After The Butcher, showroom for contemporary art and social issues, is happy to invite you and your friends to a performance of American artist Jeremiah Day, marking the 20th anniversary of the largest protests in human history on 15 February 2003.
Both the largest gathering of people in political action in one place, Rome, and as well the largest coordination of people internationally assembled in opposition to the US-plans to invade Iraq. 15 million people in the streets of 800 cities on every continent participated.
The World Social Forum and thousands of anti-war initiatives paved the way for this action, whose meaning cannot be limited to its usefulness.
The democratic protest against the US government and its war coalition did not prevent the war, which unfolded in violation of international law. This war marks a corner stone in recent political history. It has brought neither democracy to Iraq nor peace to the Gulf region; on the contrary, it has fuelled radical Islamism, increased social contradictions in the region and triggered new refugee movements. The seeming acceptance of this aggression also bears greatly on other violations of international law that followed in the years after, those today – as in Ukraine, and those potentially to come.
The Exhibition Aggregatzustände will be open after the Performance until 10pm
*Sharing as Caring is a project that reflects on the current conditions of nuclear presence in planetary perspective. The project began in 2012 with a series of small-scale exhibitions. It explores the political, economic, psychological and personal longings associated with nuclear presence. https://miyayoshida.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HDKV_SAC-Zeitung_Screen.pdf
Jamila Barakat, Mengna Tan, Eva Ďurovec and Nikita Kadan
Opening Friday, April 1, from 7 pm
Exhibition: April, 2 – May, 15 2022
Finissage: Sunday, May 15, from 3-6pm
Open by appointment: mailto@after-the-butcher.de or +49 178 3298 106 30 April, 6pm: Book Launch „New Mind Mapping Forms“ by Eva Ďurovec
In the exhibition rooms, please keep your distance and wear mouth and nose masks.
After the Butcher, Showroom for Contemporary Art and Social Issues is happy to present its next exhibition “String Figures” with artists Jamila Barakat, Mengna Tan, Eva Ďurovec and Nikita Kadan.
In Donna Haraways “Staying With The Trouble“, one figure is omnipresent: SF. This figuration seems to be more than just an abbreviation. It seems to be a subject that opens up different opportunities and methods, thought experiments and common practices of exchange and interaction. Cross-species practices that sometimes work, sometimes fail, are active and sometimes stay still. Like string figures, they propose and enact patterns for participants to inhabit, somehow, on a vulnerable and wounded earth. Haraway describes the figure with the letters SF that can be: Science Fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far…
“I think of sf and string figures in a triple sense of figuring. First, promiscuously plucking out fibers in clotted and dense events and practices, I try to follow the threads where they lead in order to track them and find their tangles and patterns crucial for staying with the trouble in real and particular places and times.” D.H.
By playing string figures, new patterns or images are formed that reveal new entanglements and interconnections.
In the exhibition “String figures” the artists are tracing SF by working, failing and exploring themes and contexts of speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science fiction and so far… A dialogue with each other begins, connections with each other emerge. While we prepare this exhibition the Russian regime under Putin launched its war against Ukraine. For this reason we decided to pick up another thread: we invited the Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan (he has to protect himself in Kiev against Russian bombing) to join the exhibition. We are happy to be able to show two of his wonderful charcoal drawings from the series „Minsk Masks“ in String Figures*). In this respect, SF may also be read as a sign against war: stay friends or seid friedlich (be peaceful) instead of Strike Forces.
*) Nikita Kadan writes: “I found these ‘masks’ in ornaments on the ceiling of the Minska station of the Kyiv Metro since I was six years old. They were really scary, and I felt that I could always find new ones. The ornamental composition “Tree of Life”, based on Belarusian folk ornaments, was created by the artists Stepan and Vasyl Khymochka in 1982, the year I was born. Much later I found out that Belarus was historically associated with a partisan movement – these associations can give new meaning to the camouflaged faces hidden among the floral motifs.” These drawings are very topical in that metro stations such as Minska station in Kiev at the moment serve as shelters from Russian shelling and bombardment….
Learning to dwell otherwise within the ruins Vermeir & Heiremans, Julia Cremers & PARALLAX Lab
Exhibition: March 19 – April 25, 2021
In its upcoming exhibition, after the butcher is pleased to present two artist positions whose work deals with buildings, ruins and questions of their value creation. At the same time, both positions approach the broad field of speculation and reclaim agency – new modes of action – against it.
The artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans will show the short film A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box). The film explores whether “financialization” can be repurposed as a tool for creating more just conditions. The artists propose a model to financialize public art collections, museum properties and/or their symbolic capital. This model aims to create a cycle of wealth that benefits not only investors and institutions, but also the creators of these assets, the original stakeholders – the artists and art workers.
