Installation, sound (14’ min, loop), posters (A1), booklets, hanging wall, 2010
Produced in occasion of the exhibition project Gruppenbild (Group picture) at the n.b.k. (Berlin)
Curated by Sophie Goltz & Kathrin Becker
‘Gruppenbild’ was a five part solo exhibition series (2010-2011) in the Showroom at n.b.k (Berlin). Each artist was commissioned by the curators to intervene, vary and add new elements to the previous exhibition "to create a collective conceptual image".
How does an event affects the event that follows? Felix became here the alter ego of ‘Gruppenbild’: fragments from the discussions between curators and artists were combined in a sound letter with references to a number of historical moments of resistance against various government systems. The question “What will remain after all this?” is directed here to radical, political-aesthetic life worlds. What remains when an artwork becomes a memory for the viewer, what remains in the individual after the experience of a shared struggle?
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, commented on this point in an interview with Robert Storr (1995): “I think more than anything else I’’m just an extension of certain practices, minimalism or conceptualism, that I am developing areas I think were not totally dealt with. I don’’t like this idea of having to undermine your ancestors, of ridiculing them, and making less out of them. I think we’’re part of a historical process and I think that this attitude that you have to murder your father in order to start something new is bullshit.”
Related film:
CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS
