Fresh A.I.R. #8 – Artists in Residence Exhibition „LINGUISTIC XPEDITION“

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deutschsprachige Version des Textes

With the Fresh A.I.R. (Artist-In-Residence) programme, 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 twelve fellows of the 8th Fresh A.I.R. class from a total of eight nations came to Berlin in January 2023 and concluded their fellowship in December 2023.

Spoken language is fundamental to our society. It is the predominant medium of meaning formation and arises from the need for communication. Organised linguistic phonation is a specifically anthropological competence, which – according to the image theory of the French paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan – is formed in reliance on the image-creating tool hand. In Leroi-Gourhan’s reconstruction of the fundamental connection between language and art (“Hand and Word” (1984)), pictorial potency and competence, that is, the ability to produce pictorial artefacts and to understand things as pictorial representations, is a co-evolutionary form of expression to spoken language. The hand of stone-age Homo sapiens as an organ for the production of tools and gestures as well as his organised linguistic sound formation are neurologically interconnected in the fronto-parietal cortex and have been essential for the shaping of reflexive, multidimensional thinking. They develop accordingly in correlation to each other. While the oral representation of the world gradually evolves through the coordination of sounds, the hand and the tool create pictorial forms of expression, the symbolic realisation and the figurative representation of reality.

The twelve fellows of the 8th Fresh A.I.R. class created a wide range of artistic projects from January to October 2023. They all revolve around the topic of language and focus on the speech act as a constitutive element of human perception and communication. They have dealt with aspects of daily language use and/or language and its communicative potentials and reflected on them (typo)graphically and critically in different forms of expression. Aspects of current debates about the structural power of language, language-critical standards, or the enforcement of non-discriminatory language have been incorporated into their works in various ways. In addition, the fellows have experimented with verbal and written language and developed their artistic positions out of various cultural contexts. In the exhibition “LINGUISTIC XPEDITION”, words and the medium of language took on highly diverse forms and dynamics. The fellows presented decidedly different approaches and functionalities with their works.

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Fresh A.I.R. not only lives through the energy of the invited artists, but also through the commitment of numerous cooperation partners who support us at various levels. For example, this year Fresh A.I.R. received financial and organisational support from the Hans and Charlotte Krull Foundation. With great commitment, they initiated a cooperation, which enabled us to include the two Ukrainian artists Katya Craftsova and Alp315 in the programme. Both have permeated Berlin in different ways. Apl315 left a lasting impression in the Prenzlauer Berg district in September 2023 with a wall painting as part of the One Wall project on the corner of Stargarder Straße / Schönhauser Allee. The international NGO Artists at Risk (AR) in partnership with the Goethe-Institut were involved in their selection process. The 8th Fresh A.I.R. class was also joined by students from the Institute for Art and Art Education at the University of Osnabrück. As part of the seminar “Writing about Art” led by Prof. Dr. Barbara Kaesbohrer, students worked together with Fresh A.I.R. to develop exhibition and showcase texts for this year’s exhibition.

I hope you, dear readers, now enjoy exploring the artistic works of our 8th class.

Janine Arndt
Artistic Director

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Fresh A.I.R. #8 Online-Showcase

Anastasia Stročkova

Free from script and symbols, the artist visualises different types of communication and the resulting situations. In her works, she depicts the power imbalances, complications, but also the beautiful aspects of communicative interaction with the use of different media.

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Apl315

Translating different layers of reality into visual signs is characteristic of the work of this Ukrainian artist. Palimpsest-like layers of meaning become visible in his pictures. In this way, he transfers artistic methods that he developed as a graffiti writer to the canvas.

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Chlepa

Through collaboration and the fusion of their styles and techniques, Chlepa have found a new common visual language. Their nine artist boxes are the artistic expression of this synergy.

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Dana Venezia

In her project, the video artist addresses the search for one’s own identity in the context of gender constructions. She distinguishes between recordings of male identities in times of change and her personal search for a specifically female perspective.

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Diana-Elena Păun

What are fake news, propaganda and conspiracy narratives doing to us, to our social interaction and how can we counter them? In her project, artist Diana Păun explores the phenomena of our post-factual present.

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Katya Craftsova

Craftsova’s work enables a playful approach to the multi-layered topic of flat hunting in Berlin. On the abstract level of playing cards, the private and the public, political levels and individual experiences are intertwined.

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Marjolein Guldentops

In her drawings, Guldentops focuses on constructed wordplay and transforms nouns into verbs to encourage viewers to reflect on their own existence and actions. In this way, she examines the interaction of people with their environment.

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Oana Maria Pop

In her project, the artist is engaging in a profound exploration of the intersection between language, abuse against women, and the visual representation of trauma.

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Rita Ferreira

With her sensitive audiovisual project, Rita Ferreira creates an alternative archive and an alternative cartography of Berlin and thus conveys experiences of migration.

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Tanel Rander

In his work, Tanel Rander explores the connection between language, foreign rule and one’s own identity. Videos and drawings as well as designed book covers are part of his artistic exploration of his own history and the history of Estonia.

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Zuzanna Odolczyk

The artist worked on an illustrated soundtrack of Berlin. The resulting film makes Berlin tangible from a different perspective and presents the beauty and character of the city audiovisually.

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Fresh A.I.R. #8 – General Information

The twelve artists from eight European countries of the 8th Fresh A.I.R. class have dedicated themselves for ten months to this year’s topic LINGUISTIC XPEDITION. They investigated the act of speaking as a constitutive element of human perception and communication.

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