The ARTISTS at RISK (AR) PAVILION: mutatis mutandis
At the Aufbau Haus am Moritzplatz, Berlin.
See DOCUMENTATION / INSTALLATION shots here
Artists:
Babi Badalov (Lerik, AZ/Paris, FR)
Chto Delat (St. Petersburg, RU)
Lusine Djanyan and Alexey Knedlyakovsky (Sweden / Moscow, RU)
Fatoş İrwen (Diyarbakır, TR)
Damian Le Bas and Delaine Le Bas (Worthing, UK)
Issa Touma (Aleppo, SY)
Tito Valery (Yaoundé, CM)
Curated by Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky
Co-Founding Directors of Artists at Risk (AR) and Perpetuum Mobile (PM)
See Concept below —>
Opening: 8 September, 2018 at 6pm @Kai Dikhas in the Aufbau Haus am Moritzplatz (entrance from Oranienstraße) and the 4th floor (Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma).
The exhibition runs through 18.10.2018. Wed-Sat 14.00 – 18.00.
Party: Live DJ set by Tito Valery, AR Resident and radio-personality from Cameroon, featuring Afro and hip hop. The opening party is being held in the Prinzenhof (outside the Prinz Charles Club) in conjunction with the premier of “Medea Rromnja“ (TAK Theatre – https://www.aufbauhaus.de/veranstaltungen/medea-rromnja) and includes outdoor screenings (AR Pavilion artists) and works related to the theatre (Delaine Le Bas) in the Foyer-bar of AURORAtaktak. Location: inner yard of the Aufbau Haus (entrance from Prinzenstraße 85f).
Symposium: 10 September from 4-6pm, “Artists at Risk (AR) Presentation and Screenings” – a Conversation at the Nordic Embassies in Berlin (www.nordischebotschaften.org/veranstaltungen/artists-risk ). House of the Nordic Embassies, Felleshus, Rauchstrasse 1, 10787 Berlin. RSVP to attend: https://www.lyyti.in/ArtistsAtRisk
Concept:
AR PAVILION-BERLIN: mutatis mutandis
mutatis mutandis
(things being changed that have to be changed)
The complex trajectories, the violent injustices and gory specifics of the conflicts which put artists at risk – be they Anglophones in Francophone Cameroon, Kurds in Turkey, Roma in Europe, or any dissenting voice under any given repressive regime – are all radically different. Seen from the perspective of rights, however, all violations of human dignity and freedom of expression are clustered under a general resemblance of illegality. Such resemblances, alas, are fragmented by inequalities, within inequalities, within inequalities – the differences of class, race, gender, geography.. Finally, as we reach the contemporary heights of domination over human bodies, minds and the planetary ecology – our defences, but also our differences practically vanish.
In other words – all is one, mutatis mutandis. This is emphatically not the tired plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: the conservative excuse that humanity is just the same old, same old. The sheer scale of change is currently upending the anthropocentric paradigm. And just like ‘the few’ see a herd to be bio-algorithmically filtered and censored, ‘the many’ are building on newfound intersectionalities.
Refugees Will Come, as Babi Badolov’s wall-work asserts in this new Berlin edition of the AR PAVILION. To paraphrase him equally bluntly, in the manner of Brechtian plumpes Denken: wars will rage, regimes oppress, people resist, peace come – even if justice is never now.
The AR PAVILION – BERLIN: mutatis mutandis is a process or, one could say, a re-alignment of intersectional fragments, a field of trajectories finding a commons.
The Artists at Risk (AR) Pavilion is an exhibition format first launched at the 5th Athens Biennale in May 2017, parallel to documenta 14. The AR Pavilion – Istanbul was part of the collateral programme of the Istanbul Biennale. The AR Pavilion – Madrid was a larger-scale exhibition at Matadero-Madrid.
The AR PAVILION – BERLIN: mutatis mutandis @Kai Dikhas in the Aufbau Haus am Moritzplatz starts the season with a new orientation for this gallery – the first, worldwide, to focus on artists of Roma and Sinti origin – by broadening its mandate and vision to other communities in situations of heightened risk. The AR Pavilion – Berlin brings together artists, including also Roma artists, with a close affinity to the topics addressed by Artists at Risk (AR) alongside current AR-Residents and AR-Alumni.
Image Credit: Babi Badalov, Chinese Ink on Cloth, 2018.
Generously Funded by:
The Nordic Council of Ministers – The Nordic Culture Point (Network)
The Kone Foundation, Finland (The AR Secretariat)
The Finnish Cultural Fund
The City of Helsinki, Cultural Office (AR Residents)
A special thanks also to
