The world within - Exhibition
04.07 – 15.08.2009, Stedefreund gallery, Berlin
15.10.2009 - 31.10.2009, Museum of the city of Skopje, Skopje
Artists: Igor Tosevski | Gjorge Jovanovic | Ivana Dragsic | Stefka Ammon | Inken Reinert | Katja Pudor
"Territories" by Igor Tosevski
In a land where the right of blood and territory have been an age-old pretext for endless and brutal conflicts, today’s shifting of the borderlines has become a matter of a very delicate nature. While debating on whether a Nation is actually a State or on whether a Nationality ultimately signifies territory, we became in the meantime divided by ethnos, nationalities, religions and names.
My work reflects on these divisions and through this declaration (performative action), the given territory challenges you to step in and get directly involved. Although the artistic act has no boundaries, this action requires responsibilities to be taken. It is up to each and everyone to act within the field of unlimited freedom.
"Svirakus" by Gjorgje Jovanovic
The installation “Svirakus” deals with the ways of creating myths and using them in the service of ‘national awakening’ as well as with people that used to be on the margins but have become prominent and appreciated. ‘Svirakus’ is an ironic and comical story about finding the historical ‘missing chain’.
“Alle schengener staaten –GR” by Ivana Dragsic
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a whole world has changed. Countries united, broke up, changed names and joined unions & organizations. People’s mobility grew and influenced various social phenomena and processes, educational systems, cultural values and political trends.
The symbol of separation, obstacle, unfairness, hostility, intolerance and repression had fallen for the German people, and initiated a debate, an [effort for] consensual look at the past and what it brings to the present. At the same time, the EU-integrative process took on a slightly different shape – equally repressive for some others, the people who didn’t find themselves in ‘better’ countries at this moment, and suffered from the consequences of a split world. Today, while the Germans are dealing with what that fragment of history brought to their lives, people in countries such as Macedonia are dealing with the present-day Berlin Wall* for them, the Schengen. Any Macedonian citizen that wishes/needs to travel to the ‘Schengen Zone’ needs to get hold of a pile of documents, in order to apply for the VISA. This illogical regulation that kills the initiative within individuals and groups, especially artists, students, academics, athletes and cultural workers, has a tough impact on ill people and separated families.
For a short moment, it might be a little unsophisticated to compare the Berlin Wall with the Schengen regime, but the symbolic of the barrier and the endless personality tests, that have stopped many from moving, studying, meeting, working or getting a surgery is very close and linked to the phenomenon of physical separation, hostility and intolerance.
*To say that the Schengen VISA is a modern metaphorical Berlin Wall is not an overstatement. There are 6 months left until the liberalization process takes place, and that time is just enough for another hundreds of people to be refused the right of free movement. Still, it will never compensate for the generations that have lived in a sort of isolation for the past 2 decades.
"Döner in the East" by Stefka Ammon
A visualization of the expansion of Doner-stands in Berlin-Weissensee (former GDR) from 1990 - 2009.
In 1993 I came to Berlin from West-Germany and in 1994 I moved into an apartment nearby Langhansstrasse in Weissensee, a former Eastern part of town. Turkish classmates, business-, kiosk-, or doner stand owners had been familiar faces, people I got used to be in touch with on a daily basis. I hadn't even realize that there hadn't been any deeper contacts with Turkish people when I first moved to Weissensee. Then a döner stand opened business in my neighbourhood. Due to my "de-habituation" I suddenly found myself part of the two-sided curious awkwardness that accompanied the "first encounter" of Turkish Döner-stand owners and former GDR-citizens. For a short moment I too saw something very exotic as well as foreign in Turkish people. A strange process in East Berlin during the first years after the change.
"Smaragd 801" by Inken Reinert
As she already did in the past, Inken Reinert employs here mass-produced East German shelving units for her piece Smaragd 801 (Emerald 801). This time the artist has installed the furniture units (which as manufactured homes, are based on a modular system) on a trailer that will be park in the courtyard outside the Stedefreund gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
For a three days period the installation will leave the courtyard going to different selected places in the eastern boroughs of Berlin.
