E-WERK Luckenwalde announce details of the 2023 artistic programme – The Material Revolution. E-WERK will bring UK based artist Kira Freije to Luckenwalde for her first German institutional exhibition, screen a series of films by legendary ecological land artist Agnes Denes, pioneer of the ecological art movement, alongside special performances and sound installation by the German musician FM Einheit (Founding member of Einstürzende Neubauten). In Autumn E-WERK will host new performance projects by Berlin based artists Melanie Jame Wolf and Lauryn Youden, the inaugural artists to take part in E-WERK invites.
The Material Revolution is a devotion to the political agency and silent power of materials to ignite systemic change. The programme will pay tribute to artists who refuse ingrained materialistic laws in order to reclaim meaning – from the subversive potential of metal in feminist discourse to the physical and radical reclamation of urbanised territories with abolished agriculture and the building of instruments from industrial waste to produce new sonic territories. The exhibition programme will take place in conjunction with an ambitious new action-orientated residency programme set to be announced in early 2023.
Agnes Denes
Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan – With Agnes Denes Standing in the Field, 1982
Photo: John McGrail
Courtesy Agnes Denes and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
Exhibition programme
The Throat is a Threaded Melody
Kira Freije
29.04.2023 (PREVIEW DAY) – 01.07.2023
E-WERK Luckenwalde will unveil The Throat is a Threaded Melody by Kira Freije. The exhibition will present a collection of new figurative sculptures by the artist, made specifically for E-WERK’s Turbine Hall. Themes of power and powerlessness jostle with the prosaic infrastructures of the street and interior. Headlights stream past to momentarily reveal the bustle and frequency within the human relationships at play. The fleeting but pervasive glow of transportation riffs off the close proximity of E-WERK to the train tracks running behind it. The recurring use of lamps in Freije’s work act as markers of space and time. Throughout the exhibition lies contradictory energy between material production and emotional rigour. Employing cold forming metal working with sand casting to formulate figures in various states of action or contemplation, Freije warps traditional and light industrial metalworking techniques. The figures on view are both emotionally and industrially constructed into reflective beings with a surreal possession of the cadence of daily ritual. During the preview day for The Throat is a Threaded Melody a performance by FM Einheit will take place.
MAIN IMAGE: Kira Freije, The Forgiver, 2022. Stainless steel, cast aluminium 212 x 86 x 50 cm. 83 7/16 x 33 7/8 x 19 11/16 in. Courtesy The Approach.
Wheatfield, Tree Mountain and The Living Pyramid
Agnes Denes
29.04.2023 (PREVIEW DAY) – 01.07.2023
Alongside Kira Freije, E-WERK will present the three films Wheatfield, Tree Mountain and The Living Pyramid by the legendary ecological land artist Agnes Denes. Nonagenarian Denes has worked at the intersection of land-art, eco-feminism, mathematics and philosophy for over fifty years. Wheatfield – A Confrontation, in which she ambitiously planted a two-acre amber field of grain under the eyes of the Twin Towers and Wall Street in 1982, and Tree Mountain in which Denes planted 11,000 trees as a land reclamation work, are more pertinent than ever as the climate emergency escalates and the division of global wealth and poverty becomes increasingly exaggerated.
Image courtesy of FM Einheit
FM Einheit
29.04.2023 (PREVIEW DAY: performance and sound installation) – 01.07.2023
The sound and material researcher FM Einheit has been a member of the legendary “Einstürzende Neubauten”; synonymous with the refusal of traditional musical thinking and laws. His instruments are the waste of the industrial society, which through affectionate and respectful handling are a portal to new musical worlds. The search for the one mysterious spark, which can be found in materials like stone, metal, sand, water and flesh, the sounds of the big city, the forest and the oceans, generate the lightning that creates new seductive spaces. The pandemic has highlighted the permanent economic and ecological crisis of our planet with brutal honesty and awareness of art, in particular the performative arts such as music and theatre, to understand the social status assigned to them: NOT RELEVANT TO THE SYSTEM. As a reaction FM Einheit has launched the project “the living Archiv”. With the support of the digital platform of the Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis musicaeterna.org, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the media theorist Prof. Siegfried Zielinski, the Poetry Machine by media archaeologist Dr. David Link, FM Modul broadcasts a series of weekly podcasts that take a stand on burning issues of our time. Scientists (Benjamin Bratton, Hennig Schmidgen, Alexander R. Galloway, and others), voices from the past (Antonin Artaud, Heiner Müller, John Cage) and musicians and writers (Meret Becker, Mona Mur, Caspar Brözmann, Kertin Specht amongst others.) provided food for thought. Collaged with music from the depths of his archive, new songs were created. “The head is round so that thinking can change direction” (Francis Picabia). Within the framework of The Material Revolution at E-WERK Luckenwalde the material thus obtained, is in turn the source material for a three-part performance with Siegfried Zielinski, Rica Blunck, Saskia von Klitzing and Volker Kamp, which will take place in the TURBINENHALLE (FM Modul), TRAFO (the ear cooks, the eye eats) and FLUXDOME (sound machines).
E-WERK Invites… Lauryn Youden and Melanie Jame Wolf
Autumn 2023
E-WERK Invites is a satellite programme for practitioners to bring their projects to life in the spaces in and around E-WERK. Artists, Curators, Scientists, Architects, amongst others are invited to submit their ideas for workshops, exhibitions, talks, laboratories etc. for consideration and make use of the 10,000m2 space EW offers. In Autumn 2023, Lauryn Youden and Melanie Jame Wolf will present new projects, details of which will be announced in the Spring 2023.
Melanie Jame Wolf. Image courtesy of the artist.
Lauryn Youden, Dark Water, 2020. Montag Modus,(c) Barbara Antal
A concurrent programme of residencies, symposiums and events will also be announced in 2023: The Sustainable Institution. The Sustainable Institution is an invitation for innovation, for artistic agency to reclaim its authority in socio-political change and to activate new material approaches and territories in order to stimulate urgent change to the cultural sector and inspire action led thinking. Expect residencies, symposiums, performances and an invitation to all to be part of the change. The programme will be delivered in partnership with LUMA Arles and Rupert.
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