Exhibition

Nothing to Declare? World Maps of Art since '89

2013-02-01 - 2013-03-24

Akademie der Künste
Pariser Platz 4
10557 Berlin.

The geopolitical change that took place in 1989 ushered in an era of worldwide biennales, whose geography bid farewell to Western Art, with its old contradiction between the centre and the periphery. The exhibition project Nothing to Declare? now documents these global developments. The heart of this exhibition is a panorama room as a media installation, which illustrates the passage of time and the geographical expansion of the global practice of art using a wide range of data. In so doing, a development becomes recognizable, which is no longer to be interpreted only as pure art history, but rather requiring multiple forms of re-narration – geopolitical, social, economic and cultural. The creation of a new critical practice in the arts also corresponds to these structural changes. Western Modernism’s universal claim to validity has become untenable. This is illustrated in an exemplary manner by the contributions of contemporary art selected. The research project Global Art and the Museum (GAM) at the ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Centre for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe has dedicated itself to this theme since 2006. An initial interim review was presented in the exhibition The Global Contemporary at the ZKM. This project is now continued in cooperation with the Academy. It places Berlin, in particular, as an art centre within the context of a development that begins in 1989.

A project developed by ZKM | Karlsruhe and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Exhibition curators: Andrea Buddensieg, Peter Weibel, Johannes Odenthal and Hans Belting (advisor) / Curatorial assistance: Sara Giannini / Project coordination Akademie der Künste, Berlin: Simone Demmel / Graphic design “Room of Histories” in ZKM | Karlsruhe: Boris Dworschak, Matthias Gommel / Technical team panorama screen: Bernd Lintermann, Jan Gerigk, Derek Hauffen / Registrar ZKM: Marianne Meister / Technical support ZKM: Christof Hierholzer

Participating Artists:
AES + F, Halil Altındere, Rasheed Araeen,Manthia Diawara, Doug Fishbone, Thierry Geoffroy/Colonel, Pieter Hugo, Christian Jankowski, Ben Lewis, Nástio Mosquito, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Ho-Yeol Ryu, Stewart Smith, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Bernd Lintermann Stewart Smith, Zhou Tiehai, Miao Xiaochun.

The exhibition Nothing to declare? is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (HKF) Berlin (Capital City Culture Fund Berlin).

Program

La Beauté du Diable/ The Devil’s Beauty

Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Hanseatenweg)
February 1 2013, 7 pm

Solo dance piece by and with Koffi Kôkô “The human body is the basis of our material existence; it is the storage of our memories and the spiritual medium of change. But the body also creates fear: there is the perishable body, death. And the body is unfortunately associated with death. People are scared of death.” La Beauté du Diable is the unusual attempt to draw on the existing resources of spiritual knowledge on the contemporary art stage. It is an avowal of the freedom of artistic languages and forms of expression beyond dogmatic assertions of the modern and the traditional. In the dialogue with the other side of existence, the body becomes the medium of insight and transformation. The choreographer and dancer Koffi Kôkô therefore consistently pursues his own path, on which he puts to the test the possibilities of artistic pro – duction for a spiritual rethinking in society.
Music: Achille Acakpo, Janos Crecelius and Moussa Coulibaly.

Rethinking Cosmopolitanism. Africa in Europe | Europe in Africa

Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Pariser Platz)
February 2/3, 2013, 10 am – 7 pm
Free Admission

The two-day conference will revisit the intersection of modernity and decolonization. Decolonization has led to the rise of a new international order, which in turn continues to challenge and expose the insufficiency of classic concepts and definitions of modernity, culture, art and politics. Focusing on the reconfiguration of these concepts within the notion of cosmopolitanism, the conference will consider the consequences of the historical, cultural, and artistic entanglement of Africa and Europe.

The conference will revisit mid-Twentieth century debates through this prism of cosmopolitanism, invoking its potential as a notion that implies the possibilities of mutual co-existence and living with difference. Cosmopolitanism is conceived here to indicate the need for members of any community to imagine entities other than their own locales or national boundaries that will be more inclusive on a global scale. Hence, cosmopolitanism is perceived as a metaphor for mobility, migrancy, and co-existence with difference, in opposition to parochialism, xenophobia, fixity, and limited notions of sovereignty. The focus will be on the anti-hegemonic and anti-homogenizing potential of cosmopolitanism, in opposition to power as it has been associated with western imperial tendencies, transnational capital, and its corollary neoliberal economic policies. Cosmopolitanism is also perceived as a pursuit of peace through developing a strong sense of ethics and moral obligation towards other human beings everywhere.

The symposium, coordinated by Salah M. Hassan, is organized by the Goethe-Institut (Lisbon) and the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) in cooperation with the Maumaus School of Visual Arts (Lisbon) and the Institute for Comparative Modernities (Cornell University, Ithaca).