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DISKURS Berlin

Exhibition Space Novalisstraße 7, 10115 Berlin, Germany t. +49 30 3384 7393 info@discursus.info www.discursus.info Publisher Jung Me Chai, DISKURS Berlin Curator Gyusik LeeText Jung Me Chai, Mariana Hahn, Gyusik Lee, William WinterTranslation Lynne Margaret Brown, Kyungtae LeeProofreading & Copyediting Lynne Margaret Brown, Beatrix Joyce, Gyusik LeePhotos Eduardo Mattos, Dian ZagorchinovDesign Sharif El Fatatry, sharif-fatatry.comCover Gyusik LeeDate of Issue Berlin, 2018Printing Pinguin Druck GmbHPartner Daegu Foundation for CultureSponsors Daegu Metropolitan City Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Republic of Korea

* All rights reserved simultaneously by the authors, the artists, the photographers and DISKURS Berlin

* This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part or in any form, without written agreement with copyright holders

ISBN: 978-3-9818757-5-1

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Content

Imprint

Welcome, Jung Me Chai

Something to believe in (curatorial text), Gysuik Lee

Mariana Hahn

Tzusoo

William Winter

CVs

About Diskurs Berlin

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DISKURS Berlin (Non-Profit Project Space & Research Program) is the place for the presentation of an international program of exhibitions and discussion platform.

DISKURS Berlin focuses on the international curatorial exchange program, collaborates with public and private institutions, managing projects, and offers training opportunities, a research program for international curators. Many factors have changed the global art world and shifts have taken place. Economic growth in Asia and the accompanying rise of a significant number of art collectors and buyers have expedited dynamically the globalization of the art world. The presence of art from Korea, and Asia, in general, has increased tremendously in recent years and this art is much in demand. Yet the contemporary art scene, as well as private collections in Asia, are still relatively new phenomena, and there is often insufficient access to the Western art scene, which hinders fruitful exchanges and debate. And on the other hand, the Western art world seeks access to the new and developing art scenes in Asia to reach the buyers and collectors there. However, this is frequently unsuccessful because the appropriate contacts are lacking.

We work with partner art organizations such as Daegu Foundation for Culture, Koreanisches Kulturzentrum and offer various programs to serve curators and artists from Asia and Germany. The guest curators and an artist will have the opportunity to work and research the wider artistic context, as well as to establish networks and dialogues with other local and international art scenes.

As negotiator and facilitator between Germany and Korea, DISKURS Berlin’s mission is to achieve structural improvements within the art scene and to organize contacts and establish a network of artists, curators, art theorists, and art scholars.

Jung Me ChaiFounder, DISKURS Berlin

Welcome

Jung Me Chai

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What constitutes dignity? In the midst of countless controversies, conflicts and never-ending news stories, in each moment we find ourselves facing choices, forced to make decisions. Truth appears to be collapsing as we lose our humanity. Society lives in overabundance while simultaneously lacking for everything, this contradiction causes hesitation when facing choices. Even within these circumstances, we have the ability to live as independent thinkers due to our belief system. What do we see and what do we believe in? Belief does not answer all of our questions although belief can fill the space in which we seek answers. As humans, whatever our beliefs, the act of believing itself provides us with dignity. In this exhibition, each of the following artists, Mariana Hahn, Tzusoo, and William Winter provide us with various perspectives on the topic of belief. Through the use of sound, video, photos and objects, Mariana Hahn creates her own unique world within the installation Nesthaut. Each element in this world exists as a metaphor. Believing that a woven dress holds its own memory, Hahn captures the histories of these dresses through a process of preservation. In contrast, she presents small scraps of paper containing messages that slowly fade away. Though each separate moment possibly exists on its own forever, these written messages transform with the passage of time, changing just as our surroundings. Hahn’s extended video presents changing sceneries including a sound of repeated brushing that resonates through the exhibition space, generating a ritual-like atmosphere that encourages visitors to pause for a moment in meditation. Pulp Nonfiction by Tzusoo, is reminiscent of a four-panel cartoon strip, presenting a dialogue between characters with childlike figures and florescent color. Tzusoo uses broken German dialogue triggering the audience to wonder if the conversation actually occurred. The fragmentary dialogue can be either her story or the story of the audience. Do you believe that communication can happen only through language? Do grammatically perfect sentences enable complete communication? The dialogue between the characters, interpreted as that of your own or that of others is a satire of misunderstanding and violence caused by language and this form of communication.

Something to believe in (curatorial text)

Gyusik Lee

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On Mount Olympus by William Winter suggests a new form of role-playing in extended space, via the style of a role-playing video game. Audiences wearing headgear (the players), appear on the screen as having animal heads representing a sacrifice or as the heads of Greek gods carrying out missions, such as giving or receiving gifts. In combination with traditional video game imagery, the players on the screen exist in an augmented reality. Missions are provided to the participants that are experiencing the extended space inside of the mask, absorbing the participants/players into their newly assigned roles. Though thoroughly engrossing the limited frame and view on the screen is designed to keep the players at a distance so they remain aware, conscious of real space and the subject of the action.

