Rachel Rits-Volloch
Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch
Founding Director, MOMENTUM: The Global Platform for Time-Based Art [www.momentumworldwide.org]
Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. Her academic appointments include a lectureship in film studies and visual culture at Bilgi University, Istanbul; and more recently, in 2016-2017, she was Visiting Professor in art theory and curatorial studies at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" and the PhD program in Artistic Research.
Rachel Rits-Volloch is the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, which she launched in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011, and since that time has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin's thriving art center, Kunstquartier Bethanien. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. Visual languages continue to evolve in concert with the technologies which drive them, and it is the role of visual artists to push the limits of these languages. As the world speeds up, and time itself seems to flow faster, MOMENTUM provides a program focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, exploring how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change.
Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated and produced over 100 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, showing the work of over 600 artists, as well as over 60 Education Events, in addition to an ongoing program of Artistic Research Residencies which has so far hosted over 45 international artists, alongside a diversity of related programming. As curator, her major exhibitions include MOMENTUM Sydney (2010, Sydney Australia), ); A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images (2011, MOMENTUM Berlin); the Works On Paper Performance Series (2013, 2014, 2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Thresholds (2013, Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin; 2014, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland); PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai (2014, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Fragments of Empires (2014-2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Ganz Grosses Kino (2016, Kino Internationale, Berlin); HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016, MOMENTUM, Berlin); The 1st Daojiao New New Art Festival, Facade Project (2016, Guangzhou, China); Focus Kazakhstan: BREAD & ROSES (2018, MOMENTUM, Berlin), amongst many others. And as producer: BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places (2015, MOMENTUM / Külhaus, / Stiftung Brandenburger Tor at Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin).
Rachel Rits-Volloch is responsible for programing the Education Program for all MOMENTUM events, altogether including over 50 Symposia, Panel Discussions, and Kunst Salon talks. As a speaker and lecturer, she has been invited to present MOMENTUM at numerous international events, including Asian Maps (2011, ARCO Talks, Madrid); Demonstrate! MOMENTUM (2012, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin); Guest Lecture: Independent Art Spaces, A Working Model (2013, Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin); Guest Lecture: The Making of MOMENTUM (2014, Transart Institute, Berlin); Incubators: Independent Art Spaces from Berlin and Beijing (2014, Today Art Museum and Goethe Institute, Beijing); LOOP Professionals Meetings: Two-Way Street - Cultivating Collections (2015, Barcelona); Acentered: Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image (2016, Videotage and Art Basel, Hong Kong); Hero Mother, Hero Artists, and Heroic Curators: Building an Independent Art Space, A Case Study (2016, NonStop Media Festival, Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, Ukraine); The Making of MOMENTUM (2017, Villa Massimo, The German Academy, Rome); Making MOMENTUM (2018, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia); Masterclass: Sculpture Beyond Form (2018, Academy of Fine Arts, Naples); EVA Berlin 2019: Based on Trust! Culture in Virtual Environment (2019, Electronic Media & Visual Arts Conference, Kulturforum, Berlin).
Born in Riga, USSR, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney.
Founding Director, MOMENTUM: The Global Platform for Time-Based Art [www.momentumworldwide.org]
Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. Her academic appointments include a lectureship in film studies and visual culture at Bilgi University, Istanbul; and more recently, in 2016-2017, she was Visiting Professor in art theory and curatorial studies at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" and the PhD program in Artistic Research.
Rachel Rits-Volloch is the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, which she launched in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011, and since that time has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin's thriving art center, Kunstquartier Bethanien. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. Visual languages continue to evolve in concert with the technologies which drive them, and it is the role of visual artists to push the limits of these languages. As the world speeds up, and time itself seems to flow faster, MOMENTUM provides a program focused on the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, exploring how time-based art reflects the digitization of our societies and the resulting cultural change.
Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated and produced over 100 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, showing the work of over 600 artists, as well as over 60 Education Events, in addition to an ongoing program of Artistic Research Residencies which has so far hosted over 45 international artists, alongside a diversity of related programming. As curator, her major exhibitions include MOMENTUM Sydney (2010, Sydney Australia), ); A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images (2011, MOMENTUM Berlin); the Works On Paper Performance Series (2013, 2014, 2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Thresholds (2013, Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin; 2014, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland); PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai (2014, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Fragments of Empires (2014-2015, MOMENTUM, Berlin); Ganz Grosses Kino (2016, Kino Internationale, Berlin); HERO MOTHER: Contemporary Art by Post-Communist Women Rethinking Heroism (2016, MOMENTUM, Berlin); The 1st Daojiao New New Art Festival, Facade Project (2016, Guangzhou, China); Focus Kazakhstan: BREAD & ROSES (2018, MOMENTUM, Berlin), amongst many others. And as producer: BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places (2015, MOMENTUM / Külhaus, / Stiftung Brandenburger Tor at Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin).
