The exhibition “Aktive Asche“ by Mariechen Danz and Johannes Paul Raether featuring KAYA focuses on intricate transformational processes through which the concepts and materials integral to the artists’ practises undergo further intensification, metamorphosis, corrosion and incineration. The point of departure is embodiment and its language, ritual acts and the creation of a temporary community. At Bärenzwinger [bear pit], their individual cosmologies and form-changing qualities join forces to enter a collectively shared process.

In Mariechen Danz’s practice the body serves as a place for examining knowledge-transfer and communication.

In the outdoor compound, the clay figure “Womb Tomb“ has been laid out. As it absorbs information from the environment, its form changes, finally becoming a coral-like fossilisation. Stretched over the figure is a cover with digital prints by Danz, KAYA and Raether.

In an appearance by Transformalor, who has emerged from Johannes Paul Raether’s figuration as SelfSister Transformellae evolving since 2010, his/her recombined Wächterinnen reposition themselves within the bear cages, wherein the plural being teaches about “ReproReality“, or the global market of human reproduction, and the coming “Reprovolution“.

In a second performance, Transformalor forks – at the moment of cremation – into a possible embodiment of entropic identity.

KAYA, acting as a fictional and concrete body, conjoin formal, painterly and metabolic procedures in their productions of identity. Within the bear pit, their “OraKle Paintings” (“Catacomb Mirrors”) carry the wishes of the participants from a workshop that recently took place at TROPEZ Sommerbad Humboldthain and amplify the sound piece by Nicolas An Xedro. As wish- and sound-paintings, they create a sound space and claim their position within a fictitious, metaphorical healing process that culminates in the performance “– KAYA_YO-NAH YO-HO (healing performance for a sick painting)”.

Mariechen Danz, born 1980 in Dublin, Ireland, lives and works in Berlin.  
Danz’s work takes communication and the transmission of knowledge as its starting point, placing the body at the center of her practice. In sculptures, drawings, costumes and installations she calls into question the expressive capabilities and incapabilities of language, the legibility and hierarchy of signs, and the primacy of Western conceptions of reason. Danz further activates her installations through staged vocal performances.

The human body functions as the primary place of investigation for Danz’ work – the body as a metaphor, as origin and remains.
Danz’ work has been featured in institutions such as Haus der Kunst Munich ; MAK Wien ; Centre Pompidou Paris ; Kunsthaus Bregenz ; New Museum New York; GAK- Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; CAN Centre d’Art Neuchâtel and the 57th La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Christine Macel.  She is currently part of ‘Agora’ on the High Line in New York. Danz is a recent recipient of the Berlin Senate Arbeitsstipendium, the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship and the Villa Romana Fellowship.

Johannes Paul Raether born in 1977, Heidelberg, currently lives and works in Berlin.
The center of his work are the identities constructions such as Avataras, AlterIdentites or SelfSisters, by emerging at different public spaces, these colorful figures with made up from everyday objects, they bring up complex topics such as bio and reproduction industries, globalized tourism or occult substances in contemporary technology to the public.

Raether’s works and performances were shown at, among others, the 9th Berlin Biennale, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Fridericianum in Kassel, Savvy Contemporary in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions took place at District in Berlin, Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, and Ludlow 38 in New York City. Raether publishes in Texte zur Kunst and is currently Professor at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf.

KAYA is a collaborative project, combining the independent practices of painter Kerstin Brätsch and sculptor Debo Eilers, both living and working in New York. The project refers to Kaya Serene, a young Texan who serves the artists as a focal and departure point for numerous exhibitions, performances, interventions, events and publications.

KAYA’s work has been shown around the world within exhibitions at Fridericianum, Kassel, MWoods, Beijing, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, KUB Kunsthaus Bregenz, Deborah Schamoni, Munich, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, and 47 Canal, New York amongst others and the works were included in the recent Whitney Biennial 2017, New York.
In 2018 KAYA has a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Memmo, Rome. KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch, 1979 Hamburg, Germany and Debo Eilers, 1974, Texas, USA)

On the 26th and the 27th of October, the curators of the Berlin Bärenzwinger are hosting a conference, bringing together various artistic, academic and political perspectives. The aim is to critically discuss and assess the past, present and future of this historically and culturally significant building.

Two years after the death of its last inhabitant, the Bärenzwinger has been transformed into a temporary exhibition venue for contemporary art, and as such has enjoyed ever growing attention. The curatorial concept centers on inviting artists to respond to the building’s rich architectural and discursive history.

During the first day (26.10.), the focus is on the current exhibition program with its three parts “Traces of the Animal(istic)”, “Architectures of Segregation” and “Projections of Indistinguishability”. On the second day (27.10.) we aim to open the discussion to more general questions concerning the conditions, possibilities and challenges that define temporary cultural uses.

The Symposium will be held in German language.

Marking the end of the current exhibition programme, “meeting with the other as such, but still”follows possible lines of flight. A paradox, it seems, considering that a multitude of border mechanisms separate the exhibition site from the outside world and the Bärenzwinger’s individual areas from each other. The artists Natalie Czech and Mirjam Thomann, alternatively search for the hidden spaces within a space. The kind that only unfold in the encounter with the other as an experience of difference.

In her works, Mirjam Thomann explores the often invisible connections between space, bodies and the subject. Considering the Bärenzwinger’s opening to the public, Thomann reflects on the hidden conditions for accessibility in her newly created sculptural series “Little Life”.

Thomann’s interventions are prosthetic extensions of the space and its narratives, always referring visitors back to the immediate physical dimension of their subjective spatial experiences.

In her series “Negative Calligrammes”, the artist Natalie Czech addresses the relationship between image and writing.

The photos show emails from authors who wrote their texts around blank spaces that in turn were fixed by Czech beforehand. Text and image appear because of each other, yet stand for themselves. Through this encounter, Czechs’ images open up a poetic space for the visitors, in which the question of meaning constitutes an aesthetic experience itself.

Curated by
Nandita Vasanta and
Christopher Weickenmeier

Natalie Czech (born 1976) lives and works in Berlin. She has presented solo exhibitions at Heidelberger Kunstverein, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Ludlow 38, New York; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf; and Captain Petzel, Berlin; among others.

Recent group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Hamburg, Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Kunsthalle Bremen; Kunsthalle Wien; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Kunsthaus Bregenz. She has received numerous awards and grants, including, in 2014, the Villa Romana Prize.

Mirjam Thomann is an artist living in Berlin. Her installations combine sculptures with text, construction materials with flesh colours, everyday objects with ceramics, and art historical references with feminist theory.

Her focus is centred around the architectural and institutional nature of a place, particularly the exhibition space.

Her works have been exhibited at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin and Cologne, Casco in Utrecht, Kunstverein Hamburg and Kunstverein Arnsberg, After the Butcher in Berlin, Galerie Krobath in Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei and at MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles.

She writes for “Texte zur Kunst” and is currently Professor of Fine Arts/Plastics at Kunsthochschule Kassel.