Martin Ebner

  • Ein Gesprächsabend im Rahmen der Ausstellung DISPOSSESSION
    17.12.2021, 18:00, Künstlerhaus, Factory

    Die Bedeutung selbst von einer symbolischen Geste

    Ganz herzlich laden wir Sie zum Diskursabend im Rahmen der Ausstellung DISPOSSESSION ein.

    Mit:
    Bea Schlingelhoff (Künstlerin),
    Gloria Hasnay (Kuratorin am Münchner Kunstverein),
    Tanja Prušnik (Präsidentin der Künstlerhaus Vereinigung)
    Tim Voss (Initiator der Ausstellung DISPOSSESSION) und
    Ariane Müller (Kuratorin der Ausstellung DISPOSSESSION)

    Moderation: Martin Fritz

    Die Veranstaltung findet vor Ort statt, sowie übers Streaming statt.

    Die Künstlerin Bea Schlingelhoff hat für ihre Ausstellung im Kunstverein München den Entwurf einer offiziellen Entschuldigung des Vereins für sein Vorgehen während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus ausgearbeitet. Dieser wurde vom Kunstverein in seinen Gremien diskutiert und von der Kuratorin sowie der Direktorin des Kunstvereins im Rahmen der Ausstellung unterzeichnet. Damit wurde in München eine Diskussion über die Verantwortlichkeiten von Kunstinstitutionen ausgelöst, die über den Verein hinausging. Die Resonanz war sehr groß, da eine Diskussion aufgerufen wurde, die die Korrektur des bestimmenden Kunstkanons betrifft. Eine Diskussion, die zur Zeit in vielen Institutionen geführt wird.

    Die Ausstellung DISPOSSESSION im Künstlerhaus entstand aus einer ähnlichen Fragestellung. Die Geste des Münchner Kunstvereins stellt deshalb auch das Künstlerhaus vor die Frage:
    Welche Verantwortlichkeiten gibt es aus der Geschichte für eine Kunstinstitution?
    Und welche Rolle spielen die Künstler*innen?

    DISPOSSESSION beschäftigt sich mit der Geschichte des Künstlerhauses vor, während und nach der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft in Wien und wie die Kategorisierung der Menschen dazu diente, Personen zu entwerten und auszuschließen. Fünf zeitgenössische Positionen beschäftigen sich mit den Themen Ausgrenzung und Enteignung. Sie untersucht den Raum der institutionellen Entscheidungen über Inklusion oder Ausschluss von Künstler*innen, dessen Konzeption bis heute unser Bild darüber bestimmt, wie Kunst präsentiert wird.

  • DISPOSSESSION

    Künstlerhaus
    Gesellschaft bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Österreichs
    Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Wien

    23.09.2021 – 16.01.2022

    Curated by Ariane Müller

    Artists:
    Linda Bilda, Stephan Janitzky, Anita Leisz, Sophie Lillie & Arye Wachsmuth, Henrik Olesen

    With works of:
    Richard Apflauer, Theodor Bruckner, Jehudo Epstein, Otto Herschel, Sofie Korner, Gerda Matejka-Felden, Teresa Feodorowna Ries, Anni Schulz, Friedrich Schön, Heinrich Sussmann, Willy Verkauf/ André Verlon und aus der Sammlung Marco Birnholz

    Exhibition design: Ariane Müller and Jasmin Trabichler

    Exhibition catalogue (PDF, German, 2,7 MB):
    DISPOSSESSION Katalog

    Wiener Künstlerhaus: Gedenkkultur neu denken
    by Sophie Lillie and Arye Wachsmuth
    Der Standard online, Jan 23, 2022

    Two years ago, the artist Ariane Müller was invited by Tim Voss, who was then the artistic director of the Künstlerhaus, to conceive an exhibition dealing with the history of the Artists’ Association in the time before, during, and after National Socialist rule in Vienna.

