12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Messy Glossary

Term

Fragment

Texts

Proposed by Christopher Wierling

What if wor(l)ds were breaking in different places than the rules for hyphenation or the habitual ear dictate: g-ener-ati-o-ns, fr-ien-dshi-ps, s-to-ri-es, soli-d-a-rit-y. Di-splac-ed, dise-nfr-anchi-sed. Which units must be ruptured, and which need to be repaired? Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody.
The Cartesian mind-body dichotomy is reverberating from a past that is built on its intimate knowledge of the violent divisibility of bodies. But notions of the whole are also conflicted, bound up with exclusions and fascist ideals of purity. Throughout violent histories and continuous modes of oppression, inventive and resistant grasps of the split of body and mind have offered ways and techniques to withdraw oneself from coerced traumatic enclosures. Some photographs, drawings, notes, memories, dreams, and particles have made it out of these spaces as witnesses by way of smuggling or hiding. Scattered, in shreds. Through the shattered glass of the museum display, wayward fibers from distorted colonial figurines are escaping the ethnological diorama. These splinters permeate skins, walls, and borders and travel across oceans. The movements they describe are passed on in clandestine messages. Refuges are being organized; people are gathering. Joining ongoing struggles: against all odds, togetherness is materializing.

Proposed by Muna AnNisa Aikins

Complete fragments.

Broken parts whole.

Elements.

Questions. Parts. Seeing. Understanding.

Feeling.

Carrying.

Segments.

Memories.

Whole grief,

fragmentary joy

experience

live.

Moments.

Fragments. Identifying.

Losing.

Creating.

Fragments.

Falling in love with me

Deepening.

Being whole.

Being fragmented.

Connecting, coming together, being more.

Connected in the in-between.

Fragments from wounds

recovering.

Unfinished beautiful answers,

in us from many places,

Elements.

Broken parts whole.

Complete fragments.