Lena Pozdnyakova ‘Hunting–Gathering’ @ Motto Berlin
Opening reception, Saturday June 10, from 7pm Eldar Tagi sound performance (8pm sharp)
Organised by Liza Kin
Exhibition June 11-28, 2023.
Excerpt from “Hunting-gathering”: [….] Community hunting-gathering and community actors can complement each other. “The new model is transforming the role of hunting-gathering by modifying their relationship with the users and their social context. That is determining the way hunting-gathering activities are produced and the way hunting-gathering spaces are designed. The future of our hunting-gathering is based on four areas of action: hunting-gathering are spaces for discovering, learning, creating and sharing. Every public hunting-gathering needs to develop its own action plan based on their local social context. In this framework, and also building on years of experience in the development of activities linked with the environment, sustainability and our territorial needs, hunting-gathering have started exploring new ways of cooperative work in the last three years [….] A very interesting link between hunting-gathering on the one hand, and innovation & future-oriented thinking on the other, are stories. Stories have the power to introduce and explore new ideas within recognizable context. When it comes to imagining how the future might look, how innovation, technology and other evolutions impact the way our society will evolve, stories are very powerful books. Fiction offers us a tangible portal to all kinds of futures, and helps us to reflect onn them, think about how they might and should look like, and think about how we want to contribute to shaping them. From this perspective, there is an obvious link between the traditional role of hunting-gathering, and the future-oriented community engaging activities that can take place there. Making the connection [….]
This is an invitation to join a book reading on Friday, May 12 at 7 p.m. in Motto.
“In the attentive curiosity of notunderstandingness, I have the feeling of being inside an infinite conversation in which knowledge and meaning are called into question, through the gaze of various entry points, philosophical provocations, relations, spirits, and rhythms. True to its critical and poetic essence, an encounter with the book seems to invite endless possibilities to enter and re-enter, chronologically and (better) anti-chronologically, and to discover and re-discover, anew.” Writes Grace Euna Kim @grace.euna.kim, Berlin-based Korean-American performance and visual artist, choreographer, and researcher.
Сau Silva @causilva.k and Denis Esakov @denisesakov will read a chapter ‘Happy Adult Future’ and the connections of linear time, images of the future, and hierarchies of power.
Denis Esakov, writer, curator and multimedia artist who graduated from Raumstrategien @raumstrategien (Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin @kunsthochschuleberlin). Denis explores the relationship between knowledge and power toward decolonial thinking.
Cau Silva studied Social Sciences at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and Visual Arts at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Her works investigate the relationship between daily gestures and environments. Through videos, installations, and performances, she experiences the body immersed in a specific situation or place.
Meet us at the Motto @mottobooks starting at 6:30 p.m., reading starts at 7 p.m. There will be books and drinks, bring your friends and curiosity
We are pleased to share with you Motto’s April 2023 Music Mix, published on the occasion of the exhibition “STEPPUBLISHER” organized by Ho King Man, at Motto Berlin.
The harsh realities of life in Berlin are laid bare in this short novel. From the piss drenched corners of the club scene, to the inevitable slide into madness. This is not therapy. This is not an addiction. It’s a fetish – of course it is. UROFAGIA – a love story with no boundaries.
A journey into Miami’s ghetto. A gang, writing classes, a bicycle, rap songs, turquoise houses, dollars, a strip club and North Beach ocean. A love story forbidden by the silent rules of the streets of Liberty City. A solar depiction of a place where fates are sealed. She is Ella. His name is June. Burnt by the sun, they are watching the white shapes of water, “White Water”.
“White Water” takes the reader on a journey through Liberty City, a poor neighborhood in Miami. It draws the story of two characters divided by everything: Ella & June. A hybrid project, this story is related by both a book and a movie. Analog photographs, raps, poems & interviews will immerse you into the hood alongside the fiction. The short movie acts as a symbolic and poetic depiction of the story. Both are connected, independent & intrinsic.
“White Water” offers a reading as an artistic experience. It is an adventure, an exploration, and a questioning of the self and the others. Halfway between a novel and an art book, “White Water” offers an adventure, an exploration and a questioning of oneself and of others.
Limited edition of 150 copies
Un voyage dans le ghetto de Miami. Un gang, des cours d’écriture, un vélo, du rap, des maisons turquoise, des dollars, un strip club et l’océan de North Beach. Une intrigue amoureuse interdite par les lois silencieuses des rues de Liberty City. Le portrait solaire d’un lieu où les destinées sont déjà écrites. Elle s’appelle Ella, il s’appelle June. Brûlés par le soleil, ils regardent les formes blanches de l’eau, “White Water”.
“White Water” offre au lecteur un voyage dans un quartier pauvre de Miami appelé Liberty City et tisse un portrait de ce lieu à travers le regard de deux personnages que tout sépare : Ella & June. Projet hybride, il se décline sous la forme d’un livre et d’un court-métrage. Le livre est un roman de fiction accompagné de photographies, de raps, de poèmes et d’interviews. Le court-métrage agit comme un portrait poétique et symbolique de la fiction. Ils sont connectés, intrinsèques et à la fois indépendants.
À mi-chemin entre le roman et le livre d’art,“White Water” se veut une aventure, une exploration et un questionnement sur soi et sur les autres.
