On August 13, at 6 pm, the group exhibition Recession Grimace opens at the Klosterruine Berlin. The exhibition brings together the work of five artists*: Lisa Gutscher, Jake Kent, Tanoa Sasraku, Paul Sochacki, and Sung Tieu. The title “Recession Grimace” comes from Lauren Berlant’s 2011 study “Cruel Optimism” on capitalism and affect, and refers to a facial expression that appears as a “new mask” in the extended moment when it becomes clear that optimism can be cruel and that hope was indeed futile. Berlant’s study analyzes experiences of systematic precarity and social inequality under late capitalism that make the present unlivable for many people. Paradoxically, the real danger of a new recession seems to exclude the possibility of understanding the dramatic situation. The futurelessness of existing conditions simply does not want to congeal into political reality. Instead, the crisis is further individualized and pathologized.

The five positions gathered in Recession Grimace turn away from the usual analyses of this mechanism and draw an affective map of loss, disappointment, and disobedience in which the personal and the political are indistinguishable. Contrary to a habitualization and institutionalization of critique in which the integrity of the mostly male, white subject remains decisive, the works gathered here speak of critique as a work in which the subject and the object of its contestation permanently threaten to undermine each other. In a ruin of contemporary feelings, the artists show us that some things only come into focus when we refuse to put a good face on them.

The exhibition will be open-air. For the protection of the visitors we ask you to wear a mouth-nose-protection and to keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters during the visit. The general rules of distance and hygiene apply in the exhibition.

Preview

10.09.2020, 19.00-23.00
An Interspecies Evening
A performance by Nschotschi Haslinger and Shí, a screening by Kinga Kielczynska, nude drawings by Zoë Claire Miller.
Bring your plants and animals.