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OPEN CALL 2023

Helin Ulas and Sarah Oh-Mock have been selected by the jury and will present their artistic works at Bärenzwinger.

In this year’s program of Bärenzwinger we will be dedicating four exihibitions to the theme of gleaning. We understand gleaning not only as the practice of collecting overlooked or leftover crops, but rather as the general practice of reviewing and re-evaluating the (supposedly) functionless and unusable. It is a semiotic process that deciphers the in parts only implicit conditions of our environment and that enables a literal examination of the modalities of our humanity. It thus also always puts norms, self-evident facts and seemingly necessary things up for disposition and tests their binding nature.

In the autumn exhibition, we therefore turn our attention to the scene of simulation: the digital world. That is, even more than focusing on the digital world, we are using the optics of simulation to make things visible that under the regime of the digitalisation of our realities is increasingly being pushed into the shadows, ignored or rendered functionless. The exhibition aims to investigate the question of how the human being has changed and will have changed under technological developments, and thus implicitly which qualities are unalterably part of being human, in that they resist the transformations of technology or cause a disruption of the matrix through their absence in the “onlife”. However, this is a gleaning that favours the viewpoint of the future, and from this viewpoint of the future asks about its plural pasts – our often seemingly monolithic present. The present is thus experienced less as a factual necessity than as a space of possibility. In this respect, our exhibition program not only asks what human beings are, but also what they can be.

As the premise of Bärenzwinger is being a former animal enclosure and not a white cube, the project proposal should also always be considered against the background of the specific symbolism of the place and space. For first impressions klick here.

Artists are warmly invited to submit a specific project proposal! From the applications two individual projects will be selected.

Practical Information

Schedule:

  • Open Call: 10.03.-30.04.23
  • Selection of Artists: 01.05.-31.05.23
  • Announcement of selection: Beginning of June
  • Kick-Off: 12.06.
  • Exhibition period: 17.08.-29.10.23

Who can apply?

  • Professional artists (completed training) resident in Berlin, designers, collectives.

Working materials and support

  • The work production is financed with up to 625 euros per artistic position. Our team supports the projects with transport, a set-up team, press work and visitor service.

Exhibition space

  • Bärenzwinger as a building and its two outdoors terraces.

Fees

  • Artist or collective fee of 2,500 euros (per artistic position).

The following must be submitted for the application (in one pdf document):

  • Project proposal (max. one DIN A4 page)
  • Technical requirements (max. one DIN A4 page)
  • Portfolio with max. 10 pages incl. Pictures
  • CV

Curation

  • Joana Stamer, Julius Kaftan

Jury

  • Team Artistic Direction Bärenzwinger.

Questions and application:

opencall@baerenzwinger.berlin