Recording margins of urban conflict. Exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 16 April to 13 June 2021 ///

Mapping as artistic research and as an image- and space-producing practice is at the core of the exhibition Mapping Along at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. The exhibition brings together selected mappings that metroZones has created during its explorations of recent years and juxtaposes them with invited international positions. All of the works presented share a focus on tracing and materializing urban conflict situations and resistance: for example, the experience and production of space by refugees, the capitalization of the urban by platform economies – or the cultures of the cities‘ periphery.

Re-Reading: Over the past years, recording processes have become increasingly important for metroZones‘ research and artistic practice, While they are embedded in the specific dynamics of the respective exploration, they also yield separate spatial images which are processed into different formats: an installation, a wallpaper, a textile or a video. Mapping thus became a method for metroZones, which as a collective and often collaborative act, contributed to the (self-)understanding of the Many and at the same time enabled specific image production.

Mapping, not cartography: The process of recording with all its tensions and contradictions regarding, for instance, legibility, visual languages or the inscription of time and power. It is about establishing relationships, translation and reconstruction, memory and discourse, about generating maps as knowledge production as well as aesthetic practice.

In the context of Mapping along, not only recordings on paper, cloth or screen, video mappings, sound stations or discourse wallpapers, but also objects such as sketchbooks, textiles or architectural models are arranged into a parcours through spaces of the metroZones explorations: Hellersdorf Research, Refugee Complex, Stadt als Byte or the School for Urban Action. Their combination with selected guest positions allows to experience and discuss the diversity of mapping procedures and aesthetics.

The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet and a series of table talks and workshops adopting the format of the metroZones-School for Urban Action. These events examine the producing and reading of mappings from different perspectives and also highlight its blind spots and limitations, as will be seen during the guest lecture of Nigerian video-artist Rahima Gambo or the Mexican architect Sergio Beltrán-García for instance.

metroZones and guests: Berlin vs. Amazon, Larissa Fassler, Gerda Heck, Im Dissens (Dagmar Pelger/Stefan Endewardt/Joerg Franzbecker/Dagmar Pelger), Daniel Kötter, Peter Spillmann/MigMap, Pedro Ceñal Murga, Katharina Pelosi, Christoph Schäfer, Ulf Treger, Nishat Awan, Denise Scott Brown/Jeremy Tenenbaum, Tytus Szabelski et al.

Gefördert durch den Hauptstadtkulturfonds