Rachel Rits-Volloch is responsible for programing the Education Program for all MOMENTUM events, altogether including over 50 Symposia, Panel Discussions, and Kunst Salon talks. As a speaker and lecturer, she has been invited to present MOMENTUM at numerous international events, including Asian Maps (2011, ARCO Talks, Madrid); Demonstrate! MOMENTUM (2012, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin); Guest Lecture: Independent Art Spaces, A Working Model (2013, Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin); Guest Lecture: The Making of MOMENTUM (2014, Transart Institute, Berlin); Incubators: Independent Art Spaces from Berlin and Beijing (2014, Today Art Museum and Goethe Institute, Beijing); LOOP Professionals Meetings: Two-Way Street - Cultivating Collections (2015, Barcelona); Acentered: Reterritorised Network of European and Chinese Moving Image (2016, Videotage and Art Basel, Hong Kong); Hero Mother, Hero Artists, and Heroic Curators: Building an Independent Art Space, A Case Study (2016, NonStop Media Festival, Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, Ukraine); The Making of MOMENTUM (2017, Villa Massimo, The German Academy, Rome); Making MOMENTUM (2018, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia); Masterclass: Sculpture Beyond Form (2018, Academy of Fine Arts, Naples); EVA Berlin 2019: Based on Trust! Culture in Virtual Environment (2019, Electronic Media & Visual Arts Conference, Kulturforum, Berlin).
Born in Riga, USSR, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney.
less
InterestsView All (13)
Uploads
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/focus-kazakhstan/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
"HERO MOTHER" is the sister exhibition to MOMENTUM's 2015 show "BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places". "BALAGAN!!!" tools place simultaneously at 3 venues across Berlin: the MOMENTUM gallery in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor
am Max Liebermann Haus, and Külhaus. The Exhibition was accompanied by a Symposium at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, a Lecture Series at the ICI (Institute for Cultural Inquiry), and a Performance Program.
More Info:
HERO MOTHER: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/hero-mother/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/hero-mother-symposium/
BALAGAN!!!: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/balagan/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-symposium-hamburger-bahnhof/
LECTURES: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-davids-lecture/
http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-ici-lectures/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
BALAGAN!!! is therefore the framework for an exhibition curated by David Elliott in Berlin, for MOMENTUM and the NORDWIND Festival 2015, that shows contemporary art from just one part of the world, those countries that comprised the former USSR and its allies. In 1999 Elliott conceived the travelling exhibition AFTER THE WALL. Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe, that measured cultural change one decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, twenty-five years after this momentous event, he shows a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are lovingly shown in art as artists struggle to digest and reconcile what they have experienced and integrate this with their dreams of a new and different way of life.
The exhibition took place from 14 November to 23 December 2015 in three venues: the museum spaces of the Max Liebermann Haus in Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, the rough industrial interiors of Kühlhaus, a former refrigeration plant on Gleisdreiecke, and in MOMENTUM, part of the Bethanien Art Center in Kreuzburg. At the same time, works by some artists in the exhibition were shown in Hellerau in Dresden and Kampnagel in Hamburg. A lecture, symposium and performance programme was also organised in Berlin in co-operation with ICI (Institute for Cultural Inquiry) and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum Contemporary Art.
The story of BALAGAN is strongly embedded within all the arts, particularly in the commedia dell’arte that underwent a revival in Russia immediately before and after the Revolution. Derived from the Turkic and Persian for ‘a wooden platform’, the original Russian word meant ‘fairground’, or the lightly constructed booths that characterised them. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked there: puppeteers, clowns and jesters who made fun of and satirised established order.
In 1906, writer and poet Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921) finished his play Balaganshchik (variously translated as The Fairground Booth or The Puppet Show), the St. Petersburg première of which was directed by the avant-garde theatre director and actor Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), who also played Pierrot, its lead role. The riotous events of the opening night proved to be the first salvo in a continuing volley of artistic coups that lasted until the repression of the early 1930s. Blok’s intent in presenting such a dysfunctional masquerade to the public was to explode the social pretensions of Realist and Symbolist theatre by exposing its melodramatic clichés yet, in doing this, he was exposed the pain and drama of his times as well as on his personal experience and relationships. The creative fusion between the political, social and the personal is the impetus for BALAGAN!!! today.
Even during the dark years of Stalinist repression BALAGAN continued underground. While Europe was torn apart by World War II, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) completed his critical masterwork Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In this he regarded the upside-down-world of carnival as both a safety valve and a vision of a better life that depended, amongst other things, on the subversive effect of exhibiting publicly the private functions of the human body.1 Cultural dichotomies such as spirit and body, ‘high’ and ‘low’, rich and poor, sacred and profane were revealed as methods of social control, the disruption of which he highlighted in the grotesque realism of Rabelais’ writings and time. In the face of oppression laughter was an uncontrollable, therapeutic, liberating force. The revolutionary politics of laughter and the cathartic release that it promises are a central subject of the BALAGAN!!! exhibition.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/balagan/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
The exhibition is accompanied by a dual language (English/Korean) catalogue. By way of this exhibition, MOMENTUM is proud to show works by three artists never before seen in Berlin – Jang Jaerok, Hyungkyu Kim, and Jihye Park – and to welcome four new artists and their works to the MOMENTUM Collection – aaajiao, Claudia Chaseling, David Krippendorff, and Milovan Destil Marković.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/station_paradox/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Cao Yu was born in Liaoning Province in 1988, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Sculpture Department. She currently lives and works in Beijing. Recent exhibitions include: THE PUBLIC BODY .02, Artspace, Sydney (2017); Kabinett, Art Basel Hong Kong, HongKong, China (2017); Prix Yishu 8 Chine Exposition des Finalistes, Yishu 8, Beijing, China (2017); Recent Acquisitions–Recent Develop- ments, Sishang Art Museum, Beijing, China (2017); and The 3rd Today’s Documents–BRIC-á-brac: The Jumble of Growth, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); WHY the PERFORMANCE?, McaM, Shanghai, China (2016).
