Assembling Past and Future is an installation in the project Blood Sweat and Tears, which was conceived especially for the gallery at Körnerpark’s 100 years anniversary and grew out of a collaboration between peace activists and a network of creatives. It is anchored historically in the first International Women’s Peace Congress at The Hague in 1915, during which the participants debated the sociopolitical, economic, and intellectual prerequisites for a future lasting peace and ties together individuals who advocate for a peaceful world.
Through a video installation, the exhibition space became a virtual conference. Historical images and text are overlaid with contemporary statements and portraits, allowing different temporal planes and materials to permeate each other.
The projects’ collaborative approach probes the relationship between the participating individuals and the conditions on site. Most important subjects are nonviolent communication and community. By destabilizing boundaries between the actors, places, and periods of time, the project wants to show a new understanding of history. Boundaries between art and activism are constantly shifting and blurred within this work. Strict categories are suspended within the instillation: past, present and future; reality, fiction and virtual space; community and individual.
The videos take on the formal tactic of the moving portrait. Moving videos of actors performing speeches are overlayed against archival images from peace activists who participated in the conference in the Hague of 1915. These archival images are broken down and dissected within the moving picture plane, while simultaneously different actors reenact suffragette poses and positions.
Palm trees and sunflowers line the blissful and baroque
Körnerpark in the middle of bustling, urban Neukölln. Here, “Sweat,
Blood and Tears – Assembling Past and Future” is on display until
September 4.
Berlin-based, Dutch artist Mathilde ter Heijne, along with her
research team, has turned the indoors of the Galerie im Körnerpark into a
feminist utopia. The first Woman’s Peace Assembly in 1915 at The Hague
is the springboard for contemporary discourse. Here, in the exhibition
which wants to remind us through photographic postcards and video
portraits that feminism today – as then – is based on the visibility and
collectivity of its players, paying tribute to the sisters that fought
so hard in the past and still do so today for a non-violent world.Mirroring the outdoors and paralleling the historical photographs of the International Peace Congress, real palm trees – the symbol of utopian paradise – stand potted and planted throughout the gallery space, giving the place a hot greenhouse vibe. The suffragettes from 1915 protested World War I. In Körnerpark this pacifist plea lingers and experiences an urgent renaissance in the face of current geo-political crises. The exhibition’s title lauds the bodily juices and the hard work that go into revolution, progress, and peace. A selection of role models provide hope for the future. Motivated by the idea of “utopia”, a potential zone to talk peace and credit great minds of revolutionary thought takes shape in the frame of the gallery. In the form of video portraits, educator and peace activist Florence Holbrook and suffragettes the likes of Susan B. Anthony gain visibility. Current social, political, and feminist organisations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom contributed to the project’s plans. Therein, new and old visionaries share footage and the floor.
Elegantly walking the fine line between new media fine art and the aesthetics of revolution, the exhibition takes raw DIY elements and mixes them with slick gallery touches. “Woman to Go” collects thousands of diverse ladies, making-up a wall of remembrance. This work consists of take-away Daguerreotype postcards of anonymous woman that history has left out, lining this wall from floor to ceiling. The static portrait, a method to manifest, becomes a mobile postcard. Taking this format a step further, videos of 24 artists, activists, and academics stand on wooden easel-like structures. Each portrait is a monologue – in colour – of a contemporary, layered as a moving image on top of the still image of a black and white photograph of a heroine of history. Voices include the 2005 Nobel Peace nominee Fatmire Feka. The footage of a woman from 1915 with the face of a woman from 2016 fitted to hers, blurs the lines between past and present. Their thoughts become timeless.
Spray-painted wooden benches sport neon pink, green, and orange political slogans like “you are never alone, you are a signal”. Acting as docks to incite protest or generate camaraderie, they invite to contemplate and listen together. These individual stories culminate in a large screen projection, reenacting the peace conference. Throughout the notion of assembly is the leitmotif, a collective event assembles. On the first of September a symposium on radical peace will do just that, followed by a performance series on the 4th. In effect, taking its cues from “her-story”, Mathilde ter Heijne and company has successfully created what Michel Foucault would have deemed a heterotopia, an oasis outside of hegemonic power structures. Pleasing to look at but also thought-provoking in its message, this exhibition sets up a good blue print for a feminist utopia: keep up the good fight, peacefully.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen