The second round of the international pilot project Art/Nature will open with an acoustic parcours created by the Berlin artist duo Serotonin and series of large scale drawings and screen prints by the Peruvian artist Fernando Bryce. Both interventions focus on the political and cultural history of the Museum für Naturkunde and its collection around 1900. Launched jointly by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the project explores interactions between contemporary art, museum practice, and natural history research. Art/Nature invites artists to create new art works in order to open fresh perspectives on natural history collections and research. Two more series of interventions will lead up to 2018.
Fernando Bryce comes to the natural history museum from the twin perspectives of cultural history and global politics. His two-part work addresses the museum’s systems of ordering and classifying as well as imagery relating to natural history research. While conducting his research in the museum, Bryce came across some labels which had once been attached to objects, and cabinets. In combining these materials with historical inventories he created a large-format series of pen-and-ink drawings and screen prints. “Paradoxurus adustus” pays homage to largely neglected “museum things”, and visually communicates how natural history seeks to understand the world. In his second series Bryce likewise applies his technique of translating historical texts and images into pen-and-ink drawings, while enlarging and rearranging the material. Based upon expedition reports, newspaper articles, scientific publications, and popular science journals, “Auf frischer Tat” looks at the representation of natural science in early twentieth-century media.
Fernando Bryce is one of the most influential contemporary Peruvian artists. He lives and works in New York and Berlin. Curatorial support: Anita Hermannstädter
With “Parcours dans la mer de ciel. A parcours through the ocean of heaven. Or: the Levitite” the audio art duo Serotonin has created a five-part intervention comprising five acoustic dioramas to comment on the history of research and collecting at the Museum für Naturkunde. These dioramas consist of small presentation spaces: visual, audio, and conceptual exhibits which correspond to the chapters of a make-believe expeditionary tale. The year is 1884 – the recently established German nation is striving to gain political recognition on the world stage. There are the following settings: a variety theatre presenting a levitating virgin, Berlin’s Tiergarten park, where the crown prince grants a discreet audience, and a cave in the future German colony of Deutsch-Südwestafrika, today Namibia. Right in the middle of all this is the young protagonist van Berg, who becomes the leader of an expedition in Africa by pure coincidence and goes on to make a spectacular discovery. Serotonin has turned the story of this expedition into a humorous show compressing cultural history from a critical perspective. The five exhibits broach complex topics such as crossing boundaries, defining oneself through the other, and the origins of national identity and a sense of Heimat.
Serotonin is a radio art duo consisting of Marie-Luise Goerke and Matthias Pusch, who create radiophonic fictional and documentary works in their own studio. Curator: Gaby Hartel
More information: http://kunst.mfn-berlin.de/en
Opening 18 July 2016, 7 p.m. Doors open: 6.30 p.m.
Please register by sending an email by 10 July to: kunst@mfn-berlin.de
Duration: 19.7. – 16.10.2016