It begins with a trace; more precisely, a sedimentation of gazes, a collection of views that overlap in the photographic documentation of past exhibitions. I sift through the digital remnants of Kaiserwache programming from the past three years: images, videos, texts—scattered across various art platforms. Gradually, the most obvious observation settles in my mind. All artifacts—most conspicuously in the photographs—incidentally address or document the architecture, gradually exposing Kaiserwache (or incrementally contributing to its digitally mediated simulacrum). This inevitably leads to the next question: What remains invisible? What eludes capture? Where does the image fall silent?

An answer shots forth: The basement and attic of Kaiserwache constitute spaces beyond the curated gaze, remote zones of our exhibition practice that seemingly evade systematic classification and visibility. In documentation, they are perceptible mainly through their absence. Until now, they have only been alluded to, their doors appearing as latent edges marking a beyond of the exhibition.

Basements and attics: When we think of these dark, often windowless spaces, our mind‘s eye tends to linger at the threshold—as if the uncertainty of these environments were transforming into a potential threat. Countless horror film tropes stem from this very notion. But is that all? What truly keeps us from entering these spaces?

Perhaps it is the darkness and dust that the camera fears, the disorder that defies the curated gaze, or simply the fact that these spaces were never intended for us. Maybe the answer lies in the architecture itself—in its boundaries, its accessibility, and, not least, its hierarchies. Or in our own perception, which resists acknowledging the invisible as part of what is being shown.

It remains to be stated that these spaces are indispensable (even in the literal sense)—foundational elements that unfold their impact in obscurity. Precisely from this marginal existence, they assert their own logic and challenge us to rethink space.

Above us and beneath us (Über uns, unter uns) are not mere spaces but vectors of movement, of displacement, that seek to renegotiate the act of looking. Attic and basement, beyond their materiality, must also be understood as spaces of thought. They are not the Other of the exhibition but its intensified form: spaces that resonate and reason.

In this exhibition, the hierarchy of space—its function as a backdrop or carrier of a curatorial narrative—is reversed. The exhibition is no longer a display presenting itself to a gaze but a process, a machinery defined by its fractures. The space loses its status as a background and becomes an agent.

The basement and attic in “Über uns, unter uns” elude conventional access for visitors; they are not spaces of direct physical perception as expected but rather spaces of inaccessibility, a deferral or displacement of vision. Their visibility is mediated—through convex mirrors that do not reveal but rather point elsewhere. This reflection generates a scattering of space, followed by a dispersion of its coherence. What remains is the attempt to decipher the distorted image, yet what lingers is not revelation but an inkling: something is there—above us, beneath us—but always withdrawn, ultimately inaccessible in its entirety.

The exhibition no longer operates in the mode of direct presentation but in a state of displacement, a topological entanglement of the visible and the invisible. Seeing is reflected in its own condition—not as access but as difference. There is no direct gaze, only detours, reflections, afterimages. This points to the paradoxical mediality of exhibitions themselves: their presence is always also their absence, their documentation always already another form of exhibition.

Photography, which ostensibly preserves, in truth transfers its referent into another order. It does not merely create an image of the exhibition but a new exhibition within the image. Every act of documentation is a curatorial decision, a cut through visibility, a frame that conceals as much as it reveals. What does this mediation do to the “actual” exhibition? Or conversely: What would an exhibition be without its mediation?

Yet there is no pure presence. Every artwork is always already framed by prior knowledge, expectation, and context. It does not exist as an autonomous object but as part of a mechanism of capture, projection, and archiving. The notion of immediate experience is deceptive. Without a structure of mediation, the artwork becomes a blind spot. The question is not whether mediation takes place, but how.

In this exhibition, Kaiserwache transforms into an oversized analog camera—a device that produces visibility but also displaces it. It is not far-fetched to consider that an exhibition, in a certain sense, is always already a camera—a machine of reflection, an assemblage of visibility and invisibility, proximity and distance, names and bodies, economy and aesthetics. Visitors find themselves in the illuminated, empty exhibition space—the print—while the actual event takes place in the negative space of the architecture: the basement, the attic. Without the negative, there is no image, no visibility, no exhibition.

The negative of an image must never be understood as a mere inversion of the developed image—they do not relate symmetrically. While it is inevitable that the content of the negative forms the basis of the future image, it would be a mistake to see it as a straightforward reversal of tonal values. After all, the development of the negative is a creative process, yielding different images depending on the mode of perception. The results can be extraordinarily distinct—so long as the chemistry is right, quite literally.

