For a moment, nothing happened

Opening: Friday 02.09.2016, 7 pm
Exhibition: 03.09.–24.09.2016
Extended Opening Hours Berlin Art Week
16.–18.09.2016 | Fri 2–10 pm, Sat/Sun 12 am–7 pm

The exhibition For a moment, nothing happened focuses on the photographic image in a rather specific manner. The exhibition’s title hints on the dicisive moment, abstracted from the passage of time, which constitutes the basis of any photographic image. Hence draws the attention on the different time-related conceptual approaches to the photographic medium.

In the photographic stagings of her work drift (2015–), Ulrike Hannemann combines materials of many origins - for instance, paper from her archive, found items from her travels, and everyday objects of mass production – into temporary arrangements that are solely created for the purpose of being photographed. By organizing the individual components of the images according to their form and aesthetics, she places them into new contexts. It is in the subtle game of repetition, superposition, and fragmentation that the variations of numerous themes emerge.

In her work Bewahrungen/Perpetuations (2007/2016), Ruth Hommelsheim transfers the seemingly unremarkable things of a private, everyday archive to a level of subtle observation. Doing that, she uses a sophisticated approach to a highly individual collection of objects.
At the beginning of the working process, Hommelsheim photographed innumerous audiotapes, vinyl records, music cassettes, boxes of slides... in their respective location. These photographies reveal a structure of preservation in all its orderliness, exposed to a constant limit of space as well as the sheer abundance of contained items. The first glance is followed by an immersive strategy, that focusses on particular objects in detail – collected and stored away postcards, acquired on journeys. Exemplary image motifs (snowy landscapes, animals, cathedrals) are beeing condensed into themed typologies.

Pujan Shakupa presents a 35mm film roll consisting of 24 displayed exposures to explore the interior of Hotel Orbit (2012), where the members of his family inhabit and gravitate the interior space of their hotel room. The constrictions of space, the synergy from the point of references and multi-trajectories recreates altogether subtle yet narrative sensory overlays. Meanwhile, scenes of a planet documentary were displayed in the background on ARTE mirrors. Merely an enactment?  Indeed, it attempts to thicken interpersonal relationships with the interstellar ones of astronomy where – at least in theory – that anything could be made comprehensible.

* For a moment, nothing happened. (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)