Archive (selection)

More information

More information

Mehr Informationen

More information

Guided tour of the exhibition Chris Korda Artist’s Con(tra)ception with Ani Schulze, artist. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Chris Korda Artist’s Con(tra)ception with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Chris Korda Artist’s Con(tra)ception with Ani Schulze, artist. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Führung durch die Ausstellung Chris Korda Artist’s Con(tra)ception mit Ani Schulze, Künstlerin. Der Eintritt zu den Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Führungen ist frei, eine Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich.

Learning to Listen Special With Chris Korda Hosted by Hanna Bächer Artist’s Con(tra)ception (25.5.–14.7.24) is Chris Korda’s first exhibition in Germany. The show at the Kölnischer Kunstverein ranges from older works to works shown for the first time, in which the intertwining of Korda’s extraordinary activist, musical and artistic movements becomes visible. Korda gained an international reputation with the environmental activist organisation founded in 1992 and her music in the field of electronic music. Records have been released by Gigolo Records, Perlon, Mental Groove, Yoyaku and on her own label Kevorkian Records. A new record will soon be released on Slacker 85. The Kölnischer Kunstverein, together with the Akademie der Künste der Welt (ADKDW) and Kompakt, is pleased to invite Chris Korda to a Special within the Learning to Listen series. No gathering would be more fitting in Cologne than with the well-known record shop Kompakt and in an event series like this to learn more about Chris Korda’s musical thinking; her understanding of music that led to her complex musical inventions. Chris Korda is an internationally renowned multimedia artist, whose work spans thirty years and includes electronic music, digital and video art, performance and conceptual art, and culture jamming. Chris pioneered the use of complex polymeter in electronic dance music, and invented a unique MIDI sequencer in order to explore polymeter composition techniques. Chris composes and performs music in a variety of genres, and has released many albums on labels such as Yoyaku, Perlon, Mental Groove, and Gigolo Records. Learning to Listen Series In radio broadcasts, podcasts and live events, Learning to Listen deals with forms of listening and non-listening – and the knowledge that can be drawn from them. The main aim of Learning to Listen is to initiate didactic processes intended to help us understand why certain sounds, songs, and narratives are heard and others are not. Together we will reflect on our internalized ways of thinking, of learning to listen and to un-learn. An event by Kölnischer Kunstverein, Akademie der Künste der Welt (ADKDW) and Kompakt. Location: Kompakt Record Store, Werderstraße 15–19, 50672 Cologne. Free entry, no registration required.  

Exhibition tour with Chris Korda and Valérie Knoll, Director. In English Admission is free, no registration required.

Chris Korda live in Salon des Amateurs Entry from 10 pm, concert ca. midnight. Tickets only at the door, admission 10€. A cooperation between Kölnischer Kunstverein and Salon des Amateurs. Location: Salon des Amateurs, Grabbeplatz 4, 40213 Düsseldorf

Chris Korda
Artist’s Con(tra)ception
25.5.–14.7.2024

Kreisch! Chris Korda is in the house. Ungeheuerlich, unerträglich, unfassbar gut. Korda wurde 1992 von einem seltsamen Traum heimgesucht, in dem eine außerirdische Intelligenz namens „Das Wesen“ behauptete, in einer anderen Dimension für die Menschen zu sprechen. Es warnte vor dem Zusammenbruch des Ökosystems unseres Planeten. Als Korda aus dem Traum erwachte, sagte sie: „Save the Planet – Kill Yourself“.

Kordas Mission gründet auf der Überzeugung, dass der Mensch, ein egozentrischer Zerstörer, in seine Grenzen gewiesen werden muss. „Danke, dass sie sich nicht fortpflanzen“, lautet die an den guten Willen appellierende Empfehlung. Meine DNA reiche ich nicht weiter, ich steige aus dem Genpool aus. Schluss mit anthropozentrischer Hybris. Wer aus freien Stücken aus dem Leben scheiden möchte, soll das tun dürfen – und leistet nebenbei einen sinnvollen Beitrag. Die Möglichkeit der Abtreibung ist ein Segen. Sex ist wunderbar, solange er nicht der Reproduktion dient. Wer unbedingt Fleisch essen will, nur das der eigenen Gattung – man tötet keine anderen Lebewesen. Die Empfehlungen der 1992 in Boston von Reverend Chris Korda gemeinsam mit Pastor Kim gegründeten Kirche, der Church of Euthanasia, lassen vielen die Haare zu Berge stehen. Allein der Name der Glaubensbewegung führt zur Verkrampfung der Gesichtszüge. Die Empfehlungen zur Dezimierung der Art Homo Sapiens sind extrem, teilweise widersprüchlich und streitbar.

Schönreden muss man den Namen der Kirche nicht, aber im Hintergrund haben, dass die CoE auf Freiwilligkeit, einem anti-autoritären Ethos beruht.

Die CoE rief Korda ins Leben, da eine Kirche, anders als eine politische Partei, in der Lage ist, ethische Normen neu zu gestalten. Einige ihrer Taktiken sind verwandt mit denen der Situationisten und der Dadaisten: Auch Kordas Aktionen treten in offene Situationen, Strategien werden immer wieder überraschend geändert; die Zungen, in denen sie spricht, sind unversöhnlich und Widersprüche zugelassen. Gleichzeitig bleibt ihr provozierendes Tun immer spielerisch.

Was Chris Korda bereits Anfang der 1990er propagierte, weil sie die irreversiblen Entwicklungen menschlicher Umweltzerstörung erkannte, war ihrer Zeit voraus: vegan zu leben, die Grenzen des Wachstums zu respektieren und die Vielfältigkeit aller Arten zu proklamieren.

Korda ist aber nicht nur Reverend. Sie ist vieles und in erster Linie aktiv als Musikerin. Sie gilt als eine der eigensinnigsten und schroffsten Positionen des Techno. In Europa erlangte sie Ende der 1990er Jahre erstmals Präsenz durch DJ Hell aus München mit seinem Label International Gigolo Records.

Als Musikerin tritt sie gegen Monokultur und Standardisierung ein und ist immer auf der Suche nach Komplexität. Korda experimentiert mit polymetrischen Taktarten (unterschiedliche Taktarten in einem Stück, ohne Angleichung der jeweiligen Dauer der Takte) und ungewöhnlichen Harmonien. Dass sie Ende der 1970er Jahre als Jazzgitarristin begonnen und Musiktheorie studiert hat, beeinflusst ihre Musik.

1980 begann Korda Software zu programmieren, erst Grafikkarten, später Musiksoftware, die sie von Anfang an umsonst zur Verfügung stellte. Seit jeher erfindet sie Werkzeuge, um künstlerische und musikalische Praktiken zu entwickeln. Aus diesem Grund bezeichnet sich Korda auch als „Inventor-Artist“, Erfinder-Künstlerin. In erster Linie bin ich eine Technologin, sagt sie von sich selbst. Als solche verbindet sie Musik wie auch ihre digitalen Bilder mit Existentialismus und einem wissenschaftlichen Pragmatismus. Wie für Musik, baut sie auch für ihre Kunst Maschinen und kooperiert mit ihnen, um nicht zuletzt ästhetische Probleme zu lösen. Musik und digitale Bilder, wie auch ihre synästhetischen Arbeiten, entstehen seit einiger Zeit auch in sich ergänzender Zusammenarbeit mit künstlicher Intelligenz. Diese bringt Präzision und Geschwindigkeit, Korda die Intuition, Bewusstsein und lustvolles Spiel.

Artist’s Con(tra)ception, ein Wortspiel aus künstlerischem Konzept und künstlerischer Empfängnisverhütung, ist die erste institutionelle Ausstellung in Deutschland zu Chris Kordas ungewöhnlichem Schaffen. In ihr werden neue oder bislang ungezeigte digitale Bilder und audiovisuelle Arbeiten entlang einer Auswahl von Bannern, Fotografien, Zeichnungen und auch Platten der letzten dreißig Jahre zusammengebracht.

Weiter lesen.

Die Ausstellung wird unterstützt durch:

Mit besonderem Dank an/With special thanks to: Anthony Stephinson und Coralie Ruiz von Goswell Road, Paris; Matthias Sohr; Blandine Houtekins, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers; Alex Sinh Nguyen; Wolfgang Voigt, Veronika Unland; Hans-Christian Dany; Moch Figuren, Köln.

CHRIS KORDA
Artist’s Con(tra)ception
25.5.–14.7.2024

Opening: Friday, 24.5., 6–9 pm, Speech at 7 pm

Holy Moly! Chris Korda is in the house. Outrageously, insufferably, unbelievably good. Back in 1992 she was haunted by a recurring dream in which an alien intelligence, known as “the Being”, claimed to speak for humanity from another dimension. It warned that our planet’s ecological system was on the verge of collapse. When Korda awoke from the dream, she found herself speaking the words “Save the Planet – Kill Yourself”.

Korda’s mission is based on the conviction that human beings are egocentric and destructive, and must be contained within their limits. With the exhortation, “Thank you for not breeding”, she appeals to our good will. I’m not going to pass on my DNA, I’m getting out of the gene pool. I’ve had it with anthropocentric hubris. Anyone who freely decides to end their life should be allowed to do so, for in so doing they are making a significant contribution. The option of having an abortion is a blessing. Sex is wonderful, as long as it never serves reproduction. Those who insist on eating meat should confine themselves to consuming their own species – killing other living beings is out of the question. The basic tenets of the Church of Euthanasia, which Reverend Korda founded in Boston with Pastor Kim in 1992, are enough to make many people’s hair stand on end. Even the name of the movement can make you wince. Its calls for the extermination of the human species are intemperate, strident and partly contradictory.

While there can be no glossing over the meaning of the church’s name, it is worth bearing in mind that the CoE is based on an anti-authoritarian ethos of non-violence.

Korda founded the CoE because a church is an institution better suited to reforming ethical norms than a political party. Several of its tactics are related to those of the Situationists and the Dadaists: Korda’s actions also aim at intervening in public situations, while her strategies are constantly changing in unexpected ways: she speaks in tongues that both are implacable and admit of contradictions. At the same time, her acts of provocation always remain playful.

By the early 1990s, Korda had already recognised that humanity’s destruction of the environment was irreversible. The issues she was raising then were well ahead of their time: they included calls to live a vegan lifestyle, to curb the limits of economic growth and to proclaim the diversity of all species.

However, Korda is not only a minister of a church. She is many things, foremost among them a musician. In the field of Techno, hers is considered one of the most idiosyncratic and uncompromising positions. She first achieved recognition in Europe in the late 1990s, when DJ Hell from Munich released her work on his label International Gigolo Records.

Read more.

Now available here:
Official Church of Euthanasia T-Shirt
ADAGIO FOR COLOR FIELDS Chris Korda, Publication by Goswell Road, Paris

The exhibition is supported by:

Exhibition Opening: Chris Korda – Artist’s Con(tra)ception

Amanda van Hesteren
If All This Was Fiction: Films 2016–2023

Film program in the cinema of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, curated by Nicholas Tammens

Opening: Friday, 12.4., 6 pm
6:30 pm Screening of films
7:30 pm Talk between Amanda van Hesteren and Nicholas Tammens
8:30 pm Repeated screening of films

Amanda van Hesteren – If All This Was Fiction: Films 2016–2023 at the Kölnischer Kunstverein is the first public presentation of films by Dutch film-maker Amanda van Hesteren (b. 1991, Amsterdam) in Germany. The program shows the development of van Hesteren’s methodology as a filmmaker over the past eight years through four film portraits focused on lovers, family, and friends.

Amanda van Hesteren began to make films at the age of 23, when she took a camera with her on holiday. “I took my camera because I wanted to find stories,” she says. “I knew that I would be able to go onto the street and find them”. In the eight years since, van Hesteren’s camera has come to substitute multiple perspectives: her own gaze, that of her subjects, and the gaze of a stand-in and outside witness.

Read more.

The film program is supported by:

Film programme in the cinema of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, curated by Nicholas Tammens Opening: Friday, 12.4., 6 pm 6:30 pm Screening of films 7:30 pm Talk between Amanda van Hesteren and Nicholas Tammens 8:30 pm Repeated screening of films

Kölner Architekturpreis 2024
Tue., 9.4. – Sat., 14.4., 11 am – 6 pm
Sun., 14.4., 11 am – 4 pm
free entry
More Information

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 3 with Valérie Knoll, Director. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 3 with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 3 with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Kölnischer Kunstverein will be closed over carnival, including Rosenmontag. We look forward to welcoming you again from Tuesday 13 February during our regular opening hours.

Der Kölnische Kunstverein bleibt über die Karnevalstage, bis einschließlich Rosenmontag, geschlossen. Wir freuen uns, Sie ab Dienstag, den 13. Februar zu den regulären Öffnungszeiten wieder bei uns zu begrüßen.

