Amnesia . Positionen zum Schlaf

Ausstellung| 22. 05. 2021 - 13. 06. 2021

opening hours: Sa, So, Feiertag 14 - 18 Uhr

opening: 22.5.2021 14 - 20 Uhr

Escapism in sleep, in forgetting and in memory loss. Even babies react to stressful situations (e.g. noise) by falling asleep spontaneously. Covid19 results in great fatigue. People who are actually ill sometimes suffer from severe fatigue syndromes for months afterwards. But society as a whole is - as in all longer crisis situations - confronted with listlessness, tiredness, need for sleep, and depression. In sleep you literally close your eyes to reality. In the arms of Morpheusone is swayed into oblivion. Sleep presses the pause button. Active perception stops for a while. Other worlds of experience rise from the subconscious and take over the sensations.

While dreams in their psychoanalytic and narrative quality have long occupied a prominent place in art production (e.g. in surrealism), only a few artists seem to be interested in sleep as a strategy of oblivion. It is precisely here that fundamental affects become apparent that take over both, individuals and entire societies. The proximity to amnesia and memory loss is obvious. When sleep becomes an epidemic, it is called sleeping sickness. A striking example, the encephalitis lethargica, as described in Oliver Sacks‘ book „Awakenings“, should be mentioned.

AMNESIA brings together four artistic sleeping positions apart from dreams and their symbolism.

Anne Glassner deals with the topics of sleep, consciousness and identity in her site-specific interventions. The focus of her catalog of works, which will be presented on the occasion of the exhibition, shows this examination, which is expressed, among other things, in sleep performances. Her work is about the disclosure of the private, the processing of memories and impressions, the visualization of the supposedly invisible and hidden, the limits of truth and fiction, self-perception and the perception of others.

Karen Stuke "portrays" herself while sleeping in various hotel rooms of the famous Berlin Hotel Bogotá. She uses a pinhole camera to capture the entire duration of sleep in one picture.

The project "Schlafradio" (1993) by Norbert Math/Andrea Sodomka is an attempt to bring radio art into an area that lies apart from attentive reception. Many people had a habit of letting their clock radios lull them to sleep. The same device fulfills two opposite functions: put you to sleep and waking you up. Which function is fulfilled is only decided by the fact who - human or radio - is active first. People turn on the radio - the radio turns off people. Radio turns people on - people turn off the radio. In her photographs and photo films,

Elfi Mikesch moves closest to the dream, but in a way in which fact and fiction become indistinguishable: between the images there is an autobiography, broken down into the spheres of fragmented facts, memories, dreams and conversations.