MARJETICA POTRC IN 'THIS PLACE IS MY PLACE' AT KUNSTVEREIN HAMBURG

Maretica Potrc, Prishtina House, 2006/ 2007, Installation view Kunstverein in Hamburg

THIS PLACE IS MY PLACE – BEGEHRTE ORTE (DESIRED SPACES)
KUNSTVEREIN IN HAMBURG
Upper floor
Yael Bartana, Ursula Biemann, Armin Linke, Dan Perjovschi, Marjetica Potrc,
Sean Snyder, Yuk King Tan
27 January–6 May 2007
This Place is My Place – Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces)

The exhibition This Place is My Place - Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces) combines works by seven international artists who explore the economic, social, political, and cultural impact of globalization. According to Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s seminal workEmpire, we are in a new phase of capitalism characterized by postmodern lifestyles, postfordist relations of production, and methods of sovereignty based on the society of control. Against the backdrop of these developments, national boundaries are increasingly being relativized by the economic activities of transnational corporations. The appropriation of space takes place both concretely as the seizure of territory, and symbolically through the expansion of spheres of influence.

The following questions are central to the exhibition This Place is My Place -
Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces): How do artists today relate to the phenomena described?

How, for instance, do they react in their work to the politically or economically motivated
occupation of land? The art projects presented in the exhibition explore, among other
things, the impact that transnational corporations have on local cultural and
economic systems, and the migratory movements induced by globally operating concerns. Some of the works examine the ways in which architecture and urban planning in the megametropolises have changed, and how this effects the social situation of their inhabitants. Thus, for instance, architectural hybrids resulting from the collision of different architectural languages and economic resources are to be seen in the exhibition. The confrontation between cultures and between economic systems is also reflected in those installations that deal with news coverage in the media. The deliberate use of cliché and the manipulation of how events are presented reveal more about the intentions behind film and newspaper reports than about the reality of the events in question. The distinction between fiction and reality collapses in these works to provide a fitting illustration of the equivocal relations that characterize our age.

This Place is My Place - Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces) is a comprehensive exhibition and presents works in the media of film, photography, installation, and murals. It embraces the entire 1,000 m2 of the main exhibition hall on the upper floor of the Kunstverein.

Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

KUNSTVEREIN IN HAMBURG
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
Tel. 0049 – (0)40 – 33 83 44
Fax 0049 – (0)40 – 32 21 59
hamburg@kunstverein.de
http://www.kunstverein.de