Vorspiel transmediale Opening 2023

Laurence Favre, Resistance. Video still, single channel video, 11’, sound, colour.

Nothing Inhuman Is Alien To Me

video art screening with the works of Maja Smrekar, Laurence Favre, Rhona Mühlebach curated by Tatiana Bogacheva

[removed], doors open 6 PM, screening from 6:30 to 9 PM

silent green (atelier 2), Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin

Rhona Mühlebach, Excitement is not part of my feeling repertoire (2021), 26’30’’

Maja Smrekar, I Hunt Nature and Culture Hunts Me (2014), 9’13’’

Laurence Favre, Resistance (2017), 11’

Building on the previous project World of Now (2019-2020), ABA presents three video works with the hope of evoking the astonishment and wonder that arise when art meets the non-human. Long before climate collapse became an integral part of contemporary cultural discourse, animals were inspiring, challenging, and more recently began to create works of art. Animal turn in art and theory has challenged the position of animals and nature, who have become convenient metaphors of those who have no voice. The title gives tribute to the seminal work of Oleg Kulik, which articulated the pragmatic demand for interspecies justice and radical democracy without interspecies discrimination.

Rhona Mühlebach worked on her video Excitement is not part of my feeling repertoire during her residency at ABA in 2020-2021. Several human protagonists of the video appear troubled by their emotional dilemmas. Rhona mixes different genres – criminal TV-show, musical, scientific or historical documentary, and (crude) digital animation – in the same frame thus disorienting a viewer trying to trace a storyline. This uncertainty and confusion, articulated in the monologues of the protagonists and intentionally created by the fragmented narrative, is interrupted by a self-assured and borderline sociopathic commentary of a wild swine.

Rhona Mühlebach, Excitement is not part of my feeling repertoire, 2021. Video still, single channel video, 26’30’’, sound, colour.

The video performance of Maja Smrekar I Hunt Nature and Culture Hunts Me (2014) is a part of her research project K-9_topology which investigates the parallel evolution of the human and the canine and the potential of alternative forms of co-evolution. In this particular performance, she brings up two references of artistic reflections on art-nature dichotomy: Joseph Beuys and Oleg Kulik, quoted by the narrator, both speak of the aspiration to access the animalistic as an integral part of artistic practice. Maja Smrekar acknowledges the impossibility of this aspiration and at the same time takes a radical step to manifest her readiness to transcend the barrier between the human and the animal.

Maja Smrekar, I Hunt Nature and Culture Hunts Me, 2014. Video still, single channel video, 9’13’’, sound, colour.

Resistance (2017) by Laurence Favre is a tribute to nature as a force which withstands the destructive influence of the human embodied in a remote landscape. For all its imposing monumentality and dignified indifference, the glacier in the video is subjected to the same process of inevitable decay. The video evokes awe which one experiences when confronted with nature, but also reminds us of the inescapable human, all too human, existential fear.

With support of the Swiss Embassy in Berlin and Vorspiel / transmediale [removed]