There, Smaragd 801 will become a mobile café, a local gathering place, an attraction, a place to sit, creating informals conversationals situations for inquisitive and interested passersby.
The director Bianca Bodau will capture on film the creation of the piece and the various activities at each stops, paying special attention to the high potential that this piece of furniture could represent for personal identification. Former owners and passersby will be given a chance to speak, an opportunity to talk about their particular relationship to the relics of this piece of East German furniture.
The installation provides space for the convergence of art and personal experiences of social and cultural history, functioning as a link between public and private, architecture and interior decoration.
"The other side" (Die andere Seite) by Katja Pudor
The frieze, The other side (Die andere Seite), refers to Walter Womacker’s monumental mosaic Unser Leben (Our Life), which wraps itself around the Haus des Lehrers (House of the Teacher) on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, and is dedicated to my first memories of art. I grew up in the GDR, the eastern part of Berlin, when the Alexanderplatz was the centre of the city. I saw the mosaic’s stereotyped figures as patterns and liked seeing their shapes circling a house: the Haus des Lehrers on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz.
'Unser Leben' depicts the socialist-communist utopia. Womacker´s archetypes of socialism are closely based on classical heroic figures. The group of twelve people embody the different values of the ideal socialist society: a mother and her children, dancing children, a young couple in the sun, students in discourse with scientists, an artist talking engagedly with workers, solidarity and friendship between different peoples, and the Peace Race, one of the greatest annual amateur bicycle races.
The national painter Womacker only painted what was permitted. His devotional images, which intended to strongly shape the Alexanderplatz of socialist Berlin, were to have no association with images from Germany’s recent history, preferring to depict the classic triumvirate: farmer – worker – scientist, instead of two concentration camp inmates, for instance. I scaled this monumental work of GDR art, which is seven meters high and 125 meters long, and spans a surface area of 800 meters, down to 1:10 and disassembled it into 12 single parts. As a result the external frieze is turned in on itself, generating negative forms of socialist utopia, giving shape to the omitted aspects of human existence: namely, aggression, intolerance, antisemitism, xenophobia, racism, abuse, brutality, greed, vengefulness, pride, disdain and envy.
"Territories" by Igor Tosevski
In a land where the right of blood and territory have been an age-old pretext for endless and brutal conflicts, today’s shifting of the borderlines has become a matter of a very delicate nature. While debating on whether a Nation is actually a State or on whether a Nationality ultimately signifies territory, we became in the meantime divided by ethnos, nationalities, religions and names.
My work reflects on these divisions and through this declaration (performative action), the given territory challenges you to step in and get directly involved. Although the artistic act has no boundaries, this action requires responsibilities to be taken. It is up to each and everyone to act within the field of unlimited freedom.
"Svirakus" by Gjorgje Jovanovic
The installation “Svirakus” deals with the ways of creating myths and using them in the service of ‘national awakening’ as well as with people that used to be on the margins but have become prominent and appreciated. ‘Svirakus’ is an ironic and comical story about finding the historical ‘missing chain’.
“Alle schengener staaten –GR” by Ivana Dragsic
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a whole world has changed. Countries united, broke up, changed names and joined unions & organizations. People’s mobility grew and influenced various social phenomena and processes, educational systems, cultural values and political trends.
The symbol of separation, obstacle, unfairness, hostility, intolerance and repression had fallen for the German people, and initiated a debate, an [effort for] consensual look at the past and what it brings to the present. At the same time, the EU-integrative process took on a slightly different shape – equally repressive for some others, the people who didn’t find themselves in ‘better’ countries at this moment, and suffered from the consequences of a split world. Today, while the Germans are dealing with what that fragment of history brought to their lives, people in countries such as Macedonia are dealing with the present-day Berlin Wall* for them, the Schengen. Any Macedonian citizen that wishes/needs to travel to the ‘Schengen Zone’ needs to get hold of a pile of documents, in order to apply for the VISA. This illogical regulation that kills the initiative within individuals and groups, especially artists, students, academics, athletes and cultural workers, has a tough impact on ill people and separated families.
