Please join us for the presentation of Tables | Factories with author and artist Ho Rui An in conversation with Nut Srisuwan

Wednesday 7 September
from 6.30pm

Motto Berlin
Salitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

//

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working at the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, he probes into the ways by which images are produced, circulate and disappear within contexts of globalism and governance. He has presented projects at the Bangkok Art Biennale; Asian Art Biennial; Gwangju Biennale; Jakarta Biennale; Sharjah Biennial; Kochi-Muziris Biennale; Kunsthalle Wien; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; and Para Site, Hong Kong. In 2019, he was awarded the International Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. In 2018, he was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Nut Srisuwan is an independent researcher and curator based in Bangkok and Leipzig. His research examines the interrelations between subjects in transnational contexts, such as national identities, politics and migratory movements. As a co-founder of the artistic and curatorial collective “Charoen Contemporaries”, he also works together with other practitioners in finding new models for the art ecosystem in Thailand.

//

Tables | Factories
Ho Rui An
Published by BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY

The process of preparing this book began with looking at photographs of large meeting tables around which Chinese and Singaporean public officials gathered during the many Chinese government study missions to Singapore throughout the 1990s. While such images might seem unremarkable today, the appearance of former revolutionaries of the Maoist era as sedentary technocrats marks the historic emergence of a distinct political imaginary in a time when “the economy” was displacing class struggle as the primary subject of governance in China.

It was at the table that these technocrats, having extricated themselves from the masses, devised the concept of the socialist market economy to frame the economic reforms that were launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. As they insisted on the compatibility of the market economy with the prevailing socialist social contract, the reformers articulated their turn towards the market as a decision informed not by the “invisible” manner through which the market allocates its resources, but by the assumed transparency of its information flows, which they believed would make visible what the party-state had been previously unable to see.

Yet, to the extent that this process of “seeking truth from facts”, as the reformers put it, is founded upon a set of separations—the party-state from the masses, information from ideology, the economic from the political—what ultimately underwrites the total visibility apparently provided by the table is the concealment of that which must not be allowed to appear as information in order for the logic of the market to obtain: the exploitation of labour.

It is on this basis that the factory can be construed as the table’s forgotten origin and impenetrable interior, and the gate that circumscribes the compound the limit of the market’s capacity for making things visible. Designed to spatially contain industrial labour and hide their exploitation from the public sphere, the factory gate is as close as the technocrat would get, as seen during the factory’s opening ceremony, to the world of labour under a capitalist mode of production. In thus proposing a convergence between tables and factories and examining their respective regimes of (in)visibility across the contexts of Singapore and Reform-era China, this collection of images and texts seeks to understand how the seemingly disparate worlds centred around these two objects in fact call forth each other to produce our deeply unsettled contemporary condition—one where the recognition that accrues to visibility has replaced freedom from exploitation as the most that the people can ever demand after the revolution’s untimely end.

Order the book here

Discrepant: inconsistent; conflicting; at variance [from Latin discrepāns, from discrepāre to differ in sound, from dis-1 + crepāre to be noisy]

Discrepant is a record label, founded in London in 2011. Our aim is to deconstruct, distort and re-assemble the lore of (un)popular music around the world.

Order here

Please join us for a Book Presentation, Reading & Talk with Renée Thorne and Raimar Stange, at Motto Berlin.

Wednesday 27 July 2022
from 7pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

*Raimar Stange
Born 1960 in Hannover, Raimar Stange studied literature and philosophy. He works and lives in Berlin as a freelance critic and curator. Stange contributes regularly to Kunst-Bulletin, Zurich; Monopol, Berlin; artmagazine.cc, Vienna; Artist, Bremen and has written catalogue texts on, amongst others, Monica Bonvicini, Peter Friedl, Thomas Hirschhorn, Michel Majerus, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Silke Wagner, Johannes Wohnseifer and Stefanie von Schroeter. He curates exhibitions on climate change and post-democracy.