    The title Dispossession describes her approach to this topic and therewith also the methodology of the exhibition: Although “dispossession” is usually translated as “Enteignung” in German, this word does not fully capture the meaning of the English term. Possession, and even more importantly, the idea of being possessed, is missing in it. National Socialism, like any right-wing movement, was obsessed with categorising people. It defined attributions such as “Jewish”, “homosexual”, or “asocial” down to the last degrading detail. What was not “normal” was dismissed as “degenerate”. It reduced women to their reproductive function and was obsessed with the concept of race and the ideology of characteristics attached to it.

    The people described in this way share the fact that they themselves were not given a say in the definition that devalued them. The actual purpose of this categorising description was to take something away from the people described by it. The exhibition argues against the notion of possessing qualities that result from external ascriptions.

    The artists Linda Bilda, Stephan Janitzky, Anita Leisz, Henrik Olesen, Arye Wachsmuth, and the historian Sophie Lillie were invited to take part in this exhibition because they have been working for years on the complex issue of identity attribution, the aim of which is to fix, devalue, and thus dispossess individuals. The works were not created with a history of the Künstlerhaus in mind. Instead, they show very different ways of approaching it altogether. In doing so, they indicate that there are other logics than those conveyed by the surviving documents from this time, since these are also always part of what they describe.

    The second part asks what kind of representation the Künstlerhaus provided for its members, and how much the reactionary socio-political orientation of this artists’ association has influenced our image of art. All one really has to do is walk through Vienna with open eyes. There is hardly an official administrative building, church, or state opera curtain in which a member of the Künstlerhaus was not involved. The Künstlerhaus had the power to exclude artists from this canon from commissions, orders, professorships, support, recognition, backing, practical help, and income – and did. Richard Apflauer, Theodor Bruckner, Jehudo Epstein, Hilda Goldwag, Sofie Korner, Gerda Matejka-Felden, Teresa Feodorowna Ries, and the collector Marco Birnholz were involved with the Künstlerhaus, but were either consistently excluded from membership or whose already-granted membership was later revoked.

    This desolidarisation extended far into the post-war period and thus also had an impact on the presence of these artists in today’s public collections. Only very few works by these artists have survived. Dispossession now shows excerpts of some of these works in an exhibition presented by the very institution that abandoned the people who created them and was wholly unconcerned about their fate during their lifetime.

    Stephan Janitzky

    Linda Bilda

    Henrik Olesen

    Sophie Lillie, Arye Wachsmuth

    Theodor Bruckner

    Teresa Feodorowna Ries, Gerda Matejka-Felden, Richard Apflauer

  • Martin Ebner, für Kalte Nadel: TOP Museum, 2020
    Kalte Nadel - Sonderedition

Suse Weber - Shadow Play

Nachwende-Fallstudien

Suse Weber

  • Animation: Levity and Gravity, Martin Ebner & Klaus Weber, 2021

    Klaus Weber
    Thinking Fountains
    On view until 2026

    Hayward Gallery
    Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd
    London SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

  • HOW TO FIND MEANING IN DEAD TIME

    Exhibition In the framework of Archival Assembly #1

    SAVVY Contemporary
    Reinickendorfer Straße 17 13347 Berlin

    Opening 26.082021 19:00
    On Show 27.08.–12.09.2021 Daily 14:00–19:00

    Curated by Kayfa ta (Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis)


    With Adel Abidin, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Kamal Aljafari, Filipa César with Sana na N’Hada and Zé Interpretador, Bady Dalloul, Martin Ebner, Haytham El-Wardany, Dana Enani and Nadine El Banhawy, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo, Nihad Kreševljaković and Clarissa Thieme, Anna Kutera, Randa Megahed, Bodo Pagels, Walid Raad, Anri Sala, Sanaz Sohrabi, Fiona Tan, and Dorothee Wenner

    Photos © Raisa Galofre

    Martin Ebner, Film Without Film, 2013/2021
    (after The Evil Faerie by George Landow, FLUX Film No. 25, 1 min., 1966)
    painted wood, ca. 300 x 10 x 10 cm

    The Evil Faerie, by George Landow aka Owen Land, was made in 1966 as part of George Maciunas‘ Fluxfilm Anthology. Following a comprehensive title sequence, The Evil Faerie only shows one single gesture by an actor whose identity remains unknown. The film is thus of a purely informative nature, only transporting this one not clearly decipherable gesture. What the „evil faerie“ wants to express, we don’t know, this is potentially free for interpretation. We do not even know for sure who made the film (Landow, or rather Maciunas himself?), but at least, this is agreed upon, even if it is a very short one: it still is a movie. It even found its way into an archive.

    The work Film Without Film (after The Evil Faerie) acts as a kind of Non-NFT (Non-non-fungible token), stored in loose pieces of painted wood instead of chains of data blocks, refering to a decidedly communitaristic and playful approach on copyright, ownership, memory and proof, as practiced by a generation of maybe humble, maybe disillusioned, maybe artists some years ago.


    In the framework of Archival Assembly #1 – the (temporary) end of the five-year project and extended international collaboration “Archive außer sich” – this exhibition by the independent publishing and curatorial platform Kayfa ta (Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis) takes a closer look into experimental languages of cultural production and dissemination, as well as the alternative histories and possibilities embedded in the archive. How to find meaning in dead time reflects on some of the key issues surrounding the archive – its agency, inert and active modes of resistance, as well as its transformative potential in expanding personal and collective histories beyond the dominant conventions of constraint and erasure.

    What is dead time? In physics, it is a technical term referring to the time that passes unrecorded by our detection systems due to a technical lag in the recording device. As such, dead time is unrecorded time. In history, dead time may refer to time that has disappeared from the records, due to a deliberate act of deletion, because it has been deemed unworthy or incongruous with the desired canonization of history. It may also refer to time that goes unaccounted for because the records attesting to its existence are no longer materially present, concealed by loss or decay. Moreover, the records of this time may be of a nature that is unreadable by our devices; records in minor languages, voiced by unacknowledged subjects or subjectivities, and contained in subsidiary media. Alternatively, dead time may be time that has wilfully withdrawn from our reach, “playing dead” in wait for a more opportune time to reinsert itself into the purview of the living. In all the above cases, time is not dead in itself, it is only insular to us because of our inability to attend to it.

    1. If you sit in your room for hours on end with nothing to do, place an empty cassette tape in the player and press the record button.
    Haytham El-Wardany, How to Disappear [1]

    This exhibition contains fragments of time that are inert, have escaped the record or are in the process of resurrecting from their transitory host media. These host media include but are not limited to: 16mm films, 3D-printed cassette tapes, CCTV footage, colonial photo archives, human bodies, a jeweller’s closet, matchboxes, VHS tapes, the vaults of the Louvre museums, VHS tapes, a Persian carpet and others. More than a finite collection of material that we visit and employ, this archive of temporalities is also an immaterially expansive being that chose to visit and employ us, animating our bodies and possibly expanding our narratives of self, place and time.

    7. Listen one more time. Note that what you are hearing is the sound of long, empty hours, and that the new-found meaning that you have gradually grown accustomed to is that very emptiness you had been experiencing, now abstracted from your feelings, and thoughts, and presence. You will discover that emptiness is not in itself an absence of all meaning, but rather your inability to understand new meaning.
    Haytham El-Wardany, How to Disappear [2]

    Team

    Curation Kayfa ta (Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis)

    (mehr …)

  • Routes/Roots
    TOKAS Project Vol. 4

    Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo
    2-4-16 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033

    SUGITO Yoshie
    TAKEDA Tatsuma
    YOSHIDA Shingo

    Martin EBNER
    Joachim FLEISCHER
    Stefanie GAUS

    2021/8/21 (Sat) – 10/3 (Sun)
    11:00-19:00
    Closed 8/23, 9/6, 13, 21, 27

    Martin Ebner, Drop Car, 2018
    HD video, audio, 10 min
    Sound by Theresa Patzschke and Martin Ebner

    Drop Car was conceived as a video installation piece, and blends photographic street views of nocturnal Tokyo, encapsuled in an artificial glass drop shape, with images of blanket-covered cars, as they are often visible in the quiet neighbourhoods of Sumida-ku district. The work is about a changing psychological relationship of society towards the car, at a moment in time when cars are becoming „intelligent“ technological extensions of the human body and psyche.
    The final scene (titled „One less“) is different, like a „small film within the film“, showing a car picked by giant chopsticks from a crowded highway and lifted up into the sky. This absurd, but minimalist gesture points towards a certain aspect of positive self-restriction, perceivable in Japanese culture, but maybe applicable to everywhere.
    The work is certainly inspired by the encounter with Japanese avantgarde art and experimental film from the period between 1960 till 1990. Having walked urban areas in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima and other cities, I also experienced a special joy in recognizing the inventiveness and beauty at the intersections of quickly changing public and private spaces. If „artificial intelligence“ is something mostly invisible, also incorporated in cars, then Japans animistic tradition might give a clue towards a future co-relation of man and machine.

    In 2011, TOKAS launched the Exchange Residency Program in which creators are dispatched to Berlin and invited to Tokyo, the two having a Friendship Cities relationship. Participants from Japan are offered the opportunity to stay and work at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin. This exhibition presents works by artists based in Berlin, to commemorate both 10 years of exchange between TOKAS and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and 160 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Japan.

    Compared to other major cities of the world, Berlin’s social structure makes it easy for artists to live and for creative communities to form, and creators from all over the world have gathered to live and work in the city. Sugito Yoshie, Takeda Tatsuma, and Yoshida Shingo, whose works are featured in this exhibition, have also lived in Berlin for several years and have been producing works with multifaceted perspectives on Europe’s unique history and diversity while adapting to a different linguistic and cultural environment. They participated in TOKAS’s residency program for Japanese artists in Germany, exhibited their works at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and each of them deepened their knowledge and insight through activities and interactions that leverage the networks they have cultivated thus far. As it happens, this year all three artists have elected to leave Berlin temporarily, for different reasons, and have begun living and working in new places that are also removed from their places of origin.

    This exhibition features works with themes related to legends, traditions, and cultures that draw the artists’ interest. Also, video works capturing Japan from distinctive perspectives, by past participants in the Tokyo TOKAS Residency, Martin Ebner, Joachim Fleischer and Stefanie Gaus, who are currently based in Germany, will be screened.

    When people relocate, we plan routes to reach our destinations, put down roots, and leave vestiges of ourselves there. Then, we plan routes to our next destinations and take flight once more. The works in this exhibition reveal something like layers of soil formed through slow accumulation over the course of long journeys, and the cultural fruits that grow up from this soil.

    *As of March 2021, TOKAS has concluded our activities at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien for the time being, but moving forward, we intend to continue the exchange program between Germany and Japan.

    Admission Free
    Organizer Tokyo Arts and Space (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
    Support The German Embassy in Tokyo, Goethe-Institut Tokyo

    Martin Ebner, with Ariane Müller: Untitled (Tokyo), 2017
    HD video, 7 min. 43 sec., audio

    Like a freewheeling unemployed cousin of Gibo-chan (the official mascot of Edo-Tokyo Museum), this obviously non-Japanese person in costume resembles a tin can and tries to communicate with residents and passersby by offering them three gestures that could be danced versions of Rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese: Janken, じゃんけん). It wanders Tokyo’s streets in an attempt to make friends, but can’t really distinguish between people and vending machines or cars.

    All photos: KATO Ken
    Courtesy of Tokyo Arts and Space