Aliens are temporary – a mutating tale at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien

9 April – 6 June 2022

at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien

Curated by Sonia Fernández Pan, Sylvia Sadzinski, Anaïs Senli

Aliens are temporary – a mutating tale is an invitation to think about plural worlds and multiple states of being. It acts as an attempt to break with the logic of human exceptionalism and to overcome binary paradigms between living beings and objects, between the „us“ and the „other“.

What does otherness mean? Who or what is perceived as the other and why? How is the so-called other a mutating term and a changing concept? How can otherness be present in the materiality of an exhibition, in space but also in time?

The exhibition project brings together contemporary artists whose works engage with alternative (cosmo)visions, creating new bodies, subjects and ways of living. Their works combine different disciplines from biology to sociology, posthumanism, new materialism, science fiction and environmental studies, and take speculative, vitalist and queer-feminist perspectives while  constituting and constructing bodies, societies and realities beyond the discursive.

Aliens are temporary – a mutating tale will undergo four mutations (three at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and one at Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch) and thereby become a living and mutating organism itself. Starting with an initially sparse and minimally used exhibition space, the audience will experience new artworks, installations and arrangements with every further mutation. Each of these mutations will be augmented by a speculative literary text associatively weaving together the artworks. A public program of becomings including talks, a reading group, a screening, a listening session and a walk in public space, will additionally animate the four mutations.

Artists:

Ally Bisshop, Sarah Browne, Club Ate (Justin Shoulder & Bhenji Ra), Lúa Coderch, Siouxzi Connor, Ann Cotten, Efe Ce Ele, Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, FRKTL, Pakui Hardware, Emily Hunt, Nona Inescu, Lorena Juan, KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch & Debo Eilers), KMRU & Aho Ssan, Vera Kox, Verónica Lehner, hn. lyonga, MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr), Sofía Montenegro, Silvia Noronha & Niko de Paula Lefort, Itziar Okariz, Lucía C. Pino, Lauren Reid, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Juli Schmidt, Anaïs Senli, Eirik Sördal, Alison Sperling, Sally von Rosen, Janaina Wagner, Sadie Weis, Leticia Ybarra, Ran Zhang u.a.