The photographic negative is a trace, an inversion, a shadow of the light conditions that left an image behind. It is a visibility not intended for itself but a transitional form, a possibility. In this show, the negative becomes the principle.

***

An attic is a boundary: too low to truly be a floor, too high to remain part of the ground. An animal inside is not a visitor, not a pet, not prey, but a constant that was not anticipated. The marten eats, shits, sleeps, disappears. Its territory is not ownership, but a habit. Its presence is a decision or a coincidence, its feces a mark of duration.

Now it is not visible, but its body has used the warmth of the wood and pressed its fur into the dust. I must wipe away its traces, clean its toilet (how ironic this statement echoes here at Kaiserwache), separate its place from mine, but the door remains a boundary that separates not only us but also time and matter. Perhaps the marten is long gone, has given up on its territory, and found some other hidden corner of the city. Or maybe it‘s right above, tucked between the beams in that twilight, just waiting for me to clear out. After all, spatial production isn‘t just a human game.

***

I am fascinated by a certain type of commercial group show that gets by with two-line exhibition texts or even just a list of names (why do I write “get by?” After all, they thrive precisely because of this!) They behave unobtrusively, yet at the same time, they cannot avoid bumping into the institutions of good taste.

The “coherence” of the selection, a protective exhibition theme, an overarching narrative—these elements often feel like mere pretexts for business in this context. A kind of intellectual ornamentation that, given the Potemkin-like motivations behind the framing, either spoils the appetite of those interested in commerce or makes a “serious” engagement with the exhibition uncomfortable, if not impossible, for those invested in the art itself. In contrast, there are those “unpretentious” exhibitions or strategically assembled arrangements. These galleries have grown weary of the masquerade—of having to dress exhibitions in the guise of a tradition of coherence and legibility, a pompous attire that many shows refuse to forgo, not least for its legitimizing effects. Especially when the emphasis on exhibition quality and curatorial value comes into conflict with the sanctified business.

Many galleries have little need to conform to curatorial conventions or etiquette—good business usually begets more good business, whereas „good“ exhibition art offers no such promise of self-sustainability. Thus, this type of exhibition seems to have a different mode of presentation, one that counteracts the tendencies of idealizing motivations and, by the way, lends the exhibition a more down-to-earth, albeit less reflective, appearance.

The exhibitions I speak of can sometimes be understood as a strategic response to certain economic conditions. Galleries have deals with artists but also deals and percentages with each other. The small fish must figure out what artistic leftovers they can grab for themselves, because clearly, there exists a food chain among galleries as well. This may sound more brutal than it really is. But if we stay with the brutal metaphor, the blood trail can be traced back to René Picard’s proclamation: “We no longer collect art, but acquire individuals.” It is no longer possible to separate art from the artist, if it ever was. Their names flash up, and names, as we know, are fleeting, negotiable, connectable, and transferable. It’s not about a hierarchy of quality but about a pragmatics of connection. Clearly, artists have grown or degenerated into brand names that must be understood as symbolic units with individual traits and, hopefully, prospects for value appreciation.

Although we, at Kaiserwache, do not directly engage in value creation through monetary flow, we are nonetheless inevitably embedded in a network of brand and symbolic values. Whether we like it or not, we act like a brand. This model of trading in immaterial values, of dancing with associations and desires, long established in the collaboration between artists and art spaces, is increasingly found in other markets and on ever more spectacular levels. I‘m talking about collaborations between international trade brands. Have you ever tasted Coca-Cola® with Oreo™ flavor? Taste here is irrelevant, because the mere idea of their union already generates enough symbolic value to push the actual product into the background. The brands enter into a promiscuous romance, just so their child can carry a double-barreled name. And it is the aura of this romance—not the child—that sparks interest. This need not necessarily be interpreted negatively.

Exactly this logic also shapes the commercial group show, which no longer has to rely on curatorial concepts but only on the economic grammar of names, whose (re-)combinations already generate a narrative. The exhibition as a cocktail of signifiers, as a fleeting arrangement of values that charge each other—not to create thematic depth, but to stage the mechanism of visibility itself.

It would be a lie to claim that the exhibition is completely free from the logic of brand fusion—after all, there is a certain allure in combining names, imagining how their interactions will create new constellations, how their symbolic values oscillate and charge each other. There is a nearly naïve joy in alphabetically ordering these names: David Attwood, Claire Megumi (Claire and Megumi are both first names of the artist); Andrea Fortmann; Nao Kikuchi; Hannah Kindler; Hojeong Lee; Alice Tioli; Michaela Tröscher, the Icelandic pianist; Lorenz Walter Wernli; Lidong Zhao: imagining a “product” emerging from their connection—more or less uninterested in the conceptual linkage of their works. Perhaps there is a gesture of marketing here, perhaps a deeply rooted need for connection, for association, and of course for communication with these artists.