Each of these artists tell a special story about belief from their own perspective. In our cities we continue to lose bits of our humanity, hindering us from living our own authentic lives. In an effort to retain our humanity and independently believe in something we continue to move forward. Ultimately it is the individual that decides what to believe in. Now more than any other time in history we crave to believe. What do you believe in?

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Mariana Hahn

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Nesthaut, 2018, Performance

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Nesthaut, 2018Mixed media, variable size

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Nesthaut (detail), 2018, Mixed media, variable size

Nesthaut, 2018, Performance

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Nesthaut

Mariana Hahn

As a child I came upon a great naked human mountain, sitting on a chair. From this mountain hair flew down like a waterfall of snakes. I was scared of the snakes and I was scared of the sheer physicality of the mountain, it’s greasy skin and it’s hair felt violent and abject to me. The mountain wanted me to discipline those snakes with a brush. I was scared of doing so, nether the less I had to follow, and as I slowly brushed, hearing the snakes hissing and curving along the surface of the mountain, it felt as though I was being initiated into an old ritual and given secret knowledge. I felt to be the mountains high priestess. With the hair thread-snakes that fell to the ground I made myself a coat, a dress, and from those snake threads inside the dress I hear the mountain sing it’s song.

The mountain is the grandmother. This hair is my skin, my nest, my Nesthaut.

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Tzusoo

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Tzusoo, Pulp Notification, 2017-2018Video, color, silent, 19’50”

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Tzusoo, Pulp Notification, 2017-2018Video, color, silent, 19’50”

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William Winter, On Mount Olympus, 2018Styrofoam, mixed media, digital objects

70 x 45 x 31 cm / 70 x 31 x 36 cm

William Winter

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William Winter, On Mount Olympus, 2018Styrofoam, mixed media, digital objects70 x 45 x 31 cm / 70 x 31 x 36 cm

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Global consumerism sits in silence, dutifully churning out commodities by the billions behind a shimmering curtain of social media and pop-up ads, leaving only blank faces bathed in its unholy glow.

On Mount Olympus, 2018 is a pulse check - a participatory social game, complete with props, inviting us to confront our desires in pairs. Wooden structures stabilize the Styrofoam façades of a sacrificial altar and a cardboard column each bearing familiar symbols of commerce woven seamlessly into their ancient architecture. The result evokes a sense of gravity followed by inadequacy.

On Mount Olympus

William Winter

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www.marianahahn.comBorn in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany Lives and works in Berlin Mariana Hahn’s work poetically interrogates the concept of human fate, story telling and language through the use of photography, performance and video.

Believing that ‘weaving’ can be a metaphor for self-autonomy, her practice is based on thinking of the body as a bearer of continuously woven narratives and that the human being too takes part in making fate, making story, she understands making story as an active, conscious and physical act.She often uses textiles to take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the narrative of a living archive.

Hahn in her work creates her own narratives and one often finds oneself in a set of references that the artist creates herself, one could say that she creates her own myths within her own world, and yet this world of her own becomes accessible to the spectator and part of his or her own world. It acts as a reminder of the power that we as humans bear, that is to say, to create and make/weave story.

Her work feeds from sociological, mythological, folkloric and anthropological sources, as well as from experience of everyday life.

EDUCATION2012 B.A of the Fine Art, Central St. Martins, London2009 Diploma in Art and Design, Central St. Martins, London

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection from 2014)2017 Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou Milk for Snakes, Der Raum, Berlin Night of Performance Art, Kharkiv Flesh on Flesh, Momentum Worldwide, Berlin Die Landscha in uns, Schlachthaus Fresh and Fine Art, Berlin Down to Earth, Galeria Il Frantoio, Capalbio CORPO – Festival delle Arti Performative, Venezia 10th - 14th May An Ocean Archive, My Art Guide Venezia Meeting Point, Arsenale, Venezia2016 Me, Myself and I, 68 Projects, Berlin October Salon, Belgrade, curated by David Elliott Social Fabric, Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong You Are What You Are, Galleria Mario Iannelli, Rome Love, actually, Momentum Worldwide, Berlin 2015 VACANCY, Crone Berlin, Berlin The ff at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin Residency program, Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong 2014 Torso no Torso, Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Moscow

PERFORMANCES (selection from 2015)2017 Milk for Snakes, Der Raum, Berlin Zizurru, Night of Performance Art, Kharkiv2016 Social Fabric, Hong Kong, Mill6 AAA, HK, Art Basel HK, An Ocean Archive2015 Distant Letter Pressent Now, Berlin Momentum Worldwide Performance Lecture, Hong Kong, Mill6

COLLECTIONS MILL6 Foundation, Hong Kong, Momentum Worldwide, Berlin

Mariana Hahn

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Born 1992 in Seoul, South Korea Lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany

