Tunnel below / Skyjacking above: deconstructing the border

This exhibition addresses the immediate impact of border regimes today. Usually excluded narratives are revealed while focusing on specific flashpoints: The growing barriers of Europe, the border between the USA and Mexico and the militarized eco-system of the Jordan River. As the contexts may be different, the issues and agendas of repression are often similar. Can border phenomena be examined as part of a larger, neoliberal agenda implemented through a war of images, habituating us to increasingly violent realities? Artists familiar with different border contexts are invited to create and to present work at the nGbK.

With: Yoav Admoni, Liz Bachhuber, Miguel Buenrostro, Vienne Chan, Kate Clark, Yann Colonna, Sofia Dona, EDT 2.0 bang lab, ERRE (Marcos Ramirez), Margarita Certeza Garcia, Lisa Glauer, Mareike Hornof, Incendiary Traces (Hillary Mushkin), Duygu Kaban, Edith Kollath, Jan Lemitz, Nina Lundström, Sara Velas

For the project La puerta de las Californias, Sofia Dona constructed a large door of 6.8 meters height and transported it on a truck across the border from Tijuana to San Diego. The door is a mistranslated object—it was constructed using the Mexican metric system of measurement instead of the American imperial system. The plan for construction was given in inches and feet, however, in a moment exemplifying the possibilities of mistranslation, materials were measured in centimetres and meters, resulting in a door that is a giant 6.8 meter door instead of the standard 6.8 feet. The gigantic door produced by this misinterpretation was brought across the Mexico/US border and went through official customs policies and processes. The process of the crossing was filmed and the documentation is presented in a video installation at nGbK. Next to the videos, a new mistranslated object-door is exhibited, this time reversing the process and creating a miniature door by using the American imperial system instead of the international metric system. A small door of 2.1 feet height was created instead of the standard metric door of 2.1 meters.

In June 2017, the collective Incendiary Traces took a group of artists and scholars to visit Frontex’s central surveillance control room in Warsaw (Poland) and the Hellenic Coast Guard in Athens (Greece), one of its key affiliates in controlling EU sea borders. Incendiary Traces used their long practised method of sketching on-site at military bases, para-military government agencies and their contractors. The goal of these visits is to see how specialized landscape visualization methods, such as aerial imaging and simulation, are used to understand remote landscapes in conflict. The drawing on-site as a collective visual practice parallel to the military’s is highlighting human observation, interpretation and gesture. Furthermore the messy drawing tools and techniques contrast with the apparent accuracy of digital visualization.

In spring 2017 Kate Clark and Sara Velas programmed a free transborder trolley tour between San Diego (USA) and Tijuana (Mexico). As part of this project they fabricated mobile dioramas that provided peephole views onto 4 miniature landscapes of the border from the past 100 years. These sculptures where displayed on-site during tour hours. Using viewfinder design the San Diego/Tijuana border was documented. The scenes reference tourist museum panoramas, but show images of the border people are less familiar with, emphasizing the dramatic changes the US/Mexico landscape has undergone in the past century.

For the nGbK project exhibition these viewfinders are transported to Berlin where they will be moved throughout the city in related sites such as the Mexican embassy and the former Berlin Wall.

Please see details on the program of events here.

nGbK projekt group: Alexandra Camara, Yann Colonna, Margarita Certeza Garcia, Lisa Glauer, Jan Lemitz, Nina Lundström
 

Also currently on show as part of the Art in the Underground project by nGbK:

until October 31
Namibia Today by Laura Horelli, Underground station Schillingstraße, U5, platform

Laboratorium der Solidarität by Saskia Köbschall & Claude Gomis, Underground station Kaulsdorf-Nord, U5, footbridge

A Migrant’s Journey by Elizabeth Wood, Underground station Cottbusser Platz, U5, platform