Opening: Friday, 2. February, 6 pm

Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Matthias Groebel, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Hamishi Farah, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Dominik Sittig, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi

Faced with this rectangular void, anything could happen. The horizon of possibilities seems open. At any moment, an idea could flicker into my consciousness, and I’d be able to get it all on the canvas. Still better, perhaps, the brush could just start moving and the painting, sleepwalker-like, paint itself without me. The void gleams auspiciously; but never for long. Whatever image I may have had in my mind’s eye, it is wrecked by the first brushstroke. Its utter fatuousness is exposed. And every additional brushstroke just makes it worse. If one seems weak, the next, which was supposed to strengthen it, has come straight out of the repertoire of cheap effects. This merry-go-round of recycled gimmicks revolves with a deadening regularity. What’s left for you to do when the dice were all cast in the last century? Hum and ha, paint small paintings, paint huge paintings, dive into abstraction and the morass of ambition, revive formalism, figuration, raise tornados of pigment, embrace minimalism, flirt with technology. Subjects and points of reference change, but their form stays stuck to the ground, as if it were covered with some repulsive, viscous liquid. Trembling, the emoji in oil tries to pull itself out of the morass, drawing long strands behind itself like chewing gum. Brushstrokes as identity crises, with filaments trailing from their lips like burst bubbles of gum.

Read more

Curated by Valérie Knoll.

The exhibition is generously supported by:

Image: Paul Coker Jr.

Exhibition Opening Hoi Köln Part 3: Nightmare of Painting

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 2 with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required. (In German)

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 2 with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required. (In German)

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 2 with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required. (In German)

Der Kölnische Kunstverein bleibt vom 24. Dezember 2023 bis einschließlich zum 1. Januar 2024 geschlossen. Wir wünschen Ihnen schöne Feiertage und freuen uns darauf, Sie im neuen Jahr wieder bei uns zu begrüßen.

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 2 with Valérie Knoll, Director. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required. (In German)

The Christmas Show – A Christmas evening with stories, music, puppets and theatre, by and with Claus Richter. Admission is free, registration is not required

Guided tour through the exhibition Hoi Köln Part 2 with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required. (In German)

Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Matthias Groebel, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Hamishi Farah, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi

Artificial intelligence is making great strides, generative systems are reaching new heights of image and text production. But what does it mean for painting if it can be produced by computing robots?

In the past, technological advances often marked the beginning of long periods in which art shed its skin in revolutionary transformation. Before these advances, human beings could still flatter themselves that the privilege of creating things was theirs alone. After them, when they suddenly found themselves overtaken by technology, they had to confront their own limitations. Impressionism emerged form art’s dialogue with the new invention of photography, while a great deal of postmodern painting was inspired by the experience of computers. Right now we stand at the dawn of another period of this kind, in which human-made art must struggle against its own reflection in technology. What are these machines capable of, and what are the limits of their capabilities? By posing the question of how they differ from machines, and by finding their own niche, human beings can engage with technology to achieve a better understanding of themselves.

Read more

Curated by Valérie Knoll

The exhibition in genereously supported by:

Photo: Mareike Tocha

Eröffnung: Freitag, 1. Dezember, 18 Uhr

Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Matthias Groebel, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Hamishi Farah, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi

Die Künstliche Intelligenz macht große Schritte, generative Systeme erreichen neue Ebenen der Bild- und Textproduktion. Was bedeutet es für die Malerei, wenn sie von rechnenden Robotern hergestellt werden kann?

In der Vergangenheit bildeten technologische Sprünge oft der Beginn langer Phasen revolutionärer Häutungen der Kunst. Vor den Sprüngen konnte sich der Mensch noch einbilden, er besitze das Privileg, etwas zu können. Danach, plötzlich überholt von der Technologie, musste er sich nach der Decke strecken. Der Impressionismus verdankte sich den Wechselwirkungen mit der Erfindung der Fotografie und vieles in der postmodernen Malerei wurde angeregt durch die Erfahrung mit dem Computer. Gerade scheint wieder der Beginn einer solchen Phase auf, in der sich die menschengemachte Kunst an ihrem technologischen Spiegel abarbeiten muss. Was können diese Maschinen und wo kommen sie an ihre Grenzen? Mit der Frage, wie er sich von ihr unterscheidet, und der Suche nach seiner Nische schaut der Mensch durch die Maschine auf sich selbst.

Weiter lesen

Kuratiert von Valérie Knoll

Die Ausstellung wird großzügig gefördert von:

Bild: Mareike Tocha

Opening: Friday, December 1, 6 pm

Marie Angeletti, BLESS, Milena Büsch, Peter Fischli, Sylvie Fleury, Ryan Gander, Lorenza Longhi, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Franz Erhard Walther, Nicole Wermers, Amelie von Wulffen, Barbara Zenner

For the 2023 Jahresgaben, orders can be made in writing from December 1, 2023 until December 17, 2023 inclusive. Should there be more orders than copies available, the decision will be made by lot. The lottery will be held on December 18, 2023. After the draw of the buyer(s), all interested parties will be informed in writing via email of the result of the lottery. All remaining Jahresgaben are still for sale after the lottery and can be purchased at any time.

The Jahresgaben and editions are an exclusive offer exclusively for members of the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Other interested parties are entitled to purchase by joining the Kölnischer Kunstverein in the current calendar year.

Please note our ordering procedures and the general terms & conditions.

Photo: Lorenza Longhi

Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Matthias Groebel, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Hamishi Farah, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi

Artificial intelligence is making great strides, generative systems are reaching new heights of image and text production. But what does it mean for painting if it can be produced by computing robots?

In the past, technological advances often marked the beginning of long periods in which art shed its skin in revolutionary transformation. Before these advances, human beings could still flatter themselves that the privilege of creating things was theirs alone. After them, when they suddenly found themselves overtaken by technology, they had to confront their own limitations. Impressionism emerged form art’s dialogue with the new invention of photography, while a great deal of postmodern painting was inspired by the experience of computers. Right now we stand at the dawn of another period of this kind, in which human-made art must struggle against its own reflection in technology. What are these machines capable of, and what are the limits of their capabilities? By posing the question of how they differ from machines, and by finding their own niche, human beings can engage with technology to achieve a better understanding of themselves.

Read more

Curated by Valérie Knoll

The exhibition in genereously supported by:

Photo: Mareike Tocha

Exhibition Opening Hoi Köln Part 2: In the Belly of the Machine

Guided tour of the exhibition Hoi Köln with Valérie Knoll, director. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Hoi Köln with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Hoi Köln with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Guided tour of the exhibition Hoi Köln with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

Talk between Valérie Knoll (director Kölnischer Kunstverein) and Peter Fischli (artist, Zurich) about his curated show Stop Painting at the Fondazione Prada, Venice (2021).

Guided tour of the exhibition Hoi Köln with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free, registration is not required.

With Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Hamishi Farah, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Matthias Groebel, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi

Where I come from, “hoi” is what people say when they greet each other in the street. I’ve come to Cologne because I love painting, and can think of no better place to engage seriously with this medium. That’s why I’m welcoming my first exhibition here with an overview of the current state of one of visual art’s oldest genres. Painting is especially exciting right now, and this has nothing to do with my own passion for it; it is rather that a lot of people are painting again and that art’s questions are again up for negotation. This doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy for painting to find its way forward. Its own history casts a long shadow over its current flowering like an implacable judgement. However, its difficulties lie not so much behind as ahead of it. Since painting develops slowly, it needs to be able to imagine an enduring future, one where it can eventually hope to arrive by creeping along at its own modest pace.

Right now, it is not just that the future is clouded over – it has become hard to imagine at all. Are people painting in the hope that the future, currently hidden behind a fog of dystopias and disaster scenarios, will eventually reappear? To keep on painting while everything familiar seems to be crumbling around you could be seen as an expression of the “principle of hope,” a way of resisting a world that has embraced darkness through the determination to see a light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, painting would be a way of going against the grain, of rising above social conventions with a wan smile.

Read more

Curated by Valérie Knoll

The exhibition is generously supported by:

Image: Basel Tourismus/Peter Ziegler

Exhibition Opening Hoi Köln Part 1: Welcoming the Space Opening on 28. September 2023, 6 pm Speeches from 7 pm, by Thomas Waldschmidt (Chairman), Valérie Knoll (Director), and by Susanne Imhoff (Chairwoman Imhoff Stiftung). With Marie Angeletti, Monika Baer, BLESS, Vittorio Brodmann, Jakob Buchner, Milena Büsch, Merlin Carpenter, Hamishi Farah, Fischli Weiss, Hansi Fuchs, Sophie Gogl, Matthias Groebel, Jacqueline Humphries, Dozie Kanu, Nora Kapfer, Morag Keil, Emil Michael Klein, Maggie Lee, Lorenza Longhi, Alan Michael, Kaspar Müller, Vera Palme, Gunter Reski, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Dennis Scholl, Nolan Simon, Lucie Stahl, Megan Francis Sullivan, Alfred d’Ursel, Amelie von Wulffen, Jie Xu, Barbara Zenner, Damon Zucconi  

Guided tour of Marie Angeletti’s exhibition “ram spin cram” with Anna Heldmann, curatorial assistant. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free. (in German)

Führung durch Marie Angelettis Ausstellung „ram spin cram“ mit Anna Heldmann, kuratorische Assistenz. Der Eintritt zu den Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Führungen ist frei.

clips with Marie Angeletti and Line Ebert

Monday, 19.06.2023, 7 pm

The event is part of Marie Angeletti’s exhibition “ram spin cram” with the artist and Line Ebert. It will be in English. The admission is free and registration is not required.

The event is part of Marie Angeletti’s exhibition “ram spin cram” with the artist and Line Ebert. It will be in English. The admission is free and registration is not required.

Guided tour of Marie Angeletti’s exhibition “ram spin cram” with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free. (in German)

Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017): “The Third World was not a place, but a project.” (Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations, 2007). This was to be a utopian alliance where the Global South would reconfigure planetary leadership, ending Euro-American dominance. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) attempted to navigate a “third way,” but parallel participation in the Petrodollar-driven “Islamic bloc” by some member countries shredded fragile coalitions behind the scenes. Two Meetings and a Funeral explores a “pivot” moment between the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algeria and the 1974 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Pakistan. The unraveling of old alliances began from a barely discernible venn diagram overlap between these two groups, one that would taken on world significance after the OPEC oil crisis, the Iranian revolution, and the invasion of Afghanistan. Traveling through the residues of transnational architecture (Niemeyer, Moretti, Le Corbusier) in New York, Algiers, and Dhaka, the film considers the erosion of the idea of the Third World as a potential space for decolonisation, and an always imperfect understanding of Socialism. Conversations between Vijay Prashad, Samia Zennadi, Atef Berredjem, Amirul Islam, and Zonayed Saki look at the contradictions of decolonization movements that never remembered to liberate their own leadership. The film is a midpoint for Mohaiemen’s loosely affiliated projects around the Non-Aligned Movement.

The screening is part of Naeem Mohaiemen’s exhibition Langer Tag, curated by Nina Möntmann, 14.-18.6. 2023 at Temporary Gallery.

Funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: curatorial project of the DFG-Research Training Group „connecting – excluding. Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks“

Guided tour of the exhibition “ram spin cram” by Marie Angeletti with Nikola Dietrich, director and curator of the exhibition. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free. (in German)

Guided tour of the exhibition “ram spin cram” by Marie Angeletti with Ani Schulze. Admission to the exhibitions, events and guided tours is free. (in German)

Bolling, Woolf, Ohanyan & Nisic Beatboxing ist die Kunst, mit der Nerses Ohanyan seine Zuhörer verblüfft. Der Hip-Hop hat diese uralte Perkussionstechnik neu erfunden. Nerses macht das eigentlich unmöglich wahr: eine Rhythmusmaschine mit Mund, Nase, Lippen und Kehle zu imitieren und so selbstbestimmt zu trommeln, während er dabei hochvirtuos Flöte spielt. Im Duo Nerses hat er sich mit dem Akkordeonisten Miroslav Nisić zusammengefunden, einem der beeindruckendsten Virtuosen seines Instruments. Miroslav ist auch Mitglied im Quartett Uwaga und hat damit 2021 die Zuhörer bei den Kammerkonzerten im Kunstverein in seinen Bann gezogen und zu Standing Ovations hingerissen. Die Zuhörer erwartet ein atemberaubend virtuoses Konzert, das absolut keine Grenzen der Genres kennt und meisterhaft seine ganz eigene Ausdrucksform findet. Neben großartigen Jazz-Werken wie Claude Bollings Suite und dem Concerto von Randall Woolf werden auch berühmte klassische Melodien und sogar ein AC/DC-Klassiker wie Thunderstruck höchst anspruchsvoll und unterhaltsam in Szene gesetzt. Karten sind auf KölnTicket erhältlich: www.koelnticket.de Aktuelle Infos & Link zum VVK unter: www.koelner-klassik-ensemble.de

For her first institutional show in Germany, ram spin cram, Marie Angeletti (*1984) is presenting newly commissioned works across the entire building of the Kölnischer Kunstverein.

Decisively articulated, each element — sculpture, photography, and video — receives equal attention. ram spin cram does not begin in the main gallery nor ends in the last room upstairs, it is all there at once. Each room can be read as a series of actions accumulated over time. The main gallery shows work made within the last two months. In the cinema, in the upstairs and basement gallery spaces, Angeletti has rearranged works from an unspecified period of time.

Thanks to Nikola, Stefan, Line, Gianna, Henrik, Gérard, Anne, Anna, Olga, John, Michele, Dora, Matt, Tonio, Jakob, Lucas, Richard, Annie, Daniel, Jordan, Seb, Medhi, Toni, Pippa, Tim, Marco, Varun, Sol.

