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until 14.12. | #2635ARTatBerlin | EIGENHEIM Berlin shows from 26th October 2019 the exhibition TOP DOWN / BOTTOM UP – Ökonomisierung und Soziales with works by the artists Benedikt Braun, Vanessa Brazeau, Gabriel Dörner, Enrico Freitag, Elfi Fröhlich, Sebastian Jung, Tommy Neuwirth, Anna Schimkat, the Professur Städtebau, José Taborda and Philipp Valenta.
The fourth exhibition of EIGENHEIM Weimar/Berlin as the official showcase of the Bauhaus University Weimar on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus deals with various aspects of the economization of our society. Economization is the spreading of market principles into other areas of society. The economic principle of efficiency is finding its way into more and more social areas, wether in education or in health care. In everyday language the invasion of economic thinking is easily recognizable: the patient becomes the customer, the administrative act the service and the donation the sponsoring. On the one hand, economicisation penetrates our social systems in this way and is thus the basis for a profound social imbalance; on the other hand, this penetration is the cause of a questionable canon of values – higher, faster, further – success, career, advancement – the principle of performance has taken root in our everyday life as a guiding principle, generates constant pressure for success and stirs up fears of descent. Depending on success, the individual‘s social position appears, and thus the chance of an optimal education, health or retirement provision. Social classes are distinguished decisively by the economic success of the individual. To this end, we are caught in a chain of dependencies between productivity and social acceptance, which results in major social disruptions. But well, we look to the future and seem to aware extensive changes. A change in values can be foreseen. Many scientists assume that in 50 years less than 10 percent of the population will be sufficient to produce the required goods and services. But it is precisely in terms of the changes foreseeable in the near future that we must discuss the social viability of this principle.
Of course, we are aware that economization has also had positive effects on society and it is not our aim to criticize it unilaterally. We are also aware that this complex and extensive topic can only be presented and discussed in excerpts in such an exhibition. It is more the task of economists, scientists or political advisors than of artists to provide a comprehensive insight into such a topic. And still artists reflect the zeitgeist and often develop their own, perhaps playfully intuitive, perhaps frighteningly dystopian view of the situation.
Thus Enrico Freitag‘s painting and drawing immerse us deeply in an active Fordist dystopia of mass production, Sebastian Jung reminds us with the relocation of a Marx bust into the trivial economic-social framework of a shopping centre that it is possible to step out of unconscious participation in the structures of capitalist economy, or Gabriel Dörner gives us insight into the economic structure of Thuringia‘s hospitals with the extensive publication of the interdisciplinary research project „Aesthetics of healing places“. Tommy Neuwirth, with his „network for an unconditional basic income“, makes us think humorously about our welfare state, Philipp Valenta opens a service station for washing the visitors money, Vanessa Brazeau transfers the changes in stock exchange-listed companies to a fitness app, and Benedikt Braun shows, among other things, an installation that illuminates the social lower class in a pictorial way. In her work „Art Tabs“, Elfi Fröhlich plays with our economy of attention and gives free space to the narratives that develop between different pictorial elements. With her work „Calgon“, she allows us to participate in self-reflective, contemplatively purifying precision work and „semantic elimination“ (Fröhlich) or, with a video consisting of scans of her calendars from 1994 to 2015, gives us a deep insight into her work as an artist and professor of fine art at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In this exhibition, we do justice to our goal of depicting precisely this institution in its broad spectrum of education through a contribution by the Chair of Urban Planning. Here we present two architectural drawds for an ecological-economic social development plan for a highly potent area in the centre of Berlin.
Plakat zur Ausstellung TOP DOWN / BOTTOM UP
Thus Enrico Freitag‘s painting and drawing immerse us deeply in an active Fordist dystopia of mass production, Sebastian Jung reminds us with the relocation of a Marx bust into the trivial economic-social framework of a shopping centre that it is possible to step out of unconscious participation in the structures of capitalist economy, or Gabriel Dörner gives us insight into the economic structure of Thuringia‘s hospitals with the extensive publication of the interdisciplinary research project „Aesthetics of healing places“. Tommy Neuwirth, with his „network for an unconditional basic income“, makes us think humorously about our welfare state, Philipp Valenta opens a service station for washing the visitors money, Vanessa Brazeau transfers the changes in stock exchange-listed companies to a fitness app, and Benedikt Braun shows, among other things, an installation that illuminates the social lower class in a pictorial way. In her work „Art Tabs“, Elfi Fröhlich plays with our economy of attention and gives free space to the narratives that develop between different pictorial elements. With her work „Calgon“, she allows us to participate in self-reflective, contemplatively purifying precision work and „semantic elimination“ (Fröhlich) or, with a video consisting of scans of her calendars from 1994 to 2015, gives us a deep insight into her work as an artist and professor of fine art at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In this exhibition, we do justice to our goal of depicting precisely this institution in its broad spectrum of education through a contribution by the Chair of Urban Planning. Here we present two architectural drawds for an ecological-economic social development plan for a highly potent area in the centre of Berlin.
Thus we arrived at the scene of the event and hereby invite you to the exhibition TOP DOWN BOTTOM UP – economization and social issues from 26.10. to 14.12.2019 at EIGENHEIM Berlin.
Vernissage: Saturday, 26. October 2019, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Exhibition period: Saturday, 26. October to Saturday, 14th December 2019
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Exhibition TOP DOWN / BOTTOM UP – EIGENHEIM Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibition Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
