VIDEOART AT MIDNIGHT AT BAW GARTEN | GROPIUS BAU
On five evenings, Videoart at Midnight presents selected artist films and video works by up-and-coming and established artists open air on the big cinema screen in the ›BAW Garten‹, this year’s Berlin Art Week festival hub at Gropius Bau. The programme will focus on themes such as community and collective experiences, identity or living together in the future—perspectives that will also be artistically negotiated under the new director of the Gropius Bau.
On the one hand, the programme presents Videoart at Midnight’s long-standing commitment to artists’ film and video in Berlin. On the other hand, the programme also refers to the artists’ presence at the Berlin Art Week’s partner institutions in the city. Mariechen Danz, for exam- ple, is this year’s winner of the GASAG Art Prize and is opening her exhibition ‘edge out’ at the Berlinische Galerie during Berlin Art Week, Helena Uambembe was a DAAD scholarship holder in 2023, has lived in Berlin since then and will receive the ars viva Prize 2025 of the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft. Lotte Nielsen was a fellow of the Danish Art Foundation at Künstlerhaus Bethanien 2022.
The participating artists have been guests at Videoart at Midnight with their works in recent years or will be in the near future.
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome.
SCREENING #1 – WED 11 SEP
8:30—9:30PM
Lotte Nielsen – Hexenhaus, 2024, 24:08 min
In intimate and sensitive images, Hexenhaus tells the story of a group of lesbian residents of an activist feminist collective in the heart of Berlin. The housing community was originally founded in 1981 when the house, like so many other empty houses in Berlin, was squatted by young people from the left-wing scene and legalised relatively soon afterwards. It was the first house in Berlin to be occupied solely by women. In personal conversations, the protagonists tell their stories of how they decided to turn the house into a collective exclusively for lesbians and how, after initial fluctuations over time, a community of twenty-four women emerged who, despite all the dynamic relationships, has grown old in and with the house. Hexenhaus is an anthropologically inspired, visual study of a collective experiment in which women live a life that provides them with a sheltered home, a social family, in direct opposition to the notion that a husband and children should be the centre of life. An attempt at a pure form of lesbian life into old age.
Ming Wong – Kontakthope, 2010, 22:05 min
With Kontakthope, Ming Wong restaged selected scenes from Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater piece Kontakthof (1978) as a work of video art, featuring artists and curators from Wong’s own professional community in Berlin. Wong reapplies extracts of Bausch’s choreography. She originally used it to describe dynamics of proximity and distance in couples’ relationships. Wong relates them to power dynamics within the art industry, raising questions with it about who holds agency and decision-making power over whom. The video depicts two different sections of the choreog- raphy side by side in a split-screen. On the left side, dancers dressed in sportswear perform everyday ges- tures, dance steps and interactions. On the right side, they conduct the same scenes in festive evening wear. During the choreography, gender roles appear to be equitably represented. Thus, some scenes are dominated by female-presenting figures, others by male-presenting ones. This impression is only broken in the final scene: at the centre, a performer presented as female stands motionless as more and more male figures approach and touch her pliant body. These gestures are not explicitly violent, but they do not appear to take place with mutual consent. The structures of male dominance, rendered explicit in this setting, are implied by the soundtrack from the start. Masculine-coded voices sing lyrics such as “Madame, you are so beautiful.” The dancers enact these words grotesquely, situating them in the context of the male gaze.
Mikhail Karikis – Ferocious Love, 2020, 12:00 min
What could bring us together in the face of the current adversity? The need for water, competition, the desire for human touch, singing together or caring for each other? Ferocious Love explores young people’s perspectives on an uncertain future in the face of adverse environmental conditions. Mikhail Karikis created this work in collaboration with young people from Birmingham City University and the activist choral group the Liverpool Socialist Singers. Together, seeking refuge as an imaginary community in a deep hole in the ground of a nature reserve, they speculate on a future in which the climate has changed and there are no more seasons. Inspired by student environmental activism and referencing feminist music thinker and per- former Pauline Oliveros and the writings of Naomi Klein, Karikis’ Ferocious Love focuses on the need for community and togetherness. It reflects the longing for hope and the emotional challenges faced by the younger generation as they realize the extent of the dramatic changes taking place.