*Renée Thorne
Renée Thorne is an author and artist based in Basel, Switzerland. Her work spans from lyric essays and literary journalism to texts rooted in a performative practice. Renée recently finished an M.A. in Transdisciplinary Studies at Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and will begin teaching Creative Writing at Franklin University in the fall.

–

Eurydice, Alive
Author: Renée Thorne
Publisher: art&fiction publications

Fusing essay, poetry and provocative prose, this hybrid work is an emotionally complex portrayal of loss and resurrection. The book ranges from memoir through myth to the overlapping lives of past artists in a fractal narrative traversing interior and exterior landscapes. In a brisk and unflinching account of the death of the narrator’s mother, the reader descends into the subterranean realms of grief as the loss unfurls into interconnected and unexpected stories of the underworld. From Eurydice’s indifferent return to Orpheus to a poet`s regret for the ghost that haunts him, each story is rich with the resonances in-between. Written in simple yet elegant prose, it is a story about emergence and the struggle to come alive. The result is a text as intense and urgent as the heartbeat the author is seeking.

Order the book here

Please join us for the presentation of Ingo Gerken: OFFENES BUCH, at Motto Berlin.

The artist will talk about the book, its ideas, problems and solutions with Jan Ketz (Raum für Zweckfreiheit, Berlin/Münster).

Saturday 9 July 2022
from 7pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

//

Ingo Gerken: OFFENES BUCH
Texts by Eva May, Wolfgang Ullrich
Published by Hatje Cantz

Brilliant Bibliophilia

Ingo Gerken’s monographic catalogue literally opens a new chapter in his series of works, Bibliosculptures. Images of open exhibition publications or art magazines become the object of investigation here. Seemingly randomly opened book pages create a play of forces or connections between text, object, and image compositions. By depicting these views of books in the book, the medium itself is both the object and subject of analysis – typical of Gerken’s artistic practice.

INGO GERKEN (*1971) completed his studies of Fine Arts at Muthesius University in Kiel and studied Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art. He lives and works in Berlin.

Order the book here

Dear friends,

Motto and Sans titre (2016) are pleased to invite you to the opening of

« Retro »
a solo show by Robert Brambora

Saturday 2nd July, 2022
from 6pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin


*The exhibition will be on view until 31.08.2022

Galería La Monja es un proyecto cooperativo de acondicionamiento, implementación y desarrollo de un espacio móvil para la experimentación, investigación y difusión de arte contemporáneo, desde la Región de Los Lagos, Sur de Chile.

Ediciones La Monja es una extensión del colectivo de artes visuales, cuyo fin es la exploración de soportes editoriales como contenedores de sentido, capaces de facilitar la circulación de investigaciones, procesos y obras. Entendemos la edición material como una estructura de autonomía, que expande las posibilidades espacio-temporales y sus limitaciones, constituyéndose en un campo de autodeterminación.

Order the books here

Please join us to welcome artist duo and cultural association, HAWAPI, for a presentation of their publications and discussion with curator Harm Lux. 

Thursday 23rd June, 2022
from 7 to 9pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

7:00 until 7:45pm > HAWAPI introduce their work (intro by Harm Lux), followed by Audience Talk

7:50pm > Presentation of HAWAPI’s Publications

8:20pm > Open Discussion

*HAWAPI’S WORK PROCESS*

After some preliminary regional research, knowledge exchange and a get together, a concept grows and HAWAPI (Susie Quillinan & Maxim Holland) invite colleagues to participate in order to carry out artistic research and actions on site.

Two examples: In northern Peru, in the mountainous region of Sorochuco, lies the property of the weaver Maxima Acuna (family). The latter is now increasingly surrounded by Conga mining, a mining company that is not afraid to appropriate and privatise public water sources. Thirteen artists worked on site several times, and results were presented to the public.

In the “Pondores” project, 12 artists stayed – for longer periods of time – in the Colombian FARC transitional settlements to develop Empathy-building, playing and acting together with these young ex-combatants. 