But if I think this impulse through further, it inevitably begins to dissolve itself. What exactly happens when an exhibition does not rely on the conventional narrative of coherence and consistency? When it does not obey the mechanisms of thematic order or curatorial mediation? Does something get revealed or is just another veil pulled?

“Über uns, unter uns” does not use this mode of presentation as a form of rejection, but as a strategy of play—a play that is unsure of its own motivations and doesn’t want to be. For an exhibition that is staged from the start as “authentic” or “down-to-earth” only reproduces another form of masquerade, a new pose of immediacy. Instead, here, the unfinished takes center stage so that the string of names can remain provisional. The reading becomes secondary.

Perhaps that is the real point: Every exhibition is an image with an invisible negative, a reflection that never shows the whole. Because ultimately, every person—every artistic gesture, every exhibition—carries something within them that not only remains incomprehensible but also unreachable. A shadow and a transcending that lies beyond any curatorial construction.

Addendum (Apologies if I repeat myself):

We tend to overlook how much an artwork is not only influenced by its presentation but often brought into being by it in the first place. The white walls, the right angles, the neutralized light—these are the oxygen of the art world. We barely notice them as long as they work their magic reliably. Only when art has to do without the white cube does its breath begin to falter. Or to put it differently: One does not suffocate inside the white cube, but rather outside of it, when the accustomed conditions disappear and the artwork must assert itself in unfamiliar atmospheres.

“Über uns, unter uns” is situated at precisely this threshold. The exhibition shifts the focus away from the neutral presentation space and into the zones that remain outside the reach of a conventional exhibition space: the attic and the basement. These are places untouched by right angles or museal smoothness. They follow their own logic—dust, darkness, confinement, and inaccessibility themselves become active forces.

For me, this was both the challenge and the promise of this exhibition: What happens when art no longer hides from architecture but instead exposes itself to it? When it is not the walls that serve the works but the works that must respond to the edges, niches, and shadows of the space? And beyond that: What does mediation mean under such conditions? How can an exhibition be made tangible when its essential elements withdraw from “direct” view?

“Über uns, unter uns” opens various paths into the exhibition and tests different forms of mediation. These include this exhibition text, a video tour, a photographic documentation using a digital camera, and an analog photo series. The distinct qualities of each medium allow different facets of the exhibition (as well as the possibilities and limitations of the media themselves) to come to the fore, making it evident that the exhibition itself only fully takes shape through these mediations.

Initially, my goal was to treat all formats equally. However, I soon realized this was hardly feasible. On the one hand, I observed a clear difference in audience engagement with the various media. A nearly ten-minute video tour or a multi-page text receives significantly less attention than the digital photo series, which, in its scrollable format—similar to an Instagram feed—proves particularly accessible.

On the other hand, a curatorial decision further shifted the dynamics: the analog documentation is presented exclusively as negatives on-site, with no digital reproductions. The decision to forgo digitization was deliberate—partly because the curatorial interest of this exhibition lies precisely in the differences and idiosyncrasies of each medium. Here, the focus is on the physical negatives, their materiality, and the process of their development. Unlike the digital documentation, these images are not transferred into the digital media landscape. This inevitably creates an imbalance in accessibility—one that is not merely accepted but emphasized.

The choice to present the negatives only in their analog form and not make them available online also serves as a gesture that reinforces the image of Kaiserwache as an oversized camera—an apparatus that produces visibility while simultaneously withholding it.

This withholding arises from the apparatus (or the media) itself. Photographs, texts, and videos do not merely document the exhibition; they also reveal their own shortcomings. Every attempt at mediation leaves behind something that cannot be fully translated. Every perspective opens a gap—a space of the untranslated (or even the untranslatable). And in this, there is a parallel to the so-called “direct” experience on-site. For even when we stand before a work, something remains withdrawn.

After all, we often fail to notice the air of the white cube, or the silent conditions that must be met for the illusion of “immediacy” and “presence” to arise in the first place (see previous text).

Perhaps this is the real break with the white cube: that we are not only leaving it behind spatially but also exposing its promises of clarity, neutrality, transparency, and immediate encounter as mere constructs.