The group show “Into the drift and sway” considers the Bärenzwinger as a place in constant flux. Located at the southern entrance to Köllnischer Park, the Bärenzwinger was built on an area that formerly contained a street-cleaning depot with a public restroom run by Berlin’s city sanitation department from 1901 to 1938. The building of the former depot was converted into a bear pit using the bricks of the pre-existing architecture. What stories from the past reside in its walls, which new qualities appear from its cracks?

The proximity of a park, the nearby banks of the Spree river, a former public bathing house and records of 1920s homosexual venues in the bear pit’s neighbourhood on Wallstraße and Inselstraße suggest the site’s previous use as a cruising area. Public restrooms or urinals, such as those in Köllnischer Park, were already documented in Berlin around 1900 as anonymous meeting places for homosexuals in the book “Berlins Drittes Geschlecht” (Berlin’s Third Sex, published in 1904) by the doctor and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.

The possible queer history of the surrounding area has left traces which the exhibition’s site-specific artistic interventions pick up on. From 1920 onwards, the publisher Adolf Brand regularly gathered with the “Gemeinschaft der Eigenen” (Society of the Own-Willed), a homosexual men’s club, in the neighbouring Marinehaus, formerly a home base for the imperial navy. Brand was a difficult man: while advocating for the abolishment of paragraph 175 which deemed homosexual acts between men illegal, he was an anti-Semite, sympathized with the Nazis and was in favor of traditional gender roles, idealizing a virile masculinity. Ludwig Hoffman, architect of the street-cleaning depot and public utility building, also built the infamous Märchenbrunnen in Volkspark Friedrichshain – which later became one of the most popular gay cruising sites in former East Berlin. In GDR times, the Klappe (“cottage”/”tea-room” in German gay slang) at Märkisches Ufer is reported to have been a meeting place for gay men, in close proximity to the bear pit. One of the founding members of the Homosexuelle Interessengemeinschaft Berlin (HIB, a gay rights association in the GDR) worked as a bear keeper at the bear pit in the 1970s.

Drawing from these historical constellations the exhibition traces queer stories, gathering six contemporary artists who address masculinities and questions of cruising and gender, reflecting on and claiming space for desire in the private and public sphere. On display are installation works, drawings, sculptures and textile works that interact with the specific history of the Köllnischer Park and the current architecture of the Bärenzwinger.
The exhibition borrows its title from a short story by gay rights activist and artist David Wojnarowicz, recalling memories of cruising and anonymous intimate encounters in urban landscapes. These recollections are marked by ambivalences. Often a transformation is at play – public spaces, industrial buildings or abandoned locations are turned into spaces of pleasure or violence. Queer spaces are also contested spaces, disappearing due to surveillance measures, policing, gentrification, and changing ways of living a “queer” life.

Constantin Hartenstein is a German artist based in Berlin. He studied at University of the Arts Berlin and Braunschweig University of Art with Professor Candice Breitz. In 2011, he worked as a film producer for the German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. Since 2019, Hartenstein is an Artistic Associate at the UdK Film Institute Berlin.

He received grants and prizes including Akademie der Künste, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Kunststiftung NRW, VISIO European Program on Artists’ Moving Images, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Künstlerkontakte) and Karl Hofer Gesellschaft grant. Hartenstein participated in several artist in residency programs such as Triangle Arts Association New York, Calle Mayor 54, Grand Central Art Center Santa Ana, Flux Factory New York and Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. His works are included in public and private collections; and have been exhibited and screened at international institutions.

Recent exhibitions include Studio Berlin (Boros Collection/Berghain), Kunstverein Dresden, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin, Galerie im Turm Berlin, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, WRO Media Art Biennale Wroclaw, Berlinische Galerie, Anthology Film Archives New York, Goethe Institute Beijing, Spring/Break Art Fair New York, Museum of the Moving Image New York (USA), Times Museum Guangzhou (CN), Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, German Consulate New York, Goethe Institute New York and transmediale Berlin.

