
From May 12 to August 19, 2007 ZKM | Karlsruhe will present an exhitibion curated by Ellen Blumenstein and Felix Ensslin. It will show a critical artistic reflection on the political, social, and cultural trend toward melancholic retrospection. The effects can be felt everywhere: in the expressions of conservative nostalgia, as well as in the social moods of stagnation, depression and anxiety. Boundless pessismism on the one side, state-ordered or self-help optimism on the other seem to be the general call.
In this situation contemporary art is thus read often as an enigmatic answer to a life that is always already traumatic or -with relief- there is talk of the »return of the romantic« understood as sentimentality and avoidance of politics. The positions gathered in »zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths« counter this interpretation by showing the current »melancholic« state of subjectivity as a figure that can be fragmented, crossed and passed through.
»zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths« shows positions that do not get stuck in the situation of the “exhausted self” (Ehrenberg) or with the “new maladies of the soul” (Kristeva). Each work interrogates the starting point of anxiety and stagnation, thus not denying the diagnosis. But beyond this, the artists reach with and through their work the zone »zwischen zwei toden / between two deaths« from where to critique the present and ask the question: What comes after? If people today find themselves in this zone, then art assembled here shows that in this »land of zombies« there lies an “emancipatory potential” (Žižek).
- Website
- www.zkm.de/zwischenzweitoden
- Credits
- Ellen Blumenstein (Curator)
- Felix Ensslin (Curator)
- Exhibitions team
Martin Häberle (technical project management)
Christiane Ostertag (technical project management)
Thomas Thiel (project management)- Organization / Institution
- ZKM | Medienmuseum
- Sponsors
Kulturstiftung des Bundes ; German Federal Cultural Foundation ; Landesbank Baden-Württemberg ; EnBW, DE:BUG ; Stadt Karlsruhe, Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg
Accompanying program
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- Sat, May 12, 20078 pm
- Between Two Deaths – Concerts
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Concert
Foyer
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- Sat, May 12, 200712 pm
- Between Two Deaths – Lectures
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Symposium
Vortragssaal
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- Sat, May 12, 200711 am
- After the Ends: Another Coldwar Slumber Party
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Film Screening
Kubus
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- Sat, May 12, 200712.15 am
- Between Two Deaths – Screening
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Film Screening
Kubus
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- Sat, May 12, 200712.15 am
- DJ Strobocop
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Concert
Foyer
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- Fri, May 11, 200711 pm
- MALAVAL & montevideo
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Performance
Foyer
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- Fri, May 11, 200710 pm
- Brock Enright & Terence Koh
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Performance
Lichthof 8
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- Fri, May 11, 20079 pm
- DJ Strobocob
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Concert
Foyer
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- Fri, May 11, 20077 pm
- Between Two Deaths (Opening)
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Opening
Foyer
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- Fri, May 11, 2007
- Between Two Deaths (Festival)
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Festival
ZKM | Medienmuseum
Audio
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Martin Dammann: Künstlervortrag
Lecture/Talk - 12.05.2007 - 30:41 -
Sue de Beer: Künstlervortrag
Performance - 12.05.2007 - 7:39 -
Elín Hansdóttir: Künstlervortrag
Lecture/Talk - 12.05.2007 - 17:00 -
Chloe Piene: Künstlervortrag
Lecture/Talk - 12.05.2007 - 21:54 -
Ulf Aminde: Künstlervortrag
Lecture/Talk - 12.05.2007 - 32:21