Using the online platform as a space of transitions where boundaries blur, students from M.A. Raumstrategien/Spatial Strategies at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee Amanda Bobadilla, Bianca Lee, Emma Lang, Nischal Khadka, Xiao Zhang, xindi propose to the internet audience a trip.
A journey that goes from the Mind or Mend the Gap, the 3-day exhibition and performances that took place in June 2024, as an output of the seminar Mobilizations (SuSe2024), held by Dr. Marianna Liosi, to the Listening into Hope radio broadcast that was shown on the 9th of July 2024 at the Refuge Worldwide Radio, as part of Dr. Anton Kats’ seminar Great Sound (SuSe2024). With the participation of several practitioners in the radio broadcast Listening into Hope, new narratives, sensitivities, practices, and spaces of resistance emerge.
Enjoy the listening!
Listening into Hope. Spatial Strategies
What does it mean to have hope? Is it a passive delusion or a path toward liberation? In this iteration of the Spatial Strategies on Refuge Worldwide, join this journey in musing through hope in our times.
In the studio: Reem Alfahad, Laura Bleck, Amanda Bobadilla, Cecilia Buffa, Nischal Khadka, Rebecca Korang, Emma Lang, Bianca Lee, Franziska Anastasia Lentes, Moana Mayall, Yupanqui Ramos, hany tea, Xiao Zhang, Xindi Zhou.
In this porous world, gaps form and dissolve as cracks between cliffs, spaces between words, or air currents weave through our lives, revealing hidden possibilities and challenges. “Mind the gap,” a warning that creates a certain urgency; “Mend the gap,” care that sews common or individual wounds. Through their works, artists aim to pay attention, search, and focus on those potential leakages as spaces of expression: to be filled, to perfect, to create anew–or, if not, then to traverse their inevitable presence. In the Mind or Mend the Gap (23 – 26 June 2024; Donaustrasse 84 12043, Berlin), students focused on the transformative potential of affect and empathy as tools for individual or collective mobilization online and offline.
Emma Lang’s audio installation magnified otherwise imperceptible experiences into limitless narratives through a poetic overexpression. Amanda Bobadilla’s political cartography had fragmented and reassembled satellite maps, tracing historical and personal migrations and challenging viewers to rethink geographic and socio-political boundaries. Bianca Lee’s drawings reflected the mutable nature of memory through the lens of Arctic cloudberries, using confabulation to reconstruct reality in response to trauma. Xiao Zhang’s paper rubbings of bone shapes and meat fat remnants addressed food scarcity and economic inequality, highlighting the deep social imprints of deprivation and abundance. Nischal Khadka’s installation brought the musical instruments Nāyākhi and its sounds to delve deeper into the historical and cultural context of ritualistic drum sounds of Kathmandu Valley, which were at risk of extinction. xindi’s installation and the sound performance represented suppressed voices and censored expressions through different plants and narrative poetry, evoking the fragility and resilience of self-expression.
A cooperation between M.A. Raumstrategien Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, Sumac Space and Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte; Coordinated by Dr. Marianna Liosi
Text: Dr. Marianna Liosi
Photo credit: Xiao Zhang