Website

Born in the United States and living in Berlin, Germany, Lindsay Lawson received her BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, her MFA in New Genres from UCLA, and attended the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in the class of Judith Hopf. While working with a wide range of sculptural media including ceramics, fountains, lamps, and 3D printing, Lawson’s practice also encompasses film, video, and digital renders. Her practice often deals with the presence and agency of objecthood in virtual and physical spaces. Numerous bodies of work investigate states of infatuation with virtual personas and both virtual and physical objects.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Efremidis Gallery, Berlin; Herald St., London; LAXART, Los Angeles; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the 9thBerlin Biennale; Frutta Gallery, Rome; Kunstverein Leipzig; Piktogram, Warsaw; Trafo Contemporary Art Center, Budapest; and TEA Museum, Tenerife. Lawson will present a solo exhibition at Efremidis Gallery, Berlin in January 2022 including a new series of paintings as well as sculptures and a fountain installation.

Website

Lotte Meret (*1985, Berlin / Germany) analyzes the effects of digital media on our identity. In her practice she articulates the influence of technologies and digital media on body experiences and body knowledge. In this context between physical experience, political agency and digital worlds – Lotte Meret creates new narrative formats and develops hybrid sculptures and installations. She was an artist-in-residence at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and was included in the Emerging Artists Program from the German Short Film Association.

Her work has been presented at OCT_LOFT, Shenzhen; EIGEN+ART Gallery, Leipzig, NRW Forum, Düsseldorf; Goethe-Institut, Beijing; Kunsthal Rotterdam; Kunstverein Leipzig; Nottingham Contemporary; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunsthalle Basel; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. In collective structures she has published the publication ‘Body of Work’ and the record ‘Don’t DJ – Authentic Exoticism’. With the interdisciplinary label SEXES she is involved in installations and music events for clubs and festivals. Her works are included in international collections as the Lafayette Anticipation, Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin in Paris and Kunstkredit, Kanton Basel-Stadt.

Website

Lucas Odahara, born in São Paulo, lives and works in Berlin. Probing the complex relationships between body, space and memory, Odahara works in diverse media to create often architectural-scale installations in which personal and external visual and textual materials are invoked to recompose diverse scenes. Odahara reimagines the materials he encounters as open negotiations in a present that is never complete. In doing so, he often returns to the format of painted ceramic tiles. Employing a technique that has historically served in the depiction of colonial narratives, in his work, he welcomes the format’s modularity as a tool for re-imagination.

He holds a bachelor’s in product design from the São Paulo State University and a master’s in arts from the University of the Arts of Bremen. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Europe as well as in South Africa and Pakistan. He is currently a recipient of the Kunstfonds Bonn work grant.

Website

Emma Wolf-Haugh is a visual artist, educator and writer based in Dublin and Berlin and working internationally. Emma’s work is shaped by economic necessity, engaging forms of recycling, thrift and ephemera that result in soft modularity, wild archiving, and performative intervention, posing questions about value, accumulation, and authorship. They sees a cultural centring of thrift as part of a tradition of queer-working class vernacular and ethics, promiscuous and adept at working within limitations. Their pedagogical and publishing work posits the imagination as a political tool with radical potential that can exist and erupt anywhere and at anytime. Their work is often collaborative generating forms of temporary collectivity, intent on the erotic and energetic capacity of brief encounter. Emma’s work occupies many different sites, spaces and relations including exhibition, performance, filmmaking, publishing, writing, disruptive pedagogy, friendship and solidarity, elements that often get messy together in long term projects.

Emma has developed a trilogy of works since 2014 dealing with sexuality and space. The Re-appropriation of Sensuality, Sex in Public, and Domestic Optimism have been exhibited through various iterations at: The Project Arts Centre Dublin, The Grazer Kunstverein Graz, NCAD Gallery Dublin, Dundee Contemporary Arts Dundee, District Berlin, Den Frie Center Of Contemporary Art Copenhagen, The Galway Arts Centre, nGbK Berlin, Scriptings Berlin, Archive Kabinet Berlin, Survival Kit Festival Riga among other places. Emma is co-founder of The Many Headed-Hydra (TMHH), aqueous-decolonising collective since 2015 working on long term critical and poly-vocal projects across the seas that connect Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iceland, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania and beyond.

Website

15/12/2021, 7 pm

Exhibition tour with the curators Malte Pieper and Lusin Reinsch

Language: German

On the evening of December 15, the curators of “Into the drift and sway” invite you to join a guided tour (in German language) of the exhibition and visit the show and research that it is based on together.

The 2G regulation is valid for the visit in the Bärenzwinger. Please bring the proof of vaccination or recovery with you.

We additionally ask you to please wear a mask while visiting the exhibition.

