DISTANZ publishing and CCA Berlin – Center for Contemporary Arts are hosting in collaboration with other publishers the very first SPINE – WINTER BOOK MARKET bringing together books from the field of art, literature, and theory as well as a selection of art editions, magazines, and selected wines.

BOOKS
Hopscotch Reading Room
lumbung Press
CCA Berlin
DISTANZ (and art editions)

MAGAZINES
CONTEMPORARY AND (C&)
Texte zur Kunst
Das Wetter

WINE SELECTION
Viniculture

Friday, 9 Dec 2022, 5–8 pm
Saturday, 10 Dec 2022, 11 am–6pm
Sunday, 11 Dec 2022, 11 am–6pm

We look forward to welcoming you!

Ich will in den Sand beißen, aber er schmeckt mir nicht. Aber ist das Problem jetzt, dass wir Hunger haben oder dass es uns nicht schmeckt? 

A world where kinship is not linked to ancestry, but to emotional proximity. People who get close to each other make themselves related by inheriting traits from each other. Each individual is a living monument to significant encounters. Author Charlotte Krafft, born in 1991 in Berlin-Wedding, creates a grand utopia in her debut novel, Marlow im Sand. She does so with a great deal of linguistic wit and passion - and in doing so seamlessly picks up where her first collection of stories left off, Die Palmen am Strand von Acapulco, sie nicken/ Eine endlose Geschichte über den Tod in einer fremden Welt [The palm trees on the beach of Acapulco, they nod/ An endless story about death in a foreign world]. It was published by Korbinian Verlag in the spring of 2021 and thus coincided with a time when not only book premieres but also utopian thinking seemed a little impossible. 

Now Marlow im Sand will celebrate its world premiere on September 23 at the CCA Berlin. The celebration will include a staged reading from the book (with the kind support of director Bonn Park and actress Zeynep Bozbay), followed by a concert by the Berlin-based No Age band Kulku (an important source of inspiration for Marlow im Sand).

The event will be held in German.
Admission on a donation basis (suggestion € 5-15).

In cooperation with Korbinian Verlag.

We live in a moment in which institutions, including those central to the art world, are facing a surge of public scrutiny. Propelled by social media, profound questions about how institutions operate—whether structurally, politically, or financially—have become an increasingly prominent part of public life and discourse in recent years.

In this context, The Art of Critique revisits the artistic practice of institutional critique to ask what it means today, and to consider its ability to respond to the urgent social, political, and economic issues of our time. Taking works by Tracey Emin, Andrea Fraser, and Sarah Lucas in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum as a departure point, The Art of Critique uses a feminist approach to broaden and challenge traditional art historical definitions of institutional critique. These expanded forms of critique function as precursors to the practices of the contemporary artists presented as part of this project. Collectively, the contemporary works shed a new light on the legacy of institutional critique while addressing structural issues as wide-ranging as labor practices in the creative industry, city development, gender inequality, and the intertwined histories of capitalism and colonialism.

The publication documents the long-term project at the Frans Hals Museum (2019–22)—a symposium, Color Critique (chapter one); an exhibition, Image Power (chapter two: Image Critique); and artist commissions (chapter three: Structure Critique)—together with artworks, conversations, and newly commissioned and translated essays.

Edited by Melanie Bühler

With contributions by Marie Angeletti, Karen Archey, Ute Meta Bauer, Melanie Bühler, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Harry Burke, Ann Demeester, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Frima Fox Hofrichter, Andrea Fraser, Simon Fujiwara, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Alex Kitnick, Lynne Kouassi, Erik van Lieshout, Lloyd Corporation, Sven Lütticken, Daniel Morgenthaler, Marlie Mul, Becket MWN, Grace Ndiritu, D’Ette Nogle, Ahmet Öğüt, Ima-Abasi Okon, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, María Inés Plaza Lazo, Bea Schlingelhoff, Hito Steyerl, Juan Uribe, Dena Yago.

Designed by Sabo Day
Co-published by Frans Hals Museum and Lenz Press

The publication was generously supported by Outset Contemporary Art Funds Netherlands and VriendenLoterij

Softcover, 288 pages, 21 x 29.7 cm
ISBN 979-12-80579-10-2

The publication can be purchased through Lenz Press.

