until 25.10. | #2776ARTatBerlin | From 9 July 2020 the Bärenzwinger shows the group exhibition SOUND.NODES. Several events will take place during the exhibition period.
The »sound.nodes« exhibition is a first step toward exploring the subject of opening, the theme of our new annual program »Openings, not Openings.« The idea here is that the various artistic approaches and perspectives shown allow the Bärenzwinger’s spaces to expand in self-reflection. New insights and changes in circumstances due to the current situation are forcing the Bärenzwinger into a self-critical, fusilli-shaped process of opening at a time when opening is either prohibited or only possible under strict conditions.
The space offers different themes, dynamics, and perspectives to connect and create »nodes«, which in turn further evolve in a self-reflective manner, continuously interlinking in new ways over time.
The act of listening among the participating artists and their contributions raises a wealth of questions that will determine the next steps we take: to what extent is opening an act of opening the self? How do we ourselves approach opening, and how open are we to perspectives that question our own standpoint? How do we cope with the fact that the memories of others don’t always reflect our own perceptions, and sometimes even question our memories and perceptions? Can we truly open ourselves up to everything?
Participating artists:
Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla, Mario Asef, Anna Bromley, Akash Sharma, Shazeb Arif Shaikh
Curation Exhibition & Events:
Ulrike Riebel and Hauke Zießler
Katja Kynast and Isabel Jäger
Co-Curation: Alexandra Neuß
Production: Carolina Redondo
Production assistance: Claudio Aguirre
Translation: Andrea Scrima
Graphic: Viktor Schmidt
Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla
Born in Alexandria, Egypt. Film Curator, educator and translator. Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla studied history, politics, and Middle Eastern Studies in Egypt and Germany. Currently a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. In his research, he focuses on Islam, Arab migration and discourses of sexuality in Europe. Abdalla also writes about film and cultural history of the Arab world. He worked inter alia for Deutsche Welle, Goethe-Institute and the Jewish Museum Berlin. Since 2014 Abdalla is currently a program curator at the Arab Film Festival Berlin (Alfilm) and published in several cultural platforms like dis:orient and Jeem. The piece »Balcony of my Dreams« presented in the exhibition is a part of a larger project that tries to tackle the issue of diasporic presence in relation to space, time and history, through sounds and creative storytelling.
Mario Asef
Mario Asef is an architect and conceptual artist based in Berlin. He studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urban Development in Córdoba, Argentina (Dpl.), and art at Chelsea College for Art and Design in London, England, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe and at the Universität der Kunst (UdK) in Berlin, Germany, where he obtained a master’s degree. His work has been exhibited worldwide, most recently at Daegu Photo Biennale (South Korea), Quartier 21 (Museumsquartier, Vienna), Wild Palms (Düsseldorf), Silent Green (Berlin), Junge Kunst e.V. (Wolfsburg, Germany), Kasa Galerie (Istanbul), SSamzie Space (Seoul), The Drawing Hub (Berlin).
His videos, photographs, sound installations, and interventions in public space deal with architectonic as well as sociopolitical questions and confront issues related to their spatial representability. Mario Asef uses these normative orders to develop a methodology that combines causality with happenstance, pushing things into absurdity. Since 2014 he organizes exhibitions and lectures for Errant Sound e.V., a project space dedicated to sound art in Berlin.
Anna Bromley
Anna Bromley develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio talks and pieces. She is interested in fractures and interruptions in representative ways of talking and saying. Recently her works have been shown and heard in AgvA CIAT, nGbK, HKW and SAVVY Contemporary Berlin as well as in MUU Helsinki, documenta14 Radio, Musrara Mix Jerusalem and Fondazione Arthur Cravan di Milano. Since 2010, she has also conceived and realized curatorial formats – mostly in non-hierarchical collectives and collaborations. These have focused on the politics of self-ironic jokes, queer temporalities, and Central European disciplinations of body and psyche. Their curatorial research groups have produced the anthologies Glossary of Inflationary Terms (Berlin 2013, Mexico City 2014) and Jokebook (Berlin 2015). She is the author of Quatsch (AAAAA PPPPP, Berlin 2020).
Bromley’s most recent research project is dedicated to radio practices in protest networks. In 2020 she is a Fellow for Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Akash Sharma
Akash Sharma is an experimental artist exploring electro-acoustic improvisation, data manipulation, algorithmic compositions, and sensor-based music. He is the founding director of sound.codes – a sound research lab which conducts archaeoacoustics conservation. He is interested in Human-Machine relationships and interfaces. His work explores the transmission of information, how to make traditional knowledge and information more accessible to the public at large.
Born in Indore, India, 1987, Akash Sharma has been developing, archiving Tribal and Traditional information since 2012 and lives in between Himalayan village and Mumbai. He has studied Computer Science from Mumbai University and Music Technology from Emory University.
Shazeb Arif Shaikh
As an independent curator and producer, Shazeb Arif Shaikh focuses on experimental practices and processes across human endeavour. With this pursuit, bringing deeply inquisitive people together from diverse cultures and perspectives has blossomed beyond a profession, into a way of life and lifelong learning. With a wide-spectrum of curiosities across arts, science, philosophy, culture, technology and their various intersections now and into the future, my projects have evolved as original frameworks of interdisciplinary research, production and experience.
Change is indeed the only constant that governs my mutating body of contemporary work spread across long-term social impact projects both urban and rural, landmarks, festivals, exhibitions, public space interventions, social experiments, residencies, facilities, live performances, films and web-based collaborations. Operating in a niche experimental space in a country with a vibrant traditional culture but largely deficient in institutional support across the board, the need to fill gaps in this society led to the experience of envisioning and establishing projects from ground zero and nurturing them into independent institutions with an international outlook, partnerships and associations.
Dates:
26.08.2020 – 7 – 10 pm
TheoryWednesday with Brandon LaBelle and Diana McCarty Presented by: Natascha Nassir-Shahnian
03.09.2020 – 5 – 8 pm
Public forum – Vision for the Bärenzwinger
11.09.2020 – 7.30 – 9 pm
Gallery Weekend – Sound performance by Ute Waldhausen
since April 2020
“Openings, not Openings” on social media and YouTube
Vernissage: Thursday, 9th July 2020, 4:00 – 10:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Thursday, 9th July to Sunday, 25th October 2020
WHERE? Bärenzwinger, Berlin, in Köllnischer Park opposite Rungestraße 3, 10179 Berlin-Mitte
Image caption: Grafik Viktor Schmidt
Exhibition SOUND.NODES – Bärenzwinger | Exhibitions Berlin Project Spaces | ART at Berlin