KOW Berlin
With Ramon Haze, Mario Pfeifer, Tina Schulz, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Tobias Zielony, Peggy Buth, Famed, Markus Dressen, Andreas Grahl, Henriette Grahnert, Eiko Grimmberg/ Arthur Zalewski, Mark Hamilton, Ramon Haze, Oliver Kossack, Claudia Annette Maier, Ulrich Polster, Julius Popp, schau-vogel-schau (Marcel BĂŒhler, Alexander Koch), Julia Schmidt, Tilo Schulz, spector cut+paste, Christoph Weber, curated by Alexander Koch and Nikolaus Oberhuber
20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we sum up the development of conceptual and socially oriented art in Leipzig since the end of the nineties. Three consecutive exhibitions bring together 28 artists, graphic designers and collectives. We call for a nuanced discussion on the societal change and its artistic resonance in the second decade after Germanyâs reunification. For the first time, this chapter of most recent German art is explored in an exhibition series that regroups essential positions and artworks.
The generation we address manages to overcome the dichotomy of political blocs, since it has been experiencing ignorance, ideological stubbornness, and genuine solidarity in all camps. Moreover, amidst the drastic social and cultural conversions following the peaceful revolution in Leipzigâs streets, these artists have been sharing the disorientation, the remaining hope and the growing skepticism of many. In 1997, documenta X looked back on the politicization of art since the sixties. Simultaneously, Leipzig-based artists were establishing links to international (Western) artistic developments of the postwar period that had been missing till then. By doing so, they questioned whether Abstraction, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Institutional Critique could contribute to a modified societal situation. The result is a remarkable variety of artistic vocabularies with a critical stance. Its diversity rejects any notion of a local school or style, even though numerous collaborations in debate and production confirm a great sense of solidarity within this scene over the years.
Three exhibition chapters take the perspective of Richard Rortyâs political philosophy in order to raise key issues of the advanced reunification process that have been occurring in contemporary art from Leipzig. As a pragmatist, Rorty saw no point in separating reality from representation; the world âas it really isâ from its âmere descriptionâ. Rather, he distinguished those descriptions of reality that would inspire and encourage a liberal democracy from others that would not. This is what his âAntirepresentationalismâ stands for. It radically politicizes philosophy giving the quest for solidarity priority over the quest for cognition. Since Rorty did not apply this call for solidarity to the visual arts, our exhibition inquires the possible outcome of such an application.
Part 1: Politics of Redescription
POLITICS OF REDESCRIPTION, the first chapter of our exhibition trilogy, assembles works and projects that understand history as a matter of viewpoints and show that viewpoints change. The fact that the past looks different depending on where we stand makes it a political issue. Social cohesion has been redescribed differently ever since the East-West confrontation came to an end in 1989. The debates about a âcorrectâ view of the past, for example the daily life in the GDR or Socialismâs fate, often strive for a common viewpoint. But there is no such viewpoint from which the past looks similar to all.
If we were to follow Rorty, we should not see competing interpretations of history as describing the past more or less accurately, but giving expression to the hopes of individuals, communities, nations, that the final words on where they come from and what they may become have not yet been spoken. It is the hope that there is still some latitude for social advancement. The exhibition shows concepts of redescribing historical events and their display as a recurring theme and method in the art from Leipzig in the second decade after the fall of the Berlin wall. The retrospective eye in the exhibited works does not search for a final ground but for other angles of view. It sees that history is being narrated and it tries out variations. It observes the deconstruction of old ideologies and utopias, and their reappearance in new formats. In projecting todayâs questions on yesterdayâs answers it gains clarity from the dissimilarity.
Part 2: Trouble with Realism
The first chapter of our exhibition trilogy stated that our images of the past will never be finished, since we keep on redescribing it from changing perspectives. Therefore, history is flexible. The second exhibition TROUBLE WITH REALISM demonstrates the same degree of flexibility with regards to reality.