Scheiße • 夏色, German slang for faeces and a popular expletive, the artist’s choice for the exhibition’s title, is intended to reflect not upon his view of art but on the conditions in which all work is made, including art. This idea is clearly expressed in Das Kapital No. 1 – Questionnaire Show, (2015), a new site-specific performance and installation Zhou has made for this exhibition which has developed out of concerns that have run as a decisive element throughout his previous work.
Here, Zhou invokes sleazy peep shows and the sultry, inviting glances of Amsterdam “window girls” as ready-mades for a performance. A scantily clad actor reclines in a glass booth, telephone in hand; how she speaks and the style of her presentation mimics the live phone-ins on the adult channels of German TV. But on entering this exhibition visitors are presented with a choice: either they stand and watch or, if they pick up the handset, they are thrust into a scripted exchange of a completely unexpected order.
Instead of revolving around titillation, or the recital of a price-list of future delights, the exchange consists of an ideological ‘discussion’ about a new economic system. This is driven by a complex set of questions developed by the artist that question the economic and social status and role of the performer in the context of wider questions about the Chinese and world economies.
The visitor may either respond or remain silent. The exchange evolves into a kind of questionnaire, bound by common causes and emotions, that are related to global questions that affect us all – about power, economy, statehood, aspiration, communication, interpretation and misunderstanding.
Zhou Xiaohu is a member of the Chinese generation that experienced in childhood the hysterical, random cruelties of the Cultural Revolution, as well as the wild elation of the country ‘opening itself to the world’ throughout the 1980s. Like many others, he has greeted the booms and busts of both ideology and economics since that time with a mixture of incredulity and scepticism. Conflicting ideas: power and weakness, love and harshness, beauty and ugliness, naivety and cynicism, oppression and freedom, run as leitmotifs throughout his films, animations, installations and performances. Yet he has always been careful to expose these by casting a humane but provocative perspective on the different processes, forms, and media he feels are appropriate for his subject.
Zhou’s whole body of work may be seen as part of a longstanding Chinese artistic tradition in which the inner reflections of an individual collide with the wider political contexts within which they find themselves. Yet it may also be placed within a more recent current of scepticism that focuses on the discrepancies between dominant ideology and economic policy. This he treats in a range of different media, using surreal, absurdist narratives and situations that may be understood as both parodies and allegories of what he sees before him.
Accompanying this new work, MOMENTUM is also showing two of Zhou’s early animated videos that reflect on the body – physical, gendered and political – in radically different ways: The Gooey Gentleman (2002) and Conspiracy (2004), show him making violent drawings on his own skin of the transforming bodies of others. These are accompanied by Secret (2012), an animated video projection on two painted aluminium panels, that seem to be depicting someone being shot….
During the exhibition, viewing access to an archive of all Zhou Xiaohu's films was also made available through Video Bureau at MOMENTUM.
Exhibition Page:
http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/scheisse-zhou-xiaohu/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Since China Avant-garde, with its iconic German debut at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1993, Chinese contemporary art has shown a completely new face to the contemporary art world. After 1979, when the first avant-garde art groups showed their work after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese art has undergone a transformation from demanding artistic freedoms to a more complex and nuanced response to both its domestic and global context. This year marks the 35-year anniversary of the beginning of this transformation.
Zhang Peili started his first experiments with video art in 1988, moving from painting to an engagement with the specific aesthetics and politics of new media. Video art in China today not only contributes to the mainstream of new media art and aesthetics, but has also rooted itself deeply in practical research into technological development as well as into the experience of daily life.
PANDAMONIUM, the title of this exhibition, suggests two conflicting ideas: the soft, cuddly, diplomatic, almost clichéd, image of the Panda, one of the great symbols of China to the outside world, and the wild, fertile, noisy disorder of Pandemonium, the place of all demons in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. The birth of this new word represents the chaotic energy of Chinese artists’ efforts and experiments in new media art over the past decade. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that Chinese contemporary art has not yet, other than through the art market, engaged globally during this time. This lack has been veiled by the speed of Chinese social and economic development and further masked by the impact of politics and the media.
