Fresh A.I.R. #7 Exhibition of the Artists in Residence „Picturing Democracy“

deutschsprachige Version des Textes

With the Fresh A.I.R. (Artist-In-Residence) program, the Stiftung Berliner Leben awards grants to European artists who deal with socio-political and urban issues. At the same time, they give residents of the city an insight into their perspective and skills in the form of workshops and events. The 11 fellows of the seventh Fresh A.I.R. year from a total of 7 nations came to Berlin in April 2022 and finished their fellowship in September 2022.

Since modernity, art and democracy have been a sign of progress, of emancipation; both are to a great extent objects of engagement. They are not only both something worth fighting for, or even something that nobilises the person fighting. They are also both only conceivable as activity, as commitment.

Democracy as a political form lives from negotiation processes. The eleven scholarship holders of Fresh A.I.R. Year #7 dealt with these processes. Under the title „Picturing Democracy“, the artists from seven European countries show how they address the fragility and the need for protection of democratic values such as freedom, equality and the rights of minorities.

With different approaches and in different media, Year #7 presents approaches to democratic action and preconditions of political life as well as models for a future democratic coexistence. Historical democratic and undemocratic events also play a role. National Socialist crimes are remembered in a video work and in photographs. We can approach the queer scene and its places in Schöneberg during the Weimar Republic with the help of sounds. Another archive consists of compiled smells that are associatively connected to democracy. A vegetabile sculpture, a video work on the flight of moths and photographs that capture the flight of moths show us how democratic principles for the coexistence of humans, animals and plants can be tested.

When it comes to the question of the freedom of movement of human bodies in different places and their limitations, boundaries are also always drawn between the public and the private. As the works show, debates can be held and utopias developed in places like coffee houses, in the Bundestag and on the street. Cardboard signs stand as a medium for the right to demonstrate and for freedom of expression par excellence. In the exhibition, they reproduce statements by voters. In a drawing that works with the ephemeral nature of easily smudged charcoal, the fragile balance of democratic coexistence is expressed. Also part of the exhibition are pictorial productions that deal with inequality in capitalism and its profoundly undemocratic mechanisms.

All these works combine a dialogical concern with their public presentation. They invite the public to reflect critically on the protection of basic democratic values and pluralistic forms of social coexistence.

I hope that you, dear readers, enjoy exploring the artistic works of our seventh year.

Janine Arndt
Artistic Director


Fresh A.I.R. #7 Online-Showcase

Anna Barnaföldi

In her four-part video installation, Anna Barnaföldi scales the visibility of democratic action. The media artist asks when and how democracy is expressed and becomes tangible.

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Denise Ackerl

A green screen that doubles as a dance floor, builds the basis of Denise Ackerl’s work. Her works emphasize the connections between urban space, borders, bodies and movement and advocate the right to move freely as an expression of a diverse democratic society.

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Elektra Stampoulou

Are olfaction and politics somehow connected? In her artistic research project, Elektra Stampoulou approaches politics through scent and examines relations between odours and impressions of democracy.

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Eleni Danesi

Through Somatic Architecture and Ecosomatics, Danesi examines which qualities of interspecies relationships can be viewed as interdependent and how humans can actively practice these relational actions, in order to cultivate the sensation of Democracy within themselves.

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Ilona Stutz

In her audio-visual work, Ilona Stutz uses the stenographic recordings of the 193rd session of the Bundestag in 2020 to examine a number of interjections made there and thus directs the focus to the culture of parliamentary debate.

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Johnny Pavlatos

In a site-specific project, Johnny Pavlatos explores the queer Schöneberg of the Weimar Republic. The lesbian, gay and queer utopias of the past should become utopias for the future.

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Karin Lindstén

In her poem and in her video work, Karin Lindstén deals with the cohabitation of animals and humans in the big city. In her work, the artist explores the characteristics and difficulties of human and animal cohabitation in a poetic way.

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Oscar Lebeck

In Germany, remembering and commemorating are essential foundations of the democratic self-image. In his performative video work and in his photographs, the artist shows the specific possibilities of art to make historical events tangible and to bring the past into the present.

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Răzvan Dumitru

Is democracy visible? How can we visualise this political form? How can democracy be depicted? Dumitru’s visualisation of democracy is a balance found, but also easily lost.

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Samuel Henne

In Samuel Henne’s work, the object of the American “Thank you” plastic bag becomes the motifs’ focal point and a metaphor for an imminent fall and for social failure within capitalist valences.

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Sonia Sagan

A carpet is one of the results of Sagan’s artistic research. As a place to dwell and exchange, it is representative of the role that coffee houses have played – and can play again in the future – in the process of social democratisation.

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