Die Künstlerinnen Pauline Boudry und Renate Lorenz zeigen im Badischen Kunstverein ihre Werke in einer breit gefächerten Einzelausstellung. Seit 1998 arbeiten Boudry und Lorenz als Künstlerduo. Ihre zentralen Medien sind Film (16mm und Super-16) und Video, in ihren aktuellen Arbeiten beziehen sie aber auch weitere Materialien wie Fotografie, Installation und Text mit ein. Die Künstlerinnen beschäftigen sich in ihren Arbeiten mit der Geschichte der Sexualität in ihrem Verhältnis zur Entstehung der Fotografie und kolonialen Ökonomie des ausgehenden 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts.
 
Pauline Boudry (1972 in Lausanne) und Renate Lorenz (1963 in Bonn) leben und arbeiten in Berlin

In Kooperation mit der Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe plant der Badische Kunstverein im Herbst 2013 eine Ausstellung über die eigene Geschichte. Anhand von Dokumenten, Zeugnissen und Kunstwerken sollen signifikante Etappen der Institutionsgeschichte beleuchtet werden. Studierende der Fachbereiche Kunstwissenschaft und Ausstellungsdesign haben im Rahmen eines Forschungsseminars in Archiven wie dem Stadtarchiv und dem Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe relevante Zeitdokumente der Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins erschlossen und ausgewählt. Für die Präsentation entwickeln die Studierenden ein spezifisches Ausstellungsdesign.
 
In Kooperation mit der Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Fachbereich Kunstwissenschaft.

Since the beginning of the 1990s the Shanghai-born and Paris-based artist Du Zhenjun has drawn attention, by way of his interactive works, to the individual as well as social conditions of a world influenced by turbo capitalism and globalization.
In the exhibition “Du Zhenjun. Babel-world” at the ZKM | Karlsruhe, his large-scale work series BABEL, composed of photographic work, demonstrates that turning the world into new Towers of Babel, he presents a contemporary version of the apokalypse: barely having the new tower-symbols of newly gained wealth and superpower been built, than they are already on fire and the earth is flooded.
 
Curators: Sacha Goldman

“You&Me-isms/Part II” is an installation and an artistic-experimental media system in the age of high-tech communication machines. The installation, composed of 600 illuminated signals appears as a kind of idiosyncratic cyberpunk communication machine.
Visitors may enter their text messages of up to 60 signs via an input terminal. Controlled by means of a computer program, the message is played back letter for letter, word for word. The messages may be notifications, news and short pieces of prose, aphorisms, wishes or questions. Thus, for the visitors, the illuminated sign matrix is a playable communications or information sculpture on which they may ›inscribe‹ their own messages. With playful-ironic and subversive-rebellious gestures, the visitors are called upon to rebel against commercial signs and information monopoles. But the installation contains, above all, the invitation to take a scrutinizing view of the world of objects and things, which surround us in the way we perceive them and, hence, the way they determine us.

With the retrospective “Werner Büttner. Gemeine Wahrheiten” the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art is to hold the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the work of Hamburg artist Werner Büttner. Together with Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, the artist has continued to exert a sustained impact on the European art scene since the early 1980s. Pictures, drawings, collages and sculptures are testimony to the sheer wealth of Büttner’s ingenuity and irony, but also to his biting sarcasm with respect to social realities. The exhibition highlights the significance of Werner Büttner in the context of the development of late 20th century German painting to which he made a decisive influence, and presents him as one its central figures and pioneers.
 
