Exhibition
die Wissen
Duration: December 16, 2023 – February 18, 2024
Opening: December 15, 2023, 6 pm
Location: nGbK am Alex, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 12–6 pm, Fri 12–8 pm, free admission
Accessible with wheelchairs and strollers.
Press preview: December 15, 2023, 11 am
Please register at presse@ngbk.de

In German grammar, the article determines the gender, number, and case of a noun. The dictionary says “das Wissen” (knowledge) can only be used in the singular and with a neuter article, implying the idea of a neutral canon. A canon that differentiates between right and wrong. Something to be assimilated, memorized, and then reproduced when needed. People with multiple belongings, longings, and varied horizons of experience know more than that; they embody and live their knowledges (die Wissen) of different situations and environments. They inhabit multiple selves and can feel through them simultaneously as a result of having had to continuously learn how knowledge is bound to place, situation, and context. Their lived experience tells them that what is right and wrong cannot be answered in the same way everywhere, with every person, and in every moment. Knowledges manifest physically. They are inscribed, sometimes reconciling and sometimes antagonistically, but always present.

The show die Wissen is the second part of a trilogy at TAXISPALAIS Innsbruck on togetherness tackling the overarching question of how we can discuss and practice discourses of multiple belongings more adequately in Western Europe. The trilogy’s third chapter, Ich bin anders, weil ich kann das. Stranger belongs to me, is on view at TAXISPALAIS through January 21, 2024.

About the Works

The paintings by Elif Saydam create gatherings of various pictorial techniques, materials, art histories, and languages. They generate and represent plural knowledges. In Staatsbibliothek (Stabi), Potsdamer Platz, a state library, a place where decisions are taken on which knowledge is to be archived and made accessible, is opened for experiential knowledges that could make it a vibrant place of learning.

Nooshin Askari’s practice fixates on the question of style, and the transgressive possibility of pitting form against symbol. In their ensemble of sculptures, Contracts, each contract performs this reluctance by stretching up and rolling back right before touching the ceiling, pouring down like a water fall or rising up like a cobra.

In his video, Hiwa K retraces a route that has been crucial in the circulation of cultures. Many people have been taking this route as the artist himself from Kurdistan (Iraq) to Europe. With a mirror sculpture balanced on his nose, he moves through landscapes until he reaches Rome. To navigate this path via the multiple perspectives that the small mirrors show from above becomes a highly corporeal and mental balancing act.

In their video Les Chenilles, Michelle Keser­wany and Noel Keserwany tell of a friendship between two young women who have come to Lyon from the Levant – two regions once linked via the Silk Road. They try out ways of supporting each other and how articulating the shared pain, which is also inscribed historically in their bodies, can be turned into joined strength. In this way, the vulnerability they live together creates acts of resistance and emancipation.

In her auto-fictional comic Homestories, Vina Yun relates the story of the Korean diaspora in Austria. Together with several artists, Vina Yun makes this history, which comprises the experiences of various diasporic generations, accessible in a popular format. In the exhibited comic excerpt, drawn by Moshtari Hilal, we see how multiple belongings are not recognized and accepted as such, and how the affected persons are therefore constantly confronted with everyday racism.

With contributions by Nooshin Askari, Hiwa K, Michelle & Noel Keserwany, Elif Saydam, Vina Yun with Moshtari Hilal

Curated by Setareh Shahbazi & Nina Tabassomi

die Wissen is a takeover of the eponymous TAXISPALAIS exhibition. The project is a cooperation between TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol and neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst.

The neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) is financed by the Senate Department for Culture and Community.