“Apartheid was legal. The Holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. Colonialism was legal. Legality is a question of power, not justice.”
Jose Antonio Vargas
(from Emila Roig, Why We Matter, Aufbau-Verlag 2021)
after the butcher, exhibition space for contemporary art and social issues cordially invites you to a discussion event with
Kerstin Stakemeier, Anike Joyce Sadiq, Thomas Locher and Helmut Draxler.
The discussion will take place in the context of our current exhibition by Anike Joyce Sadiq and Thomas Locher.
The works of both artists deal with elementary questions of law – Anike Joyce Sadiq in the context of German colonialism, Thomas Locher in the context of war and the question of whether soldiers may be labelled as potential murderers.
Both works are highly topical in politically polarised times. They develop a concrete concept of law as an elementary pillar of the power of the state. And they make it clear that this pillar is not static, but in constant motion and development: what is right and wrong is a question of the balance of power between us, the forces of society and the forces of the state.
We are in paradise. In a gay paradise. No more trans bodies comparing themselves to countries in theory. Theory no longer exists, nor does what was called human once.
The gay paradise no longer needs Eve. The apple is an apple again, you can eat it or leave it. Eve is now a tree, an android tree, with cables in her spinal cord that have long since given up the ghost. Nothing flows here anymore, her back is no longer a back, but an open landscape with a blue background.
Everything feminine there has de-formed into signal-dead details. Her spinal cord is now floating space.
We are in outer space. A universe without sexual events. A water bong flies by, a body of smoke, an object of intoxication. Without an interest of consumption.
We would float in this space if we would still exist. We could reach for the glass body and inhale. And get twisted afterwards.
There are objects that are like short stories, without a beginning or an end. They seem dystopian and therefore always out of place. Displacement is an elementary question of autonomy, as it seems so displaced within the networks of collectivization. Bound to human cords.
Do apples know about their neighbours on the tree, do they feel how they develop in form and colour, how they surrender to the given circumstances? Do they envy the pears, are they autonomous? Do they have a goal? Do they notice when you walk past them, do they like it when you see them, pick them up, eat them, compost them, photograph them?
Apples fly through space. They are not altered in any way. They are autonomous beings that do not speak, but are. They fly, just as they were hanging on the tree, same constellation just tree-less. The water bong cannot fly through them. The apple formation forms an autonomous shield. They move towards zero, while the jar with the cables moves towards one.
Spatial performance. What we are about to see has never been shown or seen before. It is unique and limited to a short time only. If you go there, you will experience the universe. You can fly, but only in your imagination. You will move through a space that does not exist,
that passes by and perhaps touches something. You will hear something, you will see rotations and a lot of installed stillness where something has moved through once.
It’s a museum in a gay universe. In which we still find flying apples and comments on the wall. People do things, people whose names have three letters. They don’t share these letters. Everyone has a different one. There is an A, an E, a J, a U, an N and a T like expensive, thoughtful, awkward, jubilant, extreme and different. All letters have experienced some time and have made decisions and yet they are sometimes not fully aware of themselves. They walk a lot and they are happy to be. They like to watch while walking.
They collect while watching while walking. They like to be with themselves. They are autonomous. So is the space they will give to us.
Form and life. In response to autonomy in the 24th millennium.
Exhibition open: Saturday Dec 2 and Sunday Dec 3 from 3-8pm
Along the Archive, Against the Grain
Can an archive be multiple, messy or intangible? In this exhibition, it’s in the water, the tree branch, the spatial matter. Archiving happens in sound, or silence, inside and outside our bodies. It speaks of violence, of surveillance or of resilience. And rather than claiming objective truths, the show asks what an embodied, or sensitive, approach to the practice of archiving might look like.
Each of the works activates the archive in a different way. Like chemicals, archives take on meaning in communication; at least they require excavating, being brought to light. In this sense, along the Archive, against the Grain explores individual relationships to the archive as a site of study, memory and resistance.
The exhibition arises from a collective inquiry carried out during the seminar “FILMS, ARCHIVES + IMAGINATIONS. Filmic Research in Collaboration” by Anna Lauenstein and Leon Vatter at Studium Generale, University of the Arts Berlin.
along the Archive, against the Grain presents works by Fadi Aljabour, Sana Al Kurdi, Auge, Vincent Carter, Elsa Estrella, Zach Hart, Agata Hörttrich, Emma Hutton, Freja Lassen, Lilly Merck, Raphaëlle Red and Paloma Schnitzer.
Tutors of the seminar: Lena Kocutar + Teresa Hoffmann
The seminar was supported by “Freiraum 2022/23 – Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre”
In their duo exhibition Charlotte Bonjour and Nadja Abt present works from the last 2 years. Both artists start from stories, which are used as material for collages: In Charlotte Bonjour’s works, we follow anxiety-ridden cell phones into a surreal universe. During her time in Portugal, Nadja Abt created a sea woman who fights against the patriarchal systems surrounding her.
Opening: Friday August 18, from 7pm Exhibition: August 19 – September 17 visit by appointment: mailto@after-the-butcher.de or +49 178 3298 106
This exhibition brings together two artistic voices in an attempt to neither emphasise nor deny clearly existing differences in form and content. Romain Löser and Wendelien van Oldenborgh belong to different generations, and when it comes to measuring possible harmonies or dissonances between their artistic practices, it is easy to see that both work mostly in different media, each with their own themes, techniques and conceptions of the public. Nevertheless, their joint appearance at after the butcher does not merely reveal vague professional sympathies or interests. Anyone who takes a serious look at the works by both artists shown here in spatial interlocking, can see a comparability in the movements with which they treat the sharp complexities in the contradictions they each convey.
The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Clemens Krümmel:
During the opening on 18 August, Lina Campanella performed Clemens Krümmel’s text, producing hiphop and gabber beats that refer to van Oldenborgh’s film and the contrasts and polyphony of both artists’ works.
after the butcher is a project space by artists for artists. Those invited to do a show will be asked to develop a work for this space. The showroom will be an opportunity and platform to present work of not so well-known artists. We are very much looking forward to a good collaboration with the artists and other cultural laborers in Berlin. [MORE]
Spittastr. 25, 10317 Berlin open by appointment or at events
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