Thanks Istal, Marseille, to have financed the production of the metal beams, and Quadrissimo, Marseille, for the prints on silver and Daniela Taschen for having hosted me in Cologne.

Marie Angeletti (*1984 in Marseille, lives in New York) has exhibited at museums such as the Centre d’edition contemporain in Geneva; Künstlerhaus Bremen; Musée de la ville de Paris; Le Consortium, Dijon; Kunsthaus Glarus; Kunsthalle Zürich; Treize, Paris; Castillo/Corrales, Paris; and in galleries including the Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Edouard Montassut, Paris; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York; Greene Naftali, New York.

Curated by Nikola Dietrich

ram spin cram Text

The exhibition is supported by:

We cordially invite you to the exhibition opening of Marie Angeletti – ram spin cram on Friday, March 31, 2023 at 7 pm.

Wir laden Sie herzlich zur Ausstellungseröffnung von Marie Angeletti – ram spin cram am Freitag, den 31.03.2023 um 19 Uhr ein.

Due to carnival the Kölnischer Kunstverein will be closed from Thursday, 16.02. to Monday, 20.02. inclusive. We ask for your understanding and look forward to welcoming you again on 21.02. at the usual opening hours.

Due to carnival the Kölnischer Kunstverein will be closed from Thursday, 16.02. to Monday, 20.02. inclusive. We ask for your understanding and look forward to welcoming you again on 21.02. at the usual opening hours.

Game of No Games – Symposium
Samstag, 11.2.2023, 10–16 Uhr

mit Lisa Arndt, Nikola Dietrich, Andreas Fischer, Amelie Gappa, Charlotte Laubard, Kito Nedo, Susanne Pfeffer, Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck, Falk Wolf, Susanne Zander

Weitere Informationen folgen!

Führung durch die Ausstellung “Game of No Games. Anleitung zu beschwingtem Gehen” mit Ani Schulze. Der Eintritt zu den Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Führungen ist frei.

Ewa Majewska Coronafuga. Fragments of online dating discourse from pandemic times Welcome and Introduction by Eva Birkenstock and Nikola Dietrich Book presentation and reading with Ewa Majewska and the performance artist Wojciech Kosma at the Ludwig Forum, Aachen

The event will be held in English.

At the conclusion of reboot: responsiveness, a presentation and reading of the latest publication by Polish cultural theorist and activist Ewa Majewska will take place at the Ludwig Forum Aachen in the presence of the author and performance artist Wojciech Kosma.

Coronafuga. Fragments of online dating discourse from pandemic times is an auto-theoretical negotiation of online dating discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic. The book combines theory and digital dating conversations into a literary account of discourses of intimacy during pandemic times. Media and other tools like dating sites, conversations in, around, and about digital flirting, and immediate entertainment are key elements of this book.

Ewa Majewska (lives in Warsaw) is a feminist cultural theorist, activist, and author. She has taught at the University of the Arts in Berlin, the University of Warsaw, and Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She has also been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, the ICI Berlin, and the IWM in Vienna. She currently works at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. She has released six books, most recently Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common (2021), and publishes in journals and platforms such as e-flux, Signs, Third Text, Journal of Utopian Studies, and Jacobin, among others. Her current research focuses on archival studies, dialectics of the weak, feminist critical theory, and antifascism.

The publication is part of reboot:—a collaborative, cyclical, anti-racist, and queer-feminist dialogue between performative and research-based practices, co-hosted by the Kölnischer Kunstverein and Ludwig Forum Aachen. The first cycle reboot: responsiveness provided infrastructures for provisional stagings, rehearsals, processual choreographies, and encounters around themes of presence, intimacy, care, and responsibility. Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann.

Ewa Majewska Coronafuga. Fragments of online dating discourse from pandemic times Edited by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, Viktor Neumann English Cu-published by Ludwig Forum Aachen and Kölnischer Kunstverein with DISTANZ Verlag ISBN 97-3-95476-523-2

The book can be purchased at the Ludwig Forum Aachen as well as online at DISTANZ Verlag.

€ 16,-

Fukio Saxophon-Quartett & Inna Firsova Seit seinen Anfängen im Jahr 2008 hat sich Fukio auf die Interpretation von Musik für Saxophon-Quartett und der Erarbeitung eines neuen Repertoires konzentriert. Das in Köln beheimatete Quartett hat sich an der HfMT Köln auf Neue Musik sowie am CNSMD in Paris auf Kammermusik spezialisiert und hat mit renommierten Komponisten wie Georges Aperghis, Fabien Lévy und Georg Friedrich Haas zusammengearbeitet. Bei den Kammerkonzerten werden sie zum ersten Mal ihr neues Programm als Quintett mit der Pianistin Inna Firsova präsentieren. Besetzung: Sopransaxophon: Joaquín Sáez Belmonte Altsaxophon: Xavier Larsson Páez Tenorsaxophon: José Manuel Bañuls Marcos Baritonsaxophon: Xabier Casal Ares Klavier: Inna Firsova Programm: Maurice Ravel: La valse, poème chorégraphique pour orchestre (Arr.: Alejandro Lidón) Leonard Bernstein: „Candide“ (Arr.: Alejandro Lidón) William Albright (1944-1998): Fantasy Etudes Ausführliche Informationen zum Ensemble: https://fukioquartet.com Preise: 19,50 Euro inkl. VVK Gebühr, ermäßigt (Schüler, Studenten, KölnPass-Inhaber) 12,- Euro inkl. VVK Gebühr, Kinder bis 14 Jahre haben freien Eintritt. Der Vorverkauf startet zur Zeit jeweils drei Wochen vor den jeweiligen Konzertterminen. Veranstalter / Aktuelle Infos: Kölner Klassik Ensemble Tickets kaufen Über die Konzertreihe: Die Musikmetropole am Rhein ist Heimatort zahlreicher international anerkannter Musikerinnen und Musiker. Mit ihrer Vielfalt und Qualität hat sich dabei die freie Kölner Kammermusikszene weltweit höchstes Ansehen erspielt. Die Kammerkonzerte im Kunstverein geben diesen Spitzenensembles aus Köln und NRW nun ein festes Schaufenster in ihrer Heimatstadt. Ab 2020 finden jährlich sechs Konzerte, jeweils Samstag Abends um 18 Uhr, im Riphahnsaal des Kölnischen Kunstvereins statt. Zentral am Neumarkt bietet der Riphahnsaal mit seiner offenen, schönen Architektur eine hervorragende Akustik für Kammermusik der internationalen Spitzenklasse. Die Verbindung von zeitgenössischer, bildender Kunst und der epochenübergreifenden Kammermusik setzt ein Symbol für die Einheit von Kunst, ihrer Vielfältigkeit und Aktualität und verspricht ein einzigartiges Ambiente.

Führung durch die Ausstellung “Game of No Games. Anleitung zu beschwingtem Gehen” mit Ani Schulze. Der Eintritt zu den Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Führungen ist frei.

This exhibition presents historical and contemporary works by artists who have received little attention throughout art history. Their participation in society and the art world has been limited—as a result of conservatorships, disenfranchisement, or discrimination, to name a few. This is closely associated with the lack of stable institutional footholds or larger (art) networks and support systems. Conventional categorizations, such as Outsider Art or Art Brut, along with the concurrent emphasis on their alleged distinguishing characteristics—which have so far often been read as narratives on the spontaneous vs. planned, innate vs. learned, naïve vs. sophisticated, or even primitive vs. modern—are currently considered outdated and must be critically challenged. Accordingly, this exhibition intends to encourage a different understanding concerning established ways of thinking in the art world, as well as consolidate an approach to exhibiting and representing different artistic practices that is more readily assimilated.

Through their works, the artists on view at the Kölnischer Kunstverein immerse themselves in self-alienating role-playing games. They can thus take on different identities and undergo a kind of metamorphosis—to the point of becoming animals. “I’m a frigging hunter, but I know that it causes trouble… I have to mask it [what is troublesome] so that I can continue to exist in society at all,” the artist Rabe perplexum declared (in Experimente, Der unbekannte Künstler, 1987). In both her works and life, she adopted a raven persona.

Our aim is not to place the exhibited artists and their artistic practices in the margins of society, nor to portray them as artists that unveil repressed realities or develop suppressed longings behind their apparent detachment from the world. Rather, this exhibition explores how they deliberately work with their dependencies. Adelhyd van Bender, for instance, designed a large and complex body of work that breaks the world into mathematical formulas. Intertwining these with biographical details in associative chains, his practice builds a new order. As a model for his drawings, which were copied and revised several times, he often used letters addressed to him from official authorities, which testified to his constant struggle against the prolongation of his conservatorship.

These artists have often positioned themselves within society, precisely in the non-places of art and interstitial spaces where a larger public could be found, so as to relate to this community and criticize it with a matter-of-factness that is peculiar to each of them. By leaving behind social conventions, norms, and dominant traditions, as well as undermining social or gender performances, these artists have frequently been met with a lack of understanding. This was certainly the case for Helga Goetze, who broke away from a conventional way of life in the 1970s and later advocated free love, sex, and female pleasure almost daily in front of the Memorial Church in Berlin.

The radical potential of the works gathered here resides in the fact that they insist on unfulfilled socio-political promises and, as Dietrich Orth hints at in one of his works that gives the exhibition its title, provide instructions and suggestions for a better, fairer way of treating one another. They manifest a profound longing directed toward the future—something that can also be understood as a critique of the present.

This exhibition was curated by Nikola Dietrich and Susanne Zander.

With works by Adelhyd van Bender, Klaus Beyer, Lee Godie, Helga Sophia Goetze, Margarethe Held, Dietrich Orth, Albert Leo Peil, Rabe perplexum, William Scott, Wendy Vainity, and August Walla.

Image: William Scott, Untitled, 2013, Courtesy of The Museum of Everything

The exhibition is supported by:

Further support: Jan Fischer, Entrepreneur and supporter of the Kölnischer Kunstverein and the NRW Kunstvereins landscape

with Rosa Aiello, Genoveva Filipovic, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, Manfred Holtfrerich, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, José Montealegre, Dala Nasser, Daniela Ortiz, Thomas Ruff, John Russell, Jasmin Werner

Opening of the exhibition: Saturday, 12.11.2022, 7 pm

Orders for the Jahresgaben 2022 can be submitted in writing from November 12 up to and including December 04, 2022. If more orders are received than there are copies available, the decision will be made by drawing lots. The draw will take place on December 05, 2022. After the draw, all interested parties will be notified of the result by e-mail. All remaining Jahresgaben will remain for sale after the draw and can be purchased at any time.

The Jahresgaben and editions are an exclusive offer exclusively for members of the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Other interested parties are entitled to purchase by joining the Kölnischer Kunstverein in the current calendar year.

Please note our ordering procedures and the general terms & conditions.

The exhibition is supported by:

Ort: Kölnischer Kunstverein, Hahnenstraße 6 Eintritt: 12,- / 10, – € Mitglieder: 8, – €

Tickets kaufen

Slide talk and performance by John Russell Death Race, 2022 (Lecture hall) A review of the exhibition and recent holidays to spectacular seaside locations, in the style of Andrea Fraser. In English. Free admission to the exhibitions, events, and guided tours. The public program is supported by:

Children’s workshop with John Russell and Yoni Hong (Exhibition hall) For children from 6 to 14 years, registration required. Come to the kunstverein and paint on the floor of the main exhibition space – over the top of a floor print by John Russell. Paint sharks, fish, waves, dolphins, bubbles and photograph yourselves in the scene. Materials provided, no participation fee. In German and English. The public program is supported by:

Guided tour through the exhibition with Nikola Dietrich and John Russell In German and English.

Guided tour through the exhibitions of John Russell and José Montealegre with Ani Schulze Free admission to the exhibitions, events, and guided tours.

Guided tour through the exhibitions pf John Russell and José Montealegre with Miriam Bettin Free admission to the exhibitions, events, and guided tours.

Guided tour through the exhibitions of John Russell and José Montealegre with Ani Schulze Free admission to the exhibitions, events, and guided tours.

Führung durch die Ausstellungen von John Russell und José Montealegre mit Ani Schulze Der Eintritt zu den Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Führungen ist frei.

Open Monument Day in Cologne “Die Brücke”, formerly the British Information Center, was built in 1949/50 according to plans by Wilhelm Riphahn and served as a meeting place. The angular building is designed like a Gesamtkunstwerk. After the Kölnischer Kunstverein moved into the listed building in 2002, it was able to adapt it as a model building of modernism in the spirit of Riphahn. Opening hours Sat, 10.09., 11 am until 6 pm Sun, 11.09., 11 am until 6 pm Free entry. Program Architecture tour 10.9.2022, 3 pm Dagmar Lutz M.A. (artist, art historian), duration 60 mins Meeting point: Foyer Kölnischer Kunstverein Unfortunately, the tour is already fully booked.  

