• Fri 26 10 2018 •
The Time of the Archive Palimpsest

With ALA YOUNIS, BINNA CHOI and CLARISSA THIEME
Moderated by Nanna Heidenreich

20:00

In english language
Venue: Stadtgarten, Venloer Straße 40, 50672 Cologne

5€ / Free admission for students

Which time defines archives? The time when the materials were collected, or the present, from which we view the archive? In recent months the Akademie der Künste der Welt has featured a variety of artistic positions dealing with (non) archived histories under the theme found:erased:palimpsest.
The last evening in this series is dedicated to the question of how the present influences our interpretation of the past, and what conclusions we can draw for our own time from our ever-present preoccupation with archives.
The invited artists will focus on events from recent history. In her presentation, BINNA CHOI refers to the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980 and how this is celebrated in a national historical frenzy without any relation to the political situation of the time. CLARISSA THIEME’s film Today Is 11th June 1993 deals with amateur videos from the period of the siege of Sarajevo. She is less interested in the pure collection and presentation of materials than in their restaging and how the view into the past influences us as observers in the present. In Plan for Greater Baghdad ALA YOUNIS turns to the documentation of demonstrations of male power in a variety of historical documents about Baghdad’s architectural history, allowing the same story to be told from a female perspective in Plan (fem.) for Greater Baghdad.
The evening will conclude with NANNA HEIDENREICH leading the three artists in a discussion about the political potential of dealing with archives–how much does reflecting on the past determine how we deal with the present? And what contribution can artists make in order not to relinquish the decision over the selection of archival materials to current power structures?

CLARISSA THIEME is an artist and filmmaker. Working across film, photography, performance, installation and text, she combines documentary and fictional forms focussing on processes of memory, politics of identity and strategies of translation. Her practice is research-based and often takes a collaborative approach. Her work includes Was bleibt/Sta Ostaje/What Remains (Film, 30′, 2010), The Place We Left (Film, 60′, 2012), Resort (Film, 15′, 2013), Die DDR hat es nie gegeben/Appell (Video, 4′, 2016), Izmedzu Nas/Between Us (Open archive project, ongoing), Weiter war nichts, ist nichts (Installation series, ongoing), Vremeplov/Time Machine (Installation & performance, 2017), Today is 11th June 1993 (Film, 13′, 2018), Can't You See Them/POV (Installation 2018). Selected exhibitions: Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin (DE), Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles (US), Berlinale - Forum Expanded (DE), Kunsthaus Graz (AT), Kunstverein Düsseldorf (DE), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (DE), NGBK Berlin (DE). Thieme studied Media Art at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) and holds a MA in Cultural Studies And Aesthetic Practice, University Hildesheim. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Berlin Center for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS) and a lecturer at UdK. Thieme co-runs the Berlin project space raum für zweckfreiheit.

ALA YOUNIS is an artist, trained as an architect in Amman. Research forms a big part of her practice, as do curating, collaboration, film, and book projects. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice, Gwangju, and Istanbul biennials, the New Museum Triennial (New York), and the Home Works Forum (Beirut) among other places. Her projects include Tin Soldiers, Nefertiti, An Index of Tensional and Unintentional Love of Land, Plan for Greater Baghdad, and most recently, Plan (fem.) for Greater Baghdad and Drachmas. Younis curated the first Kuwaiti Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; and the Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence and its interventions in Algeria, Kuwait, and Ramallah. Younis holds a BSc in Architecture from University of Jordan and MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is member of Berlinale's Forum Expanded Advisory Board and co-founder of the non-profit publishing initiative Kayfa ta.

BINNA CHOI is director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, formerly Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, the Netherlands since 2008. She conceived and co-developed with the team and numerous others a long-term artistic research project like Grand Domestic Revolution (2009/2010-2013) and Composing the Commons a three-year interdisciplinary and artistic research programme (2013-2015/16); has been part of the faculty of the Dutch Art Institute /Masters of Fine Arts Programme in Arnhem; and working for and with a trans-local network Arts Collaboratory since 2013 and the co-founding members of European networks of art organizations Cluster. Her other curatorial projects include three day seminar program Cultivate or Revolutionize: Life Between Apartment and Farmland at Times Museum, Guangzhou (2014, with Nikita Choi) and summer school and exhibition Group Affinity at Kunstverein Munich (2011, with Bart van der Heide). For the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016) she worked as the curator. As part of her practice, she also engages with writing, editing, publishing, and contributing to discursive platforms with lectures, discussion and workshops.

NANNA HEIDENREICH studied in Göttingen and Berkeley, she has a graduate degree in Social Sciences and PhD in Cultural Studies. In October 2016 she was appointed professor for Digital Narratives - Theory at the ifs internationale filmschule köln. In the summer of 2016 she was visiting professor for Media & Cultural Studies at the University of Hildesheim and from 2011-2016 she was a lecturer/researcher in Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Braunschweig. From 2009-2017 she was curator for the Berlinale program Forum Expanded. From 2015-2017 she worked as a researcher and curator for Haus der Kulturen der Welt (hkw) in Berlin; projects include Now is the time of monsters. What comes after nations? and Soundtracks. Until 2009 she was a member of the antiracist network Kanak Attak and she is part of the network critical migration and border regime studies. In 2016 she joined the preparations for the Tribunal Unraveling the NSU-Complex, which took place in 2017 in Cologne. She has published widely on migration, visual culture, postcolonial media theory, art and activism, queer theory and has edited several DVDs (political, experimental and feminist filmmaking practices). She often participates in juries and serves as an advisor, most recently she conceived of the call Thinking Europe from the Sea for Camargo Foundation / Goethe Institute Marseille and occasionally she works as a translator (English-German, including articles by Kaja Silverman, Marc Siegel, Judith Halberstam, Saskia Sassen, Jasbir Puar). Nanna Heidenreich lives in Berlin.