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online | #2912ARTatBerlin | The Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz has been showing the online exhibition TEGEL: FLIGHTS OF FANCY since 31 October 2020, a video programme as feedback on the closure of Berlin’s Tegel Airport.
The project was organised in 2011 by Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Susanne Prinz and Julie Westerman and builds on a series of events, exhibitions and publications that have been realised through crosscultural collaboration between artists based in the UK and Germany. It was screened on the eve of Tegel’s originally planned closure on 02.06.2012 at Kino Babylon.
Despite the current suspension of practically all privat air travel the closure of Tegel airport marks an important change in the way air travel is organised and experienced. The design of this airport is of a time when flight was associated with glamour, fantasy, technological progress, romantic chance encounters and fictional disasters. The building consists of a large concrete hexagonal structure circumnavigated by a corridor, punctuated with brightly coloured check-in desks. Viewing platforms and executive lounges populate the circumference of the building, inviting the traveller to enjoy a navigable thoroughfare instead of the shed-like enclosure with limited seating. There are commissioned art works, restaurants and bars, cafés and shops. The décor follows the distinctive bright colour schemes of its age all the way through to the plastic sinks and hand dryer in the restrooms. Tegel Airport is closing and while there are rumours about the next incarnation of this elegant building, what it might become in the future remains uncertain. The films selected for TEGEL: FLIGHTS OF FANCY speculate on both how the airport might be occupied in the future and what it symbolized in the past, they explore how air travel is hard wired into the imagination: the cinematic (disaster, romance and action movie all in one), and consider concepts of cultural mobility, exchange and internationalism.
Artists: Michelle Atherton, Diann Bauer+Amanda Beech, Chloé Brown, Giorgio Cappozzo+Robert Gschwantner, Alison J.Carr+Kerstin Honeit, Steven Chodoriwsky, Jamie Crew, Nick Crowe+Ian Rawlinson, Harriet Davies, Bryan Eccleshall+Karl Heinz Jeron, Stella Flatten+Jon Klein+Liane Lang, Hondartza Fraga+Miguel Santos, Rachel Garfield+Janet Hodgson, Margarita Gluzberg, Jane Harris, Gill Hobson, Dale Holmes+Gary Simmonds, Dominique Hurth, Stephan Hüsch+Águeda Simó, Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Renata Kaminska, Natasja Keller+Irene Pätzug, Sharon Kivland, Olga Lewicka+Carsten Zorn, Jeff Luckey, T.C. McCormack, Ashley Metz+Boris, Riedel+Joachim Stein, Jon Moscow, Karina Nimmerfall, Robert Partridge, Amy Patton, Melody Panosian+Stéphane Querrec, Julie Westerman.
Tegel is now history, both literally and figuratively. But how to deal with such a “relic”? Over a period of 18 months, a selected group of international artists and authors have devoted themselves to this question in a speculative-artistic way, reflecting on the situation of the airport, its history and the possibilities for its future use.
The project was supported by Sheffield Hallam University / Art and Design Research Centre, Royal College Of Art – Post Graduate and Design / Berlin TXL / The Urban Tech Rebublic.
Link to the Online-Show: www.rosa-luxemburg-platz.net
To the Gallery
Image caption: Courtesy by Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
Exhibtion TEGEL: FLIGHTS OF FANCY – Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Contemporary Art | Exhibtions Berlin Galleries – ART at Berlin
