Closing Weekend - Sea and Fog

1:00- 2:00 p.m.

As part of her installation Déplacement, Ouassila Arras invites visitors to explore the memory of walls as symbols of separation, transition, and transformation through a collective workshop. By collecting fragments of ruins and traces from the installation’s wall, participants are encouraged to use these materials as tools for expression and introspection. The fragments are catalysts that connect with individual and collective memories and evoke stories, and emotions. Throughout this workshop each participant can interact with the wall as a symbolic medium, breathing new life into it. At the end of this moment of sharing, everyone will leave with a small piece of the wall, leading to a gesture of displacement and transforming the wall into multiple meaningful keepsake. The workshop will take place in the exhibition. 

2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

The Screening Breacher – An Approach by Joseph Kadow and Chima Okerenkwo offers insights into the making of the film Breacher. The film explores questions of gender and identity, combining elements of German Romanticism with the dark aesthetics of Gothic art. It brings together the sublime and the transcendental with the eerie and fragmented. Breacher examines how identity is shaped through specific actions and performances, opening up new perspectives on contemporary social issues with its poetically dark visual language.

Please notice: this shown film is a rough cut, and this version may be different from the final release.

Starring Minttu Vesal. Directed by Joseph Kadow, Chima Okerenkwo, Co-Director; Bocar Thiam, Producer; Nicole Walker, Costumes, Lyra Pramuk, Score; Domenique Mantilla, Edit; Ahmed Tahoun, CoP; Malcom Saidou, Gaffer; Olivia Nwachukwu, Make-Up.

The Screening I'd Blush if I Could by Eli Cortiñas questions the hidden bias in contemporary digital archives and it tackles the increasing feminisation of technology through devices like voice-activated systems and other forms of artificial intelligence that aim at rendering technology neutral and exempted from bias. Navigating archival footage and different audio-visual imagery surrounding various sentient beings (humanoid robots, voice activated systems, chat bots, gynomorphic and zoomorphic social devices), Cortiñas experiments with critical uses of archival and found footage, filters that provide a "new skin", or generic images drawn from commercial platforms. Through interventions into such neo-liberal archival vessels, Cortiñas’ artistic practice reveals something ominous at play - simulations, power, surveillance -, while also stimulating ways to de-center and shape-shift their hegemonic prerogatives. As in her video essays and installations, this lecture performance by Eli Cortiñas is a collage-like audio-visual narrative that combines found imagery with documentary strategies.

This is the third iteration of I'd Blush if I Could, a lecture performance by Eli Cortiñas originally commissioned by the Screen City Biennial 2022-2024 (Berlin/Oslo/Stavanger) and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.

Biz – Wir – εμείς (Emeis) is a musical lecture performance developed by the artists Costas Gianacacos and Tuncay Acar. It takes its cue from the complex Turkish-Greek relationship, which is shaped by a shared cultural heritage but also by painful historical events – foremost among them the Great Fire of Smyrna/Izmir in 1922. This catastrophic event brought death and displacement to nearly two million people, and it still resonates with their descendants today. By examining the aftermath of World War I from the perspective of the subaltern, the performance charts the Turkish-Greek episode across the last century. It moves from labor migration back to the Great Fire of Smyrna and the subsequent population exchange between the two countries, while also casting light on the "peaceful" periods that preceded those upheavals. In weaving together these threads of history, the piece explores how national propaganda, familial myths, and individual experiences converge to shape collective memory.

Idea, Artistic Direction, Speakers: Tuncay Acar, Costas Gianacacos.

Each film will be followed by a short talk with the artists.

All three Screenings will take place in the exhibition.

4:30 - 5:00 p.m.

For their collaborative sculptural intervention Matter in Movement Michael Akstaller and Jan St. Werner let the stones from the River Oos arrive at the entrance of the Kunsthalle as minor gestures to welcome the visitors. The duo considers the river as one body in conversation with the Kunsthalle, and water resources as forms and waves of migration through the idea of dissolving the human-made construct of linearity. After several years at the entrance of the Kunsthalle these stones will, in a performative moment, finally find their way back to the Oos. The performance will take place in the public space in front of the Kunsthalle.

5:00 - 5:30 p.m.

The performance Silence by Mehtap Baydu is an expression of a conservative and anti-freedom mindset, using silence as a tool of oppression. Following her 2010 work Silence is Gold, the artist presented a performance titled The Silence (2014) at Stuttgart Künstlerhaus. During the event, while the former director Adnan Yıldız was giving a speech on Baydu's works, the artist cast a mold of her own mouth using sealing wax. She then applied the mold to Yıldız's mouth with the help of a bandage, symbolically sealing it. This created an ambiguous situation in which it was unclear whether Baydu sought to silence the spokesperson or to give the speech a unified voice. She continued this act in 2019, silencing the Director of Frieze. For Sea and Fog, Mehtap will once again perform Silence to investigate the mechanisms of speech and the suppression of critical voices. The performance evolves depending on the location, audience, and speaker involved. The performance will take place in the exhibition.

5:30 - 6:00 p.m.

Metal Waves, performance by Marco Fusinato. The performance will take place in the exhibition.

From 7 p.m.

DJ Set by Robert Lippok in the installation Garden of Ornaments by Viron Erol Vert (Café Kunsthalle).