Textilskulptur, Ursula Wagner, Foto: Juliane Eirich, 2013
Martin-Gropius-Bau // +Ultra. Wissen Schafft Gestaltung
closing Sunday 8th January 2017
„Gestalten“ – is a german term which loosely translates into „designing, creating, modelling“. The fact that design is a science is widely accepted. However how models and designs shape our understanding and knowledge of things, the constituents of science, is still underestimated. Especially the advance of digital technologies has had significant effects on how we perceive and learn from the physical and virtual worlds around us. The exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau presents a multiverse of different perspectives from architecture and urbanism, to epistimology and archeology, medicine and art.
Within the nine beautifully curated and designed rooms of the exhibition +ultra the relationships between artistic, scientific and technological design processes are presented: From the Stone Age hand ax to the 3D-printed organ, from biomimetric materials to feeling prostheses, and computer generated fractal patterns. They visually show how insights and knowledge are gained through the human transformations of nature, as well as their social and political consequences.
Personally one of my top favourites 2016 – be sure not to miss it: closing on sunday 8th january!
Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin
Das Numen Meatus 2016, courtesy of Das Numen and DITTRICH-SCHLECHTRIEM-Berlin
Dittrich & Schlechtriem // DAS NUMEN MEATUS
27th January – 11th March 2017
The artists collective Das Numen around Julian Charrière, Andreas Greiner, Markus Hoffmann and Felix Kiessling will be showcasing their latest collaboration at Galerie Dittrich & Schlechtriem, who represent several of the artists already. Together they playfully examine different ways of presenting the outside world in art, science and technology. As in the past, their new work uses real time data from various weather stations around the world which is then translated into sound flowing from giant organ pipes in the gallery. Environmental data is made accessible through the sensory perception of sound.
Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Linienstraße 23, 10178 Berlin
Galerie alexander levy // Daniel Mohr – Ornament und Versprechen
7th January – 18th February 2017
For his newest series of paintings Daniel Mohr deals with political reality in the US. Taking cut-out from newspapers and other media images as a basis, he explores Americas leading position within the globalised world and its hegemonial and geostrategic importance in it. Mohrs paintings reflect the caleidoscopic flow of images in the media, which accelerate into dissolution. Thereby he presents us with a painted mirror of our own perception of world affairs as portrayed in the media.
alexander levy, Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26, 10969 Berlin
Front and illustration from Hugo Steiner-Prags Der Golem – Prager Phantasien, 1916, Jüdisches Museum, photo: Jens Zieher
Jüdisches Museum // Golem
closing 29th January 2017
The Jewish Museum has dedicated an extensive and multifaceted exhibition to the Legend of the Golem, a giant mythical creature made of earth. In Jewish mythology the Golem is awakened to life by a rabbi in order to protect the Jewish community, however stories of the Golem going wild and going against its creators are widespread. In the exhibition the legend is shown to have influenced many cultural fields: Medieval scripts for Golem-making recipes, crime novels, such as Frankenstein, which are based on the Golem, as a character for silent films at the start of the century or as basis for contemporary artistic engagement. All of these cultural manifestations are based on the metaphor of the Golem – a human creation, that becomes more powerful than intended.
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin
Mona Hatoum: „Kapan iki“, 2012 (Detail); Foto: def image; Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris; © Mona Hatoum
Akademie der Künste // Uncertain states. Künstlerische Handeln in Ausnahmezuständen
closing 15th January
Uncertain States‘ point of departure is the period between 1933-1945, when Europe was last confronted with a refugee crisis. The exhibition relates the experiences refugees, like Walter Benjamin, Valeska Gert, Heinrich Mann or Kurt Tucholsky had then with contemporary political crisis. In both cases art and literature appeared as ways of dealing with uncertain political times and to bridge cultural differences.
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
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