Too Close, Too Far – Video (rechter Monitor) und Andrea – Keramiken – Elke Marhöfer
Broken and Repaired – Baumskulpturen – Mikhail Lylov
Landpartie – Fotos – Maternal Fantasies
Die anderen Fotos: Dorothee Albrecht, Berlin
HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTIES
We live in times of great uncertainties. Fears seamed to be the contemporary global common that affects everyone in all corners of the globe. There are different fears, but no one is in safety. COVID-19 functions like a magnifying glass. Finally we become aware of all the threats, simultaneously individual threats and threats to mankind. The dangers of the climate crises were known for years, but only through the corona virus as a catalyser we became able to imagine their enormous impact.
The virus is attacking dominant power structures, makes everyone vulnerable. The tsunamis, earthquakes, forest fires, plagues of locusts and floods transported into the living rooms of this world via the media deliver further shocks to traditional perceptions of safety. Financial crises also underscore the need to rethink economic, political, and social relationships.
Like the TEA PAVILION, my contribution for the Guangzhou Triennial in 2008, HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTIES is an ambivalent space that embraces a variety of contradictory impulses. It can be used as an area of investigation testing new ways of living the crisis, dwelling uncertainties.
HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTIES unfolds in a space between flexible architectural elements, which host material collections as connections to other theoretical, imaginative, historical and geographical fields, art works and interfaces, like the offer of complimentary tea and some furniture that invites one to rest.
As an analogy with Hannah Arendt's ideas about public space, HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTIES relies on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised. "For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position."1
HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTIES could be a space, a place, a frame for art, for discussions, performances, lectures, actions, screenings and an exhibition that extends and changes constantly.
To unfold the HOUSE, we start with performative dwelling the exhibition space. The empty space of the Times Art Center can be seen as an allegory of interruption, loneliness, emptiness, darkness, silence, living on the edge of an abyss – with an atmosphere between Samuel Beckett’s theatre play Endgame, Butoh performance, animistic rituals, evocations and dancing on the volcano.
How can we make a new start – a new beginning?
Can we start enjoying simple things? Can we create awareness towards basic ways of living? How to dwell in a post growth society? How can interdependencies be examined? How can we open up a pluralistic, civilian space and a place for potentialities, experiments and conviviality?
Simple mats, blankets, palettes and low-key wooden platforms evoke a poetic vision of temporarily settling in the provisional. The plain materials create a reference to the Japanese aesthetics of the Wabi-Sabi 2 or other Asian knowledge systems, which, contrary to the monumental and permanent, indicates an openness toward the transience of life.
We will begin with a small group of artists and performers testing simple gestures, small attempts, poetic moments, a range of new ways of acting. These will be recorded by video and shown later as a contribution to the show.
The relational frame could be stretched from Berlin, as an immediate environment, to projects from different parts of the world.
Berlin, June 2020, Dorothee Albrecht
1 Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa, Piper München Zürich, 1981, p. 71.
2 See Leonard Koren,Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, Point Reyes,
CA: Imperfect Publishing, 2008.
Uncertaintiers, New Starts I, II
Too Close, Too Far – Video (rechter Monitor) und Andrea – Keramiken – Elke Marhöfer
Broken and Repaired – Baumskulpturen – Mikhail Lylov
Landpartie – Fotos – Maternal Fantasies
Die anderen Fotos: Dorothee Albrecht, Berlin
ANGST, KEINE ANGST / FEAR, NO FEAR is curated by four artists: Huang Xiaopeng, Dorothee Albrecht, Antje Majewski, and Stefan Rummel. Initiated by Huang Xiaopeng, the project focuses on the present global state of collective fear and anxiety and unfolded in three chapters at Times Art Center Berlin from April 7–July 17, 2021.
Fear is rooted in and influenced by different cultural and historical experiences. The group exhibition explores the broad spectrum of fears that have emerged in different geographical, historical and contemporary contexts. Through the lens of these perspectives, the artist-curators, together with the exhibiting artists, seek to understand our present era.
The presentation will evolve as an ongoing process over three months, in episodes entitled Uncertainties – Walking on Unstable Grounds, Panic – The Moment of Fear, and Potentialities – Growing Out of Damaged Ground.
The curatorial team invited artists across generations, from the 1960s to the 1990s, to present their works on the complex spectrum of themes mentioned above, with the artistic media spanning sculpture, installation, video, performance, painting and photography. The artists of diverse international backgrounds are predominately based in Berlin, as well as Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and the Pearl River Delta; one young performance artist is based in Yaoundé. Many of these practitioners have been exploring the theme of fear from their individual perspective for a long time.
Curatorial Statement
In our current, complex realities, it is not unusual that fear takes hold of our bodies. We encounter difficulties breathing because of anxiety. This may originate in „objective” immediate threats and dangers, or in psychological factors. This condition leads to further anxiety about an uncertain and unpredictable future.
Fears of the nature, mice, insects, death, ghosts, strangers, heights, or enclosed spaces seem to be part of ancient human nature. There are fears of intimacy, obesity, drugs, social barriers, overpopulation, North-South conflicts, immigration, terrorism, ethnic conflicts, world famines, global warming, viruses, ecological crises, nuclear accidents, political incorrectness, and Orwellian nightmares. All these common fears are reinforced through the widespread use of smartphones and social media in the present day. Once internalized into consciousness, it is difficult to resist the sirens of fear.
When fear becomes a phantom, it becomes fear of fear itself. In 1768, a rumor about „Soulstealers”— beggars and monks who secretly absorb human souls—spread over 12 Chinese provinces (with a population of more than 200 million) in a few months. A mass hysteria triggered by fear took many lives. The witch hunts in the Middle Ages in Europe, and the persecution of "Communists" by McCarthyism in US, or the nuclear competition between East and West during the Cold War all caused widespread fear and anxiety because of a specific „superstition” or ideology. Today, in totalitarian states, fear is part of political repression. Abuse of power and the control of information make it difficult to enable room for dialogue. At the same time, in democratic countries, social media may manipulate the fear of the masses politically and culturally. Politicians can use the fear of the masses to enhance their control over society and suppress any radical impulse that tends toward social experiment.
Artists use their sensitivity to capture inner feelings, through sensory and physical experience, using multiple media in different ways of perceiving fear: cold, hot, dull, sharp, sticky, loud or too quiet, or empty.
In the current world, both living conditions and interpersonal relationships lack stability. Environmental, social, and cultural values are facing serious tests. Fear, as an instinctive and self-protective mechanism, occurs not only in response to some current stimulus, but also largely as a psychological projection. Can we become more sensitive and aware of our fragile nature? Can fear be a source of knowledge and lead us to interpretations of the unknown? Are we able to choose courage instead of fear? Can this inspire a common response to future threats in an age of globalization in which the boundaries between reality and science fiction become increasingly blurred? How can we make a new start, a new beginning?
The project was divided into three chapters:
Chapter 1: Uncertainties – Walking on Unstable Grounds
April 7–May 1, 2021
Nine Budde, Anne Gathmann, Anja Gerecke, Huang Xiaopeng 黄小鹏, Klaas Hübner, Franziska Hünig, Friederike Klotz, Ulrike Kuschel, Li Juchuan 李巨川, Li Xiangwei 李翔伟, Li Yifan 李一凡, Ma Xinyu 马馨钰, Ma Yujiang 马玉江, Antje Majewski & Vangjush Vellahu, Alice Musiol, Bettina Nürnberg & Dirk Peuker, Qin Jin 秦晋, Stefan Rummel, Erwin Stache, Tam Waiping 谭伟平, Wei Yuan 魏源, Wu Sibo 伍思波, Zhu Tao 朱涛
Chapter 2: Panic – The Moment of Fear
May 12–June 12, 2021
Iyad Dayoub, Abrie Fourie, Anne Gathmann, Ge Yulu 葛宇路, Anja Gerecke, Huang Xiaopeng 黄小鹏, Franziska Hünig, Ange Kayifa, Friederike Klotz, Lei Lijie 雷丽洁, Li Lulu 李璐璐, Li Yifan 李一凡, Alice Musiol, Pınar Öğrenci, Stefan Rummel, RZhen 阿珍, Erwin Stache, Vangjush Vellahu, Wu Sibo 伍思波, Xi Lei 奚雷, Yang Xinjia 杨欣嘉
Chapter 3: Potentialities – Growing out of Damaged Ground
June 25–July 17, 2021
Thomas Adebahr, Hank Yan Agassi, Dorothee Albrecht, Chen Dandizi 陈丹笛子, Nina DeLudemann, Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Huang Xiaopeng 黄小鹏, Yuko Kaseki, Ulrike Kuschel, Mikhail Lylov, Sajan Mani, Elke Marhöfer, Maternal Fantasies, Mwangi Hutter, Paulo Nazareth, Qin Jin 秦晋, Song Ta 宋拓, Sun Haili 孙海力, Janin Walter, Wang Yinjie 王音洁 & Yao Chunchun 姚纯纯, Wu Tiao Ren 五条人, Zhong Jialing 钟嘉玲
https://www.timesartcenter.org/de/ausstellungen/angst-keine-angst-de/