Group exhibition
May 25, 2017 - July 02, 2017, Kunstverein Hildesheim
A group exhibition with Alice Peragine, d-n-e, Lu Yang, Marcin Pietruszewski, Marianne Vlaschits,
Michaela Melián, Pinar Yoldas, a curated archive and niches to linger in.
Sci-fi shorts by Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Marie-Eve Levasseur, Stephanie Comilang and Wanuri Kahiu
"[T]he boundary that separates social reality from science fiction is an optical illusion," wrote biologist and philosopher Donna Haraway three decades ago in her much-quoted Cyborg Manifesto (1985) to emphasize the connection between fiction, cognition and the construction of social realities.1 Group exhibition Promises of Monsters takes the genres of science fiction and visionary fiction as a conceptual starting point to examine this connection.
The exhibition becomes a place of cultural practice and a space for joint critical reflection on current forms of (economic, political, cultural and technological) hegemonies as well as on possible alternatives. The exhibition space is therefore not only a presentation area for contemporary art, but also - loosely based on Donna Haraway - a "contact zone" in which encounters with the unexpected, the strange and the future take place. In concrete terms, this means that there will be places in the exhibition space where people can linger, read and discuss. Through the selected works of art, the targeted staging of the space, a selection of texts and the extensive supporting and educational program, the exhibition aims to stimulate a dialogue about the present and the future. Through this playful artistic examination, the exhibition aims to enable moments of new perspective and convey an understanding of the Other, also in order to counteract current tendencies of cultural isolation and intolerance with the means of art.
1 Haraway, Donna: Ein Manifest fur Cyborgs.Feminismus im Streit mit den Technowissenschaften. In: Haraway, Donna: The reinvention of nature. Primates, cyborgs and women. Frankfurt a. M. and New York 1995. p. 33- 72. (First published under: Haraway, Donna: Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980's. In: Socialist Review 80. 1985. pp. 65-108.), online at: http://www.medientheorie.com/doc/haraway_manifesto.pdf.