different yet corresponding worlds on the threshold of two mediums: the live performance, its projected mirror, and everything that happens in the space in between.

We invite you to a special performance by Nezaket Ekici. Ekici is a Turkish-born, Berlin-based performance artist who trained with Marina Abramovich. Following in her tradition of extreme durational statements, Ekici’s work is focused on her body and the gaze of the spectator which sustains the performance.

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MAKING THE MEDIUM

During the weekend of Berlin Art Week, MOMENTUM is screening our Collection of contemporary international video and performance art at the Moholy Nagy Gallery in the Collegium Hungaricum. The MOMENTUM Collection was established in 2010 through the generosity of a small group of artists. The donations of their works constituted their investment in MOMENTUM’s then-nascent model as a global and mobile platform for showing time-based art. Three years later, the MOMENTUM Collection has expanded from its original roster of 10 to 24 artists.  The Collection represents a cross-section of digital artworks at the top of the field. It ranges from some of the most established to emerging artists and includes work from Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, the US, the UK, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland and Germany. The growth of the Collection reflects the growth of MOMENTUM itself. While we develop and nurture our relationships with these artists, we continually endeavor to bring their work to new audiences worldwide.  We are honored to present this iteration of the MOMENTUM Collection at Collegium Hungaricum. The program is divided into three main themes: Subjects and Objects; Rituals and Ghosts; and Evolution/Revolution. We invite you to consider the ways in which our curatorial categories are limited and limiting; to consider the program as at times a discursive whole or a fragmented dialogue. Due to the unique nature of its growth, the Collection especially lends itself to this type of inquiry. Like the works that constitute it, the Collection both sets apart time (to be etched onto a hard drive, recorded on film, or projected across a gallery wall) and is constantly changed by the passing of time itself. The MOMENTUM Collection, including Artist Bios and Statements can be seen by following the link to MOMENTUM COLLECTION.

THE EXHIBITION IS BROKEN INTO 5 SECTIONS:

Subjects and Objects looks at works which address the individual as both subject and object of the gaze, of scientific enquiry and biological necessity, of the material expectations of beauty, and as objectified by the material traces of individual histories. Including works by:
TRACEY MOFFAT, NEZAKET EKICI, HYE RIM LEE, MARK KARASICK, GABRIELE LEIDOFF, FIONA PARDINGTON

Rituals and Ghosts brings together works which look at the stories, traditions, and games we repeat to ourselves and to others, which define both the stark differences between cultures, and the sometimes uncanny similarities between them. Including works by:
OSVALDO BUDET, DAVID MEDALLA, MARTIN SEXTON, ERIC BRIDGEMAN, TV MOORE, HANNU KARJALAINEN, MARIANA HAHN, ZUZANNA JANIN

Evolution/Revolution begins with the purity of nature, and moves on to ancient civilizations, the beginnings of society, racing in to the present day to address the many ways mankind misuses its hard-earned civilization. Including work by:
JANET LAURENCE, MARIANA VASSILEVA, ERIC BRIDGEMAN, MARTIN SEXTON, JAMES P. GRAHAM, MAP OFFICE, DOUG FISHBONE, SUMUGAN SIVANESAN, SARAH LÜDEMANN

Performance Archive features videos of performances commissioned by or staged at MOMENTUM. Including works by:
JOYCE CLAY, CATHERINE DUQUETTE, MARIANA HAHN, EMI HARIYAMA AND MARIANA MOREIRA,
 JARIK JONGMAN, KATE HERS, SARAH LÜDEMANN AND ADRIAN BRUN, KIRSTEN PALZ, SUMUGAN SIVANESAN, UNIT 7, YULIA STARTSEV

