NOWs: 2 or 3 Tigers

21 April - 03 July 2017 / Nows

2 or 3 Tigers
at

Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Berlin, Germany

Opening: April 20, 8pm

Opening program: April 20–23, 2017

Wherever humans have lived in a shared habitat with the tiger, mythology reflects the animal’s status as a liminal figure, closely related to the community, and yet marking its beyond. As a creature of mountains and borderlands, the tiger occupies a transitory zone separating civilization from wilderness, the living from the ancestor-spirit world.

As co-species and mythical symbol, the tiger plays an important role as a medium at the limits of society, carrying an imprint of how contemporary cultures have been shaped by encounters with otherness. The emblematic image of the tiger opens deep historical insights into the rapid remaking of human society since the dawn of colonial modernity.

At the same time as tigers were driven to near extinction, they leap into the imaginary of national modernity as a recurring ghost, and as symbols of national power, military might, and economic development they bind the hypermodern present to the colonial and pre-colonial past.

The works in the exhibition approach collective memories by questioning the historical nature of mediation, including its means of representation. They reflect on the changing nature of mass media and search for complex images that serve as sites for shared experiences of history. 2 or 3 Tigers derives its title from the work of artist, filmmaker and theater creator Ho Tzu Nyen, who explores the shifting shapes of tigers and weretigers in the ancient and modern mythology of Malaysia and Singapore.

Contributions from Park Chan-kyong, Jane Jin Kaisen and Guston Sondin-Kung reflect on histories of suppression, militarization, and exploitation in Cold War era Japan and Korea that haunt the geopolitics of the Pacific to this day. While installations by Yuichiro Tamura and IM Heung-soon present the tiger as an iconic medium of Asian military nationalism, a film by James T. Hong investigates the cultural dimensions of the tensions unfolding around several disputed East Asian islands to the present day. Photographs by Lieko Shiga made in the aftermath of the 2011 Tsunami in Japan; a digital 3D matrix by Chia-Wei Hsu of a Chinese deity displaced by the Cultural Revolution; and a large installation featuring a filmed performance along Seoul’s Han River paired with a ritualistic ensemble of sculptures transfiguring a broadcast station by Minouk Lim: all explore rapidly changing cosmologies and reverberations of animism and its forms of mediation across different political and technological registers.

Works by Ho Tzu Nyen, James T. Hong, Hsu Chia-wei, IM Heung-Soon, Jane Jin Kaisen & Guston Sondin-Kung, Minouk Lim, Park Chan-Kyong, Lieko Shiga, Tamura Yuichiro.

Curated by Anselm Franke and Hyunjin Kim

The exhibition is based in parts on the group exhibition Interrupted Survey, curated by Anselm Franke for ACC Gwangju and on view there until August 2017.

Part of 100 Years of Now

Poster image: Yuichiro Tamura: Hey Daddy, Hey Brother, 2017 (detail).

NOWs: Andreas Greiner and Raul Walch at Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS)

22 April - 09 July 2017 / Nows ⟶

NOWs: 7 trans-phonies Exhibition and Opening Talk Date　　　｜Sat., 22 April 2017, 15:00－17:00 Venue　　｜Tokyo Wonder Site, Shibuya Participants｜Andreas Greiner, Mirna Bamieh, Ligyung, Raul Walch, Erik Schmidt, Hou I-Ting The exhibition “7 trans-phonies” presents works by 7 creators who stayed at the TWS Residency from 2015 to 2016. The borderless city of Tokyo produces diverse harmonies and dissonances through the gathering and overlapping of individual voices. And what we hear as single sounds actually contain multiple sine waves. Creators who come to Tokyo from overseas hear the voices of foreign cultures, of their neighbors in this foreign country, of the artists they meet in Tokyo, and combine them with their own voices to create a new kind of voice/sound “trans-phony” which transcends cultural differences. Come and experience the 7 trans-phonies produced by these 7 creators. In 2006, Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS) launched the “Creator-in-Residence” program, which offers residence/production opportunities to creators from around the world. People of various nationalities and creative fields, such as art, film, music and architecture, reside and carry out their work in Tokyo and residency sites overseas. ＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝ More information, see Flyer. Raul Walch: Fabric & Space from 2015, Tokyo (see fabric&space). The works were realized during a residency at Tokyo Wonder Site in Japan, 2015.TW Andreas Greiner: Eye of the Hotaru Ika squid, still from Studies of an Alien Skin, 2016, photo by Paul Rohlfs Andreas Greiner: Still from Studies of an Alien Skin, 2016, photo by Paul Rohlfs NOWs: 7 trans-phonies Exhibition and Opening Talk Date　　　｜Sat., 22 April 2017, 15:00－17:00 Venue　　｜Tokyo Wonder Site, Shibuya Participants｜Andreas Greiner, Mirna Bamieh, Ligyung, Raul Walch, Erik Schmidt, Hou I-Ting The exhibition “7 trans-phonies” presents works by 7 creators who stayed at the TWS Residency from 2015 to 2016. The borderless city of Tokyo produces diverse harmonies and dissonances through the gathering and overlapping of individual voices. And what we hear as single sounds actually contain multiple sine waves. Creators who come to Tokyo from overseas hear the voices of foreign cultures, of their neighbors in this foreign country, of the artists they meet in Tokyo, and combine them with their own voices to create a new kind of voice/sound “trans-phony” which transcends cultural differences. Come and experience the 7 trans-phonies produced by these 7 creators. In 2006, Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS) launched the “Creator-in-Residence” program, which offers residence/production opportunities to creators from around the world. People of various nationalities and creative fields, such as art, film, music and architecture, reside and carry out their work in Tokyo and residency sites overseas. ＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝ More information, see Flyer. Raul Walch: Fabric & Space from 2015, Tokyo (see fabric&space). The works were realized during a residency at Tokyo Wonder Site in Japan, 2015.TW Andreas Greiner: Eye of the Hotaru Ika squid, still from Studies of an Alien Skin, 2016, photo by Paul Rohlfs Andreas Greiner: Still from Studies of an Alien Skin, 2016, photo by Paul Rohlfs