Formed in 2016 as the collaborative platform of composer Justin Hicks and artist Steffani Jemison, Mikrokosmos mines the history of Black music. This ongoing project has manifested in many forms: workshop, study session, concert, listening session, book, prompt, score. The exhibition at CCA Berlin presents two related compositions inspired by Gil Scott-Heron’s  ambitious songbook. Another time, this time, one time (Aaliyah, Barbara, Brandy, Chaka, David, Erykah, Gil, Lionel, Loleatta, Mariah, Marvin, Stevie) tracks a small group of melismatic* gestures across bodies and time; it is a search for the "mother run." Another time, this time, one time, the first Mikrokosmos LP, uses Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s “We Almost Lost Detroit” (1977) as the raw material for R&B songwriting. Like a game in which new words are formed from existing letters, these live compositions and recompositions take the form of musical studies, samples, and improvisations. Jemison and Hicks reflect upon a wide range of subjects, including Scott-Heron’s biography, police violence in the United States, and the nuclear catastrophe that threatened the city of Detroit in 1966.

*Melisma (Greek: lit. 'song'; from melos, 'song, melody') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run.

Steffani Jemison & Justin Hicks' ​Another time, this time, one time is part of CCA Berlin's Stirring Up Trouble, a program unfolding until the end of June, and which aims to host, restage, and think alongside four distinct artistic positions that foreground acts of listening and their manifold potentialities. Through their practices, invited artists engage listening as a method of witnessing unseeable formations of violence (Lawrence Abu Hamdan); an invitation to inhabit tropical geographies otherwise (Kent Chan); an everyday practice of place-making and communitarian belonging (Black Obsidian Sound System); and a regenerative archival portal into shared inheritances and histories of struggle (Steffani Jemison and Justin Hicks). By tuning in to organized sounds, accidental leaks, and enforced silences, they conceive modes of aesthetic experience that challenge common perceptions of artmaking, and trace roadmaps to resonant imaginaries.

Stirring Up Trouble is generously supported by the foundation Between Bridges.

Please join us this Saturday at CCA Berlin for a PROVENCE Market and the release of their SS22 „Real Estate“ issue. Old and new issues, merch and editions! Shop till you drop!

Warm Fronts is a series of transmissions emanating from across the tropics. Tapping into electronic music’s long-held associations as forms of futurist statement, the project began with a series of invitations to music producers from different regions of the tropics–Guillerrrrmo from Brazil, Makossiri from Kenya, Kaleekarma from India, and Gabber Modus Operandi from Indonesia–to each produce an online music set. Each set is alike in its desire to embody in its listeners a musicality in which past and future comes into sync. Collectively they take the form of a video installation with a set of four posters (designed by Jonathan Castro) each with a piece of micro-fiction printed on mirrored plexiglass. Together they speak not of the present but foretells a radical tropical future to come. A sonic and solar alliance built not only upon their distanced shared histories, but the potentiality and connectivity of heat. The work was commissioned by the Hartwig Art Foundation and first presented at the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam in 2021.

Kent Chan's Warm Fronts is part of CCA Berlin's Stirring Up Trouble, a program unfolding until the end of June, and which aims to host, restage, and think alongside four distinct artistic positions that foreground acts of listening and their manifold potentialities. Through their practices, invited artists engage listening as a method of witnessing unseeable formations of violence (Lawrence Abu Hamdan); an invitation to inhabit tropical geographies otherwise (Kent Chan); an everyday practice of place-making and communitarian belonging (Black Obsidian Sound System); and a regenerative archival portal into shared inheritances and histories of struggle (Steffani Jemison and Justin Hicks). By tuning in to organized sounds, accidental leaks, and enforced silences, they conceive modes of aesthetic experience that challenge common perceptions of artmaking, and trace roadmaps to resonant imaginaries.

Stirring Up Trouble is generously supported by the foundation Between Bridges.

Kent Chan is an artist, curator and filmmaker based in the Netherlands and Singapore. His practice revolves around encounters with art, fiction and cinema, which shape a triumvirate of practices porous in form, content and context. He holds particular interest in the tropical imagination, the past and future relationships between heat and art, and contestations to the legacies of Eurocentric modernity. He is an upcoming resident at Gasworks (2022) and a former resident of Jan van Eyck Academie (2019/20), NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017/18) and Rupert’s Residency Program (2015). He has held solo and two-person presentations at Kunstinstituut Melly, Bonnefanten Museum, National University Singapore Museum, de Appel Amsterdam and SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts, Slovenia.

Join us to celebrate the launch of artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s, first major monograph Dirty Evidence, published by Lenz Press in collaboration with Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and edited by CCA Berlin founding director Fabian Schöneich.