For a short moment, it might be a little unsophisticated to compare the Berlin Wall with the Schengen regime, but the symbolic of the barrier and the endless personality tests, that have stopped many from moving, studying, meeting, working or getting a surgery is very close and linked to the phenomenon of physical separation, hostility and intolerance.
*To say that the Schengen VISA is a modern metaphorical Berlin Wall is not an overstatement. There are 6 months left until the liberalization process takes place, and that time is just enough for another hundreds of people to be refused the right of free movement. Still, it will never compensate for the generations that have lived in a sort of isolation for the past 2 decades.
"Döner in the East" by Stefka Ammon
A visualization of the expansion of Doner-stands in Berlin-Weissensee (former GDR) from 1990 - 2009.
In 1993 I came to Berlin from West-Germany and in 1994 I moved into an apartment nearby Langhansstrasse in Weissensee, a former Eastern part of town. Turkish classmates, business-, kiosk-, or doner stand owners had been familiar faces, people I got used to be in touch with on a daily basis. I hadn't even realize that there hadn't been any deeper contacts with Turkish people when I first moved to Weissensee. Then a döner stand opened business in my neighbourhood. Due to my "de-habituation" I suddenly found myself part of the two-sided curious awkwardness that accompanied the "first encounter" of Turkish Döner-stand owners and former GDR-citizens. For a short moment I too saw something very exotic as well as foreign in Turkish people. A strange process in East Berlin during the first years after the change.
"Smaragd 801" by Inken Reinert
As she already did in the past, Inken Reinert employs here mass-produced East German shelving units for her piece Smaragd 801 (Emerald 801). This time the artist has installed the furniture units (which as manufactured homes, are based on a modular system) on a trailer that will be park in the courtyard outside the Stedefreund gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
For a three days period the installation will leave the courtyard going to different selected places in the eastern boroughs of Berlin.
There, Smaragd 801 will become a mobile café, a local gathering place, an attraction, a place to sit, creating informals conversationals situations for inquisitive and interested passersby.
The director Bianca Bodau will capture on film the creation of the piece and the various activities at each stops, paying special attention to the high potential that this piece of furniture could represent for personal identification. Former owners and passersby will be given a chance to speak, an opportunity to talk about their particular relationship to the relics of this piece of East German furniture.
The installation provides space for the convergence of art and personal experiences of social and cultural history, functioning as a link between public and private, architecture and interior decoration.
"The other side" (Die andere Seite) by Katja Pudor
The frieze, The other side (Die andere Seite), refers to Walter Womacker’s monumental mosaic Unser Leben (Our Life), which wraps itself around the Haus des Lehrers (House of the Teacher) on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, and is dedicated to my first memories of art. I grew up in the GDR, the eastern part of Berlin, when the Alexanderplatz was the centre of the city. I saw the mosaic’s stereotyped figures as patterns and liked seeing their shapes circling a house: the Haus des Lehrers on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz.
'Unser Leben' depicts the socialist-communist utopia. Womacker´s archetypes of socialism are closely based on classical heroic figures. The group of twelve people embody the different values of the ideal socialist society: a mother and her children, dancing children, a young couple in the sun, students in discourse with scientists, an artist talking engagedly with workers, solidarity and friendship between different peoples, and the Peace Race, one of the greatest annual amateur bicycle races.
The national painter Womacker only painted what was permitted. His devotional images, which intended to strongly shape the Alexanderplatz of socialist Berlin, were to have no association with images from Germany’s recent history, preferring to depict the classic triumvirate: farmer – worker – scientist, instead of two concentration camp inmates, for instance. I scaled this monumental work of GDR art, which is seven meters high and 125 meters long, and spans a surface area of 800 meters, down to 1:10 and disassembled it into 12 single parts. As a result the external frieze is turned in on itself, generating negative forms of socialist utopia, giving shape to the omitted aspects of human existence: namely, aggression, intolerance, antisemitism, xenophobia, racism, abuse, brutality, greed, vengefulness, pride, disdain and envy.