Exhibitions 05|2007

May 12, 2007–August 19, 2007
zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths
An exhibiton project at ZKM | Media Museum
Curated by Ellen Blumenstein and Felix Ensslin

Exhibition: May 12, 2007-August 19, 2007
Opening: May 11, 2007

between two deaths: the festival: May 11–12, 2007
Tickets: T. +49-721-8100-1200 / infothekezkm.de

→ www.zkm.de/betweentwodeaths
→ Festival/ Program
→ Information auf Deutsch
→ Trailer (2min.30sec., QuickTime)

From May 12 to August 19, 2007 ZKM | Karlsruhe will present an exhitibion curated by Ellen Blumenstein and Felix Ensslin. It will show a critical artistic reflection on the political, social, and cultural trend toward melancholic retrospection. The effects can be felt everywhere: in the expressions of conservative nostalgia, as well as in the social moods of stagnation, depression and anxiety. Boundless pessismism on the one side, state-ordered or self-help optimism on the other seem to be the general call.

In this situation contemporary art is thus read often as an enigmatic answer to a life that is always already traumatic or -with relief- there is talk of the "return of the romantic" understood as sentimentality and avoidance of politics. The positions gathered in "zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths" counter this interpretation by showing the current "melancholic" state of subjectivity as a figure that can be fragmented, crossed and passed through.

"zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths" shows positions that do not get stuck in the situation of the "exhausted self" (Ehrenberg) or with the "new maladies of the soul" (Kristeva). Each work interrogates the starting point of anxiety and stagnation, thus not denying the diagnosis. But beyond this, the artists reach with and through their work the zone "zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths"  from where to critique the present and ask the question: What comes after? If people today find themselves in this zone, then art assembled here shows that in this "land of zombies" there lies an "emancipatory potential" (Žižek).

Participating artists: 
Rita Ackermann, Ulf Aminde, Sue de Beer, Walead Beshty, Martin Dammann, Harry Dodge & Stanya Kahn, Brock Enright, Barnaby Furnas, Luis Gispert & Jeffrey Reed, Nan Goldin, Dan Graham, Nicolás Guagnini, Elín Hansdóttir, Jutta Koether, Terence Koh, Erik van Lieshout, Ján Mančuška, Marlene McCarty, John Miller, Chloe Piene, Adam Putnam, Stephen G. Rhodes, Kirstine Roepstorff, Aïda Ruilova, Florian Slotawa, Javier Téllez, Mark Titchner, Ryan Trecartin, Jennifer West, Charlie White

Catalogue:
A comprehensive catalogue will be published by Hatje-Cantz to accompany the exhibition. It contains contributions by Sonia Arribas & Howard Rouse, Ellen Blumenstein, Alain Ehrenberg, Felix Ensslin, Dan Graham & Robin Hurst, Mika Hannula, Eva Illouz, Doreet LeVitte Harten, John Miller, Laurence Rickels, André Rottmann, Peter Weibel, Slavoj Žižek et al.

Ellen Blumenstein & Felix Ensslin (ed.): "between two deaths", Hatje Cantz, 2007, English, 330 p., € 29,80 [D], CHF 48,-
ISBN 978-3-7757-2003-8

The exhibition is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes).

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