Terrestrial Assemblage at The Floating University / Berlin

Terrestrial Assemblage

Curated by Pauline Doutreluingne & Keumhwa Kim 

Artists: Ana Alenso, Marco Barotti, Ines Doujak, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Han Seok Hyun, Folke Köbberling, Mischa Leinkauf, Santiago Sierra, Shira Wachsmann, Clemens Wilhelm

6 May – 6 June, 2021

The Floating University

Lilienthalstraße 32

10965 Berlin-Kreuzberg

 


In the age of geo-social issues, where climate, inequality and migration are interrelated and humanity threatens to become homeless, facing a potentially uninhabitable earth in the future, paradoxically more and more enclosed and demarcated territories are emerging worldwide. As on the Korean peninsula, divided by a militarised border for over 70 years, all over the world, even after the Cold War, areas are separated, marked out and fenced off. 

In addition, geopolitical and economic upheavals and changes in climatic living conditions create new borders. In this age of global pandemics, the border seems to have become not just an instrument of intensive surveillance, but a geo-political power. The desire for the “vetted” and “sanctioned” migrant is shared across species lines. It is ironic that the ecosystems in the respective regions benefit from these border regimes, while at the same time challenging them. Border areas are refuges for rare or endangered plants and animals and have unique species richness.

The outdoor exhibition, Terrestrial Assemblage brings together artists whose practice deals with the relationship of humans to the earth („terra“). In an „act of coming together“ (assemblage) of different artistic media and ideas on current issues of demarcation and the ever louder environmental issue, ten international artists present their site-specific works on the grounds of the Floating University Berlin. They address the Anthropocene, Capitolocene causes of new borders and, in their artistic observations of the environment, reflect on social, biological and political border shifts, and design new, hybrid, cross-species images of the future. 

Terrestrial Assemblage aims to be a projection surface and a space of experience for fluid counter-images and artistic fantasies beyond political and geographical borders.