“At that time, no less than I do today, I took and continue to take painting as seriously as I do my cookware or my car.” (Werner Büttner)
 
At the beginning of the 1980s a vital, impetuous and at times radical painter’s scene began establishing itself in several centers of German art. The common attitude was one of provocative questioning of that which painting was or sought to be. With the choice of consciously trivial or absurd motives and themes, painting was reduced to the apparently ridiculous. Brusque rejection was the initial response to this art scene, the most important centers of which began crystalizing in Cologne, Berlin and Hamburg. With an apparently pointedly succinct painting style oscillating between abstraction and borrowings from the world of objects, the artists produced large-scale paintings, conceived as an assault on ‘good taste’ and ‘quality art’. Malice and cynicism towards the emerging neoliberal society of the Helmut Kohl era was the characteristic tenor of many of the works. In spite of the adopted “who gives a damn?” attitude, the art scene that gathered around Büttner was a decidedly political one. Alongside Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Ohelen were also at the center of the former Hamburg painting scene to which the likes of Hubert Kiecol, Markus Oehlen and Georg Herold were also associated.
 
“Büttners concept of art is more realistic. The only truth of the post-revolutionary phase runs: the tactic of survival also applies to art. (...) Thus, Büttner uses his pictures as a formula for battle, his paintings as a weapon with which he opposes, with which he attacks and defends himself. He attacks all and everything, even himself and painting. (...) His works thus have such wonderful, ironic titles such as Probleme des Minigolfs in der europäischen Malerei [The Problem of Minigolf in European Painting] (1982/1983) – ‘propaganda against everything’, ‘rebellious reinterpretation of mean truths.’” (Peter Weibel)
 
The exhibition’s 300 paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures of the primarily comprise Werner Büttner’s works who, following the reinvigoration of object painting during the 1960s and 1970s, began to break with its illusionism and to finally strip it of everything bourgeois. By way of his emphatically rough and coarse technique, Büttner turned against the accepted notions as to what abstract and object art should be. He recorded all written, oral or artistic expressions from his lifeworld, crushed the found both in terms of motif and content before going on to reassembling them into the picture, so that at times distinctive combinations emerge, such as “Stilleben mit Wolpertinger und beschädigtem de Chirico” [Still Life with Jackolope and Damaged de Chirico] (1984). In his more recent works, C-Prints, Büttner assembles the motifs – in spite of their proximity to digitally produced pictures – entirely by hand with a knife and scissors, making the inclusion of an entire range of expressive forms from the lifeworld even more evident.
 
No other artist from the Hamburg painter’s scene of the time cultivates such a cryptic treatment of language and its relationship to art as does Werner Büttner. Titles such as “Die Probleme des Minigolfs in der europäischen Malerei“ [The Problems of Minigolf in European Painting] (1982) or “Moderne Kunst kann man verstehen, moderne Welt nicht” [One can Understand Modern Art, but not the Modern World] (1985) testify both to his sinister humor and depth of discourse in art. Other titles, such as “Die Russische Revolution vom Hörensagen und in Öl” [The Russian Revolution from Hearsay and in Oil] (1985) or “Wetterfester Schmetterling” [Weatherproof Butterfly] (2008), again testify to Büttner‘s social criticism.
 
An accompanying catalogue to the exhibition published by Hatje Cantz, edited by Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin is forthcoming; approx. 460 pages, and primarily illustrated in color with articles by Andreas Beitin, Bazon Brock, Harald Falckenberg, Zdenek Felix, Eckart Gillen, Walter Grasskamp, Eva Meyer-Hermann, Johannes Meinhardt, Daria Mille, Wolfgang Ullrich; the volume also contains an interview with Werner Büttner held by Oliver Zybok, a discussion with Werner Hofman, with Werner Büttner and an artist’s statement by Jonathan Meese, Georg Herold, Albert Oehlen in discussion with Jörg Heiser as well as Daniel Richter.
 
Curators at the ZKM: Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin
 
The exhibition Werner Büttner. Gemeine Wahrheiten is to be held in cooperation with Weserburg Museum in Bremen, where the show can be seen from October 2013 onwards.

Over the course of the “Arab Spring” the region to the south of the Mediterranean is undergoing a state of transformation, the events of which are followed in Europe with great interest, but also with hope and skepticism. With respect to content, the focus of the exhibition “Cross-border” is on artist’s critical investigation of various thematic aspects of the concept of borders, the attitudes and approaches to borders and strategies of overcoming them. Questions emerge within the context of the exhibition, which adopt a clear position to this issue and elaborate a range of solutions, which treat regionally specific, political or cultural aspects.
 
