Bank Blank

Artists:
A/A
Halil Altindere
Carsten Becker
Ekaterina Burlyga
Catch a Falling Knife Collective
Yvon Chabrowski & Nicolás Rupcich
Mark Clare
Merve Çanakçı
Ali M. Demirel
Maurice Doherty
Mona El Gammal
Ingo Gerken
Ivana Franke
Caroline Kryzecki
Pierre-Etiene Morelle
Özgür Erkök Moroder & Steffi Weismann
Barbara Müller
Sladjan Nedeljkovic
Jakob Roepke
The Swan Collective
Pilvi Takala
Philip Topolovac & Markus Proschek
Chompunuch Vanichayan-guranon & Theerawat Klangjareonchai
Ulrich Vogl
Maria Viftrup

Curators: Stephane Klee & Ece Pazarbaşı

* BANK, BLANK is organised as the main exhibition of within the frame of 20th anniversary of 48 Hours Neukölln Festival.

* Exhibition floor plan

Preamble
The German term echt fuses a lot of English meanings, for instance: true, real, genuine, typical, authentic or substantial, just to name a few. In this way it serves as a kind of meta-term that represents a large spectrum of significances. In doing so echt sets the ground for an essential part of human existence, namely realness itself. As the authors of this concept we are really lucky, that echt also found its way into in the English language including all meanings as in German, although it might still be used very rarely in the Anglo-American regions. Thus, in the following text, the English word echt will have a direct correspondence with the German meta-term echt.

Last night I dreamed of the reality. What a relief, as I woke up!

- Stanislaw Lec

There is an empty bank in Neukölln. Placed at Karl Marx Straße, it still stands as the relic of the financial vision of the last centuries. Now the employers have left the building, the vaults are open and the cash machines are dismantled. The bank is literally blank. This institution of faith in cash, trust in money and illusion of prosperity for the many not for the few has moved on to scout some other locations, may these venues be concrete or virtual. But what will happen with this place now?

What is leftover now is the remaining architecture, the pure material, a tabula rasa waiting for something new. After the illusion of financial capitalism has moved out, the substantial architecture, the shell comes to the fore. Within this frame, one cannot help asking, what else is substantial nowadays, what else is echt? In a world interspersed with spectacle, illusions, images, screens, interfaces, surfaces, social media, hollow visions and unfulfilled dreams, it does not get only harder to authenticate a thing, but also echt changes its meaning dynamically. Checks of reality are now more valid than ever before.

So why not use the actual stage of this blank bank as a temporary research for the new echt? Why not use this lot as a collective laboratory of visions and statements regarding the meaning of realness today in our society? The curators Ece Pazarbasi and Stephan Klee will take this chance during the 48 STD Neukölln. In doing so, they will investigate this thematic complex within the context of the arts. Their conceived group exhibition “BANK, BLANK” will present 25 artistic positions, that deal with the actual matters of echt from different perspectives.

Starting point and groundwork for the curatorial selection is the established definition of each echt thing. It needs to be a coherent fusion of four qualities: material, form, function and term. To illustrate: A chair is made of matter, it has the typical form of a chair, its function is to provide a place for a person to sit and it is called a ‘chair.’ If an object complies all the qualities within itself, it must be an echt chair. Because: If it has no substance, it is solely an image or an idea. If it has not the form of a chair, it is another object. If it does not serve to seat a person it may be art. And if it is called dog, something must be wrong. The exhibition will follow this defined verification with a first sub section of artistic works assembled under the name “presence of material”. The focus is on genuine qualities of physical matter, its form, its construction, its tension and its tangibility.

In these days the social environment witnesses an expanding intermixture of object and image. Although Magritte for instance pointed out the basic difference between object and representation in his famous work Ceci n'est pas une pipe, the differentiation between the both especially in social media, 3-D printing technique, immersive entertainment or virtual reality becomes harder with technological advance. In this situation the human body plays increasingly a key role. Because in his sensitive transfer between the outside and the inside it could serve as one of the last controlling institutions to authenticate what is real and what is not. Because still lifetime archived instinct and intuition provide stable checks on the realness of surroundings. This second sub-section will comply a group of works under the title of “body checks” and will be dedicated to the role of body and it ́s genuine senses in our society.

Dealing with the truth of the present time, it is impossible to ignore changing forms and definitions of echt. Although many current developments in society may just be computational, copied, depicted, illusionary, virtual, synthetic and fake, it does not mean that they are not strongly connected to the matter itself or do not have a huge impact on real life. These developments are real because they are relevant. In the end the traditional question Is this echt? loses its significance and the question Is this relevant? gains importance. The relevant contemporary truth is an indistinguishable mix of fact and fiction. The exhibition will provide a third group of works under the name of “new authenticity.” These pieces will allow a glimpse on the things to come, but not without giving the spectator the possibility of an informed, distant perspective.

In conclusion, the exhibition offers an actual array of various contentions with the never aging question about truth in our reality. The aim in this empty bank is to create a collective dialogue about the transforming of realness that we are facing and to evoke a new awareness for the shifting dogmas of our perception and society.

Ece Pazarbasi and Stephan Klee