As a case study in the film, Vermeir & Heiremans discuss the financialization of the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, London with their lawyer. The gallery is located near Battersea Power Station, a former coal-fired power station from the mid-20th century, which after 40 years of vacancy is currently being converted into a luxury shopping center including luxury flats with the participation of “starchitects” such as Frank Gehry and Foster & Partners. The rising property values in its neighborhood will “pump up” the asset value of the gallery building. Introducing this into the artists’ global financial model will distribute surplus values for the wider art community.
Which part of this is ironic critique and which is longing for participation? In any case, the artists expose the social tensions and contradictions generated by speculation and profit maximization alongside the fundamental need for housing.
Julia Cremers and PARALLAX show their collective video and 3D works Ruin Figments and Reconstructed Memories. Both works are centred around an architectural site built in Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Palace Park in the year 1778, depicting the remains after the Roman siege of Carthage in 146 BC. This fake ruin, in line with landscaping fashions of the 18th century, was meant to manifest the power of the Habsburg Monarchy, claiming their imperial pursuits by identifying with the victorious Roman Empire: a speculation on cultural capital. PARALLAX’ work is a further reimagining of this folly within the present. The ruin’s virtual counterpart is extracted through photogrammetric methods, then distorted and rematerialized. The resulting 3D printed sculpture calls attention to the implicit alterations at each reproduction stage, hereby questioning the cultural impact of imperial collapse and its appropriation by new power structures. The video essay is another uncovering of this layered entity, exposing the material resources and human efforts that are required for the construction of (virtual) spaces. A third visual element are the photographs Ruins by Julia Cremers, which show military fortifications from the period of Nazi fascism and the German occupation in Bergen/Norway. Today, they serve as a backdrop for raves. The repurposing of these historically burdened sites for festive events can be seen as both problematic and liberating at the same time. It represents a form of reappropriation of charged places, overlaid with new narratives and cultural meaning, thus continuing to write history.
A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box) will be accompanied by a publication which brings together a series of essays that were presented in a symposium, organized by Vermeir & Heiremans at the Royal College of Art, London in 2018.
Film credits: HD Video, 28′ 7″, sound & colour, UK-Belgium, 2018 with Luke Mason, Heike Langsdorf, Vermeir & Heiremans Camera: Amir Borenstein Sound: Justin Bennett
Production: Jubilee vzw, with the support of: The Flemish Community; Art et Recherche asbl; Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles; Pump House Gallery; Wandsworth Council; Enable Leisure and Culture; Art Council England; Cockayne-Grants for the Arts; The London Community Foundation
Ruin Figments and Reconstructed Memories Video essay and 3D printed sculpture
Film credits: HD Video, sound & colour, Germany-Austria, 2021 Camera: Lena Kocutar, Daniel Viladrich Herrmannsdoerfer, Julia Cremers Sound and Editing: Julia Cremers Research: Lena Kocutar, Daniel Viladrich Herrmannsdoerfer, Polina Nikoulitcheva, Julia Cremers
Ruins Three digital prints, photography by Julia Cremers
Vermeir & Heiremans presented work at: 10th and 13th Istanbul Biennial (2007 & 2013), Arnolfini, Bristol (2009), Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin (2010), Viennale, Vienna (2011), 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (2012), Manifesta 9, Limburg (2012), Argos, Brussels (2012), Extra City, Antwerp (2012), Riga Art Space (2013), Rotwand Gallery, Zurich (2014), Triennale Brugge (2015), Dojima River Biennale, Osaka (2015), Georg Kargl Gallery, Vienna (2015), Transmediale, Berlin (2016), Bucharest Biennale 7 (2016), Glassyard Gallery, Budapest (2018), The Atlantic Project, Plymouth (2018), Pump House Gallery, London (2018), Carico Massimo, Livorno (2019), Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg (2020).
Julia Cremers graduated with a Bachelor of Audiovisual Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam in 2016, and a Master of Fine Art at the University of Bergen Faculty of Fine Art in 2018. Julia presented work at: Dutch Design Week Eindhoven (2014), Van Nelle Fabriek Rotterdam (2015), Gallery Bart Amsterdam (2016), Eye Film Museum (2016), Bergen Kunsthall (2018), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2019), Errant Sound (2020), Alte Feuerwache Köln (2020), Berlin School Of Sound (2021). Cremers has been a member of Errant Sound since September 2020.
PARALLAX Lab, Ruin Figments and Reconstructed Memories is a collaborative project initiated by artist Julia Cremers with students Daniel Viladrich Herrmannsdoerfer (Technomathematics, TU), Polina Nikoulitcheva (Architecture, TU) and Lena Kocutar (Lensbased Class, UdK). Produced as part of PARALLAX Lab, an initiative of the Berlin University of the Arts and the Technical University Berlin. With the support of FormLabs Berlin.
funded by:
Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Kunst und soziale Fragen