20/02/2022, 3 pm

Reading with Lucas Odahara and hn. lyonga

Click here to sign up

Event in English language. The texts will be available as print-outs as well.

2G+ regulation is valid for the visit in the Bärenzwinger. Please bring the proof of vaccination or recovery with you and a negative Antigen-test result (no older than 24 hrs), or a proof of third (“booster”) vaccination.

We kindly ask you to wear a mask while visiting the exhibition.

As part of Lucas Odahara’s Sleep and Death (Rasse & Schönheit), commissioned by Bärenzwinger Berlin for the exhibition „Into the drift and sway“, the artist prepared a collaborative exchange with writer hn. lyonga
set to take place on Sunday, February 20th at 15h.

In the past year, Odahara and lyonga have actively engaged in each other’s practices and personal lives. As queer people of color living in Germany for over a decade, their work often engages with questions of race and gender within European spaces and histories. 
 
For the upcoming event, they are stepping aside – but not away from the convoluted history surrounding Adolf Brand, the founder of Germany’s first published gay magazine. Odahara’s installation places a fragment of this history in the water basins of the Bärenzwinger. 

What are the water’s wills, motives, and modes of remembering? How can memories of the global south exist next to the monolithic power of western histories? Is it possible to look at water as a space of memory, in transition – one in which personal and historical memories can coexist? These questions are the bedrock upon which Odahara and lyonga’s collaboration rests. Their new texts ‘Twin Constellations’ and ’The river flows fastest towards the end’ will be read in public at the event. 
 
Following the reading, a visit to the café of nearby Marinehaus is proposed.

Postponed due to stormy weather – new date:

24/02/2022, 7 pm

A Side / B Side

Alizée Lenox and Els Vandeweyer play Lindsay Lawson’s Organum

A short concert in two acts divided by a pause for drinks and chatter

Musicians: Alizée Lenox and Els Vandeweyer

Lindsay Lawson’s Organum is a sculptural, architectural, and sound installation of over 200 wind chimes hanging from the security spikes on the perimeter moat encircling the Bärenzwinger. Divided in two halves, just like the grounds themselves, each side of Organum is tuned to eight octaves of a musical scale. Artist and musician Alizée Lenox will perform electric guitar while surrounded by and responding to the Organum.

Experimental vibraphonist Els Vandeweyer will apply an unconventional percussive technique to this watery and unwieldy instrument.

2G+ regulation is valid for the visit in the Bärenzwinger. Please bring the proof of vaccination or recovery with you and a negative Antigen-test result (no older than 24 hrs), or a proof of third (“booster”) vaccination.
 
We kindly ask you to wear a mask while visiting the exhibition.

The term ‘deep state’ in its original meaning refers to a belief in a conspiracy, a secret shadow cabinet that secretly rules the world. Meanwhile, the term ‘deep states’ holds a second meaning, referring to certain moods or emotional states. In the exhibited works, the invited artists explore critical and dystopian scenarios, as well as feelings of powerlessness, mistrust or “fear of the other” – feelings which have become increasingly apparent during the current pandemic.  Can these emotional states and stances be understood as variants of a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’? This philosophical concept, which can be traced back to Paul Ricœur, can be used to describe a particular attitude that many have adopted during the pandemic, in which the available information is permanently met with scepticism. 

Suspicion is a high-arousal emotion that can certainly cause particular content to go viral. Just like the story of the supposedly high-ranking military officer, who allegedly since 2017 has made it his mission to spread the QAnon conspiracy theory on the internet. Conspiracy theories tend to surface and proliferate in times of crisis. In the case of a catastrophe, a tragedy or a pandemic, certain groups or individuals are blamed on an emotional basis for incomprehensible events – even though the origin of many crises lies beyond what can be logically explained. Cultural theorist Lauren Berlant points to the AIDS epidemic which occurred not so long ago. The spread of the HIV virus is still accompanied by conspiracy narratives and attempts at explanations that lead nowhere. Berlant notes that the term ‘epidemic’ is never “a neutral description” and that thinking about a widespread infectious disease in one or more communities always raises questions of classification, causality, responsibility and decay.

