Denise Ackerl
@danceministerium_berlin

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A green screen that doubles as a dance floor, builds the basis of Denise Ackerl’s work. Starting from the dance floor, both in a physical and metaphorical sense, the performance artist has created a complex structure. It consists of videos, photographs, Instagram posts, performances and objects that she acquired at Berlin flea markets. All works deal with the possibilities of moving freely in public space. Where and how is freedom of movement taking place? What restrictions and limits are there for individuals, but also for groups in public space? What freedoms do individuals and their bodies have? What opportunities to travel, to choose and to be part of something are already given to us by our passport, the place of our birth and our parents, without us being able to influence this?

In her studio, Ackerl in a guided tour performance with visitors, explores the potential of the dance floor to find freedom of movement and how to carry it into the urban space. Using city maps, the performance artist makes historical reference to Berlin as a divided city, where both border crossings and the wall regulated mobility. An important reference here is David Bowie, whose concert in June 1987 took place right next to the Wall. The song „Heroes“, which he wrote during his time in divided Berlin, was also heard in East Berlin. The wall was thus lifted as a spatial division for the duration of the concert. On the other hand, the artist can be seen in photographs with a globe that shows the borders at the time of German division. Ackerl places herself and the globe, for example, at Berlin’s Wannsee, in Stralsund on the Baltic Sea and in front of Schöneberg’s town hall. In other words, in places where the division took place, was practiced and became visible. At the same time, the artist shows photos in which she poses on her dance floor with different generations of globes at the same time, like in a family photograph. Similar to disco balls, globes convey a certain harmony as objects at first glance. Differences between continents, countries and regions and the freedom of movement of their residents are initially invisible here. At the same time, globes stimulate the imagination and invite you to travel with your eyes freely on them. In a video, the artist goes beyond this kind of fantasy journey; here it seems as if she is dancing tango on the moon. The view of the earth from space forms the background here.

Another focus in Ackerl’s work is the freedom of movement of sex workers and queer people. In the Nollendorf district, which is queer and where at the same time many sex workers are visible in the urban space, the question of invisible borders and effective divisions of public space arises. In a video entitled “You don’t own me”, the artist draws attention to the connection between a lack of freedom of movement and the law that has been passed requiring sex workers to register, otherwise they are criminalised. Here, shoes printed with red lips, dance on the Berlin Reichstag, the seat of the German government. The photographs shown from the CSD, whose route led through the Nollendorf neighbourhood, are also about visibility in public space as a political statement. All videos and performances that are part of the artistic work were collected on the Instagram account @danceministerium_berlin. Ackerl’s works make clear the connections between urban space, borders, bodies and movement and advocate the right to move freely as an expression of a diverse democratic society.

Text: Dr. Silke Förschler

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Denise Ackerl

Dr Denise Ackerl, born 1987 in Vienna, Austria, is a performance artist with a feminist focus. She explores the crossover between the utopian and the authentic, often by playing with green screen technique. In 2021, she completed her practice-based PhD at the Chelsea College of Art in London (AHRC TECHNE Doctoral research award) and has presented her research internationally (New York, South Korea and Canada). In 2019 she co-organised and co-created ‘Women on the Moon’ (Lithuania), an exhibition interrogating a feminist space age and works as a lecturer across Fine Art, Performance and Gender Studies.

Watch all videos on: https://vimeo.com/channels/1836017