The eighteen artists whose works are represented in the exhibition are globally networked. Several of them have spent many years abroad, a number of them currently in foreign countries or else commute between different countries. The exhibition offers a differentiated perspective on the region through the works of the artists, which invite viewers to reevaluate biased perspectives and misinterpretations.
 
Artists: Arwa Abouon, Lara Baladi, Anna Boghiguian, Yto Barrada, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Diana El Jeiroudi, Rana ElNemr, Reem Ghazzi, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hefuna, Emily Jacir, Amal Kenawy, Bouchra Khalili, Diala Khasawnih, Randa Mirza, Faten Rouissi, Mouna Jemal Siala, Oraib Toukan
 
Curator: Elisabeth Klotz
 
Media Partner: Nafas art magazine
Cooperation Partners:
Kulturfestival Frauenperspektiven [Cultural Festival “Women’s Perspectives”], Karlsruhe
Goethe-Institut Egypt
Goethe-Institut Tunisia
German-Egyptian /-Tunisian Transformation Partnership
Supported by the Federal Foreign Office

The exhibition “Generosity. Donations and Loans from the ZKM Collection”, honors the act of giving and donating though which, in recent years, the collection of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe has been enriched with significant works of art by internationally known artists. Following the exhibitions “Architektur und Identität”, 2010/11 and “PRESENTation”, 2012, which provided insights into the ZKM collection for the first time, the exhibition “Generosity” emphasizes those works which were handed over to the house as donations and permanent loans. Works of art by over forty international artists will be shown which, in various media, straddle a period ranging from the 1060s to the present. The works from the collection will be thematically supplemented with works by Christin Lahr, Thomas Locher und Antje Majewski, who have focused on different aspects on the social practice of donation and the social implications of gift-giving.
 
Since the founding of the ZKM in 1989, the collection, initially directed by Heinrich Klotz and presently chaired by Peter Weibel, has grown to around 1500 positions; in addition to a large number of works of media art it also contains paintings, photographs, installations, videos and works on paper. Civic participation, which expresses itself in the transfer of works of art by single persons – among which are often artists themselves–, families and companies to public institutions, guarantees free access to art to a broad public and thus represents an invaluable value for the generality.
 
Artists: Hans Peter Alvermann, John Armleder, Sieglinde Bölz, Christoph Brech, Werner Büttner, Jimmie Durham, Sylvie Fleury, Günther Förg, Andreas Gursky, Georg Herold, Karl-Horst Hödicke, Edward Kienholz und Nancy Reddin-Kienholz, Martin Kippenberger, Jürgen Klauke, Barbara Klemm, Imi Knoebel, Mischa Kuball, Christin Lahr, Thomas Locher, Urs Lüthi, Heinz Mack, Michel Majerus, Antje Majewski, Gordon Matta-Clark, Olaf Metzel, Michael Najjar, Albert Oehlen, Dennis Oppenheim, Tony Oursler, Wolf Pehlke, Fabrizio Plessi, Otto Piene, Adrian Schiess, Elke Sommer, Sigmar Polke, Hans-Peter Reuter, Egon Schrick, Thomas Struth, Günther Uecker, Timm Ulrichs, Jürgen Waller, Franz Erhard Walther, Hermann Weber, Erwin Wurm, Herbert Zangs
 
Curators: Nina Fernandez, Idis Hartmann, Daria Mille, Philipp Ziegler

With “Matthew Day Jackson. Total Accomplishment” one of the most inventive artists of the new generation is presented for the first time within Germany. The exhibition is a comprehensive thematic show in which Jackson, starting out from American cultural history, undertakes a critical, multi-approach examination of the technological occupation of our world. In his works, he scrutinizes the impact of this technological occupation both on the individual and collectively through various media. In doing so, he thematizes the Occident by unraveling its myths through the creation of new enigmas.
 