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin complements MOMENTUM’s international video selection with its own selection of Hungarian video art of the past 10 years. Reflections on personal experiences, gender and social critical aspects play a significant role in the curatorial selection of these works. Including works by:
ERIKA BAGLYAS, MONA BIRKÁS, JÁNOS BORSOS, MARCELL ESTERHÁZY, DÁVID GUTEMA, MIKLÓS MÉCS, HAJNAL NÉMETH, RÓZA EL-HASSAN, EDINA CECÍLIA HORVÁTH, ISTVÁN ILLÉS, JUDIT KIS, ANNAMÁRIA SZENTPÉTERY

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The MAKING THE MEDIUM exhibition will travel to TRAFO Kunstahalle in Szczecin, Poland on 23 November – 7 December 2013. TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin is the first center for contemporary art in the northwest of Poland. Founded in 2013, and located in a renovated historic power station, TRAFO takes advantage of its geographical potential – the cross-border location within the Baltic Sea region and the immediate vicinity of Berlin, the cultural capital of this part of Europe. It acts as a unique “display window” through which Szczecin confronts its artistic image with the world.

INTERDISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE

Saturday, 21.09.2013 at 19.00 – 19.45
Created, Choreographed, and Directed by Emi Hariyama (Staatsballet Berlin) Dr. Marcus Doering, Interactive Light Design Specialist

Music composed by Bela Bartok, György Ligeti, Peter Kirn, and Szilvia Lednitzky
 

What happens when a ballerina meets Germany’s most innovative light design specialist in an responsive, interactive performance? The live score, performed by contemporary electronic producers Peter Kirn and Lower Order Ethics (Szilvia Lednitzky), will combine and improvise on self-collected samples. In asking these artists to work together, we have given them free reign to develop their own expressions towards this location and their own answers to the question MOMENTUM continuously poses: What is time-based art? Transgressing disciplinary boundaries and drawing together their creative synergies, these performers embody MOMENTUM’S mission to enable great art to happen across cultural and institutional borders.
 

Emi Hariyama is a ballerina born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated from Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow in 1996. She joined the Moscow Ballet Theater and the Aalto Ballet Theater in Essen, Germany in 1997. She has won numerous international competitions, including the Special Prize at Moscow International Ballet Competition, a bronze medal at the New York International Ballet Competition, and a silver medal at the International Ballet Competition in Paris (no gold was awarded). Since 2004, Emi Hariyama has been a member of ”Staats Oper Unter den Linden” and ”Deutsche Oper Berlin” under the direction of the maestro Vladimir Malakhov.

Dr. Marcus Doering holds a PhD in Physics and has made a name for himself with pmd-art for innovative light design. Together with André Bernhardt and the designers of büro+staubach, he realizes interactive worlds of experience. The three-dimensional illuminations and real-time projections on actors and objects that are moving through space correspond exactly to their contours, calculated by a specially developed 3D computer model. In Berlin, Marcus participated with interactive LED zones during the “Festival of Lights“ 2011 and the “Magical Mystery Show“ at the Wintergarten Variété.

PANEL DISCUSSION: CURATING PERFORMANCE ART

Where does theatre end and art begin?

Sunday, 22.09.2013, 16.00 – 18.00

By nature of its medium, performance art crosses many boundaries, taking in elements of installation, video and even theatre and dance. Given the continuation of Berthold Brecht’s program of heightening the self-reflexivity of theatre performances through contemporary playwrights such as René Pollesch, a territory once claimed by performance art is thrown wide open. The panel discussion will address if and how boundaries between the disciplines can still be drawn, raising questions such as: ‘Representation vesus reality – or the literary basis of theatre versus the ontology (the body) of performance.’ Is this distinction (first forged with performance art in the 1960s and ’70s) still valid?’ ‘Politics in theatre and performance – are these the same?’ ‘Is Theatre ever curated – does it make sense to talk about theatre in these terms and if so how?’ ‘Have we been recently witnessing a theatricalisation of performance art with the idea that performances are not unique events and may be choreographed so that they can be re-presented by others? What does this mean?’ ‘Is performance art now a historical category which no longer has relevance to what artists are doing?’