SCREENING # 2 – THU 12 SEP
8:30–9:30PM
Marcel Odenbach – Im Schiffbruch nicht schwimmen können, 2011, 8:15 min
Three men of different ages from sub-Saharan Africa, so-called migrants, visit the Louvre in Paris and study a painting: The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1819). The painting is not only the most famous in the Louvre alongside the Mona Lisa, it also summarises the whole disaster of French colonialism. The failure of Europeans to fulfil their own noble aspirations. Under the flag of the great nation and the idea of revolution, freedom and fraternity, people became cannibals. “For Im Schiffbruch nicht schwimmen können (Foundering, and you can’t swim), I conducted in-depth interviews with the three Africans about their journey, or rather their escape, about their motivation and their lives. They talked to me about their homesickness, their worries, their fears and also about being a stranger in their own country. They kept some things from me but were also open to being self-critical. I only picked out a few statements from these long conversations and decided to use them in writing rather than orally. The protagonists are silent in front of the monumental painting. They sit by the sea and dream of distant things. But what happens when the distant becomes home? The sea in my work is the sea in front of my house in Ghana, which I see there every day. The sea that seems endless, peaceful, then full of danger again. For me as a German, hope and home always mean rescue and escape.” (Marcel Odenbach)
Helena Uambembe – Toil, 2021, 4:47 min
The black-and-white video Toil chronicles the life of a woman who plants a mango tree in devotion to the liberation of her people. Imbued with womanist over-tones and exploring the systemic barriers that often drive Black women to the point of exhaustion, it draws inspiration from women resistance fighters such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Josina Machel, as well as by the women of the 32-Bataljon, the former South African Foreign Legion, during the Angolan civil war and the post-war period. Through her fable, Helena Uambembe calls for a recognition of the historical injustices faced by such women as these, suggesting a shift toward a decentralized world where those who fight against injustice and inequality can finally reap the resilience they have sown. Helena Uambembe was born in Pomfret, South Africa, and her upbringing was rooted in a complex family history shaped by the Angolan Civil War. Her parents had fled the conflict in 1975, seeking refuge in the troubled community of Pomfret alongside other families associated with the 32-Bataljon.
Tebhoho Edkins – I am Sheriff, 2017, 28:00 min
I am Sheriff follows a young man, Sheriff Mothopeng, as he travels the mountain kingdom of Lesotho showing his film in remote villages, schools and communities. Sheriff was born with a girl’s body, but as the grandmother in his film recounts, he refused to wear dresses and always wanted to play with the boys. “My name is Sheriff now”, he says, “if you want me to come home and visit my home village you have to learn to call me by my name.” Through his film and personal narration, Sheriff talks to his audiences about gender identity and the frustration of being born the ‘wrong’ sex. His spectators react with surprise and curiosity, but also offer remarkable warmth, love and acceptance that ultimately encourage him to make his choice.
SCREENING # 3 – FRI 13 SEP
8:30–9:30PM
Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler – Defender, 2021, 30:00 min
Defender is a post-industrial (anti-) musical. Three women form a work team that is sent to an underground garage with a mission that remains unknown. All they find is a mysterious SUV wrapped in a kind of ‘Erlkönig’ camouflage used by the automobile industry to disguise design novelties. Should this be their new “SMART-MOBILE-HOME-OFFICE-DRIVE-MACHINE-THINGY“, or how and what are they supposed to do here? Seemingly quite close to the burn out of the three at some moments, a breathless trialogue of restlessly spoken and sung slogans from self-improvement rhetoric, fragments from commercials and self-help slogans of evangelical megachurch gurus unfolds around the mysterious object that functions like a Mcguffin for the socially unconscious. “There must be something better!” they chant at the end, before then expressing themselves only in animal sounds—the inevitable collapse, or rather an act of liberation through which they reclaim their own voices?
Bianca Kennedy – Angers, 2024, 4:40 min
Contemporary Hollywood is finally making room for women to vent the pent-up anger that society has suppressed for far too long. Bianca Kennedy‘s 5-channel installation of high-definition clips from the likes of Pearl and Don‘t Worry Darling reveal the raw and unpolished indignations displayed by female actors. The installation is presented in a 9:16 portrait format, disrupting the traditional cinema experience and confronting the audience with the intensity and emotionality of the scenes. The selection of filmed extracts reflects a range of emotions—from desperate rage to triumphant assertion—and invites reflection on how female anger has been historically misunderstood and pathologised.
Sunny Pfalzer – I Know What To Do, 2022/2023, 16:37 min
„Vibing“ is a structural matter and repetition can be brutal. It is the feeling of a teenager, posing in front of a mirror, with a blush of shame on their pretty face. Not yet in full capacity to grasp the social implications of their creation, but eager to learn. “It is easy to be with me, just for a moment” the image says. “Can you stretch my ankle while I try to be myself?”—“Yes, I know what to do. The video I Know What To Do is deeply rooted in Sunny’s performative practice. The basis of the work is a choreographic research into gestures from music videos of the Country/Schlager culture: How butchy is Schlager singer Andreas Gabalier? What happens when we mimic his gestures? The research becomes a metaphor for a feeling, underpinned by a voiceover consisting of collaboratively written texts by the performers, opening up an intimate and poetic layer and taking the audience into the performers’ thought processes. The video work is musically underpinned with sound by R’n’B musician Marshall Vincent.
Anna Ehrenstein and Osiriz33 (Leonidas Emre Pakkan) – Passdeutscha, 2023, 3:55
Passdeutscha is a collaboration between the artist Anna Ehrenstein and the rapper and actor Osiriz33. The story is set in Cologne-Chorweiler and Berlin-Kreuzberg, the neighbourhoods in which the musician and artist themselves live. These are also the neighbourhoods that are equated in the dominant public debate with a refusal to integrate, neglect and diffuse feelings of threat. An external perception by the public that is repeatedly confirmed by the media-effective proclamation of ‘imagined inevitabilities’. The video contrasts this with self-empowering images of the neigh- bourhoods and their inhabitants, addresses everyday racism and replaces the integration paradigm with dis- integration as a possibility for radical conviviality. The song written by Osiriz33 in collaboration with Ehrenstein for the video is an alternative national anthem for radical diversity and anti-racism.’
SCREENING # 4 – SAT 14 SEP
8:30–9:30PM
Damir Očko – The Dawn Chorus, 2023, 17:42 min
The Dawn Chorus is the outbreak of birdsong at the start of a new day. It is the inspiration for a dream-like gathering of the artists local queer community in Zagreb. The joyous celebration of queer bodies pays homage to the kingdom of birds, as free and fragile creatures, through voguing, dancing, drag and costumes The Dawn Chorus is an interpretation that shows the potential of the intersections between our own identities and the inclusive spaces open to other species in the future. Filmed like a fluid ballroom event but without the popular electronic beats typically associated with such gatherings, the film solely features the sounds of bodies in motion, the rhythmic impact of dancing, resounding percussive noises created by bodies, and chanting. These elements are accompanied by polyphonic sounds of birdsong onomatopoeias and sung by Le Zbor a lesbian-antifascist choir from Zagreb.
Mariechen Danz – Knot in Arrow: Ore Oral Orientation, 2017, 16:45 min
How can we know? This question runs through the entire oeuvre of the Irish-German artist. “We live in a modernity that has only been able to preach economic and techno- logical progress because it is still based on the back of a worldwide exploitation of resources and non-modern societies. How can we still be sure: how to know?” (Angelika Stepken). When is something considered knowledge? Do we only know what we have learned? How does information imprint itself on our bodies, bringing it “into shape”? And what kind of role do signs play in this? Mariechen Danz’s works—sculptures, installations and performances—investigate different bodily inscriptions and advocate for un-learning and un-mapping. (excerpt: Technoschamanismus—Inke Arns, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, 2021)
Katarina Zdjelar – Gaze Is a bridge, 2023, 22:00 min
Katarina Zdjelar’s sensitive film Gaze Is a Bridge is inspired by the painting Self-Portrait with Rifle (1912) by Nasta Rojc (1883 – 1964), one of Croatia’s most important artists, as well as by the work and personal history of photographer and video artist Ana Opalić, her partner Martina Zvonić and their children Meri and Niru. Against the backdrop of the biographies of two women determined by the right to freedom, self-confidence and love, and set in two different eras almost a century apart, Zdjelar develops an emotional web of associations, figures and mu- sic, and opens up an open space for the gaze in the intimate atmosphere of home: a gaze that connects autobiographies, a gaze of understanding, but also a gaze that challenges us to reach out and cross the bridge between the known and the unknown, between the present and the past; a gaze to build a bridge of connection between us and them, me and you; a gaze to recognise ourselves in our fragility, alienation and vulnerability, in the struggle for personal positions and places that belong to us all.
SCREENING # 5 – SUN 15 SEP
8:30–9:30PM
Maya Schweizer – Sans Histoire, 2023, 28:28 min
In Sans Histoire, an epic flow of thoughts, Maya Schweizer confronts present-day fears of the end of civilization both “without history” and “without story.” Unnerving footage of animals at night, visions of a technologized future, and images of people dancing to excess or fleeing from war combine to generate an apocalyptic atmosphere. Yet what initially appears dystopian bears a utopian potential for new beginnings: again and again, the artist deploys images of waves, oceans, and currents that sweep up what she shows, wash it away, and absorb it. Maya Schweizer guides our attention to forgetting, as a reality determined by human life. This paradox is where we find her proposal for dealing with our era’s existential fears: Sans Histoire is a space to honor remembrance and a monument to forgetting.
Omer Fast – De Oylem iz a Goylem, 2019, 24:35 min
In De Oylem iz a Goylem, Omer Fast juxtaposes the Alps, grey colossi, snow-covered and icy, with a clichéd myth: the figure of the eternal Jew who mocked Jesus on the way to the crucifixion and now, cursed by him, must wander the world immortally. Traditionally dressed, with a hat and temple curls, he appears in a chairlift next to a functionally dressed ski tourer. The absurdity of this image forms the starting point for the film. Without being asked, the Jew begins to tell the tale of the goldsmith and the demoness, the tourist doesn’t want to hear it and an argument ensues. A scene that depicts power relations on a small scale, but in which the roles are suddenly reversed. In the end, the nameless protagonist tells the fairy tale to the end when—back in the warm light of the hotel room—she cannot let go of the mysterious encounter above the ski slope. In De Oylem iz a Goylem, Omer Fast subtly plays with human fears: that a promise of salvation could turn evil and that, as the title translates, fellow human beings might not care at all. (Kathrin Heinrich)
Gerta Xhaferaj – Kurban, 2021, 3:27 min
Every year at the end of August, the Bekachi Islamic religious community celebrates on Mount Tomorri in Albania at the tomb of Abaz Aliu, the flag bearer of the Battle of Karbala in 680, when the Sunnis and Shiites fell out. Thousands of Albanians come to this sacrificial festival, dervishes dance between the tomb of ‘Dede Baba’ and the slaughterhouse, where over 7000 sheep are slaughtered, cut up and grilled according to traditional methods as an expression of gratitude. Gerta Xhaferaj’s short essay Kurban (burnt offering) reflects on the artist’s memories of family gatherings on this occasion and attempts to explore the contemporary meaning and emotional complexity of tradition, violence and love associated with the ritual of sacrifice. The concept and practice of sacrifice is deeply rooted in religion, ethics and traditional society, but is increasingly at odds with the artist’s life experience through academic education and westernised discourse.