EDUCATION2017 - Fine Art at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, class Prof. Christian Jankowski

2011 - 2016 Studied Bachelor Printmaking at Art College of Hong-ik University in Seoul, class Prof. Seungyoen Kim Studied Bachelor Art Studies at Art College of Hong-ik University in Seoul, with supervisor Prof. Sun Kyu Ha

GROUP EXHIBITIONS2018 Plato Taught, Academiae, Youth Art Biennale, Bolzano Junction, Bar Babette, Berlin Cellular Ground, Bunker under the Diakonissenplatz, Long Night Museum Program, Stuttgart About:Blank, Project Space LAF, Pforzheim2017 The Great Infinity Fool, Museum Folkwang, Essen Klein Münster, Bergstaffel, Stuttgart Creation Island, Bergstaffel, Stuttgart

CURATION2016 Reality Check, Team Collective609, HoMA, Seoul

Tzusoo

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www.williamerhardwinter.comBorn in Chicago, United States of AmericaLives and works in Berlin William Winter uses conceptual, spatial, and interdisciplinary approaches to explore conventions and rituals and to investigate the relationships between obsession, escapism, and alchemy. His work employs a variety of media including sculpture, video, painting, mold-making, installation and performance.

EDUCATION2010 Painting and Drawing, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago2008 Psychology and Art, Greenville College, Greenville

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2017 OCDiva, A Collaborative Food Event with Li Zhenhua and April Gertler, Big Whale Studios, Berlin2014 Kulturfestival Wedding and Moabit, Berlin2014 Fra¿ment, Berlin2012 Kenzo, Flower Tag Eau de Parfum New Fragrance Event, Bloomingdales, Chicago2010 I’m There, A Birthday Celebration for the City of Chicago, Chicago Art Department, Chicago2007 Concrete Etherealism, Reconstructive Portraiture, Rowland Art Gallery, Greenville2007 Illinois Board of Higher Education Annual Collegiate Artists’ Competition, Koehnline Museum of Art, Oakton Community College, Des Plaines

GRANTS, AWARDS, RESIDENCIES2017 Tête, Picture Berlin Artist Talk: OCDiva by William Erhard Winter, Berlin2017 Picture Berlin Fall Session, Berlin 2014 Institut für Alles Mögliche Artist in Residence, Berlin2010 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Incentive Scholarship, Chicago2007 Finalist and Honorable Mention in the Illinois Board of Higher Education Annual Collegiate Artists’ Competition, Des Plaines

PRESS & PUBLICATION2012 Kenzo Flowertag Eau de Parfum Event Recap, CS Modern Luxury Magazine 2010 Hide and Seek Exhibition: Interview with the Artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Magazine 2007 The 2007 Illinois Board of Higher Education Annual Collegiate Artists’ Competition

William Winter

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DISKURS Berlin, which is based in the German capital, initiates, arranges, and develops an international network of exchange between the contemporary art scenes in Germany and Korea. DISKURS Berlin focuses primarily on advising public and private institutions, managing projects, and arranging exhibitions with up-and-coming artists and curators. Many factors have changed the global art world and shifts have taken place. Economic growth in Asia and the accompanying rise of a significant number of art collectors and buyers has dynamically expedited the globalisation of the art world. The presence of art from Korea, and Asia in general, has increased tremendously in recent years and this art is much in demand. Yet the establishment of the contemporary art scene, as well as private collections in Asia, are still relatively new phenomena. There is often insufficient access to the Western art scene, which hinders fruitful exchange and debate. And on the other hand, the Western art world seeks access to the new and developing art scenes in Asia to reach the buyers and collectors there. However, this is frequently unsuccessful because the appropriate contacts are lacking.

DISKURS Berlin (project space & residency program) presents an international program of exhibitions and simultaneously acts as a discussion platform. It focuses on an international curatorial exchange program, collaborates with public and private institutions, manages projects, offers training opportunities and a research program for international curators.

We work with partner art organizations and offer various programs to serve curators and artists from Asia. The guest curators and artists will have the opportunity to work, to conduct research into their wider artistic context and to establish new networks and dialogues with both the local and international art scene.

DISKURS Berlin is well connected and acts as a liaison between institutions, artists, curators, and collectors in Germany and Asia, particularly in Korea. For some years now, major biennials have been organised in Korea; the Gwangju Biennial, the Busan Biennial, and the Mediacity Seoul. These are not only regarded as important events in Asia, but also in the Western art world. In addition, there is a growing interest in Korea for the establishment of museums of contemporary art, off-space galleries, and artist residency programs in the larger cities. Since the end of the crisis in the world economy, the outlook for realising such projects is better than ever before. As a negotiator and a facilitator of exchange between Germany and Korea, DISKURS Berlin’s mission is to achieve structural improvements within the art scene, to organise contacts and to establish a network of artists, curators, art theorists and art scholars.

Diskurs Berlin