Looking for a New Foundation

An exhibition with Alexis Blake, Cihan Çakmak, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Pennie Key, Tatjana Stürmer and Leyla Yenirce
In cooperation with Julia Gerke, Diane Hillebrand, Hanar Hupka and Franciska Zólyom

The human body remembers and tells stories, adapts and resists in various ways. In interaction with others, it constantly changes and (re)forms itself. However, people are constrained far too often by societal expectations that conflict with their self-image, needs and desires.

In photographs, spatial and sound installations, sculptures and performances, the participating artists turn their attention to the possible meanings of the human body. It can be the scene of power struggles, serve as a projection surface, a medium for transformation, a means of expression or an archive for personal and inherited experiences. The artists’ knowledge from diverse fields – poetry, design, dance, movement therapy, martial arts or sex work – is incorporated into their artworks.

The exhibition, accompanying events and co-operations focus on the search for new, resistant interpretations of the body and the agency that arises from self-determined attitudes, statements and gestures.

MUSEUM NIGHT 2023

18-22pm – MEHRWEGLABOR
In the MEHRWEGLABOR we want to think with you about materials and how we deal with them, tinker, craft, inform. Bring your ideas!

18h-23pm – Ongoing mediation
Our mediators will accompany you to the special exhibition My Chambers of Wonder as well as through our new group exhibition Looking for a New Foundation. We look forward to talking with you!

18-24pm – My Chambers of Wonder
Walk-through space and sound installation with virtual reality animations (suitable for ages 7 and up). In the VR game, four children take us into their virtual secret world. You can also climb a tree house in the museum!

19-20.30pm film presentation “Meine Wunderkammern”

You are welcome to purchase tickets directly at our museum or on the Museum Night website.

You can find more info about the museum night here: https://www.museumsnacht-halle-leipzig.de/museum/galerie-fuer-zeitgenoessische-kunst/

Sorry, this entry is only available in German. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Rennen, Springen, Schleichen, Kriechen, Tanzen, Hüpfen, Drehen. Liegen. Bewegen. Ein Kunstwerk sehen und dabei an eine Bewegung denken. Die Idee der Bewegung ausprobieren. Erfahren, welche Ideen die anderen Kinder haben.

Wir sammeln in der Ausstellung Looking for a New Foundation Bewegungen, die in uns stecken, und probieren sie gemeinsam aus! Vielleicht wird ein Tanz daraus oder eine Demonstration oder einfach nur ein riesiger Spaß!

Bewegen und Tanzen für Kinder von 8 bis 12 Jahren mit Ariane Erfurth und Lena Seik.

Der Workshop findet barfuß bzw. in Strümpfen statt. Bitte bringt etwas zu Trinken und zu Essen mit.

Teilnahmegebühr 5 EUR/ermäßigt 3 EUR

Anmeldung unter foryou@gfzk.de oder 0341 1408117

Nächste Termine:
10. Juni 2023, 10-11:30 h
24. Juni 2023, 10-11:30 h

Sorry, this entry is only available in German. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Rennen, Springen, Schleichen, Kriechen, Tanzen, Hüpfen, Drehen. Liegen. Bewegen. Ein Kunstwerk sehen und dabei an eine Bewegung denken. Die Idee der Bewegung ausprobieren. Erfahren, welche Ideen die anderen Kinder haben.

Wir sammeln in der Ausstellung Looking for a New Foundation Bewegungen, die in uns stecken, und probieren sie gemeinsam aus! Vielleicht wird ein Tanz daraus oder eine Demonstration oder einfach nur ein riesiger Spaß!

Bewegen und Tanzen für Kinder von 8 bis 12 Jahren mit Ariane Erfurth und Lena Seik.

Der Workshop findet barfuß bzw. in Strümpfen statt. Bitte bringt etwas zu Trinken und zu Essen mit.

Die Zugänge zum Workshop, zur Ausstellung und zu den Toiletten sind barrierefrei.

