With installations by Mark Dion, Assaf Gruber and Elisabeth Price, as well as a micro-opera by Ulrike Haage & Mark Ravenhill
Opening on 29 January 2018 at 7:00 p.m.
What does a wet collection sound like? What can expedition materials tell us about natural scientists? What does it feel like in the deepest layers of Earth’s history? And have you ever thought about the meaning of display-case glass in museums? Featuring three installations and live performances of a micro-opera composed for the museum’s wet collection, the pilot project Art/Nature is entering its fourth round of interventions. In very different ways, these works interrogate the spaces and materials of the museum, draw attention to obscure objects and themes, challenge the way people see things and invite them on journeys of sensory exploration. Video interviews with the artists provide insight into the creative processes behind the works.
What drives someone to wait for hours for the chance to observe a particular animal or spend years traveling through foreign countries to collect plants, or rocks? The desire to explore these motivations inspired Mark Dion’s artistic intervention Collectors Collected. The Material Culture of Field Work. He looks at the scientists who have gathered objects for the museum’s collections for over 200 years, much like an anthropologist studies a foreign culture. Dion focuses on materials used outside for work “in the field”. In doing so, he asks how these objects provide information about the technological, political, historical, and economic aspects of scientific work. Curator: Christine Heidemann, Berlin. Mark Dion (b. 1961 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, based in New York) has been working since the 1980s on our relationship to nature in science and art. He has exhibited internationally, at venues including the Natural History Museum in London (2007), documenta 13 in Kassel (2012), the Istanbul Biennale, and the ICA Boston (both 2017).
Assaf Gruber’s artworks often deal with the interplay between people’s ideologies and their life stories, and with the way in which they shape and influence private and public spheres and relationships. This was also the theme of his film installation The Conspicuous Parts. The film challenges the ways in which museums represent and communicate scientific facts or assumptions. The life stories of the protagonists – a taxidermist and writer working at the museum – elucidate how the presentation of those facts is shaped by the cravings and desires of individuals. Over the course of the film, we gradually lose the capacity to distinguish between scientific fact and artistic freedom. Curator: Dorothée Brill, Berlin. Assaf Gruber (b. 1980 in Jerusalem, based in Berlin) typically plays with ambivalence in his films and sculptures. His solo exhibitions include The Anonymity of the Night at the Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi in Lodz, Citizen in the Making at Eigen+Art Lab in Berlin, and Rumor at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2018).
Elizabeth Price’s BERLINWAL is made from objects and spaces of the natural history museum itself. Price’s intervention into the museum’s architecture invites you to dwell in the gallery space and gaze into a neighboring courtyard that once held the Whale Hall, opened in 1935 and destroyed in a fire storm in 1945. Its most spectacular exhibit was a bowhead whale skeleton. When the museum opened in 1889, the specimen was shown in what is now the Dinosaur Hall. Later, in the 1930s, it was moved to the newly built Whale Hall. The work includes a pamphlet with a text by the artist telling the story of the skeleton and the Hall from their earliest geological formations to recent political history. Curator: Bergit Arends, London. Elizabeth Price (b. 1966 in Bradford, UK) was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize and the Paul Hamlyn Award, both in 2012. Her recent works include A RESTORATION (2016) at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the curated exhibition In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy (2016–17). Price lives and works in London.
With her micro-opera Rete Mirabile | Wundernetz, Ulrike Haage brings new life to the museum’s wet collections. The composer translated her exploration of the space’s material and atmosphere into an associative fabric of sound. The audience experiences the work, which oscillates between austerely repetitive minimal music and imaginative echoes of renaissance music, as they walk through the collections. Mark Ravenhill’s libretto plays with images from Vampyroteuthis infernalis, an essay by philosopher Vilém Flusser on the vampire squid’s experience of the world. (The museum’s collections contain a type specimen for the squid, which was first described in 1903.) He approaches the material poetically, critically and symbolically. The ten songs of the micro-opera are composed in different poetic genres, reflecting shifts of perspective between human and animal. The work of composer, pianist, and director Ulrike Haage (b. 1957 in Kassel, Germany; based in Berlin) combines jazz, avant-garde, classical music and literature. She received the German Jazz Award in 2003. Dramatist and director Mark Ravenhill (b. 1966 in Haywards Heath, UK; based in London) writes plays, scripts and radio dramas.
Premiere of the micro-opera on 12 February, 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. Additional performances: 19 Feb / 26 Feb / 5 March, at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. (approx. 40 min.). Reservation required: kunst@mfn-berlin.de
Radio broadcasts: SWR2 on 5 April at 10:03 p.m., subsequently available online at www.swr2.de/wundernetz. Deutschlandfunk Kultur on 20 July at 12:05 a.m.
Launched as a pilot project in 2014 by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Art/Nature examines the interplay between contemporary art, museum practices, and natural science. Working with external curators, artists were invited to explore the research museum and its collections in order to develop new works. This is the fourth and last round of interventions. The documentation and evaluation of the pilot project will be published in book form in the summer. In the meantime, an overview of all the works can be found on the project website, where the talks and panel discussions held at the international Kunst/Natur conference in June 2017 can also be seen.
Further information: http://kunst.mfn-berlin.de/
Please sign up by 22 January at: kunst@mfn-berlin.de
Runs from 30 Jan. – 29 Apr. 2018