With Nezekat Ekici (performance artist), Mathilde ter Heijne (artist, Professor for Visual arts, Performance and Installation, Kunsthochschule Kassel), Jens Hillje (Co-director and Chief Dramaturg at the Maxim Gorki Theater), Hajnal Németh (performance artist, 54. Biennale di Venezia, Hungarian Pavillion), Joel Verwimp (Co-Founding Director, Month of Performance Art Berlin), Jack Pam (Curator, Ikono TV Festival), Jeni Fulton (Associate Director, MOMENTUM) and moderated by David Elliott (museum director, curator, writer).

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OUR PANELISTS

David Elliott is a curator and writer who has directed contemporary art museums and institutions in Oxford, Stockholm, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney and Kiev. He is currently working on two traveling exhibitions for the UK and USA. He is also President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London, on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum and a Guest Professor in Curatorship at the China University in Hong Kong. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields and many other aspects of contemporary art. In 2008-10 he was Artistic Director of the 17^th Biennale of Sydney and in 2011-12 directed the inaugural International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Kiev, Ukraine. He has also advised the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charitable Trust on the development of CPS into a center for contemporary art and heritage.

Nezekat Ekici was born in Kırşehir, Turkey in 1970 and studied art pedagogics, sculpture and performance in Munich and Braunschweig, Germany. She then began working with performance and completed a master’s degree in Performance Art with Marina Abramovic. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in present-day Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, cross-border connections and authorial bodies are central to Ekici’s works. She has exhibited internationally, with a total of more than 120 different performances on 4 continents in more than 100 cities and 30 countries. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Photo by Nihad Nino Pušija

Jeni Fulton was born in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1981. She studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a M.A. (Hons). From 2003 onwards she worked as political and economic consultant for energy consultancies in London and Berlin, most recently for the Biogasrat+ e.V. Berlin. In 2010, she enrolled as PhD candidate at the Faculty for Cultural Theory at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, with a thesis on “Value and Evaluation in Contemporary Art”. Her thesis examines the interplay of art criticism and ranking systems in establishing value hierarchies in contemporary art. Since 2011, she has been contributing to art publications on a freelance basis, holding the position of Contributing Editor at Sleek Magazine. In 2013 she joined MOMENTUM UG as Associate Director.

Mathilde ter Heijne (born 1969 in Strasbourg, France) is a Berlin-based Dutch video and installation artist and a professor of Visual Art, Performance, and Installation at Kunsthochschule Kassel. She works in a wide range of media such as installation, video, sculpture, and performance. In her work she explores the social, cultural, political, and economic backgrounds of gender-specific phenomena within different cultures. Political, structural, and physical violence related to existing power structures in society are the starting points for a series of video works in which the artist represented different scenarios of violence and its victims using life-sized dummies. Simultaneously, ter Heijne examined her own role as an artist and analyzed these particular structural conditions. She is currently researching the fashioning of rituals and oral traditions as a way to preserve and share knowledge for social minorities. In these contexts, she explores alternative writing and symbol systems and considers the potential for matriarchal politics.

Jens Hillje was born in 1968 and grew up in Italy and Lower Bavaria. After his first experiences with revolutionary theater in Bavarian taverns, he decided not to become a gardener after all and instead studied Applied Cultural Studies in Perugia, Hildesheim, and Berlin. After finishing his studies, Hillje co-founded with Thomas Ostermeier in 1996 the Baracke am Deutschen Theater in Berlin (1998 Theater of the Year). From 1999 until 2009 he was a member of the artistic direction at the Schaubühne at Lehniner Platz. As a freelance dramaturg he worked with the director Nurkan Erpulat on the successful staging of the play Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood) at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße. In 2011, Hillje became the artistic director of the Performing Arts Festival In Transit at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He is now Co-director and Chief Dramaturg at the Maxim Gorki Theater.