The publication presents a comprehensive overview of the artist’s practice over the last 10 years. The book presents an in-depth visual analysis of Abu Hamdan’s work accompanied by commissioned essays that focus on single pieces as well as on the artist’s oeuvre. Scholarly and creative reflections explore the political aspects of key work by Abu Hamdan, while a complete list of works to date makes this monograph a crucial tool for curators and researchers working in and around the subjects to which the artist has dedicated his practice. Contributors to the publication include: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Natasha Ginwala, Ruba Katrib, Andrea Lissoni, Ramona Naddaff, Theodor Ringborg, Fabian Schöneich, Yasmine Seale and Eyal Weizman.

The event will feature a conversation between the artist and curator Aram Moshayedi.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and “private ear” whose projects have taken the form of audiovisual installations, videos, performances, photography, essays, and lectures. His interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background as a touring musician and facilitator of DIY music. The artist’s audio investigation has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International together with fellow researchers from Forensic Architecture. Recent solo exhibitions include Lawrence Abu Hamdan / Dirty Evidence, Bonniers Konsthall (2021); Green Coconuts and Other Inadmissible Evidence, Secession, Vienna (2020); The Voice Before the Law, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2019); Earwitness Theatre, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019), Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2019), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2019), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); Hammer Projects: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Hammer Museum, LA (2018); and Earshot, Portikus, Frankfurt (2016). Abu Hamdan is the co-winner of the Turner Prize 2019. He is also the recipient of the 2020 EMAF Award, the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the Baloise Art Prize 2018 and the Abraaj Art Prize 2018. In 2017, he won the short film award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and in 2016, he received the Nam June Paik Award for new media.

Aram Moshayedi is a writer and the Robert Soros curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where he most recently co-organized (with Connie Butler) the exhibition and publication Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963–2019. Other exhibitions include Stories of Almost Everyone; Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only (with Hamza Walker); and All the Instruments Agree: An Exhibition or a Concert. Since joining the Hammer in 2013, he has curated projects by artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Marwa Arsanios, Andrea Bowers, Andrea Büttner, Simon Denny, Mario Garcia Torres, Shadi Habib Allah, Maria Hassabi, Jasmina Metwaly, Oliver Payne and Keiichi Tanaami, and Avery Singer. He has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues as well as Artforum, Art in America, BOMB Magazine, Frieze, Metropolis M, Parkett, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, and Bidoun, for which he is a contributing editor.

29 Apr 2022, 6:30 pm

12 Apostel Church
An der Apostelkirche 1
10783 Berlin

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, CCA Berlin is organizing a musical evening on April 29 starting 6:30 pm in collaboration with the Zwölf-Apostel-Kirche (Twelve Apostles Church) on Kurfürstenstraße featuring live sets by Benjamin Saurer, Frankie, and Kelman Duran. 

A sliding scale ticketing option is available at the door.

Benjamin Saurer is a Berlin-based trained organist and visual artist. He practiced church music from 1997 to 2003 and received his MFA from Städelschule, Academy of Fine Arts Frankfurt am Main in 2008. In parallel to his painting practice, he writes music to accompany exhibitions of artist colleagues and regularly performs as an organist in similar frameworks. Most recently Saurer has composed and performed at Stadtgalerie Bern, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, Kunsthalle Wien, Kunsthalle Basel, Portikus, and Kunstverein Oldenburg. 
At the Twelve Apostles Church, Saurer will play an excerpt of Die Fregatte/The frigate, a work by Thys/de Gruyter, 2008; The Elect, an ambient soundtrack for Yannic Joray’s exhibition of the same name at Stadtgalerie Bern, 2021; and Ich bin eine rufende Stimme [I am a Calling Voice], 2022, composition for organ. 

Frankie is the solo music project of Franziska Aigner, consisting of a solo cello and vocal set combined with a hyper-emotional lyricism. Mostly working in choreography and performance, the past few years have continuously brought more and more music to her life. Aigner performed in and co-wrote the music to FAUST by Anne Imhof for the 2017 Venice Biennale, and joined the Holly Herndon vocal ensemble in 2019. She continues to work and perform with artists such as Anne Imhof, William Forsythe, and Austin Jack Lynch, and recently completed her PhD in philosophy.

Frankie will perform songs from her newly-released EP, Styx, which can be purchased here. 

Kelman Duran is a musician and artist born in La Ermita, in the countryside of the Dominican Republic, and raised in New York City. Prior to making music, he produced videos at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Through his music, Duran explores the legacy of the black rebellion during Haitian Revolution and today’s unbalanced racial climate, reinterpreting and propelling the parameters of Afro- rhythms like reggaeton and dancehall. His latest LP, Night In Tijuana, was released in 2021 on the label Scorpio Red, which he co-founded with artist Annie Mackinnon.

Duran will close the evening with an ambient mix conceived for the occasion.