"Haare auf den Zähnen" (2022, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle fine art paper, 84 cm x 59 cm). The work reenacts the phrase "language is the problem, not us" from my two-channel video work "Ground Control_many voices one chant" (2018).
In the exhibition BLIND VISION, initiated and realized by Matthias Mayer and Maik Schierloh in cooperation with Treptow-Ateliers e.V. Opening: Friday., 11.11., 17:00-22:00 at the Treptow Ateliers Berlin. Wilhelminenhofstr. 83-85 - Oberschöneweide - 12459 Berlin.
About the exhibition: Anyone who has moved to Berlin in recent decades has played a part in the development of this city. For some, it conveyed an atmosphere of departure (or even "dependency") in an alternative and avant-garde sense; for others, it was merely a projection surface for profane economic interests pushed by global market events. There was never a vision for all. Politicians were merely trying to pick the pearls out of many alternative ideas. For example, the nightlife and the precarious life of artists were included in the marketing of Berlin. This blind vision is now reflected in a place of action. An unrenovated former industrially used hall and other rooms formerly used as offices, which were made available to the artists' community "Treptow-Ateliers" together with their cheaply rented temporary studios as a temporary playground by an investor. The community itself opened the space for third-party projects. The rawness of the historic site, the desire and spontaneity of the alternative users inevitably lead back to the aura of Berlin in the 1980s and 1990s. And of course Berlin still works like that. But the atmosphere is deceptive, the awakening already sits in the neck, like a drug that slowly loses its effect. Because it all ends, and without romanticism. The artists soon have to go back to their nomadic way. Only that they are not nomadic, but originally displaced from their cherished place of work. Their journey is already unique, because they stick together in solidarity in their seemingly hopeless situation. What could become, what could be? Why is it a blind vision?
With the exhibition title "BLIND VISION" we want to point out not only a view of Berlin but also the unfortunate (spatial) situation of artists in Berlin, especially that of the Ateliergemeinschaft Treptow-Ateliers. Their old studio location in Mörikestraße was terminated in 2018 after six lively years of exchange, mutual support and joint art presentation. The resistance to stay remained unsuccessful, so that the community found an interim use at the current location in the Rathenau-Hallen on Wilhelminenhofstraße as a stopgap solution in 2020. The expected bad news came just in these days. The studio community with 26 artists will have to move out again by the end of the year (Link current statement Treptow-Ateliers e.V.: https://www.treptow-ateliers.de/post/treptow-ateliers-vor-dem-aus