2018,

Ashley Berlin

2018,

2013

Oranienstraße

37

Berlin

10999

ashleyberlin.de

Adam Shui-Yang Shaw, Clerks’ Quarters can there be forgiveness?, 2018, Foto: Frank Sperling

Nigin Beck, Yeki Bud, Yeki Nabud, 2019

Für viele hat die Pandemie die Wichtigkeit der künstlerischen Tätigkeit in den Vordergrund gerückt trotz der Vernachlässigung der Kultur durch die Politik. Die Wichtigkeit der Vor-Ort-Präsenz, des „analogen Sehens“, der analogen Auseinandersetzung gegenüber den digitalen Formaten ist in den Vordergrund gerückt.Ich würde es das nächste Mal nicht mehr allein machen.The commercialization of the contemporary art scene in the last decade has created alienation and dissociation from the audience. The social filters at the established exhibition spaces, the sterilization of methods of presentation, and over-professionalism have created an image and perception of inaccessibility. In that respect, project spaces and art initiatives that resist these dynamics and strive for keeping direct social contact maintain the political potential of artistic practice. We don’t promote the conventional star system in selecting the artists we are collaborating with; we don’t pursue a hierarchical method by employing an omnipotent curator; we value the critical content and formal experimentalism of the artworks rather than the conditions of their presentation, and we don’t sell any artworks in our space; we don’t invest our energy in commercial speculation. We put an emphasis on the collective and on the social. We keep contact with our immediate neighborhood (in Neukölln), and we prioritize the knowledge about and the cultural accumulation of a particular geography. Hence, we engage in a counter-position against the dominant dynamics that have shaped the field of the contemporary art scene in the last decade. The pandemic condition has also been a drastic element that forced actors in the field to reconsider methods of presentation and social contact.