A reading on the occasion of the exhibition by José Montealegre Nervous System in the context of DC Open

With texts by José Montealegre, Nat Marcus and Mikhail Wassmer, Narrator: Mark von Schlegell 

There once was a young man, not aged even fifteen, who roamed the countryside in search of stories. His name was Hilario Martinez, and when he came across older folk, with creased eyes and leather skin that could point him in the way of some good old-fashioned stories, they batted him off like a summer fly. “Why you’re not even fifteen” they would say “run-off, go-along, back to your mother you go.” This made Hilario very disappointed, but still, he found the will to continue walking. 
One day, as Hilario walked along a wooded path eating gooseberries from a gooseberry tree not far down the road he came across a tiny witch that had gotten stuck inside a plastic bottle. She clawed and clawed at the sides trying to pinch the plastic in order to bite it off and tear a hole so she could escape, but the plastic would not budge. He said to the witch picking up the bottle “Witch, you have gotten yourself stuck in a bottle”. The witch sighed and plopped herself on her ass in the bottom. “Well…” the witch said looking at the big eyes of Hilario as he held her encasement like a fireflies’ “are you gonna let me out or what?”
Hilario was not ready for that question, and wondered thinking of something witty to say.
“How can I let you out witch,” said he “for I know not, who put you there, perhaps you’re a deranged witch and as soon as I open the bottle you smite me a fool”.
“You already seem like a fool” sighed the witch as she flew up to the bottle’s neck.
“Or perhaps you’re the slave witch of a giant who will flick me a smudge on the ground when he finds out I liberated his fairy.”
“Well that’s a good story” said the witch as she hovered inside the suffocating throat of the teardrop shaped bottle, “but…..” she continued yet was interrupted by the deranged face that stared at her from the outside. Hilario’s eyes were fixed on her, like two crescent moons rising over the horizon. “Stoooooooriesss” Hilaro drooled “give me the stooooooriessss” he repeated transfixed by the witch’s hands that had by now understood the weakness of the foraging idiot.

Text: José Montealegre

Nat Marcus is a poet, vocalist and designer. Along with Zoe Darsee, she is co-editor of TABLOID Press, an imprint for poetry and art-books founded in Berlin in 2014. The publishing house maintains a focus on the public space of a poem and the poetics of a social body. Marcus’ poetry, art criticism and lyric journalism have also appeared in Arts of the Working Class, The Ransom Note, Edit, and Berlin Art Link.

Mikhail Wassmer (*1986 in South Surrey, B.C., Canada) studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, and fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He has recently exhibited works in solo shows at RESPONSIBILITY (2020) and Harmony 100 (2022) in Basel. He self-published his poetry in Agitated Dairy (2020) and the end… (2021). He recited from the two pamphlets at RESPONSIBILITY in Basel, KOBO in Zurich, Harmony 100 in Basel, and Hopscotch in Berlin.

 

Guided tour through the exhibitions by John Russell and José Montealegre with Miriam Bettin in the context of DC Open

Opening hours Fri., 02.09., 11 am until 6 pm Sat., 03.09., 11 am until 6 pm Sun., 04.09.,11 am until 6 pm Free admission Further information here. Programm John Russell: Cavapool curated by Nikola Dietrich José Montealegre: Nervous System curated by Miriam Bettin Saturday, 3.9.2022, 4 pm Guided tour through the exhibitions by John Russell and José Montealegre with Miriam Bettin Sunday, 4.9.2022, 5 pm (Cinema) A Nervous Reading by José Montealegre with Nat Marcus and Mikhail Wassmer There once was a young man, not aged even fifteen, who roamed the countryside in search of stories. His name was Hilario Martinez, and when he came across older folk, with creased eyes and leather skin that could point him in the way of some good old-fashioned stories, they batted him off like a summer fly. “Why you’re not even fifteen” they would say “run-off, go-along, back to your mother you go.” This made Hilario very disappointed, but still, he found the will to continue walking.  One day, as Hilario walked along a wooded path eating gooseberries from a gooseberry tree not far down the road he came across a tiny witch that had gotten stuck inside a plastic bottle. She clawed and clawed at the sides trying to pinch the plastic in order to bite it off and tear a hole so she could escape, but the plastic would not budge. He said to the witch picking up the bottle “Witch, you have gotten yourself stuck in a bottle”. The witch sighed and plopped herself on her ass in the bottom. “Well…” the witch said looking at the big eyes of Hilario as he held her encasement like a fireflies’ “are you gonna let me out or what?” Hilario was not ready for that question, and wondered thinking of something witty to say. “How can I let you out witch,” said he “for I know not, who put you there, perhaps you’re a deranged witch and as soon as I open the bottle you smite me a fool”. “You already seem like a fool” sighed the witch as she flew up to the bottle’s neck. “Or perhaps you’re the slave witch of a giant who will flick me a smudge on the ground when he finds out I liberated his fairy.” “Well that’s a good story” said the witch as she hovered inside the suffocating throat of the teardrop shaped bottle, “but…..” she continued yet was interrupted by the deranged face that stared at her from the outside. Hilario’s eyes were fixed on her, like two crescent moons rising over the horizon. “Stoooooooriesss” Hilaro drooled “give me the stooooooriessss” he repeated transfixed by the witch’s hands that had by now understood the weakness of the foraging idiot. Text: José Montealegre Friday, 2.9. until Sunday, 4.9.2022, every hour on the hour from 11 am to 6 pm, on Sunday until 3 pm (Cinema) Film screening EARLEY, 2021/2022 by John Russell (Video, Sound, 58 min) In the searing heat of rural France, in the summer of 2021, a group of artist and film-makers set about shooting ‘an updated version of Beckett’s absurdist post war vision, choreographed across the platforms of a train station’. As a play on Beckett’s experiments with translation, the narrative is set in the small town of Earley, in the UK, but actually filmed in Arles, South of France. To amplify this conceit all signage on the platforms and trains was swapped from French to English. During the course of their research for the film the filmmakers were warned about the myth of ‘Egghead’, or ‘Tête d’Oeuf’. The filmmakers chose to ignore these warnings and even incorporated reference to Egghead in the script. Sweltering in the melting pollen, mosquitoes, coagulating ideology and dripping sweat, with the continuous background rhythm of cicada, an intense dialogue unfolds between the two protagonist-commuters, one taking the form of a Giacometti sculpture. Text: John Russell

Opening hours
Fri., Sept. 02, 11 am to 6 pm
Sat., Sept. 03, 11 am to 6 pm
Sun., Sept. 04, 11 am to 6 pm

free entrance

For more information, click here.

Program
John Russell: Cavapool
cureated by Nikola Dietrich

Saturday, 3.9.2022, 4 pm
Guided tour through the exhibitions of John Russell and José Montealegre with Miriam Bettin 

Sunday, 4.9.2022, 5 pm (Cinema)
A Nervous Reading by José Montealegre with Nat Marcus and Mikhail Wassmer 

There once was a young man, not aged even fifteen, who roamed the countryside in search of stories. His name was Hilario Martinez, and when he came across older folk, with creased eyes and leather skin that could point him in the way of some good old-fashioned stories, they batted him off like a summer fly. “Why you’re not even fifteen” they would say “run-off, go-along, back to your mother you go.” This made Hilario very disappointed, but still, he found the will to continue walking. 
One day, as Hilario walked along a wooded path eating gooseberries from a gooseberry tree not far down the road he came across a tiny witch that had gotten stuck inside a plastic bottle. She clawed and clawed at the sides trying to pinch the plastic in order to bite it off and tear a hole so she could escape, but the plastic would not budge. He said to the witch picking up the bottle “Witch, you have gotten yourself stuck in a bottle”. The witch sighed and plopped herself on her ass in the bottom. “Well…” the witch said looking at the big eyes of Hilario as he held her encasement like a fireflies’ “are you gonna let me out or what?”
Hilario was not ready for that question, and wondered thinking of something witty to say.
“How can I let you out witch,” said he “for I know not, who put you there, perhaps you’re a deranged witch and as soon as I open the bottle you smite me a fool”.
“You already seem like a fool” sighed the witch as she flew up to the bottle’s neck.
“Or perhaps you’re the slave witch of a giant who will flick me a smudge on the ground when he finds out I liberated his fairy.”
“Well that’s a good story” said the witch as she hovered inside the suffocating throat of the teardrop shaped bottle, “but…..” she continued yet was interrupted by the deranged face that stared at her from the outside. Hilario’s eyes were fixed on her, like two crescent moons rising over the horizon. “Stoooooooriesss” Hilaro drooled “give me the stooooooriessss” he repeated transfixed by the witch’s hands that had by now understood the weakness of the foraging idiot.

Text: José Montealegre

Nat Marcus is a poet, vocalist and designer. Along with Zoe Darsee, she is co-editor of TABLOID Press, an imprint for poetry and art-books founded in Berlin in 2014. The publishing house maintains a focus on the public space of a poem and the poetics of a social body. Marcus’ poetry, art criticism and lyric journalism have also appeared in Arts of the Working Class, The Ransom Note, Edit, and Berlin Art Link.

Mikhail Wassmer (*1986 in South Surrey, B.C., Canada) studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, and fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He has recently exhibited work in solo shows at RESPONSIBILITY (2020) and Harmony 100 (2022) in Basel.
He self-published his poetry in Agitated Dairy (2020) and the end… (2021). He recited from the two pamphlets at RESPONSIBILITY in Basel, KOBO in Zurich, Harmony 100 in Basel and Hopscotch in Berlin.

Friday, 2.9. until Sunday, 4.9.2022, every hour on the hour from 11 am to 6 pm, on Sunday until 3 pm (Cinema)
Film screening EARLEY, 2021/2022 by John Russell (Video, Sound, 58 min)

In the searing heat of rural France, in the summer of 2021, a group of artist and film-makers set about shooting ‘an updated version of Beckett’s absurdist post war vision, choreographed across the platforms of a train station’.
As a play on Beckett’s experiments with translation, the narrative is set in the small town of Earley, in the UK, but actually filmed in Arles, South of France. To amplify this conceit all signage on the platforms and trains was swapped from French to English.
During the course of their research for the film the filmmakers were warned about the myth of ‘Egghead’, or ‘Tête d’Oeuf’. The filmmakers chose to ignore these warnings and even incorporated reference to Egghead in the script.
Sweltering in the melting pollen, mosquitoes, coagulating ideology and dripping sweat, with the continuous background rhythm of cicada, an intense dialogue unfolds between the two protagonist-commuters, one taking the form of a Giacometti sculpture.

Text: John Russell

Opening: Friday, 19.8.2022, 7 pm

In his first institutional solo exhibition Nervous System at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, José Montealegre continues his ongoing series of works from 2020 titled Páginas. The starting point for these sculptures is an extensive botanical archive of plant illustrations created in the course of the Spanish colonization of Mexico and published as Nova Plantarum Animalium et Mineralium Mexicanorum (1628). The archive saw the catalogization and re-systematization of hundreds of indigenous plants by the colonizers. In rich detail, Montealegre translates these botanical illustrations into copper sculptures and presents them on the second floor of the Kunstverein. In his artistic practice, which also includes writing, the artist tells stories that blur the line between origin and (mis)translation. Contrary to knowledge shaped by colonial powers, Montealegre allows marginalized perspectives to emerge thus challenging canonical history(ies).

The exhibition will be followed by the first publication of José Montealegre.


Methodologies I

One. Like a protagonist in a cartoon drawing entering the revolving snout of a concrete goosebump city like, for example, New York, my brass-buckled leather briefcase snaps unshut and all my papers fly away. Now I’m late. Now I’m poor. Now I have dreams. Now they fly away. 

Two. It is awfully obvious that any conversation about the methodologies of art begins and surely ends with life. Begins because it is the spring which taps the well. Ends because bloated goldfish are prey for hawks. 

Three. Document whirlwind. Papercut city. The nerve, the nerves, nervous nerve of steel. The page tornado scatters order and logic, thus rendering the business pitch to be delivered into an unintelligible levitation where bureaucracy has no grasp and the tendril tether fails to anchor root. A misfiring neuron is perhaps what you have. 

Four. Upon which I realize that what is sought cannot be accidental. The person who fails to hem the hole in their pocket is called a benefactor. 

Five. It is the spinning paper cyclone that so destroyed my life, the site of the worlds autolysis. Where the invisible is not only seen but transforms. The papers levitated are crumpled into orbs. They hold, hide, and corrupt information. It is to look down into the well and see the golden meniscus that refracts the light, it is the cast and wilting blossom that falls gently on the surface of the water and is blown about by the wind, it is the goldfish that swims clumsily if not in grace and the talon that breaks its peace and plunges into the water and takes that goldfish into another ecstatic world. 

Six. In May 2020 I downloaded a digital copy of the Nova Plantarum Animalium et Mineralium Mexicanorum (1628) from Biodiversitylibrary.org to a thumb drive. Then I took that thumb drive to a student printer. There I printed it in black and white on recycled paper. Leather bound front cover and all. The 1,104-page stack of documents has hundreds of drawings of plants and animals found in present day Mexico and Central America. Each drawing is accompanied by a Nahuatl name that has been scattered by the empires and a Latin name that has been reinterpreted by modern botany. Since printing this version of the ‘Nova Plantarum’ I have been going through the book almost every day. I look at the plants and sometimes, recognize them instantly. Other times it takes me months to realize that I have seen them in the past, but most remain unknown to me. When I google their name, nothing comes up. Familiar only through these drawings, I see faint possibilities in the landscape. When I feel like it and when I start to realize that I know them sculpturally, I make a sculpture of the drawing. So far, I have made around eighty plant sculptures. There are hundreds remaining. Every time I leaf through the black and white printer copy of this book I create a new order within it. The leather cover is now in the middle of the book with tons of scribbles and notations. Its order has become irrational and irrelevant. The page numbers jump by the hundreds. I have lost pages. I have crumpled them. I have stained them.


