Dear Readers,
Tomorrow, 3 November, a performance by the ever-popular rabbit Josephine Beuys will be launched - as a satellite of the current exhibition Josephine, entering the maze in Berlin. This work of art will be simply called Empire and lasts from 8:15 CET until the end of the internet.
Martychowiec gives the following statement:
"In this video citing the famous underground experimental film by Andy Warhol (Camera Jonas Mekas), Martychowiec constructs a perpeutal political statement combining a historical quotation and his own visual and symbolic language.
The question of freedom remains paramount, perhaps more than ever, in the contemporary landscape. The simple, just over 8 hours long film Empire is drawing a metaphor on freedom, power structures and their nature."
Interior of the current exhibition ©Stefan Hähnel
"One could say attachments to land, to home, dwell deeply in all of us who inherited these attitudes from the early settled farming societies. Settled (immovable) life offers security – through an unchanging place, routine, foreseeable source of food, etc. Exploration and the unknown with their potential promises are replaced with security of basic needs fulfilled. Thus the ‘cage’ on one had could be understood as a frame imposing various existential, ethical, systemic frameworks and on the other hand, offering protection and sense of security."
Exterior of the current exhibition ©Stefan Hähnel
"What does it all, however, mean to the modern contemporary man? More, because the mean of control has become so sophisticated, so that those subjected to it, perhaps, lack even the basic awareness of being part of that system. Is Josephine ‘aware’ of being caged at all? Does the guaranteed supply of daily necessities suffice to prevent any need of venturing out of the ‘comfort zone’?"
