Fear and Loathing the Perimeter – Lutz Henke / Finissage

About

For the finissage of the exhibition SLOW MOTION DISASTERS Lutz Henke will be presenting a wild potpourri around the topic of border interventions. With pictures and video snippets of partially unreleased images from project archives and GDR border troop files, he explores - in conversation with the audience - what constitutes true "border art": Is it a form of military genius, activism, artistic subconscious or disaster tourism? Based on Kreuzberg wall art, Henke creates associations from Beuys to Trump, from the outraged border troop Major General to Santiago Sierra and from the Berlin Wall to Algeria to the South Pole. It also shows how much artistic performances and military reports have in common, as soon as one regards both equally as "slapstick formalism".

Lutz Henke is a curator and cultural scientist (M.A.) from Berlin. His curatorial practice as well as his research focuses on spatial practice and theory, memory and remembrance, aesthetical interventions and frontiers in their diverse appearances. Henke has been invited to give talks and classes on urban aesthetics, art, culture and history at various institutions such as the Harvard GSD or the University of Copenhagen. His writings on these subjects have been published in various books, catalogues or media like monopol or The Guardian. He has realized public artworks and interventions in Berlin and worldwide in close collaboration with the artists – including the “World’s largest Graffiti” (2012) in the Algerian desert or „Black Flag“ (2015) at the North and South Pole with Santiago Sierra.

Meanwhile, the film 'The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box' will be presented in the KINO KIOSK of the exhibition space. 'The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box' is a film about Julien Fargetton's Pantomime Actions, which take place from June 19th to 22nd 2019 at various locations of the Berlin Wall, directed by Brad Downey and filmed by Anna Siobhán Fiedler.

Julien Fargetton takes a curious look at the world and looks for the origins of things, even if that means changing their destiny. In his drawings, sculptures, inventions, and performative actions, Fargetton takes the role of a researcher, inventor, and anthropologist who reverses witty and poetic forms of the surrounding world into their opposite.

Anna Siobhán Fiedler is editor and filmmaker. In the montage she takes the lead over the recordings of the observing camera and underlines her subjective view. Actually, something always happens, everything is potentially exciting.

Brad Downey, Lutz Henke and Julien Fargetton finally come together to talk about artistic interactions with old and new, former and still existing borders.

In his solo exhibition SLOW MOTION DISASTERS Brad Downey will also hosts a PARASITE GROUP SHOW with artworks by Robert Barta, Tania Bedriñana, Anina Brisolla, Christian Eisenberger, Endart, Oleg Kulik, Sasha Kurmaz, Helene Hellmich, Bruce McLean, Jonathan Meese, Fillipo Minnelli, Matthew Murphy, Wolf Vostell, Jazoo Yang.

The finissage says goodbye to SLOW MOTION DISASTERS, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Brad Downey, presented by Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. Both have a long history: Downey first came to Berlin in 2003 as part of the Street Art Festival Backjumps. In 2011, as part of the exhibition Do Not Think, he unveiled a work of 20 different layers of British artist Banksy. With SLOW MOTION DISASTERS Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien dedicated a show to the latest works of Brad Downey. Using a range of media from film, photography, sculpture, drawing to expansive installations, Downey focuses on the relationship between the individual, state authority and political power relations. His active interventions range in size between minimal and megalomaniacal.

Curated by Stéphane Bauer, Nadia Pilchowski and Sylvia Sadzinski with the support of project assistants Klara Neumann and Malena Vogt.