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until 13.04. | #4223ARTatBerlin | PSM Gallery currently shows the exhibition Seventeen Grams of Longing by the artist Iris Häussler.
Seventeen Grams of Longing tells of unconscious and conscious, individual and collective longings through the lens of the intertwined lives of two men and their interest in migratory birds. In 2024, the artistic legacies of two brothers were discovered on two different continents. Through the respective finds in Berlin and Toronto, we learn about their shared passion and once again ask ourselves one of the questions that science has been asking for decades: How much are we determined by nature, how much by our past experiences?
For her project Seventeen Grams of Longing, Iris Häussler developed the two characters Kurt and (K)Carl, twins who were born in Germany in the middle of the Second World War and separated as small children. While Kurt continued to grow up in Berlin, (K)Carl’s life took its course in Toronto, Canada (spelled anglophonized with a C). As the twins grew up on two continents, they never saw each other again in real life; in the context of the exhibitions Seventeen Grams of Longing in March/April 2024 at PSM in Berlin and in September/October 2024 at Daniel Faria in Toronto, the two figures symbolically meet again “in the air”.
Through their bird-watching, metaphorical thinking, creativity, empathy and passion, Kurt and (K)Carl created alternative worlds, fulfilling their ambition to ‘bring back into the air’ the birds whose extinction they observed – each in their own way. Unconsciously, this act perhaps also expresses their longing to travel together, to escape from their real life circumstances and find their other unknown selves.
Migratory birds weigh about 17 grams on average, they are very delicate and fragile, but at the same time have the incredible stamina and strength to cross continental and intercontinental distances (distances of up to 15,000 kilometers) twice a year; an ability that has not yet been fully researched scientifically.
The artistic environments the two characters each created also allowed them to become passionate about something mysterious – something intangible, something they didn’t know – and yet it had power over their emotional state throughout their lives: their traumatic experience of separation in early childhood and (K)Carl’s subsequent migration as a toddler, and ultimately the fact that the twins’ separation was ever spoken about in either family. The birds they watched and they read about, and their eyes gazing at the sky, filled them with a longing for which they had no real la guage – and no professional skills to record the bird populations that appeared in smaller numbers year after year.
Kurt collected ornithology books, which he read with fascination but also treated destructively: he cut out every illustration that showed a bird. What remained were books with eerie holes and gaps, showing only the negative outlines of the cut-out birds. However, Kurt brought them back into the sky: as mobiles, as cut-out paper birds pinned to the walls that populate his alternative world.
Iris Häussler traces the concept of transgenerational trauma not only in the series of works by the twin brothers Kurt and (K)Carl, but also in her entire oeuvre through the creation of fictional artist figures and their works; also triggered by her own biography and the attempt to escape the stressful traumas of the Second World War within her own family by emigrating.
Why do I lie awake for hours at night imagining birds arriving at one of their breeding destinations after their migrations (a tawny owl, a woodpecker, a goldfinch, a blue tit, a chimney swift…) and although completely exhausted, they are still “ready to nest”. While the world changes in their “absence” – their former nesting sites disappear, the trees they used to perch on are cut down, the flight paths they once dominated are equipped with skyscrapers that reflect the sky but are nothing but a “deadly trap” for the animals.
Quotes from *Iris Häussler, text by Iris Häussler and Sabine Schmidt
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 2. March 2024 – Saturday, 13. April 2024
To the gallery
Image caption: Seventeen Grams of Longing, installation view by Marjorie Brunet-Plaza
Exhibition Iris Häussler – PSM Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
