Berlin Program for Artists II: emic etic
Alan Affichard, Helin Alas, Armin Lorenz Gerold, Keto Logua, Anna Lucia Nissen, Tamen Perez, Zac Langdon-Pole, Philip Poppek, Gabriel Säll, Elif Saydam, Stefanie Schwarzwimmer
22 February–11 March 2018

In anthropological terms, emic is used to describe the perspective of a member of a social group, from within the societal structure itself and from the position of the subject. The term etic relates to the perspective of the outside, that of the observer, the external, the detached. The title of the exhibition implies the inseparable distinction between parts and positions; they need each other to be understood.

Two screens and seven cigarette packages. A container as a carrier and an ensemble of seven ready-to-eat onions. A start up food deliverer on his last tour. Somewhere else, a volcano erupting in the dark of the night. Around the corner a Swedish scientist that spends his days trying to capture a meteorite. Someone forever graduating. Besides that: a five year plan of what to accomplish overlapped by a helium balloon. In what language is the story told that you are listening to? In the backroom a finger is lifting up a city scenery similar to the way you try to get rid of, to scrape off chewing gum from below a chair that you have been sitting on for far too long. The feeling of a brain-freeze after eating too much ice cream way too fast, the pain suddenly making you conscious of the nature and form of your low skullcap. Staring at the screen of a smartphone you see a plate mysteriously rotating on its own axis. Below the shelves: three aluminium toolboxes, dispersed throughout the room. In them you find different constellations of objects not knowing what they are equipping you for. Is this what you would take with you in case you need to leave the place you are in now? A heavy copy of a piece by Brancusi – the Head of a Sleeping Child – or a newly printed version of The Algerian’s Flowers by Marguerite Duras and a replica of the earrings that the Queen wore once while wandering aimlessly down the aisles of Buckingham Palace. Maybe you would organize it in a red binder and call it The Story of S or Book of Mules; most importantly, The Book of Rules but only the first two pages. How many ways are there to write an A, a. ahm. Maybe close to 109 ways? We do a last round through the rooms and on our way to the door, just as we are about to leave – an ancestral flower on a steel shelf.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with contributions by Alan Affichard, Helin Alas, Maurin Dietrich, Armin Lorenz Gerold, Keto Logua, Anna Lucia Nissen, Tamen Perez, Zac Langdon-Pole, Philip Poppek, Elif Saydam, Stefanie Schwarzwimmer/Andrea Popelka