We have never been separate
We have never been separate - beyond nature and culture
Opening Thursday 7th September at 9 pm
with contributions by Centre Parrhèsia / Society of the Friends of the Virus, Melanie Bonajo, Tabita Rezaire and Michael Dobrindt.
more Information coming soon ...
Tour and talk about the production of the exhibition
with Michael Dobrindt, Birte Heier und Sebastian Stein
Screening of Night Soil Trilogy by melanie bonajo
in the context of the exhibition Wir sind nie getrennt gewesen - jenseits von Natur und Kultur we're showing all three parts of melanie bonajos Night Soil Trilogy in original version with German subtitel in a row.
Night Soil is an experimental documentary in three parts showing the huge disconnection most Western people feel to nature. In a semi- documentary style melanie bonajo explores how people today tackle feelings of fragmentation and alienation head-on. The central characters in their videos are in search of new rituals, a different relationship with nature and a reassessment of ideas surrounding gender, with the aim of combating a gnawing sense of emptiness. It is far from rare for this to involve an illegal and alternative way of life that exists outside the established system. bonajo portrays this with passion and elegance, and occasional bursts of absurdism, and they do not shrink from stepping into view themself. Beneath a layer of humour and apparent chaos lurks an ambivalent attitude to all kinds of technological and capitalist developments in modern society. Semi-documentary scenes alternate with hallucinogenic fragments that spring from bonajo’s imagination. They are shaped by an intensive collaboration with the main characters. These are mainly women, because bonajo believes their voices are insufficiently heard even today.
melanie bonajo, Night Soil - Fake Paradise, film still painting (2014)
melanie bonajo, Night Soil - Fake Paradise, film still painting (2014)
melanie bonajo, Night Soil - Nocturnal Gardening (2016)
Lecture and talk with Dr. Boniface Mabanza Bambu
Dr. Boniface Mabanza Bambu
members' bar
Dear friends and members of the Kunstverein Langenhagen,
out of the desire to be more in contact with the members of the Kunstverein, we cordially invite you to the first members' bar evening. In a pleasant atmosphere, we would like to get into conversation with you after the members' meeting, to hear how you are getting on with the Kunstverein and, last but not least, sample a glass or two of wine.
We look forward to your visit, meeting you again or getting to know you and exchanging ideas!
Love, Live, and Die in Symbiosis* with Lucile Olympe Haute
Opening 13th december 2023 7pm
Artist talk 14th december 2023 7pm
Web-to-print workshop with Lucile Olympe Haute and Jeanne Mainetti around human life with microrganisms 25th & 27th january 2024
Performance with Lucile Olympe Haute 27th january 2024 7 pm
This exhibition shows the different facets of a single plural form of life, bringing together bacteria and yeast in symbiosis within the Kombucha culture.
This series of works by Lucile Olympe Haute shows the results of experiments with materials that are both scraps from beverage production and ritual objects. They invite us to question the ways in which we collaborate with, care for, cultivate or exploit other living things. More broadly, they question our collective values and their influence on our relationship with the world.
Are we capable of empathetic projection towards swarms of microscopic life, whose effects we perceive but not the individuals? The carbonaceous life forms brought together here are neither animal nor vegetable, but a heterogeneous symbiotic legion of non-ukaryotic living organisms. They reproduce, grow together, agonise and die in the exhibition.
On a daily basis, they are our allies and also our enemies. Yeast and bacteria populate our intimate microbiota. We control their presence, sort them out, cultivate or exterminate them. We collaborate with them on and in our bodies, as well as in our food. Each of us is inhabited by invisible beings, each of us is a symbiotic legion.
*Symbiosis: an intimate and lasting association between organisms of different species.
The exhibition and the events are friendly sponsored by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, the Sparkasse Hannover and the Ministry of Sciene and Culture of Lower Saxony.
Web-to-print workshop, Part 1: About connection and circulation
by Lucile Olympe Haute and Jeanne Mainetti
During this session, we propose to address a crossed topic, from biology to culture: an holistic approach to life and a committed approach to technologies. On the one hand, we look at humans and human productions as dependent of interactions with other living beings. On the other hand, we embrace digital commons and free software culture. Besides the anecdotic covering of hobbies, there is a well documented shared culture: fermentation communities are close if not similar to hacker, maker and DIY communities. To address those questions, we will refer to short texts and quotes that will be part of a collective zine.
This session is the first part of a 2 steps workshop proposed by Lucile Olympe Haute and Jeanne Mainetti. The workshop will be in English. Participants can attend to one or both sessions.
Web-to-print workshop, Part 2: Cyberwitches web-to-print zine - graphic design with CSS
by Lucile Olympe Haute and Jeanne Mainetti
This workshop proposes to circulate texts, words and images according to a slow temporality and materiality, and to a limited audience. The chosen vehicle is micro-edition. You will produce the graphic layout of one of the texts gathered for the workshop (manifesto, open letter, short essay, fiction...). The corpus hinges on the triple intersection of political awareness, technological emancipation and spirituality. You can contribute with proposals. The method we'll use to bring the texts together is appropriation through graphic design using open-source tools. Together, we'll produce the new volume of the mini-anthology called "Cybersorcières". This workshop is an introduction to web-to-print, i.e. graphic design for print using web tools and languages.
This introduction to basics is destined to beginners. Prerequisites are: one computer per person, equipped with a word processing program adapted to code (Visual Studio, Sublime Texte, Atom) and the Chromium or Firefox web browsers. The goal of this session is for each participent to output one pdf designated to the collective zine.
This session is the second part of the a 2 steps workshop proposed by Lucile Olympe Haute and Jeanne Mainetti. The workshop will be in English. Participants can attend to one or both sessions.
Participation is free of charge
Please register at mail@kunstverein-langenhagen.de
Performance with Lucile Olympe Haute with Jeanne Mainetti
Performance inside the exhibition
January 27th 2024, 19h
For this activation of the three installations in the exhibition Loves, Lives and Deaths in Symbiosis, Lucile Olympe Haute invites Jeanne Mainetti.
Together, they will speak in tongues in front of the six Cosmic Talismans installed on their glass and string altar. Visible artifacts resulting from microscopic lives, this series invites us to project ourselves to other scales and experience a vertiginous gap: from the microscopic invisible to the cosmic infinite.
Then comes the time for healing gestures around the Agonie installation. Repeated over and over, the circle is drawn, again and again, until trance is reached. It echoes circle of life and death. If it's not possible to live without eating, to eat without killing, not all deaths are equivalent.
Finally comes the time of communion around the culture broth where yeast and bacteria reproduce and multiply. Lupanar, nuptial bed, delivery bed, deathbed: a whole life develops here. Who could take in a few thousand of these symbiotic beings?
Kathy-Ann Tan
Photo: Lisa Siomicheva