Text: José Montealegre


Methodologies II

One. Looking at
First look at the white walls, second look at the tiled floor. Looking around. Looking down. Get on your knees. Get closer. Discover. Repeat.

Two. Claiming
In 1517, during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, naturalist and physician Francisco Hernández de Toledo was sent to the first scientific and botanical expedition. The result of a seven-year expedition was an extensive botanical archive in the form of an illustrated manuscript with schematic drawings commissioned from Nahua painters. It was then stored in the Escorial Monastery, re-structured by the Italian medic Nardo Recchi, partly lost in a fire, and eventually published 100 years later under the title Nova Plantarum, Animalium, et Mineralium Mexicanorum historia in 1628.

Three. Knowing
Seeing, naming, knowing. The names of the plants in the book are both in Nahuatl and in Latin. Yet, since the references have been partially lost through appropriation, acquisition, and translation, attempts to find an equivalent in today’s botany are not always successful. As we walk through the city of Cologne, I see a strikingly dominant plant that has broken through the curb. “Didn’t you notice that paving stones in German cities are always in arches?”, he asked. Thinking through craft.

Four. Narrating
In 2013, I visited José Montealegre in his studio for the first time. He had just moved from Managua to Frankfurt am Main to start his studies at the Städelschule in the class of Willem de Rooij. I remember looking at, or rather observing, platforms of tiles on low pedestals on the floor displaying miniature jungle worlds in clay, at reliefs of tiny skeletons on the wall next to framed, seemingly historical book pages. It was with surprise when I found that those documents were fictional: digital prints on blank pages torn out of used books. Overwriting histories. Rewriting history. Reclaiming the narrative.

Five. Expanding
Montealegre’s works have the potential to extend beyond their edges. Like four rectangular cutouts of a larger environment, they seem to grow, to evolve, to reproduce. Outside, the mirroring surfaces of the plastic containers, used in Honduras to collect rainwater and hand wash clothes, reflect their surroundings. Stained-glass squares echo the influence of Catholic iconography and craft and the all-consuming European narrative. The Renaissance in Europe brought on not only the concept of perspective in art but also colonial expansion.

Six. Collapsing
What copper and nerves have in common is that they are both electrical transmitters. “Don’t trust me, I’m not telling you the truth”, he says. Trembling and shaking. Restructuring knowledge and power. Returning agency.


Text: Miriam Bettin

Curator: Miriam Bettin


José Montealegre (*1992 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras) lives and works in Berlin. He studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad Centroamericana de Managua, Nicaragua, and with Willem de Rooij at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Klosterruine in Berlin, Mountains in Berlin (both 2021), Convent Art Space in Ghent (2019), and in group exhibitions including Lantz’scher Skulpturenpark Lohausen in Düsseldorf (2021), Städelmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, Natalia Hug in Cologne (both 2019), Futura Gallery in Prague, Gillmeier Rech in Berlin (both 2018), and Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2017, 2014). Parallel to the solo exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, a group show curated by José Montealegre and Rebekka Seubert is on view at the Dortmunder Kunstverein (until 30.10.2022).

Supported by:

Opening: Friday, 19.8.2022, 7 pm


Hello … hello … woof woof woof!

My eyes are like watery ‘pools of love’, welling up, imminent to your arrival, as I stand here above you, waiting … woof woof! Looking down the stairs at you. … a coquettish mut.

“Heeeeello,” you say as you walk up the stairs, “Ooo you are a sweetie … what do you want us to do?”

And there is something in my gesture, implied in the half-turn of my body, in the appealing angle of my head, in the slight skewing of my stance, in the skilfully painted wetness of my nose, in the hand-tooled seduction of my curls and fur, even in the suggestion of a flirtatious smile playing at the corner of my jaw …

Woof woof!
Oh sly coercion!
Oh finely crafted insinuation!

And then, as I trot along beside you, your spirit animal, as we enter the main exhibition space, breathing in the perfume of pine and maybe the hint of sandlewood – cleaning fluid or maybe air-freshener. Woof woof woof! And the succulent shine underfoot of glassy concrete.

“O this is amazing!” you exclaim, as the light bursts in on you.

The ruptured gash, down through broken rock, a view of aquatic spectacle, a chasm into entangled swirls of waves, clouds, cliffs, skies, submerged architecture; baroque loops of liquid seduction, watery death and sunlit ripples. The horror of the ‘depictive’, coy perspectival fakery, the crude invitation of base representation for the sake of representation with its tricks and returns and re-animations, moving across the surface, the shine and glamour mixing desire and phantoms, as deluge or flood; ‘crafted with time-honoured technique and skill’ … woof woof! A proposal for glimmering surfaces and depths, doubled down and crowded with abstractions so clearly always only ever one millimetre thick; impishly critiquing the murderous ideology of ‘seductive surfaces and hidden depths’.

And all the while the gloss feels so strange on my paws. I yelp slightly and you all laugh, “O you adorable pup!”

And as we tip-tap across the floor of the of the former British Council building, where previously they used to present and promote Cold-War British high-art culture. O my doggy heart! On one level, this is a similarly trivial representational spectacle … but on another level … no … always this! Always only this!

“Ha ha ha ha,” you laugh as we make our way across the ravine. And on the far side, horizontally and vertically aligned, a row of fly sculptures spaced across the span – a row of punctuation marks, of black dots. One of them is perhaps, frozen mid-flight in front of a flower, as an ‘anti-bee’ … not the happy, furry, orange, ecological pollinator whose buzz delights but more like the symbols of death and decay from Dutch still life, or just the vermin that cluster in the dirt. Woof woof woof! Or on closer inspection … on closer inspection … Rorschach ink blots … maybe you can see the head of Max Wall, English music hall star, famous for his character Professor Wallofski, comedy piano routines and acting in Beckett plays.

Or maybe you can see me in the fly, can you pick out my adorable form mixed in … a Cavafloo? Or perhaps a charming Cavaflooloolooolooo to mimic the sound of a song bird perhaps. But anyway….

“Cavafloolooloo…” we cry out as we make our way out again.

As I am trotting by your feet. Eager. With a look of love when you look down. Now leaping down the stairs and at one point I stumble, a bundle of fur tumbling down. Then back on my feet. Too full of juice! Too full of life!

“Woof woof … follow me … down here” I cry. Such a cute docent. And downwards.

“O this is wonderful!” you cry.

And we walk down to the basement space, only partly accessible, roped off. A goat. Viewed from the raised foyer space. And another fly, sitting on the eyelid of the goat (an historical ecstatic fly! The same fly as sat on the eyelid of Margaret Thatcher as she died.)

The goat – most damned of creatures, not least in its repeated use in art. O cursed spawn how many more times must its carcass be reanimated in artistic context. Dragged out to metaphorical affect! And here we are again, observing its satirical form with initially sad expression, clambering across a rock outcrop, in the style of German medieval realism. Folds of fleece highlighted, rendered in oil and gloss varnish, possibly mocking the echo of William Holman Hunt’s famous ‘Scapegoat’ painting of 1892, or the mascot of Cologne FC who was, on one occasion, punched by the fans of an opposing team. Doubling down its religious schtick in its gaze out to the viewer (as implicated). Bloated with sin; as a scapegoat or indexing other formats of art-goats, or cultural goats, erotic, mythological, occult etc. As well as being just a goat. This is a specific goat indicative of its own specific potentialities. And the maggots (baby flies) on the goat’s legs and in the folds of its fleece.

Woof woof woof! “OK OK ! And where are we going now? Ha ha ha” We want to move on and there is a brief worry “Are we ghosts?” we all shriek. “Are we phantoms? Ha ha ha!”

Such fun! And ascending back up, spiralling back up. Upstairs past the posters; amalgamations of sales pitch, supermarket pitch and politics, where sits, on the wall, on the first floor, the painted portrait of the goat, rendered in bas relief and oil, in the style, or spirit, of ‘A picture of Dorian Gray’, where the subject remains youthful and beautiful and the painting deteriorates. That old goat is smiling happily at us in its whiskery decay.

And close by the goat painting, the painting of a crow, standing on a stump picking off ants on the ground below. The ants labour collectively but are snatched away by a force above them, greater than them.

“Woof woof … that old crow … if I get my teeth into his feathers! Ha! Then he would feel my force … if only for a few seconds as I shake him dead! Ha ha! Woof woof!”

“O darling so violent! Leave him … leave him … he isn’t worth it!”

“Woof woof … give me just one minute and I will stop him plucking at our collective labour! Ha ha! Woof woof!”

Woof woof! And finally, one more visit, one more leg on the trip, one more refrain, one last date, one last chapter, verse, prayer, homily, rapture, dream… Yes, to the cinema! The theatre of dreams! A sojourn in the darkness. In the shadows. Amongst the images projected on the screen. The crow features briefly and the ants … and the fly makes a fleeting appearance, drenched in the searing heat of rural France, the melting pollen, mosquitoes and coagulating history. Yes, you can sit back in the cushioned seats. I shall maybe trot up and down in the aisle. As we watch an ‘intense dialogue between two commuters, one taking the form of a Giacometti sculpture, choreographed across the platforms of a suburban train station’. As they search for the allusive Egghead.

Egghead wants his eggs back!

Egghead wants … woof woof!


Sweltering intensity, warm to the bones, into your flesh, into your skull and teeth. Woof woof woof woof!

And now in waves moving down. We flow outwards. And then lapping, flowing down the stairs and leaking out under the main doors, out into the street … joyous new cavapools in the street, across the pavement, in visions down through the concrete, under the paving stone. Gently lapping waters.

O joy!

Woof woof!


Text: John Russell

Curator: Nikola Dietrich


John Russell (*1963 in London) studied History of Art at Goldsmiths College of Art and Fine Art at Slade School of Art and Saint Martin’s School of Art. He was a co-founder of the artists’ group BANK, of which he was a member for ten years. Since leaving BANK in January 2000, Russell has worked both independently and collaboratively in producing exhibitions, curatorial projects, and artist books. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions including Bridget Donahue in New York (2021 and 2018), High Art in Paris (2017), Kunsthalle Zürich (2017) and in group exhibitions at Viborg Kunsthal, DK (2018), Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow (2018), Galerie Crèvecoeur in Paris (2018), Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2017), Artists Space in New York (2014), The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2013), ICA in London (2011), Focal Point Gallery in Southend, UK (2011), The Grey Area in Brighton (2011), Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna(2011), Tate Britain in London (2010), and Tate St Ives in Cornwall, UK (2009).

Supported by:

Guided tour through the exhibitions of Loretta Fahrenholz and Dala Nasser with Miriam Bettin, Assistant Curator

Guided tour through the exhibitions of Loretta Fahrenholz and Dala Nasser with Nikola Dietrich, Director

Children’s workshop Traces of Purple in the context of the exhibitions of Loretta Fahrenholz and Dala Nasser with artist Ani Schulze from 6 years (optional in presence of parents), max. 10 children, participation fee 10 EUR In the children’s workshop with artist Ani Schulze, we explore the current exhibitions at the Kunstverein and make large collage paintings with many different materials, such as fabrics, chalk, adhesive tapes, paper, and silver foils. In the process, we explore what traces and patterns different things (stones, leaves, everyday objects) can leave behind.  

Children’s workshop Traces of Purple in the context of the exhibitions of Loretta Fahrenholz and Dala Nasser with artist Ani Schulze from 6 years (optional in presence of parents), max. 10 children, participation fee 10 EUR In the children’s workshop with artist Ani Schulze, we explore the current exhibitions at the Kunstverein and make large collage paintings with many different materials, such as fabrics, chalk, adhesive tapes, paper, and silver foils. In the process, we explore what traces and patterns different things (stones, leaves, everyday objects) can leave behind.  

Guided tour through the exhibitions of Loretta Fahrenholz and Dala Nasser on international museum day with Ani Schulze, Artist

Opening: Friday, 13.5.2022, 7 pm

Kölnischer Kunstverein is pleased to present Dala Nasser’s first institutional solo exhibition Red in Tooth, featuring her multi-media installation of the same title. Comprising a video work, patchwork paintings, and a commissioned sound installation in collaboration with sound artist Mhamad Safa, Red in Tooth is the point of origination for her ongoing examination of decolonial ecologies and human and non-human entanglement. It’s a grounding proposal of how to listen, smell, see and sense what has been tuned down/out and made invisible by the ongoing practices of extraction and protracted colonial erasure.

Building on her practice as a material and process-based artist, through abstraction and alternative forms of image making, she cultivates a necessary discomfort through a renewed trust in the land, its rivers, and its more-than-human inhabitants. The works trace the Al Wazzani River, which flows through southern Lebanon into Occupied Palestine. Along this splintered journey, Nasser is forced to abandon state road infrastructures that are built to keep us in their lanes, and follow the soil and its color and smell, the burble of water, and other inhabitants of these lands; the animals; through vast wild ‘virgin’ terrains of southern Lebanon leading us to the border defying Wazzani. This frontier, which breeds life in its natural resources and wildlife is only partially accessible to a few families who live in the immediate area – and under difficult conditions. The trial to bear witness to ongoing slow violence, dispossession, and other colonial practices under constantly shifting, changing, and morphing conditions is (nearly) impossible. Nasser’s insistence to be guided by other environmental signifiers in her ongoing exercise to consider other possible social and political imaginaries, begs the question of how we listen to more-than-human ecological knowledges around us. How do we re-calibrate our relationship to the land and its wildlife and other beings, to find a way to listen to their unuttered testimonies? How can we learn from them to navigate the cracks of rigid colonial structures; both material and those of collective memory(s), history(s), and archives?

