In times of uncertainty, people have often turned to the creation of art. Throughout history, art has been a salve to soothe our fears, an outlet to express our anger, and a glue to connect us all. We at Fotografiska believe in the power of creativity, not just to inspire new perspectives, but new ways of interacting with the world around us.
In this issue of ON CULTURE, we present to you five cultural recommendations and exhibitions, most of which deal with sensitive and complex subject matters. We hope that they will provide support and even levity in these shifting times.
As ever, thank you for supporting us and being part of the Fotografiska community.
Lawrence Lek’s latest and largest exhibition certainly has something of the Black Mirror about it. In NOX, the London-based artist, filmmaker and musician offers a version of the future in which artificial intelligence (AI) is in the driving seat.
Lek invites audiences into a facility where an imagined AI corporation configure and treat their sentient, self-driving cars. Each vehicle serves a different purpose, such as delivery, patrol or pleasure, and has a corresponding personality type.
The name serves as a double entendre—as well as evoking the film noir genre, underpinned by its dark, dreamlike qualities and its starkly monochromatic aesthetic, NOX is an abbreviation of Nonhuman Excellence, the name of the centre to which the cars are summoned when they exhibit “undesirable behavior”.
Event date: 27 October 2023 – 14 January 2024, Kranzler Eck, Kurfürstendamm 22, 10719 Berlin
Serbian-Canadian photographer and filmmaker Mirjana Vrbaški’s latest exhibition Noontide centers upon the mythology surrounding noontide, otherwise known as midday or noontime.
Vrbaški intertwines photographs of nature, figures in motion and video installations including female dancers, forest landscapes and recordings of familiar natural occurrences. The exhibition is an effort to understand the pinnacle of the day, projecting it as as moment of ‘tenacity and abandon, stupor and elan, abundance and void’ as well as one of transformation.
Also shown is work from the series The Practice, which captures dancers in moments of transition. Vrbaški aims to create ‘a field of tension that forebodes change’ via the combination of works on display.
Event date: 13 October – 10 December, Haus am Kleistpark, Grunewaldstraße 6-7, 10823 Berlin
Boiler Room Festival
The influential music broadcasting platform Boiler Room landed in Berlin in 2011 with an event housed in a disused swimming pool and a program that included DJs such as Objekt and Kassem Mosse. Boiler Room has since hosted 170 parties, 504 sets and 704 artists in Europe’s club music capital, making it their second most visited location in the world.
This year, the program of local and international artists will be split across seven stages as a musical representation of Boiler Room’s last 12 months. The broadcaster promises to uncover ‘a multitude of subcultures, genres and scenes’ via ‘familiar faces alongside exciting debuts’.
Over 50 artists will play at the event, including Mura Masa, LSDXOXO and Refuge Worldwide DJs, among many more. So don’t worry, there’s a little something for everyone.
Event date: 16 – 18 November, Belgienhalle, Gartenfelder Str. 14-28, 13599 Berlin
Heavily influenced by an early HIV diagnosis, Pélassey’s work is a study in illness, death and understanding our bodies as ‘porous and erratic’ entities. In Bruno Pélassy and the Order of the Starfish, the artist’s work will also be punctuated by selected artworks and items from his contemporaries (b. 1966, d. 2002) as well as current artists.
The group show element will include contributions by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Beth Collar, Jesse Darling, Brice Dellsperger, Leonor Fini, Ull Hohn, Natacha Lesueur, Jean Painlevé & Geneviève Hamon, James Richards and Soshiro Matsubara.
Event date: 20 October 2023 – 14 January 2024, Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin
The Contemporary Podcast
Did you get a chance to listen to our new podcast? Each episode of The Contemporary is an in-depth exploration of one of Fotografiska’s exhibitions. Hosted by Berlin creative Tsellot Melesse, our second episode discusses –USSYPHILIAby Juliana Huxtable, her most extensive European solo exhibition, and how her vision for transcending identity and gender boundaries reaches far beyond the human sphere. Juliana and guest speaker Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju touch upon Juliana’s fascination with semantics, the joy of collaborating with friends, and her band Tongue In The Mind’s debut single Pretty Canary and music video, which is currently on show at Fotografiska Berlin until 10th January 2024.
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