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Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2012, Photo: Jens Ziehe

Anja Kirschner and David Panos

Dec 1, 2012 – Jan 27, 2013


Ground Floor

Curators: Sophie Goltz and Kerstin Stakemeier


Neuer Berliner Kunstverein shows new work by Anja Kirschner (b. 1977 in Munich) and David Panos (b. 1971 in Athens). In recent years, Kirschner and Panos have established themselves internationally, taking a significant position in artist video and were awarded the 2011 Jarman Award. Most recently their work has been exhibited in locations including: Artist Space, New York (2012), Liverpool Biennial (2012), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2011) and Kunsthall Oslo (2011).


Their video Ultimate Substance (2012, 34 min), presented for the first time in Germany, will be staged in a setting of sculptural elements. The film departs from the hypothesis that the advent of coinage, which first emerged in ancient Greece, led to the fundamental division between sensual and abstract forms of experience. The metaphysical outlook of Greek philosophy and mathematics can be seen as corresponding to the abstract experience of monetary exchange.


Ultimate Substance was filmed in and around the Numismatic Museum of Athens and in Lavreotiki, a nearby mining district, where industrial scale extraction provided the silver on which the classical Athenian city-state was founded. Abandoned in Roman times, the mines were re-discovered in the 19th century making Lavrio the first factory town of the modern Greek state. In the 1970s the local mining industry was again dismantled. Today the factory ruins house a museum on mining history.


Jumping between images of antiquity and present-day crisis ridden Greece, the film is neither documentary, nor a narrative work. Instead, it consists of fragmented pictorial quotes that are assembled and shuffled through hard cuts, emphasized with concrete sound editing.


The artists collide choreographed movements of labor, geometric proofs, and archaeological and contemporary everyday objects, contrasted and compiled into a reflection on economy and the prehistory of industrial labor. Kirschner and Panos propose the introduction of coinage as crucial to the rise and development of the Western philosophical tradition and science, which even today dominates the way in which we comprehend the world.


Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by an artist’s book with an essay by Richard Seaford, a text collage by Anja Kirschner and a foreword by András Pálffy, published by Revolver Publishing, Berlin.



Program


Thursday, December 6, 2012, 7pm

Video Becomes Display Becomes Situation

Gregor Stemmrich (Prof. Art History, Director Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie Universität Berlin) in conversation with Kerstin Stakemeier (Juniorprof. Media Theory and Visual Studies, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich)


Thursday, December 13, 2012, 6pm

Exhibition talk with Sophie Goltz (n.b.k. Curator)


Saturday, January 26, 2013, 6pm

Art as a Form of Crisis (Part 1): The Aesthetics of Money

Introduction by Stewart Martin (Senior Lecturer Modern European Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art Theory, Middlesex University London; contributing editor Radical Philosophy, London), followed by an artist talk with Anja Kirschner and David Panos (artists, London / Athen, and Stewart Martin, moderated by Sophie Goltz

In English language


Sunday, Januar 27, 2013, 4pm

Art as a Form of Crisis (Part 2): Money in the State of Crisis. The Example of Greece

Discussion and workshop with Blaumachen, Athens/Thessaloniki, Michael Heinrich (mathematician and political scientist, contributing editor Prokla. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft, Berlin), Nikos Arvanitis (artist und musician, Athens) and with Freundinnen und Freunde der klassenlosen Gesellschaft (Berlin), moderated by Kerstin Stakemeier (co-Curator Ultimate Substance)

In German and English language

Limited places, for information and registration: nbk@nbk.org


Sunday, Januar 27, 2013, 8pm

A Victim Of Society

Concert

Admission free