Ai Hasegawa | Baum & Leahy | Cecilia Jonsson | Margherita Pevere | Mary Maggic | Naja Ryde Ankarfeldt | Nicole Clouston | Sonia Levy | Špela Petrič | Tarah Rhoda
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| Mary Maggic: Milik Bersama Rekombinan, 2019, installation |
The exhibition and the symposium The Camille Diaries. Current Artistic Positions on M/otherhood, Life and Care discuss new artistic works by eleven international women and non-binary artists (installations, video, objects, performance). Reflecting on the current conditions of our world (environmental changes, gender aspects, biopolitics, etc.), the artists' positions propose an 'aesthetics of care' as the basis for inter-species coexistence. Here, the planet is understood as a symbiotic web in which we are all entangled with one another (humans, plants, animals, environment) - on molecular, organic, ethical and biopolitical levels. The artistic positions investigate reproductive mechanisms, biochemical connections between humans and nonhumans, and refer to alternative biomaterials as "source of life" in future times of scarcity and crisis.
The exhibition title "The Camille Diaries" alludes to the "Camille Stories" the final chapter of "Staying with the Trouble" (2016) by philosopher and biologist Donna Haraway, a speculative future where a dwindling human population replaces births with care between species. Each "Camille" cares for the genetic material of an endangered species (the monarch butterfly) by storing parts of that material in their own DNA.
In the exhibition artists explore genetic and biochemical exchange between human and non-human, a both part of and remedy for the Anthropocene. Here the theme of biotechnological transfigurations of human bodies places the human being on the periphery and rather directs our full attention to other living beings. This creates - and this is central to the planned series of events - a basic understanding of other species and organisms from a feminist perspective.
Online
Symposium
THE
CAMILLE DIARIES
26 September 2020, 10 am – 7:45 pm (CET Time Zone), with livestream
The one-day symposium will bring the artists together with researchers
from the humanities and natural sciences into a critical dialogue.
On the basis of the exhibited works, concepts of "Collective
survival" and "Arts of noticing" (A. Tsing) as well
as "Staying with the Trouble" (D. Haraway) and “Bodies
of water” connected to hydrofeminism (A. Neimanis) will be
discussed in an interdisciplinary manner.
-Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz
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| Sonia Levy: For the Love of Corals, 2018, video installation |
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| Špela Petrič: Phytoteratology, 2016, multimedia biological installation |
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| Exhibition view Art Laboratory Berlin. Left: Cecilia Jonsson and Rodrigo Leite de Oliveira: HAEM, 2016, mixed media installation including custom made compass, text, sound, HD–video; right: Tarah Rhoda: Ourglass, 2017, installation, spinach, ethanol, IV bag, volumetric flask, syringe, ultraviolet light |
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| Exhibition view Art Laboratory Berlin. Left: Margherita Pevere: From the series Wombs_W.01, 2018, laboratory glassware, living bacterial, culture, microbial biofilm, the artist's urine extract, silicone tube, metal wireright: Ai Hasegawa: I Wanna Deliver a Dolphin..., 2011–13, video |
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| Exhibition view Art Laboratory Berlin. Left: Nicole Clouston: Mud (Berlin), 2018-20; right: Margherita Pevere: From the series Wombs_W.01, 2018, and Wombs_W03 ,2019. |
All photos (c) by Tim Deussen for Art Laboratory Berlin
Team: Regine Rapp, Christian de Lutz, Tuçe Erel, Linus Kaufhold, Palooka Frank Natacha, Lamounier Ribeiro, Ayla Warncke
Associated project partners:OKK, Berlin, PA 58 Berlin. The project THE CAMILLE DIARIES arose from a generous invitation to take part in the international curatorial swarm for the open call »M/others and Future Humans«, initiated by Ida Bencke (LABAE,Copenhagen, DK) and Eben Kirksey (Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, USA).
Realised with the generous funding of the German Capital City Funds, The Berlin Senate Office for Culture and Europe and the Slovene Cultural Center in Berlin.
Media partners:
art-in-berlin.de, www.art-in-berlin.de
AVIVA-Berlin Online Magazin für Frauen, www.aviva-berlin.de