PANDAMONIUM focuses on the work of Shanghai artists who create openly, distant from the country’s political center in Beijing. The group of artists shown here are all engaged in experiments with new media, introducing into Chinese art new creative ideas and aesthetic approaches. This exhibition addresses the first three generations of media artists in China. Starting with pioneers like Zhang Peili and Hu Jieming, working since the 1980s to break new ground with the technologies of media art, to the successes of the next generation, such as internationally acclaimed artist Yang Fudong, and moving on to their students, who are developing their own visual languages in response and in contrast to their pioneering teachers. Most of the works of this youngest generation of artists is premiered in Berlin for the first time. Berlin-based artists Thomas Eller and Ming Wong, both with strong links to China, present works responding to these themes.
Focusing on single-channel video, the work selected for this show presents minimal and subtle expressions that offer a view not only of some of the strongest work now being made in Shanghai but also of the scale of transformation that is now running through the whole of Chinese contemporary art. PANDAMONIUM is especially proud to premiere a new work by Qiu Anxiong, made for this exhibition.
More Info:
EXHIBITION: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/past/pandamonium/
SYMPOSIUM 1: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/pandamonium-symposium-preview/
SYMPOSIUM 2: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/pandamonium-symposium-finissage/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Berlin in the 21st Century sits on the intersection of many immigrant cultures and nations, as people from all over the world flock to the city. In recent years, Berlin has come to be especially known for attracting the world’s leading artists. Equally, Berlin is famous for the wealth of cultural artifacts housed in its museums. This convergence, in this capital city, of creative and historical culture with the world’s migrant cultures is often remarked upon, but it has not yet been closely considered in terms of the convergence of the different colonial legacies of the many populations that inhabit Berlin. "Fragments of Empires" is thus a timely reflection on the hybridization of cultural practices, and the fact that not only in Berlin, but everywhere in the world, we can all find roots somewhere else.
Reflecting upon the lasting legacies as diverse as the British, Byzantine, French, Ottoman, Roman Empires within the context of Berlin’s particular struggle with the painful histories of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, this exhibition extends the remits of history through artistic innovation. "Fragments of Empires" brings together artists who have dissected the historical legacies of their particular cultures to rebuild them into contemporary statements about how cultures, by absorbing one another, defy established borders and concepts of nationhood that have been drawn and re-drawn by political force. The opening of the exhibition in Berlin in early November will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The work by the artists in the exhibition – Kader Attia, Lutz Becker, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, and Sophia Pompéry – encapsulates a wide range of different approaches to experiences of empire, migration, cultural transformation and appropriation. All strongly reflect the viral, diasporic symbolisms of contemporary culture across the world and the different contexts within which they are perceived. In "Fragments of Empires", MOMENTUM is bringing these seven artists together for the first time.
This exhibition accordingly invokes time-based art practices to explore the legacies of cultural histories that have constantly changed through the passing of time. As Berlin’s only platform focusing exclusively on time-based art, MOMENTUM focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural backgrounds also re-frame different historical moments.
The "Fragments of Empires" exhibition took place at MOMENTUM Berlin in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center on 7 Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015, and was accompanied by a Symposium on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
More Info:
EXHIBITION: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/fragments_of_empires/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/fragments-of-empires-parallel-events/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
2 - 5 November 2017 @ The Ministry of Environment, Berlin
6 - 17 November 2017 @ UNFCCC Secretariat, Bonn
FEATURING:
Andreas Blank, Stefano Cagol, Miru Kim, Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus,
Janet Laurence, Reifenberg, Stefan Rinck, Erwin Wurm, Shingo Yoshida
Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch & Constanze Kleiner
SHORT CONCEPT:
Landscapes of Loss at Berlin’s Ministry of Environment is the exhibition for the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP23, bringing together ten international artists with strong links to Berlin, who, each in their own way, address mankind’s role in relation to the environment. Through video, photography, and sculpture, this exhibition is designed as an antidote to the hyper-immediacy of the lives we live. In this age of instant gratification, we need to re-learn how to think in the long-term in order to implement the changes now which will heal our planet in the future. Landscapes of Loss asks us to stop and take the time to immerse ourselves in our planet at its most fragile, to abandon the urgency of the now and reconnect with the rhythms and needs of the natural world, from the Arctic tundra of Siberia, to the deserts of the Middle East, and the jungles and seas of the Antipodes.