NOWs: Good Weather by Julius von Bismarck

19 April - 20 May 2017 / Nows ⟶

NOWs: Julius von Bismarck: Good Weather Marlborough Contemporary, New York Marlborough Contemporary presents the second solo exhibition by Julius von Bismarck. Although based in Berlin, this globetrotting artist rarely sits still and has visited four continents, including Antarctica, in the past four months alone. Emerging from recent trips to Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico, this body of work continues von Bismarck’s explorations of the intersection of human beings and the relentless forces of nature. The sculptures, photographs and video included here investigate the territory between our Victorian inclination toward a taming taxonomy and a cruel and chaotic reality. The exhibition as a whole acts as a highly distilled and museologically ordered document of extreme power and violence. Situating the jungle as both a potent symbol of Western fear and a romanticized rainforest ecosystem, von Bismarck creates a visceral tension for his audience. The video entitled Talking to Thunder depicts the artist’s attempts at taming a bolt of lightning. By firing an aluminum rocket (equipped with a grounding wire of braided Kevlar, copper and silver) into a raging storm he is able to complete a circuit of tremendous power between the sky and the ground. The result, captured on video and in still photographs, appears to literally straighten the lightning bolt in its path to the ground. Designed as eventual sculptures, the rockets themselves are included here, lightning-struck relics, loaded with the history of this communion. Like a Colonial scientist, von Bismarck has collected plant species from jungle. Rather than pressing tiny flowers in a notebook, the artist has pressed large plants and entire palm trees into flattened specimens. Heated to a precise 250 degrees in an enormous custom-built oven and a 50-ton hydraulic press, the plants are completely dehydrated without losing their verdant coloration, and squashed astonishingly flat. They are then backed with thin stainless steel to maintain their shape for presentation. NOWs: Julius von Bismarck: Good Weather Marlborough Contemporary, New York Marlborough Contemporary presents the second solo exhibition by Julius von Bismarck. Although based in Berlin, this globetrotting artist rarely sits still and has visited four continents, including Antarctica, in the past four months alone. Emerging from recent trips to Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico, this body of work continues von Bismarck’s explorations of the intersection of human beings and the relentless forces of nature. The sculptures, photographs and video included here investigate the territory between our Victorian inclination toward a taming taxonomy and a cruel and chaotic reality. The exhibition as a whole acts as a highly distilled and museologically ordered document of extreme power and violence. Situating the jungle as both a potent symbol of Western fear and a romanticized rainforest ecosystem, von Bismarck creates a visceral tension for his audience. The video entitled Talking to Thunder depicts the artist’s attempts at taming a bolt of lightning. By firing an aluminum rocket (equipped with a grounding wire of braided Kevlar, copper and silver) into a raging storm he is able to complete a circuit of tremendous power between the sky and the ground. The result, captured on video and in still photographs, appears to literally straighten the lightning bolt in its path to the ground. Designed as eventual sculptures, the rockets themselves are included here, lightning-struck relics, loaded with the history of this communion. Like a Colonial scientist, von Bismarck has collected plant species from jungle. Rather than pressing tiny flowers in a notebook, the artist has pressed large plants and entire palm trees into flattened specimens. Heated to a precise 250 degrees in an enormous custom-built oven and a 50-ton hydraulic press, the plants are completely dehydrated without losing their verdant coloration, and squashed astonishingly flat. They are then backed with thin stainless steel to maintain their shape for presentation.

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