Satellite Affects and Other Lines of Flight

Taking its departure point from exploring the reciprocal relationships between artistic practice and the contexts of its realization, Satellite Affects and Other Lines of Flight presents the works of the eight artists and the artist collective, who since 2010 participated in DISTRICT's Studio Grant program. The studio inhabited by the artists for six months at a time is programmatically named the 'Satellite'. In the frame of the exhibition the satellite serves as a metaphorical vehicle to link aesthetic border transgressions, nomadic temporalities, unleashed conceptions of space and resistant politics of the peripheral along an erratic orbit.

Satellite Affects transfers the reflective circular movements of artificial celestial bodies and planetary satellites on the approaches for research, tangency and materialization developed by the artists and DISTRICTas an art space. Beyond dialectic and anthropocentric categories, the title simultaneously refers to social complexity of ambiguous scenarios populated by animated objects, embodiments of feeling technology and other inbetween subjects.

The exhibition presents contemporary artistic positions from the realms of performance, video, sculpting, installation, art in public spaces, collaborative and conceptual practices, graphic, choreography and sound by a younger generation of female artists. In her encyclopaedic work Grillion (2015), Katharina von Dolffs for instance fathoms the states of excitation of the techno-biological subjects from a new born planet to transfer these soundings into the possibilities of sculpting. In the immediate vicinity of Grillion Klara Hobza explores the fluid depths of the European continent as well as the boundaries of her own body and citizenship in Diving Through Europe (2010-2040).

In her collaboratively developed sound installation, emerging from the performance Resonance Assembly. Composition for Factory (2014) Zorka Wollny materializes the defunct Malzfabrik as post-industrial resonance body for the gentle erosion of a place into an acustic temporality. Hella Gerlach focuses on the relationship between body and space in her performative-sculptural practice. She inscribes the visitor as explorer, inhabitant and performer in her sculptural settings (Element XIII (bigbag), 2013). The same goes for Miryana Todorova who pushes the physical expansion of the personal space with her mobile-collapsing architectures transforming context-related (Expanded Objects, 2013-2015). In her performance Whisper-Talk-Sing-Scream (2013), specifically developed for public spaces in Zagreb, Zeljka Blaksic aka Gita Blak demonstrates how the complexity of the political struggles to reclaim the city translate into gestural and musical repertoires of a younger generation in the light of protest songs. Katrin Mayer’s poster installation, addressing examples and strategies of youth resistance during National Socialism, appears like a guide to action and sort of historical prelude to Whisper-Talk-Sing-Scream and to Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo’s Past Present Tense. Past Present Tense (2014-2015) investigates today’s racism in Germany from the perspectives of those experience xenophobia in their own country and actively oppose against it. Moving in the satellitary orbit between centre and periphery and between resistance and cosmic imagination, the collective Cooltūristės in their newly created performance Rose (Mis)Appropriations (2015) re-appropriate marginalized monuments of Berlin against patriarchal structures.

The presented works have been created, initiated or continued during the DISTRIC Studio Grant. Therefore the exhibition also enables a retrospective view on the programmatic correlations, collaborative processes and joint contexts between the artists and DISTRICT.

In rhythmic-cosmic celebration of Satellite Affects and as a fundraiser for the Soli Party Pulsar Nebula Supernova - Performance Music Dance – with contributions by Sonja Gerdes & Allison Peacock, Golden Diskó Ship, DAS DJ and Spatz Habibi will take place after the exhibition opening. The title referring to deep sky objects first catalogued in the Catalogue of Stars by Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) is a tribute to female astronomers and all those who explore the unknown. All revenue is to be used to fund the publication accompanying the exhibition, Entry based on donation: Minimum 8/6 Euro.

Exhibition: 25. April bis 6. Juni 2014, Eröffnung 24. April, 19 Uhr

Zeljka Blaksic aka Gita Blak, Cooltūristės, Christa Joo Hyun D'Angelo, Katharina von Dolffs, Hella Gerlach, Klara Hobza, Katrin Mayer, Miryana Todorova, Zorka Wollny Display: Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Programme: Cooltūristės, DAS DJ, Katharina von Dolffs, Sonja Gerdes & Allison Peacock, Golden Diskó Ship, Klara Hobza, SpatzHabibi, Jeronimo Voss, Elvia Wilk

Curators: Andrea Caroline Keppler und Susanne Husse