Exhibition Openings

Sonja Füsti »Vor dem Fall«
In public buildings one sometimes finds unlocked doors which reveal a different and unexplored world. With her installation »Vor dem Fall«, Sonja Füsti (*1975 in Leonberg) opens the door to studio 14 of the Akademie and to everything that hides behind. She provides an insight into the interior of the Akademie and thus unfolds a process with an undefined beginning and ending.

Stephan Henrich »The Fungus-Project – On Robotic Gardeners And Vertical Scrubs«
Extracting from the forests lower tiers, the scrubs accompanied by its wights ones erected to verticalness, cannot be kept off from entering architecture.

The Fungus-Project by Stephan Henrich’s (*1978 in Würzburg) uses perpetuated digestion as construction-mode.
The digestion of straw by mushroom-mycelium acting as a vital, rhizomatically growing glue, creates a living composite-material forming a self-enshadowing reticulated structure, being watered and maintained by a water-powered (lawn-sprinkler-principle) gardener-robot, using hook-like branchings on the structure to climb on it cropping oyster-mushrooms. The Fungus-Project works out the reciprocal effects of robotic “bachelor-machines” maintaining and thereby informing architecture, and architecture informing machines. Engaging living organisms to build structures it elaborates several layers of programmation and reprogrammation between nature, machinism and human overwriting each other.

Mikael Mikael »Retreat #1«
Mikael Mikael (*1974) is an artist who operates in secret and withdraws from public life. He lives everywhere and nowhere. In the series »Retreat/Rückzugsorte«, the homeless globetrotter deals with the notion of ideal accommodations and hiding-places, with temporary shelters, places of disappearance and reappearance like caravans, tree houses, holes in the ground etc. At the Akademie, Mikael Mikael shows the work »Retreat #1«, a tent made of plastic waste in an unreal, desert-like landscape. Additional to »Retreat #1, he shows part of the series »To White Out«, a photographic collection about protective suits in which he deals with the aesthetics of catastrophes and the accordingly visual strategies.

Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa »Bitch on a Bent Palm Tree«
The tropics as a trope has become synonymous with holiday fun, sex, luscious fruit, and endless natural resources. Yet the tropics are also the locus of ecological disaster, as well as labour and economic exploitation. Using photography, sculpture and paintings on plexi glass, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa (*1978 in Guatemala City, Guatemala) seeks to infuse images of the tropics, such as banana and palm trees, with the grotesque and the uncanny.

Ana Vilenica »uz)bu))na)))«
uz)bu))na))) (alarm. eng.) is an experiment in self-organization aiming to develop more sensible models of being together. uz)bu))na))) wants to provide and create unexpected spaces and unexpected situations for the production of knowledge. uz)bu))na))) is working in the field of transversal connections of theoretical, artistic and political activist practices that develop in the vicinity of the movement against economic globalization. uz)bu))na))) is a queer, feminist, post-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-racist, anti-fascist world view. uz)bu))na))) is a state of alert, call to direct action and creating new worlds. uz)bu))na))) collective are: Ana Vilenica (*1978 in Pančevo, Serbia), Tanja Marković, Nikoleta Markovic and Lina Mounzer. uz)bu))na))) started its practice by publishing online magazine. The first issue deals with political perspectives and problems of the New Feminism and art from the perspective of theorists, activists and artists from the region of former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Kerstin Meyer and Achim Lengerer »L’auditeur/The auditor«
The World Social Forum, which takes place on a bi-annual basis, is a platform for social activism against global capitalism. With their project “L’auditeur/The auditor“ Kerstin Meyer and Achim Lengerer reflect on the complex situation of the latest World Social Forum at Dakar, Senegal. The artists invited Mohamadou Diol and Seydou Ndiaye, both writers and theater directors working with the method of Augusto Boal in Dakar, Senegal, to wander around the site of the World Social Forum 2011. They disposed of a clear arrangement with which to reflect the complex situation of the World Social Forum: each day Mohamadou Diol and Seydou Ndiaye would be listening in to the talks as they happened, taking notes all the time; and immediately turning them into radio plays in the mobile sound studios. The studio booth consisted of two blue foam mats, which could be transported and set up easily on the extensive Dakar University campus.

On Sunday, September 25, 3 pm, the art historian Stephan Pohl guides the visitors through the exhibitions.