Hajnal Németh (born 1972 in Szőny, Hungary) lives and works in Berlin and studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Németh has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at prestigious art institutions in Europe, America and Asia, including MUMOK, Vienna; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; The Kitchen, New York; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Art Museum, Singapore; Ludwig-Museum, Budapest; TENT, Rotterdam; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Kunsthalle, Budapest; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Comunidad de Madrid; 2nd Berlin Biennale, KW Berlin; Casino Luxembourg; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne; Picasso Museum, Barcelona; Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2011, she represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale.

Jack Pam is a West Australian Artist, Filmmaker, and Curator based in Berlin, whose image and sound-based work has been extensively published and collected worldwide. He is the Co- Founder and Art Director of Staple Magazine, a West Australian skate and photography magazine, founder of Tennis Club Book Shop, a unique self-made focused bookshop and publishing house based in Amsterdam, as well as the Creative Director of mapfilms: a collective of experimental video producers. Pam works independently as a curator and art critic focusing on contemporary video and media art, and joined ikono in late 2012 to direct the inaugural ikono On Air Festival.

Joël Verwimp is a Berlin-based Belgian artist who works primarily in the context of performance art. Initially trained as a visual artist and cook, Verwimp was Bethanien resident of the Flemish Government and Curator at Netwerk / center for contemporary art. He was a board member at the artist space Flutgraben e.V. and co-initiated the MPA (Month of Performance art) Berlin in 2011 as well as the APAB (Association for Performance Art in Berlin) in 2013. In recent years, his work has been hosted by Agora collective, Baltic Circle Festival (Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma), Belluard Bollwerk International arts festival, Bains Connective Art Laboratory, a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies), Theater an der Parkaue, Die Denkerei, Kaaitheater arts centre, Skulpturenpark Berlin, Stiftung PROGR (Lehrerzimmer), Exchange Radical Moments! Live Art Festival and Grüntaler9. He is currently doing research into forms of complicity and is since 2009 developing together with Nicolas Y Galeazzi the VerlegtVerlag as a framework for performance on paper. Verwimp is a curious mind fascinated with the ever-changing world around him. He loves to mingle in debates surrounding ownership, migration, performativity, and hospitality. He considers it a blessing to still be relatively sane.

SKY SCREEN: THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES REVISITED

Saturday – Sunday, 21.09 – 22.09.2013 from 21.00 – 00.00

Featuring:

Lutz Becker, John Bock, Yang Fudong, Gülsün Karamustafa, Tracey Moffatt, Map Office, and Miao Xiaochun

Curated By David Elliott

MOMENTUM is pleased to announce the showing of a special program of video works originally screened at the 1st Kiev Biennale in 2012. The works will be on view from September 7^th – October 26^th 2013 at MOMENTUM Berlin and then as part of our SKY SCREEN initiative on the media facade of the Collegium Hungaricum!  Curated by the Artistic Director of the Biennale, David Elliott.

Echoing the first words of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens’ famous novel set at the time of the French Revolution, this exhibition jumps forward to the present to consider how contemporary art and aesthetics use the past to express the future. The ideals of Human Rights developed during 18th Century European Enlightenment found their first political expression in the American and French Revolutions. Yet, in spite of fine intentions at the outset, Human Rights have been constricted as each revolution has contained at its core the worst as well as the best of human thought and action. This program reflects on utopian dreams of freedom, equality, and security that are very much at the heart of our lives today, as well as on their opposite: terror, inequity and war. It is the destructive forces of both man and nature that seem to make a more ideal life impossible.  Showing simultaneously across three locations in Berlin and Istanbul, revisiting this selection of works is a timely response to the current situation in Turkey, where ideals of democracy and freedom have been brought into renewed focus.

The artist Miao Xiaochun, who is part of this program, is currently representing the People’s Republic of China in the 55^th Venice Biennale.

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For more information on this screening program, follow the link to SKY SCREEN.

THE TUBE IMAGE GALLERY:

MAKING THE MEDIUM IMAGE GALLERY:

PANEL DISCUSSION IMAGE GALLERY:

SKY SCREEN IMAGE GALLERY: