guided car tour, site specific sound track, 45 min, 2021
Driving a car is the epitome of relaxation for artist Carola Uehlken. In
a Guided Car Performance, she will drive through the streets of Potsdam
with visitors on October 31, 2021. During the ride, guests will listen
to a site-specific sound work while Sanssouci Palace and other monuments
of Potsdam's architectural history pass by outside. The subtitle "Guided
Tour" is reminiscent of guided walks and bus rides, which purposefully
complete a mandatory program of prominent buildings along the shortest
route. In Carola Uehlken's case, the "tour" first leads back into her
own biography. The passengers learn about an accident that almost took
the artist's father out of his life in his Opel Manta in the 1980s.
Since then, the animal that served as the sports car's emblem and
namesake, the Manta ray, has become a kind of patron saint for Uehlken,
motivating her to explore biomimetic architectures. What inspiration
does nature convey to us, and how do we give it language and sound? What
characters contribute to the making of places? How can we stop
repressing the ghosts of the past and learn from them? The manta ray is
one of the most spectacular inhabitants of the oceans and has found its
way into numerous cultural contexts, such as science fiction narratives.
So far, the artist has identified 261 architectures worldwide that are
modeled on its shape. And so the Potsdam tour is also dedicated to the
manta ray.
The Palliative Turn
Simon Blanck, Kasia Fudakowski, Anna Gohmert, Annemarie Goldschmidt,
Ethan Hayes-Chute, Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen, Per Hüttner, Nina
Katchadourian, Alex Kwartler, Karin Kytökangas, Keith Larson, Mathias
Lempart, Dafna Maimon, Carima Neusser, Michael Norton, Rattelschneck,
John-Luke Roberts, Xavier Robles de Medina, Lydia Roeder, Nala Tessloff,
Carola Uehlken, Olav Westphalen
Initiated by Olav Westphalen
BKV Potsdam, 2021
interdisciplinary guided tours in the Nordic Regions, since 2021
Carima Neusser, Carola Uehlken and John Andrew Wilhite-Hannisdal
Helsinki, Finland, 2021
During the first Nordic Art Lab, an interdisciplinary group of artists
will work to create the piece “Sensing Landmarks” over a two-week
period. The three artists are Carima Neusser (Sweden), John Andrew
Wilhite-Hannisdal (Norway), and Carola Uehlken (Germany).
The piece “Sensing Landmarks” brings together dance, visual art,
architecture, music, and poetry with the aim of creating a guided tour
that is specific to Suomenlinna’s nature, architecture, and history.
During their residency, the artists will develop texts and scripts,
choreography, music, videos, and scenography to guide the audience
through an interdisciplinary experience with an emphasis on the senses.
The work will be an opportunity to find new perspectives on
Suomenlinna’s unique architecture and history in a creative and
innovative way. The group will also invite people to participate in the
creative process who have specific knowledge about or who feel a sense
of love for the place. The work process is thoroughly transparent, with
ample scope for improvisation.
At the end of the residency period, the public will be invited to
participate in one of two guided tours organised by the artist group in
Suomenlinna on Friday 8 October and Saturday 9 October 2021. The project
was kindly supported by the Nordic Culture Point.
guided tour performance, 2021
Carima Neusser and Carola Uehlken
Carima Neusser and Carola Uehlken stage a still life performance
inspired by a guided tour into the underworld as described in the famous
17th century baroque poem "Stage of Death.” Living and dead material
merge to create a tableau vivant. Bodies lie and move in and around a
derelict car near a busy market scene selling fruits and vegetables. The
audience is invited to witness the various physical processes between
life and death as they picnic. Stage of Death is a continuation of her
ongoing multisensory research project Sensing Landmarks, which has been
incorporated into a wide variety of artistic presentations since 2019.
Solo Market
The exhibition series "SOLO Markt" took place on various weekly markets
in Berlin. Market stalls and self-constructed stands were transformed
into mobile, temporary spaces for installative and performative works.
In addition, guided tours and mobile performances took place.
Ambassadors of Disappointment, Lou Hoyer, Superfiliale, James Brewster,
Lee Stevens, Carima Neusser and Carola Uehlken, Das Helmi, Temporary Art
Platform and Franziska Pierwoss, Bettina Scholz, Julia Frankenberg,
Sumugan Sivanesan, Tide Fam, Nschotschi Haslinger, Sonder (Anton
Steenbock and Peter Behrbohm)
Curated by Lola Göller and Johanna Landscheidt
Berlin, 2021
Theodoulos Polyviou and Dakis Panayiotou
Curated by Carola Uehlken
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2021
In landscape architecture, "Desire Lines" are the imprints of illicit
paths that emerge when predetermined patterns of movement are not
adhered to and spaces are accessed contrary to their planning. Planned
lines start from conventional navigation methods that become inscribed
in everyday life over time through repetitions of norms and rituals. To
deviate from these lines is to become disoriented.
With Post Impalpable Rites, Theo and Daki celebrate a divorce from the
virtual reality that populates our private and public spaces. Visitors
currently experience and develop "Desire Lines" mainly digitally, with
body extensions such as their smartphones. In the window front of
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the artists transform an architecture that was
once constructed virtually but is now brought into the exhibition space
in real terms. The structure represents the already built part of a
building, a future space and at the same time the outline of a ruin from
the past.
"Lines are both created by being followed and followed by being
created." – Sara Ahmed
Theo and Daki have been working together for the past two years. The duo
is interested in site-specific responses to space and the exploration of
open forms of audience participation. Ritual, ideology and architecture
are displaced and analysed in order to be able to create formulations
about selfhood and desire.
OPEN WINDOW was a series of presentations by the artists-in-residence at
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, who currently don’t have the chance to show
their work in the usual Open Studios and exhibitions. Their works can be
seen from the window front, Kottbusser Str 10 each day. Initiated by
Arthur Debert.
interdisciplinary guided tour, 2020
Sara Gurevitsch, Carima Neusser, Carola Uehlken and John Andrew
Wilhite-Hannisdal
Old Mine Residency, Outokumpu, Finland, 2020
Workshops investigating the effect of microorganisms on
human behaviour
Elias Arnér (Professor in Biochemistry), Giada Lo Re (PhD, Industrial
and Materials Science), Carola Uehlken (Curator/Artist), Carima Neusser
(Choreographer), MaiBritt Giacobini (Child psychiatrist MD, PhD), Per
Hüttner (Visual artist/Musician), Oskar Gudmundsson (Writer), Adriaan
Samson (Writer), Freddie Ross (Art Historian), Emil Krog (Visual
Artist), Simone Bang Jørgensen (Visual Artist) and Saber Rhaleb
(Musician)
Stockholm, 2019
Italienske Palatset, Växjö, Sweden 2020
Östersund, Sweden 2021
Copenhagen, Denmark, 2021
The project has been started and is maintained by a pan-Nordic group of
artists from many disciplines of different ages who work together with
established academics from the Natural Sciences. Together they share a
fascination for microbes and how humanity’s increased knowledge about
them is changing the understanding of who we are and our place in the
world. The group takes its starting point in contemporary medical
research on microorganisms and people like researcher Stig Bengmark who
promotes eating habits that support the human microbiota (the microbes
whom we live in symbiosis with), biologist Lynn Margulis who has shown
that symbiosis is just as important as competition in evolution and
political theorist Elizabeth Povinelli who discusses the humans
relationship to living and non living organisms. All three underline
that our understanding of how our bodies function and what a human being
is, is changing rapidly. Human beings can no longer be considered to be
individuals, they need to be perceived as ecosystems who live in
symbiosis with a very large number of microbes.
Every human being has over one kilogram of microorganisms in his/her
gut. We live in symbiosis with them and they are necessary for digestion
and other life support processes. They affect our mood, energy and
probably also to what extent we are curious and social. They help to
facilitate communication between gut and brain. So far we know only
around two per cent of their functions and capabilities. But one thing
is certain: they can live without us, but without them we die.
The interdisciplinary group that runs this project has met numerous
times in different places in Sweden in 2019-20. They have organised both
private and public events. They will continue to meet and to go deeper
into our individual and collective research and at the same time spread
their knowledge and experiences in the Nordic region in 2020-21. They
will also interact with a broader network of artists and researchers and
they have made contacts with new collaborators in Norway, Finland and
Denmark.
The project will both take the shape of further private and public
events in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Germany. In order to make
the most of these meetings, the group will start by developing the
publication “Governing Bodies: An Interdisciplinary investigation into
microbes and their effect on human identity,” which will also be a
central tool in the public and private workshops.
"The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has
led to the rise of a new and increasingly controlling system of
management driven by targets and numbers." Adam Curtis in "The Trap:
What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom"
KELDER is pleased to host Glossary of Rotating Actions, a collaborative
project by Janine Eggert and Ash Moniz that explores the politics and
aesthetics of maritime trade within a larger system of global logistics.
This project forms part of a series of collaborative acts where KELDER
invites other cultural practitioners to realise a project. Our second
guest curator is Berlin based, Carola Uehlken who searches for
possibilities to understand global relationships through her curatorial
practice.
The cargo ship is a contentious vessel with its birth in European
colonial expansion and current position harbouring geopolitical
tensions. This delicate legacy, and the agents bound up in this
trajectory, are explored by Eggert and Moniz in contrasting ways through
their respective practices. Both artists follow different threads that
stem from the abstraction of the cargo ship and in doing so confront us
with that which is rarely witnessed but heavily present through its
absence: the protection of global trade.
Within the history of cargo ships, the security of goods has taken many
forms, requiring solutions of technological nature as well as
traditional policing. In 1798, theft onboard ships on the Thames led to
the formation of the Maritime Police. Using this as a starting point,
Ash Moniz explores the Wapping Coal Riots which took place that same
year. Through their multimedia installation we are introduced to the
character of Elizabeth Forester and her account of a fatal shooting
during the riot, prompting us to question the value of evidence and
testimony. Using this historic account, Moniz investigates the value of
identification: the importance of creating a visual identity of a
criminal to be used not only to convict of past crimes, but also to
prevent future criminal activity. This use of composite photography to
generate images of imagined criminals are hugely problematic and the
ramifications of this failed early technology are felt today.
Janine Eggert also investigates technologies used to protect goods and
returns to the contemporary cargo ship and the use of ‘rat racks’. These
objects have been developed to protect the goods from damage caused by
vermin onboard ships and their aesthetic and formal qualities belie
their utilitarian purpose. Informed by the artist’s observations during
her time onboard these vessels, Eggert presents us with sculptural works
that explore the tension between ornamentation and the repetition of
mass-manufactured industrial structures. Building on her research into
how natural geometric forms and layouts inform industrial manufacturing,
Eggert plays with these qualities and creates sculptural objects which
in its origin are elements of a larger industrial environment.
MORE INFO HERE
Sketch Up, single channel video, 18 minutes 31 seconds, 2019
Installation view, Part One, Cologne, 2019
The Value of Flowers
Daniel Kiss, Manuela Leinhoss, Carola Uehlken, Adriano Costa
Part One, Cologne 2019
Interdisciplinary Festival, Hangzhou 2018
Initiated by Arthur Debert, Lola Göller, Carola Uehlken and Benjamin
Zuber
aaajiao, ESA, Awu, Arthur Debert, Deyi Studio (Xia Yilan and Paul
Devautour), Wu Ding, Lola Göller, Chen Hangfeng, Da Mian, Maming, Cheng
Ran, Hu Renyi, Bi Rong Rong, Jessie Yingying Gong, Ecole Offshore, Guan,
Dropdown, Kenneth Dow, Alisson Schmitt, Alban Diaz, Pauline Lecerf Li
Siyi, Bruno Siegrist, Zhang Lehua, Carola Uehlken, Song Xi, Lilli
Kuschel, Elisophie Eulenburg, Li Xiaofei, Wang Xin, Ma Yongfeng, Yuan
Yuan, Wang Zhibo, Benjamin Zuber, Ning Zuohong, Leng Yue and Xiao Xiao,
DMT Tattoo Department, Fanny Paldacci, Marine Calamai, Yao Qingmei
Art Spaces: SPZ Prague, Babel Berlin, Ecole Offshore Shanghai, I:
Project Space Beijing, Martin Goya Business Hangzhou, 2018
The Festival was kindly supported by IFA Institute for Foreign
Relationships
Performance by Alisson Schmitt and Pauline Lecerf, Babel-Lelab, Hangzhou
2018. Photo: Lola Göller
BABEL - LELAB was an interdisciplinary, collaborative art festival
bringing together artists of all medias from China, Germany and France
in order to communicate about transfer, migration, exchange and the
potential of misunderstanding.
An artist studio built in a former military space was turned into a
laboratory. We created situations, screenings, concerts, performances
and installations reflecting on constructions in language, taking minor
and major misunderstandings as a potential for communication. How do
concepts and objects change their meaning as soon as they move from one
place to another?
Telling stories and bringing them from one place to another is the
oldest cultural form existing. Babel - Lelab was meant to provide
experimental conditions in which artistic research was performed. As
part of our communication, especially as artists, language becomes an
important tool for play. We don’t use language to express what we
already know; we learn to know differently by using language to express.
And that expansion of knowledge re-shapes our understanding of the
world.
Niklas Goldbach, Verena Issel, Marion Orfila, Martijn in 't Veld
Curated by Carola Uehlken
House of Egorn, Berlin 2018
Marion Orfila, Orée Delocalisée, (Delocalized Forest edge), HD video,
9‘31, 2015
"The Mobile House Turns with the Sun" is a quote from Ivan Chtcheglov's
"Formulary for a New Urbanism" written in 1953 under his pseudonym
Gilles Ivain. This text, both poetic and theoretical, foundational to
the Situationist International movement, was consequently published in
1958. The visionary text set the tone for Guy Debord and the
Situationists in their early phase: aspects of urbanism, urban space,
transit and flexible forms. The manifest asked for a total
transformation of everyday life and structural elements of social
environments of individuals.
The exhibition brings together four distinctive perspectives regarding
landscape and urban structures. Niklas Goldbach, Verena Issel, Marion
Orfila and Martijn in 't Veld develop sensible questions throughout the
mediums photography, video, print, text and installation. References
range from the over 2000 years old Nazca Lines carved into the rocky
landscape of Peru and end with today's traffic lines in California City
being remnants of one of the world's biggest failed urban planning
projects on the planet. How can we imagine ourselves in illogical
circumstances?
„We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun.“
Ivan Chtcheglov
Niklas Goldbach, Land of the Sun, video still, 11:35 min loop, Full HD,
Stereo, 2015
Project Space
Artistic Director, Construction Coordinator
With Arthur Debert
Invited artists: John Andrew Wilhite-Hannisdal, Daniel Bickett, Arthur
Debert, Kyoung Jae Cho, Isak Han, special guest Soja Juretschko, Brad
Henkel, Nana Pi Aabo Larsen, Andreas Hoem Roysum, John Andrew
Wilhite-Hannisdal, Capucine Vandebroeck, Marion Orfila, Dietrich
Meyer, Lola Göller, Michael Pohl, Sara Björg Bjarnadóttir (performing
artists: Chloe Kwiatkowski, Guðrún Benónýsdóttir, Ingileif Franzdóttir
Wechner, Michael-David Blostein, Sigurrós Eiðsdóttir, Sigrún Gyða, Simon
Bittner), Ma Yongfeng, Anne Brujean (Club Sandwich), Tiphaine
Calmettes, Hanwei Li, Vincent Scheers, Chen Hangfeng, Saverio
Tonoli, Franziska Klötzler
Babel Berlin, 2017 - 2018
Performance for 3 volunteers, 3 VR glasses, 7min
30sec
Arthur Debert and Carola Uehlken
Nachrichten aus der Gegenwart 2 (News from the Present 2)
Neuschwanstein, 2016, Performance, Nachrichten aus der Gegenwart 2,
Kunsthallen Rottstr, Bochum. Photo: Carola Uehlken
Following precisely the instructions inside virtual reality glasses 3
volunteers from the audience realize a performance visible for the other
spectators.They perform text, movement as well as they describe and
interprete images with their own ways of perception and knowledge
creating a theatre piece that they discover while playing for the first
time.
The content of the play is based on the idea that humankind already have
a precise image of the future through anticipation. Written in novels,
realized in science fiction movies buildings reappear and develop a
second future, the image of urbanity. The theater play reflects
especially on architectorial projects which rised especially in the
cultural and museal environment.
Neuschwanstein
The mad king hated people living in capitals.
He preferred caves, forests and mountains to cities.
Painters and Artists were asked to draw many castles,
but none convinced him. None was big enough for his dreams.
In his palace, he was the king.
Old poets whisper he was the only real king of his century.
Architect of his own life, he had built a boundless place
where there is an office for each illusion, a room for each dream
and a kitchen for every taste in the world.
Passing by the flying bridge you could see
the three towers of the past facing the gate of stars.
A wonderful stairway of concrete trees leads to thousands of
suites where Sultans, Emirs and Legends lived by his side.
Every night you could hear the valkyries singing and running
through the woods, surrounding the crystal dome.
Operas succeeded to ballet endlessly, protected and forced
by the greatest, - the only spectator.
He was never frightened by new technologies.
In his place you could see machines, people wouldn't have ever believed.
Every day, the king went to sleep, as soon as the sun rose.
His blanket woven by his ideas for the days to come.
His bed floating slowly through the empty corridors.
People from the city, jealous of this king reality couldn't stop.
They called the king mad and straightened him for his dangerous mind.
They forced him to live like them. At least for one day.
Berndnaut Smilde
Curated by Carola Uehlken
LIAN Contemporary Art Space, Shanghai 2015-2016
Berndnaut Smilde, False Firmament, Installation view, LIAN Contemporary
Art Space, Shanghai 2016
The solo exhibition False Firmament by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde
features among new works also works that the artist developed during his
residency stay in LIAN Contemporary Art Space, Shanghai. The show
includes his youngest research on breaking light and centers on the site
of LIAN Contemporary Art Space, its surrounding as well as its counter
part, its antipode, the direct opposite location on the world.
In history the firmament was conceived as a vast solid dome, where sun,
stars and moon were arranged in the atmosphere. Nowadays a lot of
different proto-scientifical models try to describe how we perceive the
blue heaven above us and natural phenomenons related to it differently.
Technologies allow us views onto almost every surface on earth. But our
imagination about the view into and out of the sky is still personal,
related to our knowledge, narrations and myths, that we have. How do we
perceive nature, images and arrangements in nature? False Firmament is
referring to Berndnauts interference with these phenomenons in nature
and questions the matter of truth in our view.
Catharina Cramer, Nicholas Grafia, Susanne Griem, René Haustein, Niklas
Heidemann, Philipp Höning, Daniel Hundt, Seungyho Jung, Sumi Kim,
Christian Klement, Luisa Kömm, Johannes Leßke, Sebastian Liebl, Ill Jong
Park, Jan Partke, Roman Podeszwa, Hanna Schneider, Meike
Schulze-Hobeling, Stephanie Sczepanek, Katharina Siemeling, Vakho
Sikharulidze, Kyoung Jae Cho, Manuel Talarico
Curated by Carola Uehlken
V ART CENTER and LIAN Contemporary Art Space, Shanghai 2015
With the kind support of V Art Center, CAC Chronus Art Center, Goethe
Institute Shanghai, Academy of Fine Arts Münster and SIVA Shanghai
Inistitute for Visual Arts
Performance "Happy Hour" as part of Drinking a Drink, Sinking a Ship,
2015, V Art Center, Shanghai
Drinking a Drink, Sinking a Ship, 2015, Installation view, LIAN
Contemporary Art Space, Shanghai
Gao Shan, Gisa Pantel, Rene Haustein, Inga Krüger, Wang Hongfeng, Wu
Ding, Zhang Mei, Daniel Kiss, Katy Roseland, Jiang Jun and Wong Dan,
Song Xi
Curated by Carola Uehlken and Sun Qidong
Bazaar Compatible Program, Shanghai 2015
Ash Moniz, Felix Kalmenson, Hu Weiyi, Wang Man, Double Fly Art
Center, Wang Xin, Ruben Gaehrken, Sören Beineke, Mai Mai
Curated by Carola Uehlken
bazaar compatible program and Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai 2014
Watch Your Steps, 2014, bazaar compatible program and Minsheng Art
Museum, Shanghai
Within a one-day art-event artists from Canada, Germany and China are
showing their works in the Minsheng Art Museum and at the bazaar
compatible program in Shanghai. The distance between the spaces is about
700 meters. The audience is asked to go back and forth, in order to
discuss about the value of art in these two very different venues.
