Perspectives on Cartography. Chapter Two.

Eröffnung: 10.01.19, 7pm
Öffnungszeiten: 11.01.20 – 02.02.20, Dienstag – Samstag, 13.30-18.30 Uhr

Karten sind von einem eigenen System aus Symbolen, Maßstäben und Dimensionen geprägt, mithilfe derer wir die Welt um uns herum interpretieren und ausdrücken können. Wie einfach aber ist der Austausch zwischen dem Entwickler der Karten und deren Benutzer? In dieser Ausstellung steht nicht die Funktion der Berliner Karten als solche im Vordergrund, sondern sie werden als rhetorische Hilfsmittel und Navigationsinstrumente betrachtet – so soll das Potential der Karten als kreative Artefakte mit dialogischer Kraft betont werden. Die Besucher sind eingeladen, in die faszinierende Welt der Legenden, Maßstäbe, Himmelsrichtungen, Netzwerke, Kartuschen und Vignetten einzutauchen.

Mit Kunstwerken von Elizabeth McTernan und Simon Faithfull.

Simon Faithfull
Orbital no. 2: Berlin
HD video, 2020

The video-work ‘Orbital no.2: Berlin’ creates a hypnotic map from the routes that orbit through and around the city of Berlin. Combining three circular journeys into a single video-image, the work visualises the dizzying energy states that define a contemporary city. At the centre of this moving map we see footage from the rotating restaurant in Berlin’s Fernsehturm (as it completes one full rotation). Outside this inner circle is then a ring of video shot from the cab of an S-Bahn train as it completes one circuit of Berlin’s ‚Ringbahn‘. The outer ring of this ‚video-Mandala‘ then shows footage shot from a vehicle as speeds around one circuit of Berlin’s circular A100 Autobahn. For Berliners, these circular routes assume an almost mythical status within the folklore of their city – becoming something like a medieval city’s rings of perimeter battlements, or the concentric circles of Dante’s inferno.

Simon Faithfull is a contemporary artist based in Berlin, whose work has been exhibited extensively around the world. Working with video, digital-drawing, performance and text, Faithfull’s practice has been described as an attempt to understand and explore the planet as a sculptural object – to test its limits and report back from its extremities. Recent projects include a journey across Africa tracing the Greenwich Meridian and the deliberate sinking of a ship to create an artificial reef.
Faithfull was born in Oxfordshire, UK, studied at Central St Martins (London) and then Reading University. He is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London.

www.simonfaithfull.org

Elizabeth McTernan
High Seas
Mixed media, 2019–2020

The phrase ‘high seas’ brings to mind remote and wild waters churning far from land – ungovernable, unknowable. This unknowability is reflected further in the representation of oceans in digital maps, painted over in an immaterial, monochrome, digital blue hue. The body of work High Seas explores the various expressions of the color Berliner Blau as it crosses space, media, and history, from its birth as the first synthetic pigment to its chemical cousin the cyanotype, from the laboratory of the man who inspired the character Dr. Frankenstein to the National Metrology Institute of Germany in Berlin, from situated one-to-one measurements of landscape to the fiction of seamless satellite imagery. This work is also an exploration of surface through digital imaging, painting, and sculpture – the infinite flatness of the virtual breaks against the withdrawn, infinite roughness of physical objects. What emerges when map becomes artifact?

Elizabeth’s practice is research-oriented and focuses on ways to problematize notions of objectivity put forth by scientific discourses of measurement. From the Gobi Desert to the Indian Himalaya to the Arctic, she regularly travels to different remote landscapes in a mixed-media, interdisciplinary practice that is sometimes a cartography of mountains or deserts, and other times a cartography of objects. She processes what she finds with actions, installation, new media, drawing, printmaking, sound, text, and artist books. Elizabeth has exhibited widely across Europe and the US. Her artworks and writings have also appeared in several publications, including MIT Press Leonardo Journal. Elizabeth lives, works, and walks in Berlin.

http://astheworldtilts.com

Navigating Berlin: Perspectives on Cartography
Eine Ausstellungsreihe in drei Kapiteln
von Lisa Gordon in Kollaboration mit CLB Berlin.

Gefördert durch die Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa

Photo: Vietze & Fels.