Deutscher Künstlerbund e.V.
© Paddy Clarke





11.09.2020 until 13.11.2020
Exhibition

the border
Conceived by Albert Weis
Opening
Thursday, 10 September 2020 | from 4 pm

Greetings | 7 pm
Dr. Klaus Lederer, Senator for Culture and Europe of Berlin
Albert Weis, Speaker of the Board, Deutscher Künstlerbund

Please register
In accordance with the »Hygiene Concept for Cultural Venues in Berlin«, only seven people may visit the exhibition at any one time. The time slots begin half-hourly from 16:00 to 21:30. Please register by mail to info@kuenstlerbund.de stating your name, phone number and chosen time slot. Your data will be deleted after four weeks.

Gallery Weekend
1 September 2020 | 6 – 9 pm
12 & 13 September 2020 | 11 am – 6 pm

Press release
»the border« concerns itself with the conflict in Northern Ireland and the underlying forces of identity, nationalism and religion. The exhibition examines the way in which history is constructed and how it affects the daily lives of citizens.

Looking back to the troubles – a civil war-like conflict between 1969 and 1998 – it is possible to understand how political tensions emerge, what dangers they harbour and how fragile democratic societies can be. Northern Ireland, however, also represents how a violent conflict can be overcome. Following Brexit at the end of this year, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will become an exterior European border. This will potentially result in a further partition of the island of Ireland, which could be the trigger for new troubles.

Northern Irish artist Sandra Johnston deals in her performances and video works with the aftermath of trauma. In her multipart video work »That Apart« she uses improvisation processes to examine states of physical reaction that arise in relation to a specific situation and in the moment of making. Mairéad McClean works mainly with found film footage and archive material. »No More« and »Broadcast 32172« refer to the internment policy of Northern Ireland’s then Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, who introduced imprisonment without trial. McClean’s father, a civil rights activist, was among those arrested and interned in the notorious Long Kesh camp. Tracing the paths of agricultural exports and those of the plastic explosive Semtex from former Czechoslovakia to Northern Ireland during the period of the civil war in the 1970s, the film »Group Portrait with Explosives« by Declan Clarke interweaves the historical-political narratives of these two places with personal recollections of South Armagh in the late 1970s and early 1980s where the artist spent much time in childhood. In her work »Für eine aufstrebende Zukunft« (For an Emerging Future), Susanne Bosch creates a collage from newspaper reports about processions commemorating the Battle of the Boyne, juxtaposing this annual event with quotations from Hannah Arendt or current headlines on the Black Lives Matter movement as a way of highlighting other values of social humanity. Mark Clare’s video »Territorial Integrity, Self-determination« takes the viewer on a Black Taxi Tour through Belfast’s neighbourhoods, while the driver explains the various highly politically-charged murals. Eoghan McTigue’s multipart photographic work »The Glass Album« consists of contact prints made from broken glass plate negatives. The aerial photographs showing the coastline of Donegal and Northern Ireland refer to historical photographs by James Glass from the late 1870s. The contact sheets record the landscape as well as the damage. There is a sense of the landscape being scarred and broken, fractured and distant


In the context of EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography
> www.emop-berlin.eu

Programming subject to change


Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 2pm – 6pm
and by appointment

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