Reverting to a seemingly ritualistic intuition, the paintings have been dug into the earth around the Wazzani, washed with collected rainwater and/or boiled in salt water, they smell of the wretched soil and carry accumulated matter within it. They are imprinted with an-other memory, reality, and futurity; years of erosion, degradation, loss of water, pollution, and increased salinity imbued with a history of natural life, extraction, death, blood, violence, and land grabs. It’s an attempt to listen to the soil, its ailments and hopes, through that which has truly witnessed and continues to survive there. The large patchwork piece has been reassembled for the lecture hall (Riphahnsaal), the paintings are suspended and cascaded down from the stage to the center where they disharmoniously meet the accompanying site-specific sound installation. The sound work, a collaboration with sound artist and architect Mhamad Safa, manipulates the temporality of the environment through time-based effects. It brings our attention to the crackles of the field recordings from the river and its surrounding area, the birds, the crickets, the wind. The result is an immersive abstracted visual, sonic, and olfactory conditioning that urges us towards a slower, more focused reading and sensing.

In the second space, the video work negotiates and reveals other possibilities of being and relating through learning from the intricate nuances and complexities of the genuinely decolonial species, terrain, and wildlife of the area. Narrated by the wildlife as witnesses whose testimonies have no words, the film transitions between moving shots of a road most traveled, human produced waste, constructed borders, political signage, existing topographical markers animated as imaginary lines, the inhabitant’s voices, dead and living animals, and long, beautiful, desolate imagery of landscapes of southern Lebanon and northern Occupied Palestine. Through a studied use of imagery and sound, Nasser, at times, paints an impressionist-like painting that transports us to and from an-other possible way of life and lived reality.

The exhibition demands a multisensorial presence and engagement as colonial practices and landscape are abstracted within the spaces on a material, olfactory, sonic, and visual level. Red in Tooth is a reminder that we have made the wrong decisions, we have trusted the wrong materials, we have been listening to the testimonies of those who have not witnessed for too long. It reveals to us an entrapped power dynamic between colonial structures, people, animals, plants, the river, and the soil, and invites us through Nasser’s subtle but radical language of abstraction to consider different forms of mobility and relationship to the land.

Text: Reem Shadid

The exhibition was curated by Nikola Dietrich.

Dala Nasser (*1990 in Tyre, lives in Beirut, Lebanon) recently had solo exhibitions at VO Curations in London and Deborah Schamoni in Munich (2022, and 2021). She participated in a number of group exhibitions, including Centre Pompidou in Paris (2022), Villa Emplain in Brussels (2021), Beirut Art Center (2019); Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche in Paris (2019); Victoria Miro in London (2018); François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles (2018); and ACT2 of the Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017).

Asynchronicity. A symposium-like gathering, hosted by Cally Spooner. 

With Paul Abbott & Will Holder, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Taina Bucher, Elizabeth Freeman, Hendrik Folkerts, Irena Haiduk, Dana Luciano, Martina Roß-Nickoll, Cally Spooner with Sanna Blennow and Melody Giron, Mark von Schlegell, Jesper List Thomsen, Jackie Wang and films by Pierre Bal-Blanc and Frances Scholz. 

Saturday, May 7, 2022, 8.59 am – 6.50 pm 
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne
Free Admission, no registration required

Sunday, May 8, 2022, 11 am – 8 pm
Ludwig Forum, Aachen
Free Admission, no registration required

All contributions are in English. In Aachen, simultaneous translation into German is provided.

Asynchronicity is a symposium-like gathering of choreographies, lectures, sounds, screenings, and discussions assembled by artist Cally Spooner with reboot: responsiveness at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Ludwig Forum, Aachen.

Asynchronicity takes as its backdrop the neoliberal paradigm of an always measurable performance. In this climate performance manifests at once as a regime of disciplinary power and a condition of everyday life, in which subjects constantly quantify, manage and stratify themselves until the social imagination and desire is deadened. Asynchronicity probes how such draining quests can be subverted by collectively fostering a resistance towards chrononormativity. Coined in 2010 by queer studies scholar Elizabeth Freeman (one of the gathering’s contributors), the term chrononormativity describes the prevalent use of time to organize human bodies toward maximum productivity.

Asynchronicity responds by unravelling the resistant potentials of becoming or remaining asynchronous. Over the course of two days, collaborators – artists, performers, musicians, theoreticians, dancers, curators and designers – are invited to unfold a diverse set of propositions for alternative, fugitive temporalities, affects and bodily practices that bend and subvert familiarity and which deliberately, or naturally, remain out of sync. Jointly introducing the notion of asynchronicity as an alternative, non-sequential mode of time, texts, movements, encounters and thoughts will collide across the partnering institutions in Aachen and Cologne.

Asynchronicity is part of Cally Spooners longterm research project Deadtime (since 2018) in which she finds and handles temporal structures beyond the Clock-Time standardizations that force labour, bodies, nervous systems, and digital technologies into a completely metric-orientated future. Conceived as the first of five assemblies hosted by the artist, that challenge the chrononormative order and the performance imperative implied.

While you may enter the symposium-like gathering in your own time – any moment or time span of preference – we suggest you experience its choreography in its entirety and in both cities, if possible.


Saturday, May 7, 2022, 8.59 am – 6.50 pm
Doors open from 8.30 am
Kölnischer Kunstverein
Hahnenstraße 6, 50667 Cologne

I GOT UP AT 8:59 AM OCT. 19 2021 by Pierre Bal-Blanc, adapted from I GOT UP AT 8:59 AM OCT. 19 1968 by On Kawara addressed to Dan Graham, is screened. Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lawn of Excluded Middle is read by Will Holder (vocals) and Paul Abbott (drums). Each reading comprises three fifteen-minute readings of three verses, to a maximum of six people. Deadtime, an opera in progress, is presented by Cally Spooner (lecture), Sanna Blennow (dance) and Melody Giron (cello) . Elizabeth Freeman introduces the audience to the concept of chrononormativity, with a historical frame. Mark von Schlegell reflects on his science fiction experiences with time travel. Taina Bucher engages in conversation on techno-dystopias, and ‘right time newsfeeds’. Jackie Wang examines how time is used as a technology of punishment inside prisons, then ends with a meditation on Black Quantum Futurism’s use of Afro-futurist sci-fi to create new political openings. Dana Luciano presents James McCune Smith, the 19th century physician, activist, who positioned geology as a site for the production of pleasure. Jesper List Thomsen reads FREEEee, a part lecture part folk song on dismantling representation. We conclude with Introduction To Feelings, Studio Feelings where Irena Haiduk casts from the year 2135 for 32 mins.

Timetable
08.59 am I GOT UP AT 8:59 AM OCT. 19 2021, Pierre Bal-Blanc
10.00 am Dead Time, Cally Spooner, Melody Giron, Sanna Blennow and Jesper List Thomsen
11.00 am On Chrononormativity: Histories and Possibilities, Elizabeth Freeman
12.00 pm Carceral Temporalities and the Politics of Dreaming, Jackie Wang
1.00 pm Rosmarie Waldrop: “Lawn of Excluded Middle”, Will Holder and Paul Abbott
—  Lunch Break
2.00 pm Algorithmic “right time” and Deadtime, Taina Bucher and Cally Spooner
2.30 pm Choromonautics, Then and now, Mark von Schlegell
3.30 pm FREEEee, Jesper List Thomsen
—  Break
4.15 pm Freedom’s Ammonite: Blackness, Geomorphology, Worldmaking, Dana Luciano
5.00 pm Introduction To Feelings, Studio Feelings, Irena Haiduk
5.30 pm (A rehearsal for) Unending love, or love dies, on repeat like it’s endless, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins
6.00 pm Rosmarie Waldrop: “Lawn of Excluded Middle”, Will Holder and Paul Abbott
6.50 pm End


Sunday, May 8, 2022, 11 am – 8 pm
Ludwig Forum, Aachen
Jülicher Straße 97-109, 52070 Aachen

Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lawn of Excluded Middle is read by Will Holder (vocals) and Paul Abbott (drums). Each reading comprises three fifteen-minute readings of three verses, to a maximum of six people. Mark von Schlegell screens Frances Scholz’s YEAR OF THE WRITER, a time-capsule/fragmentary portrait of a sci-fi writer and the musical environment surrounding, in Los Angeles, 2004. Hendrik Folkerts presents the prologue to a symposium-like gathering on Duration in the spring of 2023, and an asynchronous lapse in this gathering. Jackie Wang analyzes the relationship between listening and power by examining the history of voice surveillance and voice printing technology. Elizabeth Freeman talks about chrononormativity and the asynchrony of personhood and collectivity during illness in the present day—COVID, and her own. Dana Luciano introduces Ellen Gallagher’s alignment with oceanic time, via ecologies formed from the corpses of whales—that might help us to imagine life anew. Biologist Martina Roß-Nickoll explains biodiversity and the temporality of meadows (lecture in German, simultaneous translation into English will be provided.) Irena Haiduk asks things to teach us how to live. Alex Baczynski-Jenkins presents a processual choreography that reflects on the relations of desire, dance, fragmentation, love (as communality) and time.

Timetable
11.00 am DURATION symposium in the spring of 2023; an asynchronous lapse, Hendrik Folkerts
12.00 pm Crip Asynchronies: COVID, Cancer, Climate, Elizabeth Freeman
1.00 pm Captured Voices: Prisoner Voiceprints and the Carceral Laboratory, Jackie Wang
2.00 pm Rosmarie Waldrop: “Lawn of Excluded Middle”, Will Holder and Paul Abbott
— Lunch break
3.00 pm Oceanic Time and Black Feminist Futures, Dana Luciano
4.00 pm A conversation on Meadows, Prof. Martina Roß-Nickoll
4.00 pm Rosmarie Waldrop: “Lawn of Excluded Middle”, Will Holder and Paul Abbott
4.30 pm Introduction to YEAR OF THE WRITER, by Frances Scholz, 2004, Mark von Schlegell
— Drink break
5.10 pm Prop Positions, Irena Haiduk
6.00 pm (A rehearsal for) Unending love, or love dies, on repeat like it’s endless, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins
8.00 pm End


reboot: responsiveness is the first cycle of reboot: – a collaborative, multi-cycle, anti-racist and queer-feminist dialogue encompassing performance and research based practices, jointly presented by Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Ludwig Forum für internationale Kunst, Aachen.

reboot:
Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann
Core Collective: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia
Graphic design by Sean Yendrys


reboot: responsiveness is a cooperation of:

reboot: responsiveness is supported by:

Guided tour through the exhibition of Loretta Fahrenholz with Ani Schulze, Artist

Film screening Loretta Fahrenholz Two A.M., 2019, 79 min (original English version) and a conversation with the artist (in German) Two A.M. Color, 79 min, 2019 With: Theadora Davies, Emile Clarke, Jim Fletcher, Sophie Fives, Annika Glass, Andrew Kerton, Paula Knüpling, Ilya Lipkin, Mira, Partecke, Emily Sundblad, Yuko Torihara, Helga Wretman and Michael Bornhütter, Klaus Kamptner, Leonie Kossi, Gerda Martin, Liv Moritz, Liana Saito, Julian Wadsworth, Jürgen Wolf, Min Yoon, Tate Zirner, et al. Cinematography: Till Megerle, Loretta Fahrenholz, Jan Mammey; Editing: Michael Fandel, Loretta Fahrenholz; Sound Design: Steffen Martin, Anders Ehlin; Assistant Directors: Angela Stiegler, Yulia Lokshina; Script: Jegg Nagy, Loretta Fahrenholz; Production Management: Sarah Schipschack; Producer: Loretta Fahrenholz; Executive Producer: Sarah Schipschack & Leif Magne Tangen, vitakuben; Sound: Simon Konrad; Costumes, Make-up: Marianna Serwa; Stunt Choreography: Michael Bornhütter; Colorist: Jorge Piquer Rodríguez; Music: Steffen Martin, Christian Naujoks, Anders Ehlin, Stephan Gschwendtner, Ivan Sobolew, Timo Ellis, Christoph Reiserer; Titles: HIT Two A.M. (2019) is a hallucinatory tale of coercion, control, and peer-to-peer surveillance on the fringes of present-day Berlin. Fahrenholz draws on Irmgard Keun’s 1937 novel, After Midnight, for her protagonist, Sanna. Where Keun’s young narrator turned a septic eye on the rise of the Nazis in prewar Germany, Fahrenholz’s Sanna is pitted against her own overbearing family of mind-reading ‘Watchers’, who use their powers to monitor the thoughts and feelings of their human counterparts. As a police state tightens its grip in the face of increasing social unrest, Sanna goes on the run from her volatile Watcher aunt and reconnects with her sister Algin, a blacklisted pop star. But when an escape from her claustrophobic past seems just within reach, events conspire against Sanna and her allies, in an unpredictable fever dream of desire, voyeurism, and political chaos.