The predominantly sculptural work of the New York-based artist Matthew Day Jackson (born 1974 in Panorama City, California, USA) is distinguished by its selection of interdisciplinary themes. Here, technology and pop-culture, but also aesthetics, philosophy, and sport comprise the wealth of sources from which the works emerge and negate a linear model of history. The artist’s questions turn on the deconstruction of history. Through his use of bricolage, connecting the remains of artifacts with high-tech materials, objects emerge that combine utopian as well as dystopian elements of a technologized world. Jackson’s practice of unveiling the past renders him as an artist-archaeologist who, in his versatile work combines historical realities with a fictional search for traces – whereby media-critical reflection is an inherent feature of his works. In this process, the artist’s self-mythologizing invariably occupies the center of his oeuvre, thus contextualizing physicality and the destructive results of the human power of invention.
 
“Matthew Day Jackson. Total Accomplishment” is the artist’s first German solo exhibition. It offers an overview of the artist’s still young but astonishingly comprehensive work, essentially typified by a ‘processing’ of the art and cultural history of the Occident.
 
A comprehensive ZKM publication is to appear in conjunction with the exhibition in the form of a mid-career oeuvre index, edited by Andreas Beitin and Martin Hartung, with written contributions by Andreas Beitin, Michael Broderick, Graham Burnett, Knut Ebeling, Anne Ellegood, Jerome Friedman, Donatien Grau, Martin Hartung, Caroline A. Jones, Thomas Macho, Jen Mergel, Sally O’Reilly and Paul Virilio.
 
Curators: Andreas Beitin and Martin Hartung
 
ANNEX
 
“The essence of Jackson’s current work pivots on questions relating to the cultural impact of the atom bomb. In the form of an artistic debate on the substance and future of the American dream, the artist weaves its aftereffects into his works. Accordingly, the title of the exhibition cites Paul Virilio’s ‘The Information Bomb’ (original: ‘La bombe informatique’, Paris: Galilée, 1998), in which the French philosopher decodes the consequences of supreme scientific achievements against the background of information technology. The exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures and videos, the majority of which were especially produced for the exhibition at the ZKM.
The works presented are placed in relation to one another so as to unfold the cosmos of Jackson’s world of ideas. Here, the works on show are grouped around two key pieces: the large-scale sculpture ‘Axis Mundi’ (2011) and the ‘Kiloton Room’ (2013).
Staged in front of a gigantic illustration of the universe taken from the space telescope Hubble, the high-gloss polished cockpit of a B-29 bomber of the large-scale sculpture ‘Axis Mundi’ is presented as an artifact of the space age. For Jackson, the large-scale sculpture is a reference to the site of the beginning of a new world order emerging from destruction – indeed, from a B-29 bomber from which the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Jackson’s art, historical interpretation and vision of the immediate present go hand-in-hand: whereas the cockpit brings to mind the all-pervasive power and destructive fantasies of the ‘spaceship’ USA against the background of the Cold War – which led to a hitherto unparalleled arms race with the USSR – today, in a sublimated form, this relationship is reflected in the worldwide struggle for resources. It is invariably the same and frequently fatal race for the ‘faster, the bigger, the better’. On the other hand, the spectrum of the rainbow as materialized in different objects points to a utopian claim, which is not only inherent in art, but also in technology.
As a central counterpart to ‘Axis Mundi’, a huge cube is installed which, with its edge size measuring 8.46 m, and a volume of approximately 600 cubic meters, corresponds to a spatial extension of 1 kiloton of TNT. This mass is, in turn, the equivalent of the minimal explosive power of one atom bomb, which thematically completes the circle with the B-29 bomber. The potential destructive force overtaxes the imagination, and the incomprehensible is represented on a spatial as well as technical level. In this ‘Kiloton Room‘, the center of which corresponds to a perfect ’white cube’, hangs the burned out urban landscape of the historical city of Paris. Retrospect, disastrous prospect, limitless white and the deepest black face each other.
 