The Minsheng Art Museum is one of Shanghai‘s oldest art spaces. It
opened about in the 1980s and is owned by the first privatised bank
Chinas, the Minsheng Art Bank. The BCP bazaar compatible program is a
project space on a traditional Chinese market, where one can buy meet,
fish, vegetables, go to the shoe maker or the hair cutter and get
everything one could possibly think of. The crossover between an art
space in a commercial market building and a white cube financed by a
bank served as a platform for the group show Watch Your Steps. We shared
works and thoughts about the professionalisation as artists and money in
general.
The show included a lecture performance by ADL (The Association for the
Dematerialisation of Landscapes) about the value decrease of money clips
on online sales platforms at the Art Museum, which in video format then
was sold through an auction on the way to the market venue. Fake money
was produced to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the art collective
Double Fly Art Center, a video by Wang Man pushing a weapon bullet back
and forth while kissing his partner demonstrated the power of sex and
relationships, paintings by Sören Beineke were installed like towels
hanging from the ceiling at the market. Wang Xin installed an art and
psychology driven installation, and an actrice performing the „sexy“ art
market through songs, pills and games. We had a painted canvas cut into
name cards to be puzzled by Ruben Gärken reacting on the business driven
communication in Shanghai while a performance by Hu Weiyi endangered the
audiences' entrance into the exhibition. The moving night ended with a
post rock concert by Mai Mai.
ADL performing at Watch Your Steps, 2014, bazaar compatible program and
Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
Wong Man, Bullet, 2014, video still
Tim Woodward
Curated by Lejla Aliev, Jan Enste, Carola Uehlken and Manuel Talarico
Geological Museum, Münster 2014
A priest explains the religious ceremony of profanation, in a video
portrait of the Donald Judd sculpture Untitled [1977] as it exists in
2014. The shooting took place at the Donald Judd sculpture at Lake AA,
which was installed in 1977 for the first Sculpture Projects in Münster.
For nearly forty years this work of art has been part of the public
space of the city. In the eleven minute video RING AROUND THE DOWSER, a
priest explains from a personal point of view the process of
profanation.
The work‘s title references both a technical detail of a film apparatus,
and on the other hand „dowsing“ is a method to locate secret, hidden or
missing things. Complimenting the video, a sculptural work titled MARTHA
SUN DECK was created as a seating area in the exhibition space of the
Geomuseum.
Tim Woodward, Ring Around the Dowser, 2014, Geological Museum, Münster
An exhibition between Balls, Bimages, Birls, Bymnastic, Brojektions,
Beer, and Bymposium
Bettina Dettmer and Willi Kramer, Ivan Geddert, Betsy Flock (Daniel
Hundt) and Jan Partke, Gisa Pantel, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Anne
Staab, Benjamin Zuber
Curated by Clara Napp and Carola Uehlken
In collaboration with the specialist conference Inside. Outside. Others.
The body in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, Academy of
Fine Arts, Münster 2013
Goys and Birls, 2013, Academy of Fine Arts, Münster
Bahar Taheri
Curated by Lejla Aliev, Jan Enste, Carola Uehlken and Manuel Talarico
FAK Förderverein Aktuelle Kunst, Münster 2013
Bahar Taheri intended to demonstrate the historical, political and
social events in her homeland Iran by using the symbolic object of the
crown to represent the potions of power in relation to what has been
going on behind the scenes, either in favour of or against, the
established source of authority in the form of monarchies and royal
dynasties.
The artist used the flag as an object representing national identity
that conveys the historical background of a nation. The flag, through
which she intended to show several overlapping layers of social events
and evolutions in the history of her country, was tattered, in pieces of
fabric, or was used in a way in which is was composed. The audience
acted as the dominant outsiders, who have been always influential in the
shifting situation of Iran. They were invited to assemble sheets of
fabric in a way they imagined or prefered it to be.