21 Sep 2012

The City, that doesn't exist – Ludwig Forum Aachen

The City that Doesn't Exist (Die Stadt, die es nicht gibt) takes visitors to places which raise questions about their own existence. Media and social processes are continually changing our world and creating new, 'in-between' spaces, spaces where any distinction between facts and fictions become blurred. Above all photographers but also film and video artists have explored the theme of 'worldwide' in recent years, challenging our perception of reality. This challenge has focused on the everyday practice of how we consume images in our urban spaces and the news images reaching us from seemingly every point on the globe. We believe that we know these places, and yet time and again their remoteness takes us by surprise and fascinates.

The 20 participating photo, film, and video artists present scenes from such places. The imaginary map of the exhibition extends from the town of Kohlscheid on the periphery of Aachen to Beijing, from Cairo to Peru, and from Berlin to Chandigarh. And in between we have Naples, Amsterdam, Fukushima, Hong Kong, Pyongyang, Marseille, and Bratislava. The result is a mosaic of imaginary and real terrains which ultimately form and visually reproduce our world. In the process, it becomes clear that our conception of the world is composed of diverse structural, social, political, and cultural parameters. It simply cannot do without images which satisfy our intellectual and visual curiosity for the 'other' and people in other places.

Artists: Kader Attia, Stefan Canham, Nadia El Fani, Annette Kelm, Aglaia Konrad, Till Krause, Michael Krumm, Armin Linke, Daniel Maier-Reimer, Paolo Pellegrin, Michael Schmidt, Wilhelm Schürmann, Maya Schweizer, Lidwien van de Ven, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Annette Wehrmann, Maja Weyermann, Rufina Wu, Tobias Zielony, David Zink Yi

Curator: Dr. Brigitte Franzen; Assistant Curator: Esther Boehle

Sponsored by: Kunststiftung NRW, AachenMünchener, Freunde des Ludwig Forums für Internationale Kunst e.V., Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung

Partners: plan 12, WDR 3

Preview:
Videozone
Artur Zmijewski, Blindly
November 10, 2012 – January 6, 2013
Opening: Friday, November 9, 8 p.m.