ART CITIES: Berlin-At Dawn

Cauleen Smith, Sky Learn Sky, 2018/2022, site-specific installation comprises of differently colored overlapping gels and installation instructions, dimensions variable. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin LayThe group exhibition “At Dawn” draws connections between techniques of image production and the social and political work that goes into imagining alternatives to what the late Cuban American thinker José Esteban Muñoz called our “poisonous and insolvent” present. The show seeks to express a sense of art’s utopian horizon—a generative space of desire, experimentation, and queer relationality aligned with what he described as “ecstatic time.”

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Julia Stoschek FoundationArchive

Cauleen Smith, Sky Learn Sky, 2018/2022, site-specific installation comprises of differently colored overlapping gels and installation instructions, dimensions variable. Right: Jeppe Hein, 2-Dimensional Mirror Labyrinth, 2006, sculpture; polished stain- less steel, Ø 350 cm, 22 parts: 220 × 23 × 5.5 cm; 21 parts: 220 × 10 × 5.5 cm. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay
Cauleen Smith, Sky Learn Sky, 2018/2022, site-specific installation comprises of differently colored overlapping gels and installation instructions, dimensions variable. Right: Jeppe Hein, 2-Dimensional Mirror Labyrinth, 2006, sculpture; polished stain- less steel, Ø 350 cm, 22 parts: 220 × 23 × 5.5 cm; 21 parts: 220 × 10 × 5.5 cm. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay

The 27 works on view at the group exhibition “At Dawn” range from performance videos, film, photography, video sculptures, and Land art documentation to moving-image installations and poetry. Historical works foregrounding materiality and process by Nancy Holt (and Holt with Robert Smithson), Joan Jonas, Mary Lucier, and Anthony McCall connect to the formal and conceptual concerns of more recent pieces by artists including Heike Baranowsky, Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, and Jeppe Hein. These are set in dialogue with questions of desire and identity in works by the collective DIS, Barbara Hammer, and Wolfgang Tillmans, as well as in A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner’s sixty-nine-minute ode to queer sexuality in “Community Action Center” (2010). In what will be the biggest European presentation of the artist’s work to date, four large video installations by Jacolby Satterwhite fuse the artist’s own performance practice with a CGI dreamscape to explore queer ritual and the political potential of software. Two video sculptures by Nam June Paik can be seen as precursors to Satterwhite’s animated image overload. The show also includes an update of the reading room by Cassandra Press installed at JSC Berlin since 2021, a discursive space in which visitors can delve into Black schol- arship on subjects such as double consciousness, performativity, and reparations. Audio recordings of poems from Precious Okoyomon are nestled into the building’s exterior, while Cauleen Smith contributes not only a video but also an installation, “Sky Learn Sky” (2022), turning the building into a durational artwork. Like that of the exhibition, the installation’s title is borrowed from a saying by Alice Coltrane, known in her spiritual life as Swamini Turiyasangitananda: “At dawn, sit at the feet of action. At noon, be at the hand of might. At eventide, be so big that sky will learn sky”. How and where do we locate the utopian in everyday life and in art? Why is it important to keep envisioning other ways of being, other temporalities, other spaces, even if it seems naïve to do so considering the violence that defines the status quo? at dawn offers examples of how artists carve out spiritual, psychological, and physical enclaves that call for “something else, something better, something dawning”.

Works by: Heike Baranowsky, Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, Cassandra Press, DIS, Barbara Hammer, Jeppe Hein, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Mary Lucier, Anthony McCall, Precious Okoyomon, Nam June Paik, Jacolby Satterwhite, Cauleen Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans

Photo: Cauleen Smith, Sky Learn Sky, 2018/2022, site-specific installation comprises of differently colored overlapping gels and installation instructions, dimensions variable. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay

Info: Curators: Lisa Long & Julia Stoschek, Assistant Curator: Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin, Leipziger Straße 60 (entrance: Jerusalemer Straße), Berlin, Germany, Duration: 28/4-4/12/2022, Days & Hours: Sat-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.jsc.art/

Jacolby Satterwhite, Moments of Silence, 2019, two-channel video, 5′25′′, color, sound. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay
Jacolby Satterwhite, Moments of Silence, 2019, two-channel video, 5′25′′, color, sound. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay

 

 

Jacolby Satterwhite, Moments of Silence, 2019, two-channel video, 5′25′′, color, sound. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay
Jacolby Satterwhite, Moments of Silence, 2019, two-channel video, 5′25′′, color, sound. Installation view, at dawn, JSC Berlin. Photo: Alwin Lay

 

 

 A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, Community Action Center, 2010, video, 69′, color, sound. Video still. Courtesy of the artists

A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, Community Action Center, 2010, video, 69′, color, sound. Video still. Courtesy of the artists

 

 

Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017, 16mm film transferred to digital video, 7′41′′. Video still. Courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán, Los Angeles
Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017, 16mm film transferred to digital video, 7′41′′. Video still. Courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán, Los Angeles

 

 

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1978, 16mm film transferred to video, 26′31″, color, sound. Video still, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021. Courtesy of the Holt/Smithson Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1978, 16mm film transferred to video, 26′31″, color, sound. Video still, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021. Courtesy of the Holt/Smithson Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

 

 

Jacolby Satterwhite, Venus Region Two, 2017, wallpaper, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
Jacolby Satterwhite, Venus Region Two, 2017, wallpaper, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

 

Jacolby Satterwhite, Shrines, 2021, video, 13′38′′, color, sound. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, and Morán Morán, Los Angeles
Jacolby Satterwhite, Shrines, 2021, video, 13′38′′, color, sound. Video still. Courtesy of the artist, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, and Morán Morán, Los Angeles