We will also be presenting new publications from La Monja, books from Arequipa based artist- designer-theoretician, Sebastián Baudrand.

Order HAWAPI books here
Order La Monja books here

Please join us for a release party, listening session and conversation with Kristin Oppenheim, for her latest LP release, Voices Fill My Head, at Motto Berlin.

Friday 3 June 2022
from 6 to 9pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

7pm > Talk with Kristin Oppenheim and Adina Glickstein

8pm > Listening Session (musical selections from INFO and friends throughout the evening)

//

Voices Fill My Head is Kristin Oppenheim’s second double LP release on the INFO label documenting her early sound works from the 1990s. Recorded between 1993 and 1999 in her Brooklyn studio this record features eight pieces composed solely of the artist’s voice. For listeners who were fond of Night Run Run, Oppenheim’s first release on the label, this record reveals yet another important chapter in Oppenheim’s oeuvre.

//

Kristin Oppenheim is best known for installation art based in performance, film, and sound. She is represented by greengrassi in London and 303 Gallery in New York.

Oppenheim was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1959 and currently lives and works in New York City. Her work is included in public collections of the Art Foundation Mallorca Collection, CCA-Andratx in Mallorca; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the FNAC Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; the FRAC Des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; MAMCO Museum d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York.

//

Order Voices Fill My Head (2LP) (PRE ORDER)
Order Night Run (2LP) (PRE ORDER)

Dear friends,

Please join us for the presentation of

Nervous Fossils: Syndromes of the Synthetic Nether
with the author Mochu, who will be reading excerpts from the book.

May 3rd at 7pm
@ Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68
10997, Berlin

Stationed around an art freeport megaproject in the Persian Gulf, and hopping across numerous locations real and fabricated, the book spins off into shadow-histories of synthetic colour production, abstruse citizenship schemes, nuclear warning signs, and syndromes leaking back from the future. During their idiosyncratic philosophical debates, the project employees gradually begin to sense a manic sensorium operating beneath their seemingly sterile financial and logistical systems. Troubles erupt while discussing works of art; futurist imaginaries of financialisation stumble upon the deep inertia of historical time preserved in museums and tombs. Monumental works of art pleasantly rotting in history enter into messy partnerships with volcanoes, hadopelagic planktons, and whimsical vibes of rich people. Stakes are endless while smiles are fake, as the debates swerve into the discreet horror of corporate gleefulness.

Mochu works with video and text arranged as installations, lectures, and publications. Techno-scientific fictions feature prominently in his practice, often overlapping with instances or figures drawn from art history and philosophy. Recent projects have explored mad geologies, psychedelic subcultures, and Indian Modernist painting. Mochu is a recipient of the Edith-Russ-Haus grant for Media Art and his practice has previously been supported by Ashkal Alwan, India Foundation for the Arts, and The Sarai Programme. Exhibitions include the 9th Asia-Pacific Triennial, Sharjah Biennial 13, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and Transmediale BWPWAP. He currently lives in Delhi and Istanbul.

Published by Reliable Copy in collaboration with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.
Order the book here

Image by Adriana Preda.

We are pleased to invite you to “Mind The Gap”, the three-days-opening of the Cazul101 group show featuring works of Dan Perjovschi, Anca Bucur, artistic duo SABA (Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu), Nicoleta Moise, Adriana Preda, Ioana Gheorghiu and Megan Dominescu.

28 April, at 6pm
@ Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68
10997, Berlin

Regularly using the subversive and progressive message in their practice, the artists are invited to reflect on the current political situation due to the high rise of extremist regimes in Europe and build a bridge between past and present, personal and political, highlighting the historical events that endangered the freedom of the individual.

The group show “Mind The Gap” is an alarm signal where image and text communicate to question and eradicate the toxic extremist behaviours experienced by the artists in the geographical space they develop their work.

After the three opening days, on 1st of May, from 7pm, the artist Dan Perjovschi will be present for an artist talk about the synthesis of the last years and the current situation in Europe.

Looking forward to seeing you!