Texts by Brad Feuerhelm, Juri Marian Gross, Marija Repšytė, and Nele Ruckelshausen Edited by Philippe Gerlach and Agnė Juodvalkytė Design by Marijn Degenaar
Through photographs of the studio process and visual sketches the first publication ANSKA by artist Agnė Juodvalkytė offers an overview of the artist’s studio practice from the past years while creating a sensory world of recollection. The book marks the conclusion of the ANSKA cycle in her work.
“In Agnė Juodvalkytė’s work, the weave that is bound by cloth, ash, dirt, and dye, invokes memory, utility, and hand-infused labor. The stains, folds, and strained fraying edges of her chosen material are also infused, caked, and distressed to provide new readings of production. There is something familiar in her use of textiles. Each fold of fabric is detailed by a weave birthed from the center spiraling out in an obstinate mosaic of emotion wrought from the plunder of self.” — Brad Feuerhelm
How to Get Rid of Pimples is Cookie Mueller’s first and only fiction publication, where she spins short, strange tales of friends healed by her miraculous acne cure. Although the stories revolve around her description of others, Cookie herself outshines her characters, with an unmistakable voice that is astute, grotesque, and undeniably hers – as if Flannery O’Connor became a New York downtown diva. With photos by Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, and David Armstrong, How to Get Rid of Pimples conjures a vision of the remarkable world of Cookie Mueller.
Ein Jahrhundert der verletzten Männer / A century of injured men
Authors: Bernhard Cella Publisher: Salon für Kunstbuch Year: 2022 Pages: 152 Dimensions: 12.8 x 20 cm Language: English / German ISBN: 978-3-85164-210-0
Bernhard Cella’s sweeping pictorial documentary of convalescent men present us with an iconography of a century of medical progress and, by the same token, with a typology of the mise en scenes of soon-to-be homecoming patients. These staged pictures open up a counter narrative to that of vigorous, unscathed, and invulnerable masculinity. They invariably invoke calamitous moments, sustained injuries, the scars of war as well as the causes and circumstances preceding a fateful event that no camera was there to capture. Their insistence on calm, deceleration, casual gestures, and lightheartedness in the photographer’s presence cannot hide this fact. Or, as Paul Virilio put it, “images are ammunition, cameras are weapons.”
Bernhard Cellas Panoptikum an rekonvaleszenten Männern – quer durch ein Jahrhundert – demonstriert nicht nur eine Ikonografie des medizinischen Fortschritts und die Typologie der mise en scène der bald wieder in den Alltag Zurückkehrenden. Es legt in seiner jeweiligen Inszenierung auch einen Bruch offen, der dem Bild der vitalen, unversehrten und unverletzbaren Männlichkeit zuwiderläuft. Jedes fotografische Abbild trägt in sich unweigerlich auch den Moment des Unfalls, der Verwundung, der Kriegsverletzung, bei dem kein Aufnahmeapparat zugegen war. Die Insistenz auf Ruhe, Entschleunigung, Unbefangenheit und Unbeschwertheit für das Objektiv kann nicht drüber hinwegtäuschen. Oder wie Paul Virilio formulierte: “Bilder sind Munition, Kameras sind Waffen”.
Art&Girls
Authors: _ Publisher: Salon für Kunstbuch Year: 2023 Pages: 204 Dimensions: 14.8 x 10.5 cm Language: English / German ISBN: 978-3-902374-23-3
Text by Valie Djordjević Translation by Andrea Scrima
We see women looking at art, everything an exhibition has to offer: paintings, sculptures, installations. If we’re women, then one could say they’re women looking at women looking at art. And if the Instagram account “art.n.girls,” which reposts images of women looking at art, is also art, then we have women looking at art in which women are looking at art. The images are gleaned from the Instagram accounts of museums, galleries, art magazines, art blogs, and auction houses. Women looking at art embody a particular image of commodified femininity that shows its bourgeois roots. Thus, they reflect the commodification of an art that’s become a mere investment. Their bearing in these PR photos is receptive, moved, submissive, and might be intended as a stand-in for the artwork’s aura, but ultimately it remains empty and devoid of meaning.
Wir sehen Frauen, die sich Kunst anschauen – alles, was die Ausstellungsorte so hergeben: Gemälde, Skulpturen, Installationen. Wenn wir Frauen sind, dann könnte man sagen, hier schauen Frauen sich Frauen an, die auf Kunst schauen. Und wenn der Instagram Account “art.n.girls,” der Bilder von Frauen repostet, die sich Kunst anschauen, auch Kunst ist, dann schauen Frauen auf Kunst, auf der Frauen Kunst anschauen. Die Bilder stammen aus Instagram Accounts von Museen, Galerien, Kunstzeitschriften, Kunstblogs oder Auktionshäusern. Die Kunst schauenden Frauen verkörpern ein ganz bestimmtes Bild von warenförmiger Weiblichkeit, die ihre bourgeoise Herkunft nicht versteckt. Sie spiegeln damit die Warenförmigkeit einer Kunst, die lediglich Investitionsobjekt ist. Ihre Haltung in diesen PR-Fotos – empfänglich, bewegt und unterwürfig – soll möglicherweise als Surrogat der Aura des Kunstwerks dienen, bleibt aber letztendlich leer und ohne Bedeutung.
