12/2004
Now and Ten Years Ago
An exhibition on relationships between culture production and urban development
contribution to the exhibition on urban action, freies fach
Kunstwerke, Berlin
www.kw-berlin.de

Rückbau X: preponed unapproved protest demolition of the former Foreign Ministry of the GDR, 1995

The exhibition Now and Ten Years Ago assembles artistic, architectural, and activist works and projects that reflect the upward revaluation processes that have changed social spaces. Attention to gentrification has thereby become a method for artists to relate to a societal function of art. On the other hand, the term hardly seems suitable for grasping the euphoric coming together of youth cultures and art or for determining a function of art. The exhibition traces this ambivalence between social relevance and individual possibilities for expression as a shaping and productive debate.

The exhibition spans three methodological fields. A historical segment documents dynamic phases of gentrification with central projects, artistic works and materials, a second segment deals with the phenomenon of what is just past. A third segment - Comparative Studies - attempts to set the regional and identity-laden constructions of bohemia and the city in a relationship to opaque, self-organized, and collective productions.

The exhibition's organizers are Axel John Wieder, Gertrud Berlin, and Josef Strau.

with reconstructions by Art Club 2000, Botschaft e.V., Freies Fach / An Architektur, Trap, Octavian Trauttmansdorff; works and materials by Charlie Ahearn and Jane Dickson, Gary Azon, Juliet Bashore, Gretchen Bender, Mike Bidlo, Jim C, Tseng Kwong Chi, George Condo, Arch Connelly, Martha Cooper, Friesenwall 120, Day Gleeson and Dennis Thomas, Archives of Group Material, Becky Howland, Vereinigte Varben Wawavox/K77, KuLe/Mount Warning, Louise Lawler, Mark Morrisroe, Kembra Pfahler, Sonic Youth, Philip Taaffe und Thiery Cheverny, Martin Wong; present just past: metal-sculptures and photography ecetera with Rupert Altenburger, Dirk Bell, Bernadette Corporation, Clegg & Guttmann, Alexander Dammeyer, Martin Eberle, Sergej Jensen, Annette Kelm, Jutta Koether, Frank B. Lyte, Michaela Meise, Johannes Peschken und Wolfram Kühn, Jänis M. Pohl, Juliane Solmsdorf, Josef Strau, Wolfgang Tillmans, Suse Weber, Amelie von Wulffen und Henning Bohl; Comparative Studies by Bernadette Corporation, Endre Aalrust, Janne Lervik and Andreas Dalen, Gardar Einarsson und Matias Faldbakken, Reverend Jen Miller, Nils Norman and Stephan Dillemuth, Carissa Rodriguez and Jodi Busby

Our contribution to the exhibition was a modell of the reconstructed urban actions carried out by freies fach.

download catalogue's photo spread on freies fach


more information on freies fach:
Urban Action.
Biographische Erzählung zur stadtpolitisch-intervenierenden Praxis freien fachs.
in: Jochen Becker (Hg.): "Bignes? Size does matter", Berlin 2001,
Seite 230-243
see text (german only)

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