Reduzierte Spielpläne und Ausstellungsprogramme, drohender Personalabbau: Die Ende letzten Jahres durch den Berliner Senat verabschiedeten Kürzungen schränken die Arbeit von Kultureinrichtungen stark ein. Weniger augenscheinlich sind die Leerstellen, die diejenigen Projekte hinterlassen, deren Förderung schlicht gestrichen wurde. Zum Abschluss unserer Reihe zur aktuellen Berliner Kulturpolitik setzt Annette Maechtel die gegenwärtigen Sparmaßnahmen ins Verhältnis zu denen der 1990er Jahre. Die damals als Reaktion auf den Sparkurs entstandenen Projektförderungen verortet Maechtel in ihrem historischen Kontext und skizziert deren langfristige kulturpolitische Implikationen.

The perpetual threat of larger-than-life catastrophes, an environment of fear and subliminal anxiety, the intrusion of the past upon the present, often epitomized by the long, looming shadows of shattered empires: Many features of the genre of gothic fiction, whose motifs and aesthetics have been adapted in numerous contexts over the centuries, sound all too contemporary today. A new play that Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff are currently developing at New Theater Hollywood together with the writer Oliver Misraje draws on the gothic mode to explore the demise of the California Dream in the aftermath of the Great Fires in January – and in the face of Donald Trump’s “flood the zone” tactics, which have since pushed the devastating consequences of the natural disaster out of international news. In conversation with Anna Sinofzik, Misraje, Henkel, and Pitegoff give a sneak peek into the project, which is still in the implementation phase, and share their own observations about the situation on the ground.

Als malende Minimalistin im New York der 1960er Jahre musste Jo Baer manchem Widerstand trotzen, um sich mit ihrer Kunst und ihren Texten eine zentrale Position zu erarbeiten. Im Nachruf für die Anfang des Jahres verstorbene Künstlerin stellt Julia Friedrich heraus, wie sehr Baers Schaffen von Erkenntnisinteressen geleitet war. Doch es ist nicht nur der mit wissenschaftlichem Anspruch verfolgte wahrnehmungstheoretische Ansatz, der Baers frühe nichtgegenständliche Gemälde mit ihren ab den 1970er Jahren entstandenen figürlichen Sujets verbindet. Als Bindeglied zwischen diesen beiden auf den ersten Blick so gegensätzlichen Werkkomplexen hebt Friedrich zudem die grafischen Arbeiten hervor und zeichnet so die künstlerische Entwicklung Baers nach.

Some days begin in our dressing gowns – as does this edition of Seen & Read. Here, our publisher Isabelle Graw discusses the exhibition “Corps In•visibles,” which was on display in Paris until recently and focused on the studies produced by Auguste Rodin in preparation for his famous monument to Honoré de Balzac, with his cast of the author’s “robe de chambre” at its center. Heike Geißler’s book-length essay “Verzweiflungen” addresses pervasive states of mind in times of multiple crises, in what Graw reads as both a lament and a plea to continue – in spite of all adversities. Last but not least, she analyzes the remarkable intertwining of two disparate processes of artistic production in Isa Genzken’s “Basic Research” series, currently on view at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin.

Binary notions of East and West have rarely seemed as untenable as they do today. Despite curatorial efforts to break the usual pattern, artistic work that emerged from restrictive regimes such as the GDR are often still reduced to aspects of political resistance and creative rebellion. In the case of Christine Schlegel’s artistic practice, it is not least the depth and complexity of the works themselves that make such clear categorizations virtually impossible, as Krista Bailie points out in her review of the artist’s recent retrospective in Cottbus. Although – or precisely because – not all references and levels of meaning in Schlegel multi-layered collages are easily accessible, they effectively show how inextricably intertwined not only the personal and political, but also different eras and seemingly opposed systems are.

What’s more welcome in difficult times than an effective distraction – for example in the form of a die-hard obsession? A good ten years ago, our new columnist Alissa Bennett published her zine Dead Is Better, driven by a keen interest in the lives and premature deaths of celebrities such as Judy Garland, Peaches Geldof, and River Phoenix. The stapled pages assembled an addictive collection of personal prose, based on in-depth internet (re)search results derived from dubious sources. For her TZK column, Gladstone Gallery director Bennett pursues her interest in prominent personalities and their legacies, rummaging up remnants of their eventful lives found on the world wide web and its auction house catalogues. Under the title “Fiction/Nonfiction,” borrowed from the former New York gallery of the same name, Bennett’s series of texts begins by taking up the cudgels for conning. If this seems untenable in times when bullshitting, fake news, and falsity dominate the political landscape, you’d better read on.

With her first institutional survey in Europe, which opened in Bern last fall, Amy Sillman expands the well-established temporal dimension of her practice, which includes layers, series, and repetitions, into a dialogue with the Kunstmuseum’s collection. The coiled quality of her gestures – the physicality of the mark as well as the process of its making that are at play in her paintings – manifests here in art historical constellations and murals across the two-storied exhibition space as well as in her own work. As Sasha Rossman argues, this results in a suspenseful viewing experience that subverts the linearity of time and fixity of position both humorously and rebelliously.

Die Gier nach Territorien und Rohstoffen, die zur Vertreibung ganzer Bevölkerungsgruppen führte und die politische Landschaft heute wieder besonders unverhohlen bestimmt, hat seit der Kolonialzeit auch zahllose Tierpopulationen zerstört. Inwieweit Strafbestände des Völkerrechts wie „Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit“ auch nichtmenschliche Tiere einbeziehen sollten, ist angesichts des sechsten Massenaussterbens vermehrt Gegenstand philosophischer Debatten und künstlerischer Produktion. Das Duo Hörner/Antlfinger nimmt diesbezüglich eine Vorreiter*innenrolle ein und verfolgt den Ansatz der Interspecies Justice besonders ganzheitlich und konsequent. Mit Blick auf eine von Felix Sattler kuratierte Ausstellung, zu deren Urheber*innenschaft neben den beiden in Teilen auch zwei Graupapageien zählen, erläutert Annette Weisser, wo die artenübergreifende Kollaboration an Grenzen stößt und warum es dennoch ein Umdenken bei ihr bewirkt hat.