Teilnahmegebühr 5 EUR/ermäßigt 3 EUR

Anmeldung unter foryou@gfzk.de oder 0341 1408117

Nächster Termin:
24. Juni 2023, 10-11:30 h

Sorry, this entry is only available in German. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Rennen, Springen, Schleichen, Kriechen, Tanzen, Hüpfen, Drehen. Liegen. Bewegen. Ein Kunstwerk sehen und dabei an eine Bewegung denken. Die Idee der Bewegung ausprobieren. Erfahren, welche Ideen die anderen Kinder haben.

Wir sammeln in der Ausstellung Looking for a New Foundation Bewegungen, die in uns stecken, und probieren sie gemeinsam aus! Vielleicht wird ein Tanz daraus oder eine Demonstration oder einfach nur ein riesiger Spaß!

Bewegen und Tanzen für Kinder von 8 bis 12 Jahren mit Ariane Erfurth und Lena Seik.

Der Workshop findet barfuß bzw. in Strümpfen statt. Bitte bringt etwas zu Trinken und zu Essen mit.

Die Zugänge zum Workshop, zur Ausstellung und zu den Toiletten sind barrierefrei.

Teilnahmegebühr 5 EUR/ermäßigt 3 EUR

Anmeldung unter foryou@gfzk.de oder 0341 1408117

On the last weekend of the exhibition Looking For A New Foundation, there will be a conversation with makers of the feminist magazine outside the box. The latest issue, outside the box #8:Struggles explores how women around the world are rebelling against violence, oppression, and exploitation, what technologies they are using, and how they are uniting across borders. The conversation will focus on the connection between extractivist economic forms, which violently appropriate raw materials, bodies, landscapes, among other things, and colonial, patriarchal and racist structures. Drawing on transnational struggles in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, ecofeminist approaches to self-determination will be discussed.

We Will Not Be Moved is an artistic project that focuses on the relationship between the individual and collective, and the contemporary represented woman and non-binary body in resistance. It does so by investigating the gestural language and somatics within protests, and engaging with the historical struggles for women’s, LGBTQIA+ and immigrants’ rights, and racial justice.

We Will Not Be Moved was first presented for the performance series, Stage as a Social Platform for the Milan XXI Triennale in April 2016. For each iteration of this project, a group of women and non-binary people from diverse professional backgrounds – dancers, writers, researchers, and activists – was brought together. In a series of meetings, they studied and discussed the gestural languages of protests and explored their own personal expression of resistance, through the body. The New Dance Group (NDG) – a dance school dedicated to social change that helped industrial workers to translate their political unrest into movement in New York City from 1932 to the 1960’s – serves as a historical reference and inspiration for Blake’s methodology.

Further, for the adaptation in Leipzig, an archive on the history of women’s dissonance in Germany from 1920–2000 was assembled with the assistance of Hanar Hupka and Lissy Willberg. In collaboration with graphic designer Sandra Kassenaar, Blake developed a poster series out of this material highlighting five moments of protest in Germany. The posters were first displayed throughout the city. In a series of meetings, the Leipzig group studied archival images, discussed the gestural language of specific protest groups and their slogans, and questioned what solidarity means to them. Through embodiment and discourse, a choreography of gestures and collective movement for the present was explored, which is now shown in Leipzig.

We Will Not Be Moved has been realized with kind support from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Mondriaan Fonds. It was part of the exhibition Looking For A New Foundation at GfZK.

Due to limited space, participation is only possible with registration at welcome@gfzk.de.

Project by
Alexis Blake
With the participation of
Andrea Alvergue, Vasiliki Bara, Gina Escobar, Yuval Gal Cohen, Tania Kolbe, Henriette Rodemerk and Ras Yohannes
Poster series by
Alexis Blake and Sandra Kassenaar
Research and project assistance
Hanar Hupka, Lissy Willberg