Now open at Lichtenberg’s Fahrbereitschaft, Consider Listening encourages calm reflection during the era where outrage reigns. “We want to address the crises going on in Germany and Berlin,” says Sam Durant, co-curator of ‘Consider Listening’, a contemporary art exhibition at Fahrbereitschaft. “Our hope is that people consider, reflect and think – and don’t just point fingers and say what’s right or wrong. It’s about creating more open-mindedness.”
Featuring contemporary artists like Monica Bonvicini, Ryan Gander and Oliver Laric, the exhibition explores issues such as ‘cancel culture’, ecology, economic constraints and antisemitism, presenting works from the Haubrok Collection alongside external loans. “One of the key pieces for me is an installation by Ilit Azoulay,” says Durant. “Viewers lie on a round bed and listen to a monologue in an unfamiliar language. Another is Charles Gaines’s text-based work, which weaves written fragments from various sources into a layered piece.”
Durant co-curates the show with Axel Haubrok, owner of the Haubrok collection and Fahrbereitschaft – a former DDR industrial complex in Lichtenberg now filled with exhibition rooms and artist, musician and dance studios. “We’ve been discussing the difficulties artists face amid social polarisation,” Durant explains. “Social media, especially, has made it harder to have rational conversations.”
The show includes an ambitious ten-week programme of talks, screenings, performances and discussions. “I’ll be doing a talk with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev [May 11], the curator of dOCUMENTA (13),” says Durant, “and we’re going to talk about the current state of freedom of expression.” Durant has firsthand experience with censorship.
His sculptural installation Scaffold (2012), a 50-foot-tall wooden and steel structure referencing various gallows used in US executions between 1859 and 2006, was removed from the Walker Art Center in 2017 following protests. “It was 2017, just after Trump came into office, around the time of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Durant recalls. “There was no space for reasoned, thoughtful debate. It was simply, ‘This sculpture is causing anger in our community, so it has to go.’”
The piece included a reference to the largest mass execution in US history, ordered by President Lincoln in 1862, in which 38 Dakota Indians were killed in Mankato, Minnesota. “It was dealing with controversial subject matter, but no one wanted to find a way to make it work. Since then, I haven’t had an exhibition in the US and probably won’t in my lifetime.”
The struggle to navigate nuance and historical reckoning is at the heart of ‘Consider Listening’, the exhibition title borrowed from one of Durant’s electric sign artworks. “Things are never black and white. Everything is shades of grey,” he says. “In recent years, we’ve lost touch with that. And the politics we’re dealing with now seem to bear that out.”
- Fahrbereitschft, Herzbergstr. 40-43, Lichtenberg, Apr 6 – Jul 13, details.