The exhibition explores the emotive backgrounds of conspiracy narratives in a place – the Köllnischer Park – that itself was once (in 1825) administered by the Masonic lodge called “Zu den drei Weltkugeln” (“To the three globes”). By designing the park to include an orangery, a temple, a pyramid and a labyrinth, the lodge members created a mysterious atmosphere that can still be felt at Bärenzwinger today. In the context of the exhibition, the unusual interior of the former bear pit has been transformed into a multi-layered labyrinth in which critical approaches towards knowledge are interwoven with affective images. The labyrinth stands metaphorically for unmanageable circumstances that are difficult to categorise, as well as for the search for solutions and answers to questions about its beginning and end, and in extension our unknown and unconscious future.

BBB_ (Alla Popp & Alex Traka) is a digitally advanced music and performance artist duo that confronts audiences with utopian and dystopian worlds where the boundaries between the human and the digital seem to merge.

Instagram @allapopp @alextraka

Korhan Erel creates electronic music and sound art. Erel treats the computer and electronics as instruments that coexist with conventional instruments in free improvisation and other musical genres. Erel often uses field recordings, found sounds or synthesised sounds in instrument designs and sound art projects. 

Erel’s music shifts between free improvisation, conceptual sound performances and also structured and composed pieces. Erel presents sound art projects in group and solo exhibitions and also collaborates with visual artists in performances.

Website

Gosia Lehmann studied at Central Saint Martin’s College in London and at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her works move between video, scenography and sound. She often works with performative and participatory formats. In 2019, she co-founded the art collective Lagoon Parliament, a platform and network established for the independent scene in Berlin. 

Her work has been presented at the following Berlin venues, among others: Kunsthaus KuLe, at 2 OG in the Alte Münze, the Museum für Naturkunde and the Akademie der Künste.

Website

Lukas Liese studied free art/sculpture at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA. In his sculptural work, Liese mainly uses stone. Over the years, he has created a wide variety of works that have this material in common. Through the presence of stone in space, its geological properties and its significance in art and cultural history, Liese builds up an interaction between the content of his works and the material.

In 2018, Liese was awarded the Mart Stam Prize for his graduation work at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. In 2020, Liese received the Elsa Neumann Scholarship from the State of Berlin.

Website

Kristina Paustian explores cultural anthropological and socio-political themes in her work. She is a co-founder of the Medienkunstverein (mkv), which works towards the promotion of contemporary art with new media, dedicated to the development of experimental narrative- and exhibition formats.

Paustian’s work has been shown at Les Rencontres Internationales Festival, Arsenal Berlin, Visions du Réel International Film Festival, Torino International Film Festival, Odessa Biennale, Athens Biennale, Tashkent Biennale and the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Website

ZUGANG collective members – Bruno Siegrist, Ada Kopaz, Can Kurucu and Tama Ruß – studied fine arts at the Berlin University of the Arts, among others, and work across the fields of film, photography, performance and sculpture. They are interested in the city, its inhabitants and relationships. 

The central theme of their artistic practice is their research into the political dimension of images and the power of relations in public space..

Websites:
– Bruno Siegrist
– Can Kurucu
– Edekawo

Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus (Hydrangea)

10.–12.09.2021 Bärenzwinger, everyday at 19 Uhr & 20 Uhr

Within the frame of the festival Easterndaze x Berlin 2021

»The Double« will be experienced as a walk-through listening session at the Bärenzwinger on 10, 11 and 12 September 2021. Admission is free.

Between 10 and 12 September, the Bärenzwinger invites you to the concert performance “The Double” at 7 and 8 pm. »The Double« is an immersive music installation by the artist duo Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus (Hydrangea), taking place as part of the Easterndaze x Berlin festival. Easterndaze is a platform that connects community-oriented radio projects from Central and Eastern Europe and organises annual digital and on-site events to connect local music scenes internationally.

The artist duo Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus explores the history of European colonial gardens in their work. Visitors will be guided through the evening by two performers. In the performance»The Double«, botanical gardens are critically reflected upon by questioning them as places of hidden violence, appropriation and destruction.

The work is presented on the outside terraces of the building and deals with the history of Köllnischer Park, which was privately administered as a garden and park in the 19th century by a Masonic lodge, among others, and was transformed into an aesthetic landscape according to their designs. The artistic intervention»The Double«is now transforming once again, through music and installative elements, the place that until 2015 served as an enclosure for the Berlin city bears.

BBB_
Concert performance
01/10/2021

Admission 7 pm
Concert 7.30 pm

The concert will take place on an outdoor terrace of the Bärenzwinger. Admission is free.

Access according to the 3G regulation for those tested – negative antigen test not older than 24h, vaccinated or recovered.

