17 Sep 2010

Examples to Follow! Expeditions in Aesthetics and Sustainability

With: Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Néle Azevedo, Richard Box, Ines Doujak, Adib Fricke, Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Till Krause, Klara Hobza, Lukas Feireiss,Luis Berríos-Negrón | Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, Dionisio González, Tue Greenfort, Hermann, Josef Hack, Henrik Håkansson, Ilkka Halso, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Christoph Keller, Folke, Köbberling | Martin Kaltwasser, Christian Kuhtz, Christin Lahr, Antal Lakner, Jae Rhim Lee, Till Leeser, Marlen Liebau | Marc Lingk, Susanne Lorenz, Gerd Niemöller, Dan Peterman, Nana Petzet, Clement Price-Thomas, Dodi Reifenberg, Gustavo Romano, Miguel Rothschild, Otmar Sattel, Michael Saup, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Dina Shenhav, Superflex, Jakub Szczesny, The Yes Men, Gudrun F. Widlok, Xing Danwen and Zwischenbericht

EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW! EXPEDITIONS IN AESTHETICS AND SUSTAINABILITY is curated by Adrienne Goehler and coordinated by Jaana Prüss.
Organizing Body: Stiftung Forum der Kulturen zu Fragen der Zeit.
Patron: Jochen Flasbarth, Umweltbundesamt Dessau.

EXPEDITIONS IN AESTHETICS AND SUSTAINABILITY present artistic practices that contribute to the preservation of the planet and aim to influence conscious consumer behavior. Sustainability requires a broadening of perception in the collaborating of the arts and sciences. Boundaries between artistic and technical creativity, between feasibility and idea are abolished. “We don’t need morality and abstinence, but passion and desire,” states Adrienne Goehler, the exhibition’s curator. In a first exhibition that attempts to bring aesthetics and sustainability into focus using the instruments of contemporary art, forty artists and artists’ groups have taken up this challenge. The stripped down space of the Uferhallen in Berlin Wedding provides the setting for a range of sculptures, video works, photographs, performances and installations dealing with the cultural dimension of sustainability. The exhibition has been three years in preparation due to the time needed to convince potential sponsors of the urgent link between aesthetics and sustainability. Indeed so far, questions of ecoaesthetics, as Rasheed Araeen calls it, could only be seen in smaller monothematic exhibitions in Kunstvereinen or in an architectural context.

Even before thinking about the exhibition, Adrienne Goehler was well aware of the need to create a Fund for Aesthetics and Sustainability (Fonds für Ästhetik und Nachhaltigkeit, FÄN) to reunite things that had been arbitrarily separated. An instrument should be found that would collect and tie together different perspectives and activities.

Accompanied by an extensive program of events with artists’ talks, panel discussions and a film program (in the exhibition and in the Arsenal cinema), EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW! is linked to exhibitions in the United States, England and Scandinavia that present and discuss sustainability without uncoupling it from questions of aesthetics.

No commissioned works were made for the exhibition in Berlin. The force of their messages is a result of the presentation and the juxtaposition of the artistic statement with a nature that in the summer of 2010 is clearly increasingly out of joint. The exhibition is accompanied by workshops with children and young people, discussion forums with representatives from art, science, economics, NGOs and foundations as well as by a diverse film program and the collaboration with the design shop Lilli Green.

Accompanying the exhibition a publication consisting of a catalogue, storybook, children’s coloring book, a construction manual and thoughts concerning a Fund for Aesthetics and Sustainability is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, www.hatjecantz.de,  ISBN 978-3-7757-2772-3,
€ 48,--. There will be two collectors’ editions. More information is available from the publisher.

Adrienne Goehler, curator of the exhibition and editor of the publication lives and works as a publicist and curator in Berlin. 1989-2001 President of the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, 2001- 2002 Senator for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Berlin, 2002-2006 Curator of Capital Cultural Fund, Berlin. Following Verflüssigungen from 2006, €1000 für jeden: Freiheit. Gleichheit. Grundeinkommen (Götz Werner & Adrienne Goehler, Econ Verlag) will appear at the end of August 2010.

Jaana Prüss, Project Director, works as art mediator, project manager and freelance curator in Berlin. After setting up a gallery (Prüss & Ochs Galerie) she founded the project space L.O.F.T in 2005 and Morgengrün Kommunikation in 2005.


Specials during the exhibition: Tuesdays: Artists’ Talks, Wednesdays: filmprogram at Kino Arsenal, Thursdays: Panel discussions, Fridays: filmprogram at Uferhallen


The project is sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Additional sponsors: Umweltbundesamt Dessau, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Berlin Senat für Gesundheit, Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz, GASAG, WISTA Management GmbH Adlershof, Bundesamt für Kultur der Schweiz, Schering Stiftung, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung, the cities Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, Ingolstadt and Neuburg an der Donau as part of AK gemeinsame Kulturarbeit bayerischer Städte e.V., Goethe Institute St. Petersburg, Goethe Institute Australia, Goethe Institute Athens, Andrea von Braun Stiftung, Stiftung Naturschutz Berlin, Anstiftung Ertomis, Schweisfurth Stiftung, British Council, WWF, Consido AG
Project partners: Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst, Autostadt Wolfsburg, Lilli Green
Media partners: taz, Zitty, LE MONDE diplomatique

After Berlin, EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW! will travel to: Westwendischer Kunstverein, Umweltbundesamt Dessau, Neuer Kunstverein Pfaffenhofen, Kunstverein Ingolstadt and Städtische Galerie Neuburg an der Donau; finally, in collaboration with the respective Goethe Institutes, to St. Petersburg, Australia and Athens. Additional exhibition locations are in negotiation.


Contact:
Presse I PR
Anne Maier
Tel. 0170 290 75 85
Mail: annemaier.presse@z-n-e.info