BcmA is delighted to present “Die Grenzen unserer Welt”, a solo exhibition by Rishin Singh. Emerging as a response to our 2018 Open Call “Borders of Power | Power of Borders”, this exhibition, ironically, does not offer any response. In fact, it adds further to the questions initially posed. It calmly embraces the only certainty – of the impossibility to be certain. Yet, it is strong and confident in its asking, skillfully alluring us into the conversation. Perhaps together we reach answers.
In addressing borders Singh shrewdly resists the temptations of the exhausted poststructuralist discourse and shifts his initial focus from a macro realm to that of a single person. “Die Grenzen unserer Welt” gradually traces one’s experience of a border, starting from an internal personal experience, to borders with our immediate surroundings, leading to large scale reflections on the challenges of globalisation and technological progress. Through sculpture, performance, video, – and most importantly, language – Singh’s work is a meditation on the ways in which we encounter borders. Composed of three separate works, “Die Grenzen unserer Welt” offers a multi-sensory experience which welcomes visitors’ active participation.
In a photo series Knowing all by the mastery of one Singh explores the notion of border manifested as an internalized, embodied phenomenon. Observing how immigrants, when crossing borders into new languages, are being physically changed and challenged with implied imperative of renovation of their interior architecture, this piece recognize geographical borders as lexical borders. It weighs the common concept of “physical” borders with a new, even more literal meaning.
Treephones (installation/performance) encourages viewer/participant to reconsider her/his connection with immediate surrounding and nature, or rather the alienation from it. Created out of fallen twigs and ear plugs, Treephones can be seen as an organic headphones which enable us to finally silence the city noise and allow the vibrations of the wind and our own steps to create unique sonic experience of the city. In participating in this work, we are required to relinquish our Anthropocentrism and abandon ourselves to ‘plant agency’.
In his internet-based video work Haiku for The City and The Tower Singh undermines Technological Utopianism, in poetically expressing the unavoidable linguistic borders between all users of that so-called emancipatory and horizontally-organised tool: The Internet. The work automatically generates and displays a false haiku every minute, selecting words at random from all the writing systems of human languages existing on the Internet. The work complicates the utopian idea of unfettered, borderless communication, which the Internet is said to deliver, and transforms sonic and communicative symbols into pure imagery. [Programming by Olga Syrova]
Take a look at the interview we did with Rishin:
Within the time of the exhibition, BcmA will also host a public programme in an effort to extend this discourse:
Debate: November 21st – Contemporary Art is for the rich
Performance Lectures: November 27th – When we burn down the borders will the haters inhale the fumes?
Vernissage: November 15th, 19:30
Finissage: December 4th, 19:30