The music and performance artist duo BBB_ (Alla Popp & Alex Traka) confronts the audience with utopian and dystopian worlds in which the boundaries between the human and the digital seem to merge. The performance extends the computer game designed by BBB_ “Songs of Cyborgeoisie. The Game”, which is part of the current exhibition “deep states” at Bärenzwinger.

The project explores how technological dystopian fears influence the imagination about the future. The audience can expect a one-hour interactive performance with narrative electronic live music that invites them to take an audio-visual journey through immersive science fiction worlds. Visitors are immersed in the perspectives of various technological, organic or fantastic beings. The performance questions the technological status quo in order to create new future scenarios.

With live vocals and spoken word by Alla Popp and live guitar by Alex Traka.

Game visuals by BBB_ in collaboration with Simon Kein and Lixing Yang, with costume design by Sarah Ama Duah and hybrid choreographic concept by Katja Cheranaeva.

Note: Strobe lights and fog may be used during the event.  

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Viviana Druga
Performance
15/10/2021

Admission 6 pm

The performance will take place on an outdoor terrace of the Bärenzwinger. Admission is free.

Access according to the 3G regulation for those tested – negative antigen test not older than 24h, vaccinated or recovered.

In her performance “The fat dreams of an Eastern bear“ Viviana Druga takes visitors on a journey to channel the energy of the Ukranian bear, a distant cousin of the Berlin bear. Fat as a materialized power source is a medicine used in archaic cultures centering bears throughout Eastern Europe.

By using “bear fat vapors”, the ritualista offers healing to the participants, while enabling them to connect with nature.

What is the significance of rituals in contemporary life? How can spiritual practices help to connect with nature and with oneself – and how can we reflect on them?

“Art for me is a magical activity, a ritual that could help subjects (people) discover new dimensions of themselves.” Viviana Druga

In her work Romanian artist Viviana Druga explores the relationship of nature and humans, using ritual practices touching upon issues like healing, rebirth and feminine aesthetics.

With this performance, Viviana Druga invites visitors to discuss contemporary healing practices and their relation to ritual, tradition and heritage.

Gosia Lehmann
Performance

Gosia Lehmann
Performance
19/11/2021

6-8 pm

There will be 3 time slots for 8 persons each. 

Access according to the 2G regulation for vaccinated or recovered persons.

Starting point: Wall Street (Wallstraße 57 in front of Brazilian Embassy)

Please be on time!

In her experimental lecture-performance “Portal to the Other Realms” Gosia Lehmann invites the audience into the Blue Chamber: an extra-dimensional space inhabited by ’Angels-of-sweet-deals’, who will be your guides through the evening. The audience will get to make decisions about the narratives of the performance. But be aware: a choice can’t be undone and a story can never be told twice.

“Portal to the Other Realms” is part of Gosia Lehmann’s “Divine Interventions <–> Force Majeure” – an ongoing series of works exploring the idea of economic shamanism and how the business of future forecasting evolved from esoteric and ritualistic believes into a corporate industry.

The performance will take place in English. Admission is free. Registration is required and the number of participants is limited. 

Credits

Concept: Gosia Lehmann
Performers: Rosanna Graf & Maryna Makarenko
Production assistance: Valerian Blos
Sound: Gabriel Kleber
3D renders: Hsiangfu Chen

Zugang Kollektiv
Finissage & Community
20/11/2021

6-8 pm

Access according to the 2G regulation for vaccinated or recovered persons.

The Zugang Kollektiv (Bruno Siegrist, Ada Kopaz, Can Kurucu and Tama Ruß) invites to the “Performative Encounter with Soup and Fire Substitute” on the second to last evening of the exhibition.

Over soup, fire substitute and music, the Zugang Kollektiv will engage with the audience of the Bärenzwinger.

In the course of the evening, the gathering will be framed by gestures and performative interludes. In this way, possible proposals about the course of the evening will emerge.

Surprise guests have also already announced themselves, among others:

“The Radically Other”
Lecture Performance
Anonymised Telegramchat Querdenker

With Paja Burgess, Rydiger Benterbusch, Ken-und-Barbie-Hollihore, Antonia Benterbusch, Lara Kitzig.

It will be possible to (partly) experience the exhibition at the same time. Please register in advance and bring your warmest overalls.

The performative gathering will take place in German and English.

Admission is free.