THE NEW SUBJECT
14 September 2024 – 26 January 2025 / KINDL Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst
Exhibition Booklet & Catalogue Editorial
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The catalogue The New Subject expands on the exhibition of the same title at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, an interdisciplinary project that addresses the political discourse surrounding the body. With contributions by international scholars as well as numerous installation views and images of the four iterations of the project. It includes an introduction by curator Kathrin Becker, the curatorial collective TOK / Anna Bitkina & Maria Veits, and an essay by Micha Frazer-Carroll.
Annika Turkowski is currently editing the exhibition booklets and the comprehensive catalogue. It will be published in early 2025.
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The New Subject. Mutating Rights and Conditions of Living Bodies
is a multi-year interdisciplinary research and exhibition project by the curatorial collective TOK / Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits. It investigates the human body in the context of global biopolitics and technological developments, reflecting on the legal, physical, and cognitive impacts of state control mechanisms. The exhibition at the KINDL – the project’s fourth presentation – brings together 15 artists and collectives tackling this topic through various artistic media. The project draws on the ideas of Achille Mbembe, who argues that today’s control societies rely on “the manufacture of a new subject that is at once a physiological assemblage, a synthetic and electronic assemblage, and a neuro-biological assemblage.”
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Clara Sika Helbo, Uncovering an Iceberg, 2023, Foto: Clara Sika Helbo, 2022
JULIUS VON BISMARCK WHEN PLATITUDES BECOME FORM
26 May – 14 August 2023 / Berlinische Galerie. Museum für moderne Kunst
Exhibition Catalogue Editorial
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The catalogue When Platitudes Become Form expands on Bismarck’s exhibition of the same title at Berlinische Galerie, the first show for which he chose a biographical approach, drawing on his own family’s history, with contributions by international scholars as well as numerous installation views and images of his work. It includes an introduction by Thomas Köhler and Anne Bitterwolf, essays by the literary scholar and philosopher Timothy Morton, the landscape architect Violeta Burckhardt, the art historian Paul Farber, and a conversation between curator and HKW director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and the artist.
Annika Turkowski has edited the catalogue. She has written and edited the conversation between Ndikung and Bismarck for the catalogue.
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The practice of Julius von Bismarck (b. Breisach am Rhein, 1983; lives and works in Berlin) probes what is commonly labeled as nature. He insistently deconstructs his chosen objects to inquire into how we as a society shape and value nature and who controls the interpretations involved in this process. Intertwining visual art with concerns in the natural and human sciences, his work takes on richly diverse forms: installations, happenings, sculptures, or land art pieces. Bismarck brings a sense of humor and critical acumen to bear on our frequently oversimplified views of nature and explores how these can influence past and present discourse about politics. Beholding his magical creations—the artist filmed fires, chased hurricanes, painted on the high seas—one is deeply conflicted; they are terrifying and beautiful at once.
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Julius von Bismarck, When Platitudes Become Form, Berlinische Galerie, ©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, Foto: Roman März
THE SKY LOOKS AMAZING FROM HERE
12 June – 17 July 2022 / Kunsthaus L6, Freiburg
Exhibition with CUCO – curatorial concepts berlin for the
5th Biennale de la Photographie de Mulhouse (FR)
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Under the festival theme “Celestial Bodies”, the exhibition curated by CUCO berlin presented works by contemporary photographers Sharon Harper (US), the artist duo Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs (CH), and Felix Schöppner (DE). The photographic presentation was expanded by the installation works of multimedia artist Angela Bulloch (CAN/UK). The selected artists shared an interest in the phenomena of the heavens: from scientific-looking observations of celestial bodies, such as the large-scale lunar studies by Sharon Harper or the pseudo experimental arrangements by Felix Schöppner, to the dystopian-tinged visions of the future in the photographic series by Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, to the multimedia constellations of stars by Angela Bulloch.
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CUCO berlin was invited to conceive and curate the exhibition at Kunsthaus L6. The exhibition was part of the 5th edition of the Biennale de la Photographie de Mulhouse. Every two years, the photo festival attracts an international audience of photography enthusiasts to the region. In addition to the Kunsthaus L6, the Centre Culturel Français in Freiburg, the Le musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse, the Mulhouse Art Contemporain, show exhibitions of contemporary photography.
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CUCO berlin, The Sky Looks Amazing From Here (Detail: Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs), Kunsthaus L6, ©Danilo Sierra
LONG DISTANCE CALL
3 July – 17 July 2022 / Kunstpalais, Erlangen
Exhibition with Amelie Deiss & Operndorf Afrika
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In the context of the exhibition project Long Distance Call - the Opera Village Africa at the Kunstpalais, the Opera Village presented four artists, who who first met at the artist-in-residence program in Burkina Faso in 2020. The project was conceived and curated by Annika Turkowski together with the director of the Kunstpalais Amelie Deiss and included a two-week exhibition and a diverse program of events. Diana Ejaita (NG/IT), Rahima Gambo (NG), Taiwo Jacob Ojudun (NG) and Anja Saleh (DE) brought the core idea of the Opera Village Africa - intercultural exchange - with the intensity of a small festival to Erlangen and activated the public space through performances, discussions, workshops, film screenings and musical presentations. Questions of intercontinental solidarity, collective cultural memory and postcolonialism (also from an African perspective) were discussed together with the Erlangen audience.
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Since 2015, the Artist-in-Residence program has been established at the Opera Village in Burkina Faso, which once a year invites African and non-African artists from various disciplines and media to use the location as a living and working space. Since 2020 the program is curated by the Nigerian photographer and curator Akinbode Akinbiyi. The program is accompanied by exhibitions and events in Europe in the following year, conceived and organized by Annika Turkowski in close collaboration with the artists.
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Long Distance Call. The Opera Village in Erlangen (Detail: Taiwo Jacob Ojudun), Kunstpalais Erlangen ©the artist
ABSURDE ROUTINEN ROUTINISED ABSURDITY
30 September 2018 – 3 February 2019 / KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art
Exhibition with CUCO – curatorial concepts berlin
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Routines give us security. They are based on our experiences, preventing us from learning new things and saving ourselves from the unforeseen. However, when these practices become rigid, unreflected habits, they interfere with everyday life and suppress purposeful behavior. We wish to break out of the day-to-day patterns and yearn for a stroke of freedom that brings variety to our cyclical regiments of work, consumption, leisure, personal care, and sleep.
The thematic group exhibition presented photographs of ten international contemporary photographers, who address our daily routines and breaking free from them. The highly narrative photographs, which are often self-portraits, not only show the absurdity inherent in repetitive habits, but also raise questions about the state of a performance-oriented society in which efficient action is paramount. They also illuminate the flip sides of the permanent functioning of each individual – fatigue, overstrain and collapse. In most of the works, the faces of the protagonists remain hidden. As a result, the viewer‘s attention shifts to the rest of the body, which becomes the medium of mental states.
With works by Louis De Belle, Juno Calypso, Brooke DiDonato, Christoph Grill, Aleksey Kondratyev, Elisa Larvego, Sandra Lazzarini, Pierrick Sorin, Sebastian Stumpf, and Ben Zank.
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The exhibition was part of Berlin Art Week 2018. It was conceived and co-curated by Annika Turkowski as part of CUCO berlin and presented at KINDL - Center for Contemporary Art.
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CUCO berlin, Absurde Routinen (Detail: Juno Calypso), KINDL Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst ©Jens Ziehe