D’EST invited by SOFT SOIL: Space Ideologies at Haus der Statistik

“Who owns the city?” and “Who is allowed to live and who has to die?” (Achille Mbembe 2019): these existential, spatial-ideological questions reverberate in urban infrastructures, architectures and not least in citizens’ and non-citizens’ bodies. Space Ideologies is a one-night screening program that investigates processes of privatisation and economisation in post-socialist cities such as Almaty, Belgrade, Berlin, Moscow, and Tallinn. From ruined investment properties and anonymous dancers in Tallinn’s port area (Flo Kasearu), to ghostly urban landscapes reflecting the social exclusion and disconnection of trans*women in Almaty (Ruthia Jenrbekova & Morris Getman), to near-deadly labour conditions and structural racism experienced by migrants working under vigilant algorithmic tracking at the Russian courier and taxi service-platform Yandex (Anna Engelhardt), it becomes evident that since the 1990s, precarious bodies have been exploited to create neoliberal infrastructures. The final videos may symbolise ‘flashes of awakening’, ruptures in the tissue of neoliberal space ideologies: an engaging documentary about cultural activists who occupied a cinema in Belgrade, creating a temporary micro economy (Senka Domanović), and a filmically compressed, 24-hour performance project in front of Berlin’s contested Ernst-Thälmann monument touching on the political leader’s legacy (A.S.S. Collective). In response to the program, artists Mizu Sugai and Jonathan Jung of A.S.S. Collective, who work at the intersection of social, political and artistic practices, will discuss their work and introduce their new fields of research.

Video screening with Anna Engelhardt, A.S.S. Collective (Mizu Sugai & Jonathan Jung), Senka Domanović, Ruthia Jenrbekova & Morris Getman and Flo Kasearu; followed by a discussion with A.S.S. Collective

Language: German, videos with English subtitling, whisper translation available upon request until August 5, please specify language: softsoil_ngbk[a]protonmail.com

PROGRAM

Video works/film excerpts (in order of screening):

• Client’s Day (2020), Flo Kasearu (Estonian, English subtitles)
• Excerpt from Nobody with a Movie Camera (2011-16), Ruthia Jenrbekova & Morris Getman (Russian, English subtitles)
• Movements of Algorithmic Labour (2020), Anna Engelhardt (Russian, English subtitles)
• Excerpt from Occupied Cinema (2018), Senka Domanović (Serbian, English subtitles)
• Dawn of the Red – A Rupture in the Deep-Sleep of Capitalism (2018), A.S.S. Collective (Mizu Sugai and Jonathan Jung) (English, German subtitles)

Curated by Ulrike Gerhardt and Daria Iuriichuk

*Current change: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the production of Movements of Algorithmic Labour has been delayed. Instead, the video work Colonial Sediments (2020) of the Distributed Cognition Cooperative (DCC) by Anna Engelhardt and Sasha Shestakova will be screened. The video work investigates the infrastructure of intermodal terminals in the Russian port city Nakhodka as a site of colonial violence, but also of decolonial resistance. Video details: Colonial Sediments (2020), Distributed Cognition Cooperative (Anna Engelhardt, Sasha Shestakova) (Russian, English subtitles)

This event takes place in the context of SOFT SOIL II/III Beyond emergency. A project by Jennifer Bennett, Sonja Hornung, Vicky Kiefer, siddhartha lokanandi and Sonya Schönberger, organized by the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin.