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28/4/2011

Wert/Sache

ex tip-Berlin-Shop, Tagesspiegel-Areal, Berlin

curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers

Arno Brandlhuber, Tue Greenfort, Beate Gütschow, Gregor Hildebrandt, Lisa Junghanß, Alicja Kwade, Isa Melsheimer, Florian Slotawa, Dirk Stewen, Katja Strunz

Things ‘make’ people to the same degree as people ‘make’ things. Things or objects have their own power to act – they have an agency, a kind of magic or power, like the fetish: Things tell us how we have to deal with them much more than we would like to admit. Over the last few years, within cultural studies this way of thinking has led to an increasing appreciation for things. And since the financial crisis of 2008–09, capital markets more and more prefer to trust the power of tangible material assets as things of value. A thing or matter was –and still is– also worth to be the cause and the mission of a moot: Among the old Germanic people the tribal or court assemblies were called “Ding” [eng: thing] or “Thing”. Therefore this concept and the analysis of it fits perfectly into our times of grass-roots democratic “Wutbürger” (citizens in rage), of the Tea-Party-Movement and in particular into the era of the democratic movements strengthened by the web 3.0, which are about to launch a historical shift in North Africa.

Arno Brandlhuber, Tue Greenfort, Beate Gütschow, Gregor Hildebrandt, Lisa Junghanß, Alicja Kwade, Isa Melsheimer, Florian Slotawa, Dirk Stewen and Katja Strunz have developed images for posters on ‘things of value’, which are based on these thoughts.

The visitors of the exhibition WERT/SACHE (“thing of value”) are invited to not only contemplate the posters – they may rather choose a poster, to take it home as a physical object and to make it their personal thing of value. This democratisation of art takes us to ‘the thing’: Apart from the common discussion of an object, the depletion of the stacks will produce a bar chart, in which the popularity of each of the images will be reflected and which will symbolise a sort of vote. Furthermore, the act of giving posters away for free appeals to the ethical aspect of a gift: the tradition of the potlatch is still maintained in some societies today. The mutual distribution of presents is supposed to prevent a permanent accumulation of wealth in the hands of a single person or family.

WERT/SACHE is accompanied by a publication designed by Bureau Mario Lombardo, and with contributions by Hartmut Böhme and Anna-Catharina Gebbers (WERT/SACHE, Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, ISBN 978-3-86984-222-6).

WERT/SACHE is supported by quirin bank.

WERT/SACHE is the second poster-project curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers and supported by quirin bank: In 2008 the artists Tjorg Douglas Beer, Andreas Gefeller, Uwe Henneken, Volker Hueller, Josephine Meckseper, Bernhard Prinz, Thomas Scheibitz, Norbert Schwontkowski and Heji Shin had developed posters on the issue of WERT-SCHÄTZUNG (“estimation”).

ex tip-Berlin-Shop, Tagesspiegel-Areal, vis-à-vis the Wintergarten Varieté
Potsdamer Str 87, 10785 Berlin-Tiergarten
Friday, 29 April 2011, 4–9pm
Saturday + Sunday, 30 April + 1 May 2011, 11am–9pm

stampa

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