KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Exhibition

Milchstrassenverkehrsordnung

(Space is the Place)

 

Opening: Thursday, 1 August 2019, 7 pm
with JUAN ATKINS (Detroit) / Special thanks to TRESOR Berlin

Exhibition: 2 August – 15 September 2019

Participating artists:
Guy Allott (GB) / Andreas Ammer, Andreas Gerth, Martin Gretschmann (D) / Song-Ming Ang (SGP) / Lucas Foletto Celinski (BR) / Vincent Fournier (F) / Gregor Hildebrandt (D) / Via Lewandowsky (D) / Bjørn Melhus (D) / Nik Nowak (D) / Johan Österholm (S)  / Thomas Ravens (D) / Nik Raicevic alias Nik Pascal (USA) / Gerd Rohling (D) / Igor Sacharow-Ross (RU/D) / Bettina Scholz (D) / Annette Schröter (D) / Sebastian Szary (D) / Jared Theis (USA) / Saverio Tonoli (I) / Brigitte Waldach (D) / Aribert von Ostrowski (D)

(Slider image: Bjørn Melhus, Moon over Da Nang, 2017,  ©Bjørn Melhus)

 

The future of mankind lies in outer space: that’s at least what the American physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku believes; in his book Farewell to Earth he presents tempting ideas on how we can conquer the stars – an undertaking that certainly doesn’t happen without complications.
The exhibition therefore uses a dual title that, on the one hand, refers to Stanisław Lem’s term “Milky Way Traffic Code”, which refers to the impossibility of limiting damage when crossing cosmic borders, and yet does not leave us hoping for redemption in higher spheres, which Sun Ra raves about with his directional display “Space is the place”.
Guided by economic or political interests, the space industry is booming like never before. Almost every month we hear about new scientific achievements. There can be no more doubts – a new space age has dawned and, within the framework of a Commercial Crew programme, those adventurers who pay dearly for flying to the international space station ISS will be able to do so in 2019 already. And equally attractive for space visionaries are manned flights to distant planets such as Mars. The first unmanned and manned tests of the technologies are planned for the next decade.
In the arts, too, distant galaxies as symbols, projection surfaces and symbolic spaces have recently been booming again. Parallel to science, artists, musicians, science fiction authors, filmmakers and comic-strip artists are simultaneously using and criticizing space as a reflector of the human unconscious. This inscribes not only a scientific-critical but also a socio-critical dimension into the presentation of their works.
Music and sounds that explicitly deal with the theme of “Universe – Earth – Man” are an important field of experience for the exhibition. In the 1960s and 1970s, this triad was a huge topic in music, especially rock music, and is experiencing a renaissance with current forms of space and psychedelic rock. For more than 60 years Sun Ra and his fleet of 26 Arkestras have been giving a lunar Free Jazz orientation. They can be interpreted as instructions to multiply mind matter relationships beyond the limits of physics.
The exhibition presents works of painting, photography, drawings, objects, videos, record covers and sounds.

(Text from the catalogue of the exhibition)


Side Programme
to Milchstrassenverkehrsordnung:
02.08. / 7pm
Lecture by Jeannot Simmen (in German): Finster war’s. Der Mond schien helle. Kosmos-Utopien und Irdisches Paradies 

05.09. / 7pm
Driftmachine (Andreas Gerth + Florian Zimmer) + Andreas Ammer

15.09. / 7pm
Book presentation Jens Balzer Das entfesselte Jahrzehnt. Sound and Spirit of the 70’s and DJ set

Exhibition
01.08. – 15.09.2019
Tue - Sun: 2 - 7pm
Admission free

Opening
01.08.2019
7 pm