Markues (en)

Amber
Solo exhibition, Braennen, Berlin, 2.8. – 23.8.2015

Like ships or floes, three mattresses lie on the floor of the exhibition space. They are wrapped in fitted bedsheets, which have been dyed with quotations using a batik process. Resting on them, visitors can let themselves drift. Folding screens held together by power cords surround the mattresses. During opening hours, attendees are read aloud texts encompassing themes such as ancestry, depletion, cultural entrenchment, class, utopia, and their transgression. Between each reading the space is rearranged, which, along with the different associations provoked by the text, creates a warm but ephemeral atmosphere at the limits of tangibility.

The ambiguities of the installation reflect the ambiguity of the word “amber”, which refers both to the fossilized tree resin gemstone and to ambergris, a substance that used to be important for the manufacture of perfume and is derived from sperm whales’ stomach contents. While amber suggests healing a wound, encapsulating and conserving, ambergris results from the metamorphosis of indigestible bone fragments through weathering and processing into a valuable eroticizing fragrance. Both substances share a connection to the sea, for before their provenance was known, they could only be found washed up on the shore.

• 2.8.2015, Jörg Markowski reads River Without Banks by Hans Henny Jahnn
• 7.8.2015, Vince Tillotson reads Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• 8.8.2015, Eric Jones reads Close to the Knifes by David Wojnarowicz
• 9.8.2015, Tucké Royale reads fairy tales by Hans-Christian Andersen
• 14.8.2015, Michaela Meise reads Pretty Honest by Sali Hughes
• 15.8.2015, Alicia Agustín reads How to Be Gay? by David Halperin
• 16.8.2015, Daniel Cremer and Heike-Karin Föll read the interview with Jean Genet by Hubert Fichte
• 21.8.2015, Nicholas Courtman reads Maurice by E.M. Forster
• 22.8.2015, Dirck Linck reads Sheeper by Irving Rosenthal
• 23.8.2015, Raoul Klooker reads So schön by Ronald M. Schernikau