At Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Mladen Bizumic is showing two acts of a “Spatial Opera”, which relates facets of contemporary geopolitics to architectural phenomena.
The production presents contributions by other artists, musicians, theorists, and – in one case – his mother. In Berlin, Bizumic also follows his principle of referring to the urban environment and the history of the place where he is living and working. “How If – A Translation In III Acts” makes the area between Künstlerhaus Bethanien and PROGRAM, the location for the third act of the opera in Berlin’s Invalidentraße, into an integral component of the project.

“ACT I Freud Museum (for her) 2006-2007” consists of a glass showcase containing fragments from various buildings in Vienna, accompanied by a piano piece and a “psychoanalytical poem” written by the artist’s mother. “ACT II Sister Cities of Berlin (Paris) 2007” is a video installation showing Paris street lights, seen through the glass door of a building as if through a distorting prism, while a voice from the off tells a story about the Paris suburb Le Kremlin-Bicetre, later switching to an interview with two French artists who live there. Finally “ACT III”, which Bizumic is showing at PROGRAM, is a multi-channel video project on which the artist has been working since 2004; in this, an image of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and one of an avalanche on Mount Cook in New Zealand merge into a constantly metamorphosing Rorschach blot, thus reflecting UNESCO’s cultural policy.

Act III at PROGRAM: Initiative for Art + Architecture Collaborations, Invalidenstrasse 115, Berlin-Mitte