ARTISTS & WORKS:
From endangered species to the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian artist Janet Laurence confronts us with the beauty and loneliness of creatures that could soon be the last of their kind. With the works of German sculptors Andreas Blank and Stefan Rinck, we turn from the ephemeral landscape and its vanishing creatures to the solid permanence of stone; a material reflecting the very substance of time, in its strata are recorded the ages of the planet. Berlin-based Israeli artist Reifenberg addresses the detritus polluting our environment by working with plastic bags recycled into art. Italian artist Stefano Cagol and Japanese artist Shingo Yoshida each ventured on long journeys into the Arctic to record mankind’s impact upon nature at its most extreme, and at its most threatened from the impacts of climate change. From the frozen north to the burning sands of Israel’s Negev Desert, Turkish/German artist Nezaket Ekici together with Israeli artist Shahar Marcus create human sand-clocks measuring how quickly time is running out to find solutions for political and environmental stability. While in Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert, Korean/American artist Miru Kim positions the fragility of her own body within the drama of the natural landscape. And Austrian artist Erwin Wurm brings us back into the urban landscape; an environment changing as rapidly as our natural one. In confronting our place in the landscape, these works together cast a hope that humanity will find a way to fit into all the world’s landscapes, however fragile the balance.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/landscapes-of-loss/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Filmed in three UK locations – the Welsh Borders, the Kent coast and a Hampshire lake, as well as film sets (memory rooms) constructed in the artist’s studio, the exhibition traces the journey of a young girl as she rediscovers a heritage of knowledge and power. The work stitches together recreations of memories, combined with their physical remainders in the present day – objects, ephemera, locations and sounds. The films are inter-dispersed with photographs, spoken word and poetry, attempting to articulate the way memory inflects and informs the present, not as a series of linear and knowable narratives, but as constantly changing, ambiguous, beautiful and haunting residue.
The Past is Singing in our Teeth plays with ideas include the repeating of history, the presence of linked signs, archetypes, place and the objects we carry alongside us throughout our lives. The interplay between what is lost and what remains, the repetition of certain behaviours, the seeking out of certain systems and themes become the visual language of the work. So, whilst the impetus for the work begins with the artist’s own biographical engagement with time and memory, the concepts expand outwards, inviting viewers to connect to the work through their own experiences and ideas. The work is quiet, refusing monumentality – instead framing a precarious and fragile movement through the world. Like a psychoanalytic investigation, the construction of the work becomes a tenuous relationship between the real and the unreal, what is known and what is not.
EXHIBITION PAGE: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/the-past-is-singing-in-our-teeth/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/focus-kazakhstan/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
"HERO MOTHER" is the sister exhibition to MOMENTUM's 2015 show "BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from the Former Soviet Union and Other Mythical Places". "BALAGAN!!!" tools place simultaneously at 3 venues across Berlin: the MOMENTUM gallery in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center, the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor
am Max Liebermann Haus, and Külhaus. The Exhibition was accompanied by a Symposium at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, a Lecture Series at the ICI (Institute for Cultural Inquiry), and a Performance Program.
More Info:
HERO MOTHER: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/hero-mother/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/hero-mother-symposium/
BALAGAN!!!: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/balagan/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-symposium-hamburger-bahnhof/
LECTURES: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-davids-lecture/
http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/balagan-ici-lectures/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
BALAGAN!!! is therefore the framework for an exhibition curated by David Elliott in Berlin, for MOMENTUM and the NORDWIND Festival 2015, that shows contemporary art from just one part of the world, those countries that comprised the former USSR and its allies. In 1999 Elliott conceived the travelling exhibition AFTER THE WALL. Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe, that measured cultural change one decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, twenty-five years after this momentous event, he shows a world where chaos and misrule, along with the social comedy that results from it, are lovingly shown in art as artists struggle to digest and reconcile what they have experienced and integrate this with their dreams of a new and different way of life.
The exhibition took place from 14 November to 23 December 2015 in three venues: the museum spaces of the Max Liebermann Haus in Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, the rough industrial interiors of Kühlhaus, a former refrigeration plant on Gleisdreiecke, and in MOMENTUM, part of the Bethanien Art Center in Kreuzburg. At the same time, works by some artists in the exhibition were shown in Hellerau in Dresden and Kampnagel in Hamburg. A lecture, symposium and performance programme was also organised in Berlin in co-operation with ICI (Institute for Cultural Inquiry) and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum Contemporary Art.
The story of BALAGAN is strongly embedded within all the arts, particularly in the commedia dell’arte that underwent a revival in Russia immediately before and after the Revolution. Derived from the Turkic and Persian for ‘a wooden platform’, the original Russian word meant ‘fairground’, or the lightly constructed booths that characterised them. By the 18th century it had become associated with the activities of the people who worked there: puppeteers, clowns and jesters who made fun of and satirised established order.
In 1906, writer and poet Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921) finished his play Balaganshchik (variously translated as The Fairground Booth or The Puppet Show), the St. Petersburg première of which was directed by the avant-garde theatre director and actor Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), who also played Pierrot, its lead role. The riotous events of the opening night proved to be the first salvo in a continuing volley of artistic coups that lasted until the repression of the early 1930s. Blok’s intent in presenting such a dysfunctional masquerade to the public was to explode the social pretensions of Realist and Symbolist theatre by exposing its melodramatic clichés yet, in doing this, he was exposed the pain and drama of his times as well as on his personal experience and relationships. The creative fusion between the political, social and the personal is the impetus for BALAGAN!!! today.
