stattberlin: Burnt Stars

BURNT STARS
Meditations on resistance, resilience and systems

New work by Jenny Brown from her DAAD residency curated by Adam Nankervis

Opening event 7pm Thursday 17 January 2013 with viewing until Sunday 20 January from 2pm until 7pm or by appointment on 015214511085

BURNT STARS by Jenny Brown curated by Adam Nankervis

Burnt Stars is an exhibition that forms part of a preliminary investigation for a wider research program made possible by a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). This research involves creatively interpreting the life and legacy of political thinker Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975). The focus is on the readjustment of critical readings of Arendt as well as the story of her life framing a broader investigation of contemporary activism.

In the video Burnt Stars Arendt’s world is partly articulated through presentation of two others Martin Heidegger and Joseph Beuys. Nazi pilot, Joseph Beuys is shot down and lands on Martin Heidegger’s hut and whilst laying on the roof in a post-traumatic delirium envisions his redemptive path that enables him to find his place in the world. His words weave an alchemical journey illustrating the way artists incorporate truths and fictions in their creative actions to reconcile life’s negative forces.

Presented as counterpoint to both of these, Arendt presents the way that she matches her visionary thinking with her own actions in her private and public worlds.

A young Arendt is presented through the involvement of Annalena Kirchler, an activist dealing with gentrification in her home city of Hamburg, who initiated and continues to lead a reclamation and restoration campaign to save her neighbouring Schiller-Oper. Annalena’s activism for the institutional, social and personal aspect of rights reflects Arendt’s belief that there is an ongoing need to find ways to root and internalise these within a community so these communities can be sustainable.

Concentration Camp Bark Scrapers are objects used by Arendt in the Gurs Prison Camp scene in Burnt Stars that comprise small perforated tins used to scrape living tissue to eat. The work Skins extends related ideas of death and the camp including those relating to what remains of the living and ‘ghosts’ of the dead.

The work Rover illustrates points about structures and operations of political systems. The work draws from and features an episode of the 1967 television series The Prisoner. The series explores the Cold War and World War 2 individual and group control operations and the work in the exhibition extends this through an expandable time/space analogy. This is done through the involvement of Rover, the balloon-like monitoring system and security force of the series, that recaptures those who attempt escape the town. Rover is incorporated into a series of plates from various geographic locations and times from around the world.

Burnt Stars

by Jenny Brown

Editor - Kat Szuminska