Mohamed Bourouissa
LINK
18. January – 15. March 2020
Opening: 17. January 18:00

Mohamed Bourouissa (*1978 in Blida, Algeria) dedicates his work to the role of the individual within current political, social, and economic structures. His multidisciplinary work is based on intensive collaborations and exchanges with groups and individuals, who become both the source and the subject of his photographs, sculptures, installations, drawings and videos. Most often Bourouissa addresses and discusses peripheral places and marginalized groups as a mirror of the state of a society and its understanding of
the subject.

With the newly created video work LINK (2019), Bourouissa expands his view to a similarly peripheral space and approaches the tabooed and simultaneously omnipresent practice of virtual sexuality. The semi-documentary work looks at video-chat forums and humanoid latex dolls that not only promise the fulfillment of physical pleasure but rather become places for the projection of and longing for emotional intimacy. Bourouissa discusses the bivalent relationship between humans and technical things that insistently surround us, and raises the question of whether and to what extent physical-emotional experience today shifts to an immaterial as well as an anonymous sphere.

 

Accompanying Programm

Si Di Kubi 2.0 with Mohamed Bourouissa, Tony Elieh, Paulina Greta, Dorine Potel, Youmna Saba, Sina XX, 2038

@ Clärchens Ballhaus, January 31, 2020, 8 pm

Clärchens Ballhaus has been closed since the beginning of January! We are making it open to the public one more time before a new chapter begins and renovations start at the legendary dance hall. Within the framework of DISAPPEARING BERLIN, we are creating a vision in which Clärchens Ballhaus will continue to exist as a place for dance, art, and music for everyone. In its famous mirror hall (Spiegelsaal), Mohamed Bourouissa, together with a group of artists, unfolds a narrative between Beirut and Berlin, two cities that are as different as they are connected. In live music, films, and photographs, fragments of these two cities overlap to form a poem about disappearance and displacement, change, and freedom – and about the potential of art and shared artistic vision as driving forces in the development of these cities. Between the artists, a multifaceted collage of their artistic practice, their languages and identities emerge, reflecting in the story of Clärchens Ballhaus.

With screenings by Mohamed Bourouissa and 2038; live music by Tony Elieh, Youmna Saba and Sina XX; music by Dorine Potel and a DJ/VJ set by Paulina Greta, Sina XX, and Mohamed Bourouissa

 

The exhibition and event are taking place in the framework of DISAPPEARING BERLIN. At the end of the one-year run, we are returning to Schinkel Pavillon’s own space: set in Berlin’s historic Mitte, the iconic architecture, designed by Richard Paulick in the late 60s as a representative venue for the GDR, is in a location where massive changes have been irretrievably and progressively taking shape. When Schinkel Pavillon first opened in 2007, the Palace of the Republic and the Dome were the backdrops for the first exhibitions – a view, that doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, generic townhouses (Berlin’s most expensive speculative real estate) obstruct the horizon – behind them, tower cranes appear with the new Stadtschloss under construction. The increasingly generic neighborhood is in constant flux, but with every new investor moving in, Schinkel Pavillon’s very existence here is more and more at stake.

For over a year, DISAPPEARING BERLIN by Schinkel Pavillon has been staging unique Berlin architecture and unique urban spaces that are about to be demolished, privatized or converted, after having shaped the cityscape and cultural life for decades. With performances, dance, and concerts we explore the city and the potential of its endangered, forgotten, and newly emerging spaces. In a playful approach to art, new perspectives on a change, that cannot be stopped, but shaped, are developed.