Even during the dark years of Stalinist repression BALAGAN continued underground. While Europe was torn apart by World War II, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) completed his critical masterwork Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In this he regarded the upside-down-world of carnival as both a safety valve and a vision of a better life that depended, amongst other things, on the subversive effect of exhibiting publicly the private functions of the human body.1 Cultural dichotomies such as spirit and body, ‘high’ and ‘low’, rich and poor, sacred and profane were revealed as methods of social control, the disruption of which he highlighted in the grotesque realism of Rabelais’ writings and time. In the face of oppression laughter was an uncontrollable, therapeutic, liberating force. The revolutionary politics of laughter and the cathartic release that it promises are a central subject of the BALAGAN!!! exhibition.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/balagan/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
The exhibition is accompanied by a dual language (English/Korean) catalogue. By way of this exhibition, MOMENTUM is proud to show works by three artists never before seen in Berlin – Jang Jaerok, Hyungkyu Kim, and Jihye Park – and to welcome four new artists and their works to the MOMENTUM Collection – aaajiao, Claudia Chaseling, David Krippendorff, and Milovan Destil Marković.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/station_paradox/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Cao Yu was born in Liaoning Province in 1988, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Sculpture Department. She currently lives and works in Beijing. Recent exhibitions include: THE PUBLIC BODY .02, Artspace, Sydney (2017); Kabinett, Art Basel Hong Kong, HongKong, China (2017); Prix Yishu 8 Chine Exposition des Finalistes, Yishu 8, Beijing, China (2017); Recent Acquisitions–Recent Develop- ments, Sishang Art Museum, Beijing, China (2017); and The 3rd Today’s Documents–BRIC-á-brac: The Jumble of Growth, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); WHY the PERFORMANCE?, McaM, Shanghai, China (2016).
Scheiße • 夏色, German slang for faeces and a popular expletive, the artist’s choice for the exhibition’s title, is intended to reflect not upon his view of art but on the conditions in which all work is made, including art. This idea is clearly expressed in Das Kapital No. 1 – Questionnaire Show, (2015), a new site-specific performance and installation Zhou has made for this exhibition which has developed out of concerns that have run as a decisive element throughout his previous work.
Here, Zhou invokes sleazy peep shows and the sultry, inviting glances of Amsterdam “window girls” as ready-mades for a performance. A scantily clad actor reclines in a glass booth, telephone in hand; how she speaks and the style of her presentation mimics the live phone-ins on the adult channels of German TV. But on entering this exhibition visitors are presented with a choice: either they stand and watch or, if they pick up the handset, they are thrust into a scripted exchange of a completely unexpected order.
Instead of revolving around titillation, or the recital of a price-list of future delights, the exchange consists of an ideological ‘discussion’ about a new economic system. This is driven by a complex set of questions developed by the artist that question the economic and social status and role of the performer in the context of wider questions about the Chinese and world economies.
The visitor may either respond or remain silent. The exchange evolves into a kind of questionnaire, bound by common causes and emotions, that are related to global questions that affect us all – about power, economy, statehood, aspiration, communication, interpretation and misunderstanding.
Zhou Xiaohu is a member of the Chinese generation that experienced in childhood the hysterical, random cruelties of the Cultural Revolution, as well as the wild elation of the country ‘opening itself to the world’ throughout the 1980s. Like many others, he has greeted the booms and busts of both ideology and economics since that time with a mixture of incredulity and scepticism. Conflicting ideas: power and weakness, love and harshness, beauty and ugliness, naivety and cynicism, oppression and freedom, run as leitmotifs throughout his films, animations, installations and performances. Yet he has always been careful to expose these by casting a humane but provocative perspective on the different processes, forms, and media he feels are appropriate for his subject.
Zhou’s whole body of work may be seen as part of a longstanding Chinese artistic tradition in which the inner reflections of an individual collide with the wider political contexts within which they find themselves. Yet it may also be placed within a more recent current of scepticism that focuses on the discrepancies between dominant ideology and economic policy. This he treats in a range of different media, using surreal, absurdist narratives and situations that may be understood as both parodies and allegories of what he sees before him.
Accompanying this new work, MOMENTUM is also showing two of Zhou’s early animated videos that reflect on the body – physical, gendered and political – in radically different ways: The Gooey Gentleman (2002) and Conspiracy (2004), show him making violent drawings on his own skin of the transforming bodies of others. These are accompanied by Secret (2012), an animated video projection on two painted aluminium panels, that seem to be depicting someone being shot….
During the exhibition, viewing access to an archive of all Zhou Xiaohu's films was also made available through Video Bureau at MOMENTUM.
Exhibition Page:
http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/scheisse-zhou-xiaohu/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Since China Avant-garde, with its iconic German debut at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1993, Chinese contemporary art has shown a completely new face to the contemporary art world. After 1979, when the first avant-garde art groups showed their work after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese art has undergone a transformation from demanding artistic freedoms to a more complex and nuanced response to both its domestic and global context. This year marks the 35-year anniversary of the beginning of this transformation.
Zhang Peili started his first experiments with video art in 1988, moving from painting to an engagement with the specific aesthetics and politics of new media. Video art in China today not only contributes to the mainstream of new media art and aesthetics, but has also rooted itself deeply in practical research into technological development as well as into the experience of daily life.