Guided tour through the exhibition of Loretta Fahrenholz with Miriam Bettin, Assistant Curator

Schubert, Fauré & Blomenkamp Dekoriert mit den höchsten Preisen und Auszeichnungen (Wien, Melbourne, ARD, KLRITA) ist das Mor­genstern Trio auf den wichtigsten Podien der Welt zu Hause. Dazu zählen: Carnegie Hall New York, Kennedy Center Washington DC, Musikverein und Konzerthaus Wien, Kölner Philharmonie, Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam und andere. Publikum und Presse feiern das Morgenstern Trio für höchsten kammermusikalischen und technischen Anspruch: Seine lange gereiften Interpretationen faszinieren in der Ausarbeitung feinster Nuancen. Bei den Kammerkonzerten im Kunstverein kann das Morgenstern Trio ganz seine kammermusikalischen Fähigkeiten ausspielen und präsentiert ein besonderes und abwechselungsreiches Programm. Neben Klaviertrios von Franz Schubert und Gabriel Fauré wird eine 2019 erstmalig uraufgeführte Suite von Thomas Blomenkamp zu hören sein. Besetzung: Catherine Klipfel, Klavier Stefan Hempel, Violine Emanuel Wehse, Violoncello Programm: Gabriel Fauré: Klaviertrio d-Moll, op. 120 Thomas Blomenkamp: Preludio, Prestissimo, Pavane und Precipitato für Klaviertrio (2019) #RepertoireNRW Franz Schubert: Trio B-Dur, D 898 Ausführliche Informationen zum Ensemble: www.morgensterntrio.com Preise: 19,50 Euro inkl. VVK Gebühr, ermäßigt (Schüler, Studenten, KölnPass-Inhaber) 12,- Euro inkl. VVK Gebühr, Kinder bis 14 Jahre haben freien Eintritt. Der Vorverkauf startet zur Zeit jeweils drei Wochen vor den jeweiligen Konzertterminen. Karten sind auf KölnTicket erhältlich: www.koelnticket.de Aktuelle Infos & Link zum VVK unter: www.koelner-klassik-ensemble.de Über die Konzertreihe: Die Musikmetropole am Rhein ist Heimatort zahlreicher international anerkannter Musikerinnen und Musiker. Mit ihrer Vielfalt und Qualität hat sich dabei die freie Kölner Kammermusikszene weltweit höchstes Ansehen erspielt. Die Kammerkonzerte im Kunstverein geben diesen Spitzenensembles aus Köln und NRW nun ein festes Schaufenster in ihrer Heimatstadt. Ab 2020 finden jährlich sechs Konzerte, jeweils Samstag Abends um 18 Uhr, im Riphahnsaal des Kölnischen Kunstvereins statt. Zentral am Neumarkt bietet der Riphahnsaal mit seiner offenen, schönen Architektur eine hervorragende Akustik für Kammermusik der internationalen Spitzenklasse. Die Verbindung von zeitgenössischer, bildender Kunst und der epochenübergreifenden Kammermusik setzt ein Symbol für die Einheit von Kunst, ihrer Vielfältigkeit und Aktualität und verspricht ein einzigartiges Ambiente.

Mariana Valencia Tulum, New York Video presentation and conversation with Mariana Valencia Wednesday, March 30, 2022 Online Zoom, 6 – 8pm CET (in English) Participation link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83878297992 Meeting ID: 838 7829 7992 reboot: responsiveness is pleased to premiere New York-based artist and choreographer Mariana Valencia’s latest video work Tulum, New York in its newly conceived multi-language versions in English, German, and Spanish. On March 30, 2022, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Ludwig Forum Aachen invite to a screening of the videos and a subsequent zoom-conversation with Mariana Valencia to contextualize her practice in dialogue with Viktor Neumann, one of the three curators of reboot. All three versions of Tulum, New York will be on view at Kölnischer Kunstverein and Ludwig Forum Aachen on site afterwards. “Exploring the ‘pandemic screen’, Tulum, New York makes use of the video-chat function that’s been imposed onto us as a means to connect and transport during pandemic times. Here, Mariana Valencia retells her recurring dreams that feature her psychotherapist, during the beginning of the first Covid-19 lockdown. Her face fills the frame and moves in slow-motion, out of rhythm to the speaking and in a surreal incantation. Tulum, New York sits between the tropical and urban, wakefulness and dreams, loss and attachment.” Choreographer and performer Mariana Valencia works in the New York experimental field of dance and performance. Her commissions include Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, The Whitney Museum, The Shed and Performance Space New York. Valencia’s work has toured in Korea, England, Norway, Macedonia and Serbia; her residencies include AUNTS, Chez Bushwick, New York Live Arts, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney Dance Center, Movement Research, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR). Valencia is an LMCC Extended Life grantee, a Whitney Biennial artist, a Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer, a Bessie Award nominee for Best Production, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient, a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow, and a Movement Research GPS/Global Practice Sharing artist. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence. She’s worked with artists AK Burns, Elizabeth Orr, Em Rooney, Fia Backstrom, Geo Wyeth, Guadalupe Rosales, Jazmin Romero, Juliana May, Jules Gimbrone, Kim Brandt, Lauren Bakst, Lydia Okrent, Morgan Bassichis, MPA, and robbinschilds. Valencia has published two books of performance texts, “Album” (Wendy’s Subway) and “Mariana Valencia’s Bouquet” (3 Hole Press). She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA with a concentration in dance and ethnography. reboot: responsiveness Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Ludwig Forum Aachen jointly announce the launch of reboot: – a collaborative, multi-cycle, anti-racist, and queer-feminist dialogue encompassing performance and research based practices. reboot: Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann Core Collective: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia Graphic design by Sean Yendrys reboot: responsiveness is a cooperation of: reboot: responsiveness is supported by:

Opening of the exhibition: Friday, 18.03.2022, 7 pm

Gap year: a reprieve from work and responsibility, time off before time starts again – or a chunk of time that lands in your lap when society unexpectedly stops.

A vast and relatively unregulated space, Berlin’s Tempelhofer Feld is built on ruptures reflected in its various historical incarnations, among other functions Germany’s first football training ground, a 19^th century Sunday destination, NS parade site, a concentration camp, and, of course, Berlin’s airport during the Cold War Airlift. Fahrenholz’ photo series Gap Years depicts the flourishing of leisure activities and new hobbies during the pandemic, when the Feld became everyone’s cafe, gym, bar, club, pick-up spot and music venue. Recorded with strobe-like time-lapse photography that registers movement like in a frozen jelly, the works in the series show people in self-defence classes, playing ping-pong, roller-skating, or engaging in impromptu raves and remote-controlled car driving, open-air bondage and snacking. There is also a blurry close-up of tahini poured on one of the unpopular e-scooters (we are among irritable Berliners all right).

The contemporaneity of the activities cannot hide the belle-époque quaintness of the motif of leisure, or what Fahrenholz identifies as its ‘kitsch’ aspect. We have no illusions about leisure activities. As carefully measured breaks in the regime of work they can be the next best thing to being stuck in a rut. And in an urban context the display of street skill and everyday virtuosity is already inscribed in a layered visual economy: Fahrenholz’ photos trail instagrammable styles of social-media self-consumption but also the heroics of sports photography. Still, the social collapse of the pandemic provided an opportunity for other rhythms, for social reorganization on a micro-level, thus creating a space in which it was possible to get in touch with both dystopia and utopia.

The film Happy Birthday (2022) emulates the perspective of a first-person shooter video game through a sole protagonist who wanders aimlessly across the Tempelhofer Feld. Little windows appear with snippets of mobile-phone-recorded birthday greetings. As the film progresses, darkness falls on the lonely social choreography, a non-celebration with long-distance missives from friends and family who should have been present. The birthday boy’s blank expression and the absence of action build up emotional pressure and expectation, as the air around him is perforated with songs, encouragements or scolding, shared memories, saucy messages, and existential musings.

What is left, where are we now? Where do we go from here? – These questions emerge from the darkness surrounding the figures in Fahrenholz’ two works. To Henri Lefebvre, the ‘rhythmanalyst’ is someone who studies rhythms as a structure for the experience of space and time – someone who listens to “all sorts of already known practices” but first of all “to his body; he learns rhythm from it, in order consequently to appreciate external rhythms. His body serves him as a metronome.” What would Lefebvre’s rhythmanalyst make of a pandemic time out of whack? Lefebvre’s notion of the body as a metronome takes on other signification, both when held against the digitally scripted movements of the Happy Birthday protagonist and Gjon Mili’s photographic experiments from the mid-20^th century that inspired Fahrenholz for her Gap Years series. New strobe technology enabled Mili to capture movement by arresting the human body in sequences in a single photographic image: Picasso making a drawing with light, a ballet dancer’s stride across the stage. Mili’s is a kind of portraiture in which psychology is reduced, or even effaced, in favour of speed.

In 1960s counterculture the spasmodic gestation of the strobe was employed to chop up time and dissolve the body. Tom Wolfe describes the dance floor of a 1960s ‘acid test’:

Ecstatic dancers – their hands flew off their arms, frozen in the air – a gleaming ellipse of teeth here, a pair of buffered highlit cheekbones there – all flacking and fragmenting into images as in an old flicker movie – a man in slices! – all of history pinned up on a butterfly board; the experience, of course.

The psychedelic sensibility for the non-human side of technology inspired the filmmaker Jonas Mekas to say that “since there is nothing but the white light in [the strobe], it represents…the point of death, or nothingness.” But it is not only visual shrapnel; there is a theoretical bent in the strobe, too, a crystalline ur-cinematic logic: “One could even say that it dramatizes the light itself.” On the thin line between emancipation and control, stimulus and trauma, the strobe summarizes the modern onslaught on the nervous system with instantly changing signals. In the 1950s, flicker technologies were used for electroencephalographic research documenting how changes in the electrical rhythms of the brain have diagnostic value. In the nerve-brain click-regime of our digital era such stimuli have plenty of exchange value, too.

“Writing in strobe” can invent “crazy speeds…where different themes connect up, and words form various figures according to the precipitous speeds of reading and association,” as Gilles Deleuze said about Hélène Cixous’ way of writing her way out of patriarchal regimes. In Fahrenholz, the icy strobe is no less of a poetics, a suitable aesthetic for our dreamless time. Departing from acceleration and Cixous’ call for “more body”, Fahrenholz instead presents meditations on the dissolution of normality and on caesuras in social time and space. Known rhythms of life begin to limp and falter as we are served up a new diet of (dis)embodiment, separation and togetherness, in the affective interstices between bodies and technologies. Maybe somewhere here, in a big blank space-time like the Tempelhofer Feld during the pandemic, we can find a way to acknowledge what happens – or what does not happen – as an event to be handed over to the future, so time can branch out into something new.

Lars Bang Larsen

This exhibition was curated by Nikola Dietrich.

Pure Fiction Shifting Theatre: Sibyl’s Mouths Performance program starts at 2.30 pm with Mark von Schlegell (feat. Arjan Stockhausen), Luzie Meyer and Erika Landström with Dana Munro In Shifting Theatre: Sibyl’s Mouths, members of the writing and performance group Pure Fiction—Rosa Aiello, Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, and Mark von Schlegell—respond to the unpredictable cultural landscape of today by staging this strikingly relevant novel’s motifs in a shifting theatre of sound, installation, lecture, film and puppetry. Voices animate and prophesize; make presence out of absent figures and forces; translate from symbol to action and back. In a time when coming together physically as a group seems near impossible; coming apart together is newly significant. Like the fragmentary prophecies of the eponymous Sibylline cave, works made specifically for the exhibition come to life at various stages, and in accordance with their own internal script and time-line. Through a careful interrogation to the where and who, their individual unfoldings seem to ask in discordant chorus: what is performance? The 2G rule applies. No registration required. The event takes place in the context of Show & Tell and is supported by:  

Pure Fiction: Rosa Aiello (in collaboration with Dylan Aiello), Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, Mark von Schlegell
Shifting Theatre: Sibyl’s Mouths

An Exhibition at the End of Performance

Opening: Friday, February 11, 2022, 5 – 9 pm
Performances from 7 pm

Closing: Sunday, March 6, 2022, 11 am – 6 pm
Performances from 2 pm

The 2G rule applies. No registration required.


In the Sibylline cave near today’s Naples, the narrator of Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man finds a collection of prophecies scribbled on scattered oak leaves. These fragments conjure the story of an epidemic that ravages the globe in the 2100’s, forever altering human history. Arguably the first science-fiction apocalypse, The Last Man touches on themes such as solitude, new forms of intimacy, repetition, and life on the edge of an epoch.

In Shifting Theatre: Sibyl’s Mouths, members of the writing and performance group Pure Fiction—Rosa Aiello, Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, and Mark von Schlegell—respond to the unpredictable cultural landscape of today by staging this strikingly relevant novel’s motifs in a shifting theatre of sound, installation, lecture, film and puppetry. Voices animate and prophesize; make presence out of absent figures and forces; translate from symbol to action and back.

