TWO POSITIONS: BETTINA LOCKEMANN, JENS LÜSTRAETEN | Eden Olympia

Opening: Friday, 12 October 2012, 7 p.m.

Exhibition: 13 October - 10 November 2012

The desire for participation of individual citizens and certain sections of the population who feel politically and economically excluded are expressed in protest cultures, confrontation and rioting directed at rigid power systems and their economic manifestations. Bettina Lockemann and Jens Lüstraeten’s exhibition entitled Eden Olympia contrasts current tendencies in two different worlds.

Lockemann’s photographic images show the sober chaos of the roundabout traffic on Tahrir Square in Cairo, which has become a permanent showcase for the Arab Spring conflict. Lüstraeten, on the other hand, focuses on western cultures such as the suburbs of London, consumerism and recent clashes. 

Bettina Lockemann: TRAFFIC – Roundabout
The images used in the Tableau Roundabout showing normal traffic around Tahrir Square were taken during a stay in Cairo in January 2012, which coincided with the anniversary of the Tahrir Revolution – at a time when the country’s future was far from clear, and old and new forces battled for power and influence.
We are familiar with images from Tahrir Square; pictures of rallies, revolution, violence. These are implicitly contained in the Tableau on show here. Our knowledge of the events constitutes the backdrop for what we see of Egyptian daily life: the use of the streets. Roundabout traffic on the square is heavy and – bumper to bumper – seems ground to a halt. People sit in buses, mopeds and bicycles whizz by, pedestrians walk along the street passing the the viewer.
Roundabout is one component of the two-part work TRAFFIC. The other – entitled Parking Lot – is on show in Quartier 267 of the Photomuseum in Braunschweig until 23 December 2012 in the exhibition Cairo. Open city. New Testimonies of an Ongoing Revolution. 

Jens Lüstraeten: KINGDOM COME
The violent clashes and plundering in London last year and the fictitious development of areas on the city circuit along the M 25 motorway, which British author J.G. Ballard describes in his dystopian novel Kingdom Come, form the basis of the work shown in the exhibition Eden Olympia. The video KC is devoted to the remains of the first, oval-shaped car-racing track in the world, its decline and its simultaneous integration into the contemporary structure of a locality marked by super stores, parking lots and Mercedes Benz showrooms. Lüstraeten positions the different collectibles and finds in relation to one another in a multi-media collage, provoking a game of meanings. The video work KCcontrasts among other things ten framed product photographs of large format flat-screen television sets with a street scene at night that seems to refer to the riots but on closer inspection defies any form of classification.