PANDAMONIUM, the title of this exhibition, suggests two conflicting ideas: the soft, cuddly, diplomatic, almost clichéd, image of the Panda, one of the great symbols of China to the outside world, and the wild, fertile, noisy disorder of Pandemonium, the place of all demons in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. The birth of this new word represents the chaotic energy of Chinese artists’ efforts and experiments in new media art over the past decade. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that Chinese contemporary art has not yet, other than through the art market, engaged globally during this time. This lack has been veiled by the speed of Chinese social and economic development and further masked by the impact of politics and the media.
PANDAMONIUM focuses on the work of Shanghai artists who create openly, distant from the country’s political center in Beijing. The group of artists shown here are all engaged in experiments with new media, introducing into Chinese art new creative ideas and aesthetic approaches. This exhibition addresses the first three generations of media artists in China. Starting with pioneers like Zhang Peili and Hu Jieming, working since the 1980s to break new ground with the technologies of media art, to the successes of the next generation, such as internationally acclaimed artist Yang Fudong, and moving on to their students, who are developing their own visual languages in response and in contrast to their pioneering teachers. Most of the works of this youngest generation of artists is premiered in Berlin for the first time. Berlin-based artists Thomas Eller and Ming Wong, both with strong links to China, present works responding to these themes.
Focusing on single-channel video, the work selected for this show presents minimal and subtle expressions that offer a view not only of some of the strongest work now being made in Shanghai but also of the scale of transformation that is now running through the whole of Chinese contemporary art. PANDAMONIUM is especially proud to premiere a new work by Qiu Anxiong, made for this exhibition.
More Info:
EXHIBITION: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/past/pandamonium/
SYMPOSIUM 1: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/pandamonium-symposium-preview/
SYMPOSIUM 2: http://momentumworldwide.org/panel-discussions-3/pandamonium-symposium-finissage/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Berlin in the 21st Century sits on the intersection of many immigrant cultures and nations, as people from all over the world flock to the city. In recent years, Berlin has come to be especially known for attracting the world’s leading artists. Equally, Berlin is famous for the wealth of cultural artifacts housed in its museums. This convergence, in this capital city, of creative and historical culture with the world’s migrant cultures is often remarked upon, but it has not yet been closely considered in terms of the convergence of the different colonial legacies of the many populations that inhabit Berlin. "Fragments of Empires" is thus a timely reflection on the hybridization of cultural practices, and the fact that not only in Berlin, but everywhere in the world, we can all find roots somewhere else.
Reflecting upon the lasting legacies as diverse as the British, Byzantine, French, Ottoman, Roman Empires within the context of Berlin’s particular struggle with the painful histories of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, this exhibition extends the remits of history through artistic innovation. "Fragments of Empires" brings together artists who have dissected the historical legacies of their particular cultures to rebuild them into contemporary statements about how cultures, by absorbing one another, defy established borders and concepts of nationhood that have been drawn and re-drawn by political force. The opening of the exhibition in Berlin in early November will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The work by the artists in the exhibition – Kader Attia, Lutz Becker, Theo Eshetu, Amir Fattal, Gülsün Karamustafa, Fiona Pardington, and Sophia Pompéry – encapsulates a wide range of different approaches to experiences of empire, migration, cultural transformation and appropriation. All strongly reflect the viral, diasporic symbolisms of contemporary culture across the world and the different contexts within which they are perceived. In "Fragments of Empires", MOMENTUM is bringing these seven artists together for the first time.
This exhibition accordingly invokes time-based art practices to explore the legacies of cultural histories that have constantly changed through the passing of time. As Berlin’s only platform focusing exclusively on time-based art, MOMENTUM focuses on historical time through the lens of technologies that break down moments into images, as well as through the personal experiences of artists whose varied cultural backgrounds also re-frame different historical moments.
The "Fragments of Empires" exhibition took place at MOMENTUM Berlin in the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center on 7 Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015, and was accompanied by a Symposium on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
More Info:
EXHIBITION: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/fragments_of_empires/
SYMPOSIUM: http://momentumworldwide.org/fragments-of-empires-parallel-events/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues:
http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
2 - 5 November 2017 @ The Ministry of Environment, Berlin
6 - 17 November 2017 @ UNFCCC Secretariat, Bonn
FEATURING:
Andreas Blank, Stefano Cagol, Miru Kim, Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus,
Janet Laurence, Reifenberg, Stefan Rinck, Erwin Wurm, Shingo Yoshida
Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch & Constanze Kleiner
SHORT CONCEPT:
Landscapes of Loss at Berlin’s Ministry of Environment is the exhibition for the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP23, bringing together ten international artists with strong links to Berlin, who, each in their own way, address mankind’s role in relation to the environment. Through video, photography, and sculpture, this exhibition is designed as an antidote to the hyper-immediacy of the lives we live. In this age of instant gratification, we need to re-learn how to think in the long-term in order to implement the changes now which will heal our planet in the future. Landscapes of Loss asks us to stop and take the time to immerse ourselves in our planet at its most fragile, to abandon the urgency of the now and reconnect with the rhythms and needs of the natural world, from the Arctic tundra of Siberia, to the deserts of the Middle East, and the jungles and seas of the Antipodes.
