Step Out of the Strange Light
With Step Out of the Strange Light, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein continues its series of group exhibitions with artists who have been awarded the Berlin Senate’s work stipends in the visual arts. At the heart of many of the contributions is an examination of real and imagined places, shaped both by ideological implications and collective practices. A further common aspect is the impulse to reveal and question structures that are inscribed in, yet often hidden behind, forms of emergence and transformation of the social condition.
Part of the exhibition is the multi-channel installation ARCHIVAL GRID (preview, 2021), created by our former fellow Clarissa Thieme together with Charlotte Eifler. The artists research the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and develop a filmic analysis that combines strategies of reenactment, translation, and abstraction to capture documents, memories, and testimonies from multiple perspectives. ARCHIVAL GRID (Preview) raises doubt about a simple causal relation between fact-findings and reconciliation. How do we deal with collective, traumatic violent crime? What forms and places do we give our memories, and what role do instruments of evidence, cartography and measurement serve in this process? Which algorithms evolve from our archives, which independently organize and link constantly emerging pools of data?
Clarissa Thieme's filmic installation CAN'T YOU SEE THEM? - REPEAT. (2019), developed in collaboration with Nedim Alikadić and the library Hamdija Kreševljaković Video Arhiv Sarajevo, will be presented for the first time as part of the exhibition and can be streamed here.
“Can we finally get rid of these ghosts, forget everything and simply look ahead?” This question opens the new film by our future associates Adnan and Nina Softić, which addresses the link between national myth-making and the hegemonic disregard of victim perspectives in former Yugoslavia.
A panel discussion with Charlotte Eifler and Clarissa Thieme, Rajkamal Kahlon, Nina and Adnan Softić, moderated by Nataša Ilić accompanies the exhibition.
When? Where?
26 March – 9 May 2021 (the panel takes place online on April 15th at 12pm)
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein
Chausseestrasse 128/129
10115 Berlin