âRealismâ is synonymous with the endeavor to grasp something of the world as it really is. But, what is it really? During the Cold War, struggling for the right view of the world, the ends of the notion were pulled, until little of the concept remained. While realism served the west either as aggressor of abstraction or to approve its own objectivity, it served socialist governments to impose a âtruthfulâ vision for society. Even though these perceptions linger on, the political as well as the epistemological value of aesthetic realism are questionable today. Antirepresentationalists like Richard Rorty see nothing deep down on the grounds of reality, except what we have put there ourselves. For them no word, no book, no image contains more truth and comes closer to the real than any other. They are not interested whether something merely looks like something, or looks like reality really is. They are rather interested in getting to accept plural realities at a time and to eventually change one or another.Â
We show artistic positions and projects which search and establish relations to the real without going with realism. Being close to reality means in their view neither faithfulness to truth nor depiction, but rather habits of perception and understanding. Habitual convictions that guide our view of the world. Convictions that give us a sense of orientation as we follow them and that make us stumble once we mistrust them. It is exactly the mistrust in well trained convictions on how and under what aim the social world is being organized and pictured that has occupied much socially oriented art in Leipzig in the second decade after the iron curtain fell. This art is full of conceptual cuts and disruptions. Those do not result from wrong fittings between reality and its representations, but from a decomposed understanding of shared realities.
The approximately 50 works we show are rich in influences. For their authors, the tradition of realism from the days of the GDR was not a model to follow. Represented by the âLeipziger Schuleâ and its social criticism from the Seventies, after the wall had fallen this local style resembled more an imaginary of inner sentiments than an art with a societal orientation.
Part 3: Issues of Empathy
ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM takes up the proposal of the American philosopher Richard Rorty, which states that we should exchange our pursuit of truth and objectivity for an ability to empathise and devote ourselves to social advancement. The first two chapters of our exhibition trilogy stated that neither history nor reality are found âout thereâ, independent from our search for them.
Both are instead a result of our own perspective. And both look different from different angles. ISSUES OF EMPATHY draws the same conclusions from this concept as did Richard Rorty: if any image of the world in which we live is equally true, instead of worrying about which of our representations fit better with reality we should instead worry about how to make reality a more solidaric place.
Empathy is our capacity to see things from another personâs point of view, to share their perspective and feelings. Rorty saw this capacity as a precondition to communal solidarity. According to him, training our sensibility, bringing us up against unfairness and suffering, inspiring social hope is the only valuable project contemporary philosophy could commit to. We might take the same postion regarding contemporary art. ISSUES OF EMPATHY seeks the capacity to empathise in a specific historical situation: Leipzig in the second decade after the peaceful revolution. This is a situation characterised by a decline of social hope during the reunification process and consequent loss of perspective in both public and private life.
The art we show records the increasing desolidarisation in eastern Germany and elsewhere in the country. It rarely addresses the topic directly, its subjects often seem remote. Belgian Congo, urban Athens, the stylised RAF, a Berlin gay cinema, the internetâs production of desire. However, our hypothesis is that this generation of artists is able concisely to document the mental and emotional ruptures experienced by many in the preceding decade. After state socialism had betrayed the solidarity it was borrowed from, and with late capitalism not even recognising how much it had abandoned the space of society (and hence its crisis), it remained uncertain to which perspective socially-oriented art could commit.
Maybe a perspective of proximity without superstructure. A position of shared uncertainty and scepticism as well as shared longing. According to Rorty, no political regime and no philosophical ethics can ever decree solidarity. Feeling close to others, having a sense of community, sharing points of view that are not even oneâs own, this is something either you feel or you donât. Literature, music, art, allow us to develop such feelings under model conditions, under the protection of aesthetic experience. Taking the step from aesthetics to solidarity would mean to politicise such experience, giving oneâs own capacity to empathise a societal dimension.
Alexander Koch
September 2009/Januar 2010