Artistic positions

Remembering as a survival technique, archives as a place of transformation: the “memory work” of the artists featured in this exhibition reveals that dealing with the past is a fundamental prerequisite for shaping the future. It expresses an urgency of questions about what a society remembers, forgets or represses, about how history is made accessible and how collective memory is practised and organised. Art intervenes in the archives and establishes archives of its own. It brings preserved material to light, investigates processes of exclusion and inclusion, and selects, documents and captures images and voices, thereby making them visible and audible.

Applying the methods of visual and performing arts, literature, film and music, these 13 commissioned works each open up a narrative space of its own, while at the same time tying striking interconnections between one another. Enacted as large-formatted room installations, as video- and sound-works, the artistic positions visualize the grammar of remembering and forgetting; they go in search for traces, perform work on trauma and grief, advocate for archival care work, and demonstrate the power of narration.

With works by:
Mirosław Bałka
Candice Breitz
Ulrike Draesner
Arnold Dreyblatt
Thomas Heise
Susann Maria Hempel
Alexander Kluge
Eduardo Molinari
Matana Roberts
Cemile Sahin
Cécile Wajsbrot
Jennifer Walshe
Robert Wilson