Exhibition

Still Present!

On the occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, titled Still Present!, artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. In addition to their works, the exhibition features historical documents, including political and activist publications from the Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona (AdA). The contributions reveal connections between colonialism, fascism, and imperialism, and propose decolonial strategies for the future, oriented around a set of questions: How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of historical narratives? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, This undreamt of sail is watered by the white wind of the abyss, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Jens Franke / Art and Architecture Documentation

Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige, Self-Portrait as Restitution – From a Feminist Point of View, 2020, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, The Natural History of Rape, 2017/22, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Imani Jacqueline Brown, What remains at the ends of the earth?, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Oh Shining Star Testify, 2019/22, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Laura Fiorio

Nil Yalter, Postering Workshop as part of Nil Yalter’s artwork Exile Is a Hard Job, 1983/2022, with Nagham Hammoush and Rüzgâr Buşki, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Postering Workshop as part of Nil Yalter’s artwork Exile Is a Hard Job, 1983/2022, with Nagham Hammoush and Rüzgâr Buşki, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Zach Blas, Profundior (Lachryphagic Transmutation Deus-Motus-Data Network), 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Laura Fiorio

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Laura Fiorio

Dubréus Lhérisson, Untitled, ca. 2015, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Taloi Havini, Beroana (Shell money) IV, 2016, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Mathieu Pernot, photographs from the series Les Gorgans [The Gorgans], 1995-2015, © Mathieu Pernot / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

From left to right: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Schiefblatt und Maske [Begonia and Mask], 1950, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Grüne Frau [Green Woman], 1956, © Karl Schmidt-Rottluff / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022, crucifixes, various collections, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Front: DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, visualization of Ente di Decolonizzazione (Entity of Decolonization) – Borgo ~~Rizza~~, 2022, back: Tammy Nguyen, series of paintings, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Jewish Anarchist Women against Hegemony, performance, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Jewish Anarchist Women against Hegemony, performance, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Documents from the Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona (AdA), installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Jeneen Frei Njootli, Thunderstruck, 2013/22, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Elske Rosenfeld, Speaking (Statements for the Future), 2019/22, from the series An Archive of Gestures, 2012–22, © Elske Rosenfeld / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Myriam El Haïk, performance as part of the artwork Please Patterns, 2022, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Myriam El Haïk, performance as part of the artwork Please Patterns, 2022, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Mai Nguyễn-Long, from the series Vomit Girl (Berlin Cluster), 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

The School of Mutants, All Fragments of the Word Will Come Back Here to Mend Each Other, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Uriel Orlow, performance as part of the artwork Reading Wood (Backwards), 2022, with the Portuguese performer Fabíola, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Silke Briel

Susan Schuppli, Weaponizing Water Against Water Protectors, from the series Cold Cases, 2021–22, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Omer Fast, A Place Which Is Ripe, 2020, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Stasi Headquarters. Campus for Democracy, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Laura Fiorio

Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite, 2012–14, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Stasi Headquarters. Campus for Democracy, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: Laura Fiorio

Prabhakar Kamble, from the series Utarand [Stacked vessels], 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Đào Châu Hải, Ballad of the East Sea, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Đào Châu Hải, Ballad of the East Sea, 2022, installation view, 12th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, 11.6.–18.9.2022, photo: dotgain.info

Excerpt from Kader Attia’s curatorial statement:

“As diverse and varied as the worlds that comprise our current human reality are, they subsist amid the waste and cacophony that traverse global capitalism’s frantic and destructive race toward production. Since the onset of modernity, our planet has endured successive and ruinous changes that have accelerated alarmingly from the start of the third millennium. The place to which we have arrived today is not by chance: it is the result of historical formations constructed over centuries. In their egoism, modern Western societies have taken their own liberal character for granted, falsely assuming that the balance between free trade and universal suffrage guarantees a self-regulating system of universal democratic values. The dystopian society we have inherited from this utopian promise produces chaos but denies responsibility for it. In fact, the present world is the way it is because it carries all of the wounds accumulated throughout the history of Western modernity. Unrepaired, they continue to haunt our societies.

We must beware of the consequences of the capitalist logic of modernity/coloniality and its capacity to depoliticize the subject. The social worlds we inhabit today are articulated through cross-linked networked environments that interact in ways that are not immediately visible. More than ever before, algorithmic governance has taken over our present moment; it has become a field of unprecedented economic struggle over behavioral data extraction, which is such a powerful economic model that we feel powerless to free our present from its clutches. We project ourselves daily onto the future or past, while believing that we constantly act in the present. How do we reclaim our present? By reclaiming our attention. Art offers a present that is protracted and, above all, free. Inherent to emotion, consciousness is movement in the present: as emotional, interpretive beings, we are totally unpredictable in the present, and this allows us to escape the technologies of capitalist behavioral manipulation and imperialist governance that colludes with it. So more than ever, we must remain present!”

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Exhibition

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