Lecture Performance and conversation:
KW, a hike – flaring flashes of 1991
With Raoul Zöllner and Susan Philipsz
2 August 23, 8 pm
In English
Venue: Café Bravo
Limited capacity
Registration via reservation@kw-berlin.de
Raoul Zoellner, KW, a hike, video still, 2023
KW’s history is inseparably linked to that of its surrounding streets. In 1991, many buildings on Auguststrasse wasted away in desolate condition, windows inside vacant courtyards were boarded up and coffee was sold bitter and black. 30 years later, KW published the survey KW, a history in order to look back on it’s rapid transformation, ever since the empty spaces of a former factory in East-Berlin became a renowned Institute for Contemporary Art.
In order revive this survey and uncover KW’s historical entanglements, each month KW, a hike explores the remaining relics of this past during a guided tour which leads through the neighboring streets and highlights some of KW’s commissioned works.
In this lecture performance Raoul Zoellner combines video and speech in order to flare up flashbacks into KW’s origin in 1991 and highlight Rosa by Susan Philipsz, which was commissioned exactly 30 years after KW’s founding. During the second part of the evening Susan Philipsz will share further insights into her sound- and voice-based practice and the site-specificity of her works.
Raoul Zöllner grew up in Berlin, studied at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and is Director of the Boros Foundation. He explores various forms of art mediation and works in this field for KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the 12th Berlin Biennale.
Susan Philipsz (Glasgow, 1965) work deals with the spatial properties of sound and with the relationships between sound and architecture. Since taking up residence at KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2001-2002) she has exhibited internationally, including participation in Manifesta 3, Ljubljana 2000, Berlin Biennial, 2006, Münster Skulptur Projekte, Münster, 2007, Turner Prize, London, 2010, dOCUMENTA (13), 2012. Recent solo exhibitions include: Sokol Terezin, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (2023), The Depths, Kunst Museum Brands, Odense (2023) and Separated Strings, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2023).