ARTISTS & WORKS:
From endangered species to the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian artist Janet Laurence confronts us with the beauty and loneliness of creatures that could soon be the last of their kind. With the works of German sculptors Andreas Blank and Stefan Rinck, we turn from the ephemeral landscape and its vanishing creatures to the solid permanence of stone; a material reflecting the very substance of time, in its strata are recorded the ages of the planet. Berlin-based Israeli artist Reifenberg addresses the detritus polluting our environment by working with plastic bags recycled into art. Italian artist Stefano Cagol and Japanese artist Shingo Yoshida each ventured on long journeys into the Arctic to record mankind’s impact upon nature at its most extreme, and at its most threatened from the impacts of climate change. From the frozen north to the burning sands of Israel’s Negev Desert, Turkish/German artist Nezaket Ekici together with Israeli artist Shahar Marcus create human sand-clocks measuring how quickly time is running out to find solutions for political and environmental stability. While in Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert, Korean/American artist Miru Kim positions the fragility of her own body within the drama of the natural landscape. And Austrian artist Erwin Wurm brings us back into the urban landscape; an environment changing as rapidly as our natural one. In confronting our place in the landscape, these works together cast a hope that humanity will find a way to fit into all the world’s landscapes, however fragile the balance.
Exhibition Page: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/landscapes-of-loss/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
Filmed in three UK locations – the Welsh Borders, the Kent coast and a Hampshire lake, as well as film sets (memory rooms) constructed in the artist’s studio, the exhibition traces the journey of a young girl as she rediscovers a heritage of knowledge and power. The work stitches together recreations of memories, combined with their physical remainders in the present day – objects, ephemera, locations and sounds. The films are inter-dispersed with photographs, spoken word and poetry, attempting to articulate the way memory inflects and informs the present, not as a series of linear and knowable narratives, but as constantly changing, ambiguous, beautiful and haunting residue.
The Past is Singing in our Teeth plays with ideas include the repeating of history, the presence of linked signs, archetypes, place and the objects we carry alongside us throughout our lives. The interplay between what is lost and what remains, the repetition of certain behaviours, the seeking out of certain systems and themes become the visual language of the work. So, whilst the impetus for the work begins with the artist’s own biographical engagement with time and memory, the concepts expand outwards, inviting viewers to connect to the work through their own experiences and ideas. The work is quiet, refusing monumentality – instead framing a precarious and fragile movement through the world. Like a psychoanalytic investigation, the construction of the work becomes a tenuous relationship between the real and the unreal, what is known and what is not.
EXHIBITION PAGE: http://momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/the-past-is-singing-in-our-teeth/
More MOMENTUM Catalogues: http://momentumworldwide.org/publishing/
This book collects (with essays in English and Italian) the reflections on the anthropogenic interferences that the artist triggered during a year-long creative process, prophetically anticipating and going through the Covid-19, the first great subversion of the Third Millennium. Authors: Stefano Cagol, Giorgia Calò, Elisa Carollo, Alessandro Castiglioni, Mareike Dittmer, Silvana Greco, Rachel Rits-Volloch, Nicola Trezzi.
---
Questo libro raccoglie le riflessioni ( in inglese e italiano) sulle interferenze antropogeniche che l'artista ha innescato durante un processo creativo durato un anno, anticipando profeticamente e attraversando il Covid-19, prima grande sovversione del Terzo millennio. Con saggi di: Stefano Cagol, Giorgia Calò, Elisa Carollo, Alessandro Castiglioni, Mareike Dittmer, Silvana Greco, Rachel Rits-Volloch, Nicola Trezzi
.___
"The Time of the Flood. Beyond the myth through climate change," Stefano Cagol's year-long international artistic research initiative, began in Berlin on the 1st of November, 2019. By the time Cagol completed his artist residency at MOMENTUM at the end of February 2020, he had produced three new video works, a number of performative interventions throughout the city, countless photographs, installations, several studio visits, a symposium at the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin – and the world had irrevocably turned upside down. Cagol developed his concept for "The Time of the Flood" long before the first cases of Covid-19 were registered in Germany. His concept, to recontextualize the biblical story of the Flood within our current climate emergency, remains a crucial and timely reflection on the devastating impacts we humans have on our planet. Yet who could have imagined at the start of this project just how prophetic and timely it would prove to be?_ Rachel Rits-Volloch
___
Stefano Cagol is an Italian artist who participated in the 55th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 11, 14th Curitiba Biennale, 2nd OFF Biennale Cairo, 1st Xinjiang Biennale, and has held solo shows at CCA – Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, MA*GA Museum, Mart Museum, CLB Berlin and ZKM Karlsruhe. He studied at the Brera Academy in Milan and Ryerson University in Toronto with a post-doctoral fellowship from the Government of Canada.
He has been deconstructing Western notions of subjectivity and in particular the "white male complex" starting with a thorough interrogation of the camera obscura and by extension photography. Identifying the camera as a colonial tool in everyday life, he works against selfie-culture and, ironically, self portraiture altogether..