Julia Staszak, Noch 10 Minuten, 2007
Awst & Walther / Lucy Beech & Edward Thomasson / Julia Prezewowsky / Alexandra Schumacher / Julia Staszak / Kym Ward
21st of March - 5th of April, 2009
The desire to know the future is an ancient dream of mankind, and has produced numerous professions, mechanisms and genres. From fortune tellers to the Oracle of Delphi, from weather forecasts to economic speculation, the quest to know what the future holds is as compelling as it is lucrative.
Schicksal oder Vaseline? (Destiny or Vaseline?) brought together a group of artists, exhibiting works that play with different notions of the future, but that were humorously grounded by the reality of matter, mortality or a greasy mundanity.
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Julia Staszak’s Noch 10 Minuten (10 minutes to go), (image above) is an arch shaped tribute to the perceived decline of society, using different materials, objects and pictures. The eye moves from the bottom left column (10 minutes to go) swinging upwards to the apex, a singing siren (6 minutes to go) in order to flow downwards into the fountain (1 minute to go). Hamster-like clay figures announce each stage of the countdown.
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The installation Hand Job by Manon Awst & Benjamin Walther is composed of two drawings, a pair of high-fashion heels and golden bones, playing with the image of beauty against a backdrop of corrupt, post-Utopian landscape. Compelled and disturbed by the incoherence that disrupts the seemingly ordered and monitored space of our daily lives, the artists present a contemporary world satiated with commerce, fetish and neurosis.
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Conceived as part instructional demonstration, part expressive dance, Self Protection is Not Magical, a film by Lucy Beech & Edward Thomasson, focuses on an innate desire to prepare for the worst. A group of young women perform a series of choreographed activities based on methods of self-defence. The presentation shifts between dance, aggression, instruction and celebration, and is intended to disallow its audience to relax into any single mode of experience. By learning, repeating and demonstrating these actions, the women are performing their hypothetical futures.
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Anstrengung ist die Gemüsebeilage zum Glück (Effort is the side dish to luck) by Julia Prezewowsky, is half peepshow, half wheel of fortune. The sculpture rewards the viewers effort with soothing, generic platitudes.
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The centre of Alexandra Schumacher’s installation The day the women left the Earth, 2009, is a collection of portraits of female astronauts, smiling happily into the camera. The title suggest that they are about to leave planet Earth. This idea of leaving in order to find a new place to live somewhere else in space has been dealt with in a number of SF-movies since the 50ies. It contains the notion of failure, the world lies in ruins, people want to flee from it. But in a crisis, there is always also hope. It is the idea of a fresh start that is appealing, leaving the ruins behind. Here, it is apparently only the women leaving which creates a built-in tragedy: The women won’t be able to start a new population, as they apparently have no men with them. Or will they? And are there any women left on earth to accompany the left behind men? Anyway, judging from the women’s faces, there are no regrets.
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Destiny/Density by Kym Ward was a performance which took place between 7pm and 9pm on the 21st of March, on the road outside the gallery. Text written on the gallery’s window led the eye through the frame to the street beyond. Taking fate into her own hands, a situation which could be perceived as destiny was turned into planned performance as the artist was run over at repeated intervals by a maroon coloured car. The dull thud of matter that accompanied the irrevocable act was slapstick but also deadly serious.
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