The Middle Ages came back long ago. Even executions are now accumulated as shareware in the videoclip databases of Youtube.com, and the media editors are not the guilty parties this time; as can be seen from the download statistics, it is a matter of the users’ greed. The new project by Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström, therefore, not only provides political debate on the death penalty as a political and social ritual. It is also an exemplary demonstration of how art can take a second and even a third look at the media spectacle.

Last Supper is a 16mm film about the ritual of the last meal, the now proverbial final privilege of prisoners about to be led to their execution. The custom is as old as the death penalty itself and to be found in a range of cultures. It was the way that merciful executioners equipped the condemned man for his path into the next world. But Bigert & Bergström are not presenting cultural history here. They make a former cook from death row into their film’s protagonist, showing a ritual that has lost its meaning and been transformed into a mere act of administration; the last stage but one in a punishment that is upheld as a media symbol.



Last Supper, Studio 2,
February 23 – March 11 2007,
Opening: Thursday, 22. February 2007, 19 h

Bas Zoontjen's pictures are a dialogue with the canvas, onto which he projects both his questions and their answers. The images themselves resemble travel impressions of fantastic-surreal architecture and landscapes. Rough, brightly-coloured, organic and graphic forms strive to find the ideal balance, generating new forms in the process. The viewer finds himself confronted with the traces of a process as well as self-contained painterly surfaces. He not only reads the current form, but also finds inferences to the path that led there.

As a consequence, Zoontjen's pictures are also narratives. They arise during the thorough examination of a fictive story that seems to include both past and future. Imaginative forms implode or explode in a multitude of sometimes drastically garish colours. They describe the world as it might appear after some huge catastrophe - at a point in time when new life is already blossoming from the ruins. His surreal, interplanetary panoramas confuse our perception of reality, but in a productive way.



Planet of the Planets, Studio 3,
February 23 – March 11 2007,
Opening: Thursday, 22. February 2007, 19 h

Since April 2006, Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH has been offering an annual fellowship to an artist of Turkish nationality; the award entitles its recipient to a three- month stay as part of the Künstlerhaus’ International Studio Programme. In 2006, the acclaimed Istanbul artist Serkan Özkaya was a guest at the Künstlerhaus, presenting a successful exhibition in June/July 2006.

Time frame 2007: October – December, exhibition in December 2007. In addition to a studio and the exhibition, the fellowship includes a monthly grant of 500 EUR plus travel costs.

Applications are now invited, with the corresponding project documentation. Deadline: 1st April 2007.