In a time when coming together physically as a group seems near impossible; coming apart together is newly significant. Like the fragmentary prophecies of the Sibylline cave, works made specifically for the exhibition come to life at various stages, and in accordance with their own internal script and time-line. Through a careful interrogation to the where and who, their individual unfoldings seem to ask in discordant chorus: what is performance?

On the Kölnischer Kunstverein’s ground floor, a sound installation by Ellen Yeon Kim repeats while physically sprawling across the premises. Luzie Meyer’s new video work is accompanied by marionettes of the current Pure Fiction members, and in REAL BOOKS—a temporary book store of no set time or space—Mark von Schlegell offers the written word as time machine, for a price.

In the adjacent cinema, Rosa Aiello (in collaboration with Dylan Aiello) entangles herself in sibling ribaldry and the libidinal potentials of performance (on and off screen). Meanwhile, in the former broadcasting room on the second floor, Erika Landström stages a dream machine of cognitive labour and space exploration.

With live performances on opening night and closing day.

The exhibition was curated by Nikola Dietrich.

Rosa Aiello (*1987, Canada) is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her works have been shown at various institutions and galleries, including Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main; Cell Project Space, London; Bureau des Réalités, Brussels; and Stadtgalerie Bern, among others. She has had recent solo exhibitions at DREI, Cologne; Arcadia Missa, London; Lodos, Mexico City, and Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge. Her writing has been published in Triple Canopy, Starship, CanadianArt, Art Papers, Public Journal, and F. R. David.

Ellen Yeon Kim (*1985, South Korea) studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in the class of Peter Fischli and Simon Starling, and graduated from Slade School of Art, UCL. Her aesthetically complex work unveils the absurdity of the multiple irreconcilable expectations which are placed on individuals by society and its institutions. It reveals ways in which trauma is passed on and perpetuated by individuals themselves. Kim’s practice involves various media, including theatre, stand-up comedy, installations and drawings. She was awarded The Peter Mertes Stipendium in 2021 and has been part of the studio program at the Kölnischer Kunstverein since 2019. 

Erika Landström (*1984, Sweden) is an artist working in sculpture, installation and performance. She is a graduate from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in New York. Her most recent performance Holders premiered at the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, 2020. She has been published by Sternberg Press and Texte Zur Kunst, among others, and her writing ranges from poetry to art criticism. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally.

Luzie Meyer (*1990, Germany) is an artist, poet, musician, and translator based in Berlin. She studied Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt and graduated in Fine Arts from Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2016. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally. She was awarded the studio residency of the Hessische Kulturstiftung at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris in 2018. She has received a pre-doctoral fellowship of the DiGiTal fund Berlin in 2020, as well as a research grant from the Berlin senate in 2021 for her research project “Unthinking Metatheatre”. 

Mark von Schlegell (*1967, USA) is a novelist, critic and artist, Cologne-based since 2005. His first novel Venusia (2005) was honor’s listed for the Otherwise Prize in science fiction. In English he is published by Semiotext(e) and Sternberg Press; in German by Matthes und Seitz and Merve Verlag. His visual art has been shown in the US (New York), South Korea (Seoul), Denmark, and throughout Germany. A founding member of the Pure Fiction collective since 2011, he has taught art and literature at CalArts in Valencia, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

Rory Pilgrim Is there a story that has helped you to recover? Informal public presentation of a two-day workshop, organized by the Kölnischer Kunstverein and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf Sunday, January 23, 2022, 7 – 8 pm Venue: Salon des Amateurs Grabbeplatz 4, 40213 Düsseldorf Free Admission. Please note that this is a 2G+ event. For admission, a negative daily (not older than 24 hours) rapid test result is required in addition to proof of vaccination or recovery. A booster vaccination replaces the test result. Please register at info@reboot-responsiveness.com. Can we recover, if the systems around us do not change? By storytelling, how might we recover those systems? Over the course of a two-day long workshop, artist Rory Pilgrim has invited people from Cologne and Düsseldorf to reflect through different forms of storytelling on what ‘recovery’ might mean today. This workshop results in this informal public event, giving the opportunity for participants to share stories developed in the workshop in whatever way comfortable for them. With recovery implying a return to a previous state of health, or even the retrieval of something stolen, can we instead rethink recovery as a way to imagine something completely anew with possibilities? Inspired by the novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, who described the story as a ‘medicine bundle’, we will explore how we use storytelling to share what recovery might mean to us in our own lives. This might be personal or born out of wider political concerns. Reflecting on how we might share our own stories or the stories of others, we will work with different forms of storytelling that feels intuitive to each person and as a group, such as through speech, writing, recordings and nonverbal forms such as tableau making and movement. Through this, we will together explore how experiences of recovery become entangled with wider systems of care, bureaucracy and law. By sharing stories, we will find ways to reimagine what recovery might be and as a way to shape the narratives and change we hope to implement for ourselves, local communities and the wider world. Rory Pilgrim (UK/NL) is an artist and facilitator working across many different mediums including film, music, drawing, and live performance. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen, and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Working with others through different methods of dialogue, workshops, and collaboration, Rory is interested in how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens. If you would like to register as a participant for the entire two-day workshop, feel free to get in touch! Hermann Mueller info@reboot-responsiveness.com reboot: responsiveness Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf jointly announce the launch of reboot: – a collaborative, multi-cycle, anti-racist, and queer-feminist dialogue encompassing performance and research based practices. reboot: Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann Core Collective: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia Graphic design by Sean Yendrys

with Nikola Dietrich, Director Kölnischer Kunstverein

The exhibition Daniela Ortiz – Nurtured by the defeat of the colonizers our seeds will raise will be closed from 24 December 2021 to 03 January 2022.

We look forward to welcoming you back on 4 January 2022.

For your visit to the exhibition, please also refer to the current information.

Die Ausstellung Daniela Ortiz – Nurtured by the the defeat of the colonizers our seeds will raise bleibt vom 24. Dezember 2021 bis zum 03. Januar 2022 geschlossen.

Wir freuen uns, Sie ab dem 4. Januar 2022 wieder bei uns begrüßen zu können.

Bitte beachten Sie für Ihren Ausstellungsbesuch auch die aktuellen Informationen.

We are pleased to present our latest Jahresgaben on December 8, 2021 and would like to invite you to a tour of the Jahresgaben exhibition on December 9, 2021. Our director Nikola Dietrich will guide you through the exhibition. For your visit the vac­ci­nat­ed-re­cov­ered-rule (“2G-Regel”) ap­plies at the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Please have proof of vacci­na­tion or past ill­ness and a valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ment ready. The vac­ci­nat­ed-re­cov­ered-test­ed-rule (“3G-Regel”) ap­plies to chil­dren and teens un­der 18. Chil­dren up to the age of school en­try do not re­quire proof. Stu­dents un­der the age of 16 are con­sid­ered test­ed. Stu­dents 16 years of age and old­er are asked to pro­vide school cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Adults who can­not be vac­ci­nat­ed for med­i­cal rea­sons must pre­sent a neg­a­tive rapid test (max. 24 hours old) in ad­di­tion to a med­i­cal cer­ti­fi­cate.

We are pleased to present our latest Jahresgaben on December 8, 2021 and would like to invite you to a tour of the Jahresgaben exhibition on December 9, 2021. Our director Nikola Dietrich will guide you through the exhibition. For your visit the vac­ci­nat­ed-re­cov­ered-rule (“2G-Regel”) ap­plies at the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Please have proof of vacci­na­tion or past ill­ness and a valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ment ready. The vac­ci­nat­ed-re­cov­ered-test­ed-rule (“3G-Regel”) ap­plies to chil­dren and teens un­der 18. Chil­dren up to the age of school en­try do not re­quire proof. Stu­dents un­der the age of 16 are con­sid­ered test­ed. Stu­dents 16 years of age and old­er are asked to pro­vide school cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Adults who can­not be vac­ci­nat­ed for med­i­cal rea­sons must pre­sent a neg­a­tive rapid test (max. 24 hours old) in ad­di­tion to a med­i­cal cer­ti­fi­cate.

Artists:
Naama Arad, Inessa Emmer, Sabrina Fritsch, Stefani Glauber, Selma Gültoprak, Melike Kara, Ellen Yeon Kim, Rory Pilgrim, Nora Schultz, Cally Spooner, Katja Tönnissen, Mark von Schlegell

We are pleased to present to you this year’s Jahresgaben at the Kölnischer Kunstverein from December 8 to 19, 2021 during the regular opening hours and cordially invite you to a tour with the director Nikola Dietrich on Thursday, December 9 at 5 pm. Registration and presentation of a 2G certificate are required. Please note our information regarding your visit to our exhibitions and events.

Some of the young and established regional and international artists who are supporting the Kölnischer Kunstverein this year with an edition were represented in the 2021 annual program, are current studio fellows, or are connected to the Kunstverein in some other way.

Please find information about the artists and the available works under Latest Jahresgaben. 

Orders for the Jahresgaben 2021 can be submitted in written from that date up to and including December 19. If more orders are received than there are copies available, the decision will be made by lot. The lottery will take place on December 20, 2021. After the draw, all interested parties will be notified in writing of the result. All remaining Jahresgaben are still for sale after the lottery and can be purchased at any time. Purchase only by members.

Cally Spooner’s “A Lecture on Stagnation” read by Will Holder …for single mothers; followed by a conversation on Dead Time, between Cally Spooner and Hendrik Folkerts. Friday, November 19, 2021, 6 pm Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne Since 2007 Will Holder has orally published work authored by those who do not share all or any aspects of his white, male, heterosexual speaking body. The presence of these discrepancies are intended to highlight what our bodies DO have in common, and collectively undergo, rather than only speak of that which normatively divides us. Central to this series of publications is Alice Notley’s Doctor Williams’ Heiresses, (1980) and the poet’s expressed desire to synthesise a female, speaking voice within male poetic meters. Will attempts something comparable, with respect to a sense of Notley’s poetry, while reading Cally Spooner’s “Lecture on Stagnation”. Will’s reading is a way to lead into Cally Spooner’s ongoing project Dead Time. Over the coming three years, Dead Time will be periodically published with Will Holder, to test a thesis —- ‘dead time’ is an event that is chrononormatively-inactive and therefore holds the potential to restitute life. Dead Time (2018) is a 63 page performance score. It was composed by artist and writer Cally Spooner, in response to what she has coined to be ‘a global techno-temporal-performance culture’; a crime scene in which it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is alive and what is dead. Since 2018 Spooner has been incrementally translating Dead Time into a number of works that can coexist under various conditions, and which will culminate in an Opera in the future. For now, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Spooner and curator Hendrik Folkerts discuss the present-tense condition of Dead Time, avoiding future-orientated speculation and chronological reminiscence. They will be accompanied by Melody Giron on cello. She will join the conversation from New York, to present Dead Time’s current work in progress. Typographer Will Holder makes books, and publishes the work of others, orally and in print. He likes to draw attention to an ongoing, shared authorship of meaning, co-produced in the gaps between bodies, their speech and the printed page. Since 2007, Holder edits F.R.DAVID, a journal concerned with reading & writing and typography: the organisation and reproduction of language, published by uh books, Brussels. Hendrik Folkerts has curated numerous solo and international group exhibitions as well as collection presentations, new commissions, and public programs, anchored in the expanded field of performance and building on feminist, queer, and anti-colonial histories of art. He is a curator of Moderna Museet Stockholm. He previously held positions as Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (2017–2021); as Curator at documenta 14, Kassel/Athens (2014–2017); as Curator of Performance, Film, and Discursive Programs at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010–2015); and as the Coordinator of the Curatorial Program at De Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (2009–2011). He frequently writes for art journals and magazines, as well as exhibition catalogues and artists’ monographs. Rooted firmly in her training in philosophy, Cally Spooner’s practice is generated through writing, unfolds as performance, then lands as film, sound, sculpture, drawings or scores. Her performances incorporate duration and rehearsal as acts of resistance to techno, temporal and performative climates in which it is hard to tell the difference between what is alive and what is dead. Dead Time is co-produced with reboot:responsiveness; O-Overgaden, Copenhagen; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris. Deadtime is fully supported… … Organisationally and practically, by Rhea Dall of O-Overgaden, Copenhagen. Academically, by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; and the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen. Financially, by Novo Nordisk Foundation, Hellerup. reboot: responsiveness Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf jointly announce the launch of reboot: – a collaborative, multi-cycle, anti-racist, and queer-feminist dialogue encompassing performance and research based practices. The first cycle, reboot: responsiveness, departs from desires, anxieties and hopes amplified by the current pandemic. Hosted in two different yet aligned sites that mutually interact with one another as much as they support, complement and challenge each other, reboot: responsiveness provides infrastructures for provisional stagings, rehearsals, processual choreographies, and encounters around notions of presence, intimacy, care, and responsibility. reboot: responsivenessdevelops activities together with a core collective comprised of Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia. Embracing diverse formats, and working together with further invited guests and audiences in Cologne and Düsseldorf, these artists and thinkers will explore ways to dedicate time to one another and to perform in time, to develop alternative vocabularies, archives, gestures, movements, and translations, to share and transmit resources and ideas, and to find modes of resistance and togetherness in response to the current situation we are living in. reboot: Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann Core Collective: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia Graphic design by Sean Yendrys http://reboot-responsiveness.com/   

Cally Spooners „Lecture on Stagnation“,