D’EST: Space Ideologies

Sat, 15 Aug 2020 19:30

On view
15 Aug 2020

D’EST: Space Ideologies

Video Screening mit Anna Engelhardt, A.S.S. Collective (Mizu Sugai & Jonathan Jung), Senka Domanović, Ruthia Jenrbekova & Morris Getman und Flo Kasearu; im Anschluss Diskussion mit A.S.S. Collective

“Who owns the city?” and “Who is allowed to live and who has to die?” (Achille Mbembe 2019): these existential, spatial-ideological questions reverberate in urban infrastructures, architectures and not least in citizens’ and non-citizens’ bodies. Space Ideologies is a one-night screening program that investigates processes of privatisation and economisation in post-socialist cities such as Almaty, Belgrade, Berlin, Moscow, and Tallinn. From ruined investment properties and anonymous dancers in Tallinn’s port area (Flo Kasearu), to ghostly urban landscapes reflecting the social exclusion and disconnection of trans*women in Almaty (Ruthia Jenrbekova & Morris Getman), to near-deadly labour conditions and structural racism experienced by migrants working under vigilant algorithmic tracking at the Russian courier and taxi service-platform Yandex (Anna Engelhardt), it becomes evident that since the 1990s, precarious bodies have been exploited to create neoliberal infrastructures. The final videos may symbolize ‘flashes of awakening’, ruptures in the tissue of neoliberal space ideologies: an engaging documentary about cultural activists who occupied a cinema in Belgrade, creating a temporary micro economy (Senka Domanović), and a filmically compressed, 24-hour performance project in front of Berlin’s contested Ernst-Thälmann monument touching on the political leader’s legacy (A.S.S. Collective). In response to the program, artists Mizu Sugai and Jonathan Jung of A.S.S. Collective, who work at the intersection of social, political and artistic practices, will discuss their work and introduce their new fields of research.

The event takes place at Autoscooter, Haus der Statistik

Karl-Marx-Allee 1, 10178 Berlin

A.S.S. Collective (Mizu Sugai & Jonathan Jung), Dawn of the Red – A Rupture in the Deep-Sleep of Capitalism, 2018. Video still, 15’12’’, color, sound, 16:9, courtesy: the artists.
A.S.S. Collective (Mizu Sugai & Jonathan Jung), Dawn of the Red – A Rupture in the Deep-Sleep of Capitalism, 2018. Video still, 15’12’’, color, sound, 16:9, courtesy: the artists.