Against the background of social and atomic power relations, in a variety of ways, Matthew Day Jackson transforms history in complex, sculptural entities, the formal origins of which are to be found in a diverse sampling culture. The artist’s new pictorial work juxtaposes the myths of the universe and their exploration with the historical events of atomic tests. Filmically, these are connected with a four-part new production of the historic TV series ‘In Search of...’, which – moderated in the 1970s by Leonard Nimoy – sought answers to historical inconsistencies and paranormal phenomena. The works are related to Jackson’s long-term filmic project ‘24 Hours of Television’, a still to be completed, critical adaption of typical formats of the American entertainment industry, which was begun in 2010. The completed parts of the daylong television program set up by the artist are shown throughout the entire duration of the exhibition.”

Manfred Mohr was one of the first painters in the 20th century to have begun using computer technology to manifest his artistic vision.
The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exhibited his computer-generated pictures in a solo-exhibition as early as 1971. The ZKM has dedicated a retrospective to Manfred Mohr on the occasion of his 75th birthday, which, in addition to his works, also presents numerous documents from his private archive for the first time.
 
Curator: Margit Rosen

Until today, poet, performer and antimilitarist, Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), is seen as one of the founders and most influential figures of the Beat Generation. As thematic sequel to the exhibition “the name is BURROUGHS – Expanded Media”, on show at the ZKM in 2012, “Reality Sandwiches” is a multimedia, interactive presentation. The exhibition, concurrently on show in Metz, Rennes and Tourcoing, near Lille, presents the life and works of Allen Ginsberg, as well as his influence on other personalities of the Beat Generation.
 
Curator: Jean-Jacques Lebel

Since its opening in 1997, numerous computer games have been presented in a permanent exhibition on the second floor of the ZKM | Media Museum, since these reflect an essential part within modern society heavily influenced by digitalized realities of life. For centuries new artistic, experimental, media-reflective as well as ‘serious’ forms of games have evolved. In the past decade alone, the cultural influence and economic power of digital games and gameplay have experienced enormous and continuous growth. Digital games also generate promises and equally vague fears.
In June 2013, the ZKM | Media Museum will open a newly designed exhibition on the theme and significance of the computer game in general and the digital game in particular. The exhibition has the purpose to explore the multi-facetted layers of games with a critical gaze.
 
Curator: Stephan Schwingeler and Bernhard Serexhe

“fm-scenario – The Listener‘s Voice” is an inter-media project by Eran Schaerf, in which the Internet is used as the site of production so as to generate further media, such as radio broadcasts, exhibitions and publications.
The starting point of this inter-media project is comprised of Eran Schaerf’s news radio games of the fictive radio program “The Voice of the Listener” (2002). Based on an archive made available by Eran Schaerf, with audio modules the curator Margit Rosen creates a montage that serves Schaerf as a script for a performance-for-the-camera. Resembling the practice of news agencies, the reports from the fm-scenario montage are shown in images and simultaneously transmitted to the ZKM exhibition space. They are then presented by performers in performances-for-the-camera within a scenic exhibition structure.
 
Project curator: Joerg Franzbecker
Project management: Herbert Kapfer and Joerg Franzbecker
Exhibition curator: Margit Rosen
Project coordination ZKM: Annina Zwettler
Performance and image production: in cooperation with Kerstin Honeit, Karolin Meunier, Stefan Pente, Andrea Thal and William Wheeler
 
The project is supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation. „FM-Scenario – The Listener’s Voice“ (2012–2014) is a production by a production e. V., Berlin and the Bayerischen Rundfunk / Hörspiel und Medienkunst, in cooperation with Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Les Complices, Zürich; Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt; and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
 
fm-scenario: www.fm-scenario.net/

Holography, which already was discovered in 1948 and developed further in the 1960s, is a successful, comprehensive spatial representation of objects and structures, which in their potential application, extend far beyond classical photography. As an imaging technique, in the 1970s holography was considered as a technology of the future, but withdrew into the background with the emergence of digital technologies. The exhibition at the ZKM | Media Museum shows a selection of artistic works from the most important holographic collection at the ZKM | Karlsruhe.
 
Curator: Bernhard Serexhe