How to move and respond

20.5.2023 – 21.5.2023
From 1 pm
Free admission

An exhibition as text, in texts. A weekend-long programme to stage what language in and about art holds, is able to hold, and how. Conceived as a group show – one that throws discourse in the air like confetti (Estelle Hoy) – it describes an encounter, an attempt to fathom discursive relations.

How to Move and Respond is an invitation to artists and writers to read/present their texts in the park of Haus am Waldsee. And for the exhibition two levels unfold: on the one hand, the texts or text-based works are read/presented in the form of readings, performances, audio files, or screenings, and on the other hand what is written about, or the artists who are described, or the artworks that are discussed (but are not visible).

In Welcome to Girard, in May N°21 Jay Chung writes with reference to Elif Batuman about the importance of “discursive relations in which works respond to and elaborate on their contemporaries” and “If there is no means by which someone else’s work can further one’s own, art becomes a zero-sum game in which everyone else is an obstacle to realizing one’s own project or gaining the attention of audiences”. How to Move and Respond wants to underline that we move further via others, and their words, that we understand everything only through them. Also our own position and ways of working and its effect. Art that touches something, touches us, always evolves from the dialogue with the ideas of others. 

The oldest contribution I selected is from 2000, the youngest from 2023 and the invited artists are from different generations. From twenty participants I chose specific texts or artworks for this exhibition and invited seven artists to readings of open text contributions. So this is also literally an exhibition of encounters. And Speech is a symptom of affection… (Emily Dickinson).

The contributions include (this division is rough and there are overlaps) texts about the conditions or the status quo in contemporary art or society by Ariane Müller, Josephine Pryde, and Robot (Takuji Kogo/John Miller), texts about exhibitions and artworks or practices of artists by Sabeth Buchmann (Judith Hopf), Jutta Koether (Jean Fautrier) with Leon Keller and Philipp Joy Reinhardt (Jutta  Koether), Tonio Kröner (Michaela Eichwald), Quinn Latimer (Patricia L. Boyd), Hans-Christian Lotz (Peter Wächtler), Kristian Vistrup Madsen (Nick Mauss and Francis Megan Sullivan), Inka Meißner (Anne Speier), Eleanor Ivory Weber (Sara Deraedt), and Annette Weisser (Alina Szapocznikow), text based works or texts about one’s own practice by Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Heike Geißler, Lisa Holzer, Estelle Hoy, David Jourdan, Nina Könnemann, Niklas Lichti, Vera Palme, Phung-Tien Phan, Josef Strau, Iris Touliatou, Camilla Wills, and Anna Susanna Woof, and performances by Karl Holmqvist, and Stefan Müller. The videos and audio files will just like the readings only be visible/audible once. 

All contributions stand out due to their sensitivity, humour and, albeit occasionally ambivalent, their love for contemporary art. They are restless. And I am a fan. In the park there is a graffiti: Alle werfen / Keiner fängt (Everyone throws / No one catches). I read this weekend also in this sense to catch (once more) all these ideas in a park.

Lisa Holzer

SATURDAY | MAY 20 

1 PM

Robot, A Little About Me, 2010, E

Kristian Vistrup Madsen, Happiness, 2022, E

Anke Dyes, Pitches, 2023, D

David Jourdan, Wine Gets Depressed at Times, 2019, E 

Robot, Taste Your Day, 2019, E

Estelle Hoy, I’m Going to Slip Myself a Mickey, 2022, E

2.30 PM

Robot, Societies of Control 2021. NFT., 2021, E

Ariane Müller, Kinderkommunismus, 2019, D

Jutta Koether, All Alone (1957) Fautrier in den Vereinigten Staaten, 2003, D with Leon Keller and Philipp Joy Reinhardt, „nicht so leicht hinzukommen“, 2023, D 

Tonio Kröner, Inventur, 2021, D

4 PM

Robot, OOO, 2021, E 

Quinn Latimer, Hush, Hold, 2021, E

Iris Touliatou, _tbd, 2023, E

Heike Geißler, All of My Bones Are Broken, 2019, E

Nina Könnemann, Old Dogs, 2021, E 

Karl Holmqvist, MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE, 2023, E

SUNDAY | MAY 21

1 PM

Hans-Christian Lotz, Video about “Mascot (sea otter)” by Peter Wächtler, 2015

Annette Weisser, Unknown Glands, 2021, E 

Anna Susanna Woof, Wenn ich Texte schreibe, macht es mir Wirklich Spaß, 2022/3, E+D

Vera Palme, Shed Sensitivity, 2022, E

Josephine Pryde, Men of the Left, 2018, E

2.30 PM

Robot, Why Do Things Have Outlines?, 2017, E

Inka Meißner, The House That … Built, 2023, D

Eleanor Ivory Weber, Sara Deraedt, 2020, E

Phung-Tien Phan, The Podcast City, 2021, D 

Lisa Holzer, Forgot Sunglasses Again, 2023, E

Robot, BELOW 14TH ST., 2018, E

4 PM

Robot, The Photographic Poster of a Toothbrush, 2019, E 

Sabeth Buchmann, Rain Is a Cage You Can Walk Through, 2000, D

Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, I’d Like to Use, 2008, E 

Josef Strau, Nora’s Dream, but Now the Dream That Is Actually Two Dreams, 2015, E

Camilla Wills, Dictated From the bed, 2011, E

Stefan Müller, Musik, E

With the kind support of Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin, Emanuel Layr, Gilbert Zinsler, Olivia Thurn-Valsassina, and Westphalie Verlag