Welt ohne Außen. Immersive Spaces since the 1960s.

With Larry Bell, Laura Burns, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Renée Coulombe, Lou Drago, Fernanda Farah, Lucio Fontana & Nanda Vigo, Ed Fornieles Studios and Omsk Social Club, Peter Frost und die Gruppe Le Frau, Cyprien Gaillard, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė (Young Girl Reading Group), Wolfgang Georgsdorf, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Stefanie Görisch, Jeppe Hein, Michael Helland, Hidden Agency / ∞OS and guests, Carsten Höller, Josh Johnson, Ana Jordão, just in f kennedy, Lea Kieffer with Angela Schubot & Rocio Marano, Dambi Kim, Isabel Lewis, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ángela Muñoz Martínez, Nonny de la Peña, Susan Ploetz, Thomas Proksch, Tabita Rezaire, Xavier Le Roy, Maria Francesca Scaroni & Mieko Suzuki, Chris Scherer, Scent Club Berlin, Tino Sehgal, Colin Self, Coral Short and Jean P\’ark, Iv Shri, Claire Vivianne Sobottke, Jessy Tuddenham, two-women-machine-show, Doug Wheeler, Helga Wretman, XenoEntities Network

Welt ohne Außen. Immersive Spaces since the 1960s traces a development from the pioneers of immersive installations to contemporary artistic practices, bringing together a wide range of art forms and disciplines that mark the transition from object to spatial situation. Curated by Thomas Oberender and Tino Sehgal the exhibition features objects and installations, virtual reality, 3D-film and olfactory compositions, tea ceremonies, live works and workshops in a unique dramaturgy that allows visitors to enter immersive spaces, with each work unfolding within its own temporality.

Welt ohne Außen attempts to create immersive experiences within a format that, since its advent, has usually operated with an almost opposed modality: the exhibition. This ritual of Western modernity can be seen as an expression of a particular set of ideas about being in the world: a world that we confront in opposition and evaluate as an object from a critical distance. Immersion, on the other hand, allows for knowledge through direct experience: Entering and taking part in an experience is prioritised over evaluating observation. In this sense, immersive practices are an expression of an altered relation to the world, one that is based not on a dualism of subject and object, but rather on the entanglement of situation and experience.

The exhibition opens with a series of historical works from the late 1960s that contrasts installations by Larry Bell and Doug Wheeler with an environment by Lucio Fontana and Nanda Vigo followed by more recent works such as Carsten Höller’s Light Wall, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Cosmodrome and Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife. Gaillard’s hypnotic 3D-film marks the transition from analogue to virtual spaces, while VR-pioneer Nonny de la Peña makes social realities tangible in virtual worlds. Multi-layered scent-compositions by Wolfgang Georgsdorf, a programme of weekly rotating live works and a series of workshops co-curated by Isabel Lewis, explore the elements that define Welt ohne Außen as a format situated between exhibition and enactment, between tangible works and social processes as well as between art and non-art.

Live works
Maria Francesca Scaroni & Mieko Suzuki: On Air, June 7–18 
Josh Johnson, June 8–10
Thomas Proksch: LE_GO, June 20–25 
Claire Vivianne Sobottke: Strange Songs, June 27–July 2 
Ana Jordao: I am knot, July 4–9 
Isabel Lewis: Distention in Several Directions: a week of ambient dances, July 11–16 
two-women-machine-show: TRANS-, July 18–23 
Peter Frost und die Gruppe Le Frau: berichten aus vergessenen Matriarchaten Berlins und der Welt, July 25–30
Xavier Le Roy: Le Sacre du Printemps, August 2–5

Workshops
Bringing together a broad range of approaches to embodied practice, the workshop programme focuses on “feeling” as a bodily occurrence rather than “thought” as a distancing intellectual process. Visitors are invited to move through stages of deepening participation from “hospitality and orientation” to “guided bodily practice and full-bodied engagement” and eventually “self-orientation, experimentation and play.” Participation is open to all and walk-ins are encouraged.

Curated by Thomas Oberender & Tino Sehgal
Associate curator: Annika Kuhlmann
Workshops concept and programme: Isabel Lewis

A permanent ticket allows multiple visits and participation in all workshops and live-works throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. For information on the workshop programme and the daily schedule please visit www.berlinerfestspiele.de