Digging Digging

Opening: Thursday 3.5.18 at 19:30

Closing: Saturday 23.6.18

 Morning of lectures: Human – Nature/ Terra deformation: Friday 4 May 2018 at 10:30

Initiators:
INGEBORG LOCKEMANN, ROSWITHA VON DEN DRIESCH & SVEN KALDEN

Participants:
ADITAL ELA & STUDIO CRIATERRA, ANNA LENA GRAU, EFRAT EYAL, HENDRIK LIETMANN, INKEN REINERT, INGEBORG LOCKEMANN, OLIVER VAN DEN BERG, RELLI DE VRIES, ROSWITHA VON DEN DRIESCH AND JENS-UWE DYFFORT, SHLOMIT BAUMAN, SIGALIT LANDAU, SVEN KALDEN

The Digging Digging project presents artistic positions that deal with transformations and deformations of landscapes and urban changes due to extraction and utilization of resources.

The extraction of raw materials and the economic and environmental results that effect social conditions and dominate entire regions are simultaneously a global issue.

The project is realized in collaboration with the BENYAMINI CONTEMPORARY CERAMICS CENTER in Tel Aviv. The Benyamini Center has been running for 7 years in Tel Aviv with a comprehensive exhibition, education and residency program of an “enhanced ceramics concept” that places art and design in relation to social and political context.

The exhibition Digging Digging (Graben Graben) was first shown in the Galerie am Körnerpark in May 2016 in Berlin. The conceptual starting point for our exhibition was the gallery itself that is located in a park, which has been used as a mine for gravel extraction in the 19th century.

(The „Körner Park“ is significantly lower than the urban environment around it. This is due to the fact that at this point the gravel pit of Theodor Körner (1838-1911) was located. Körner, the producer of raw building materials became rich through the mined materials that were used for construction purposes of downtown districts of Berlin.)

The exhibition looks at the digging issue from different perspectives. There are documentary-investigative or narrative approaches in addition to those that are inspired by the visual impressions of landscape transformations and cityscape changes. Their space and structure are an opportunity for artistic investigation as well as the materiality of the extracted materials and their metabolisms. This diagonal “digging through” of the topic creates new contexts and associations.

Inviting this exhibition to Israel is part of an effort by the Benyamini Gallery to focus on the discussion about using natural resources in a local context. The Benyamini Gallery deals with a broad context of clay, minerals and materials and aims to give new interpretations to the term “Digging”.

In our region, we face intervention of public and private organizations and corporations that influence this process: changing landscapes, using natural resources, effecting quality of food, historical narrative and political reality.

For the exhibition in Israel, we invited 4 Israeli artists to also address these issues and to participate in the local presentation of this exhibition:  Adital Ela (industrial designer), Reli De Fries (landscape architect & artist), Efrat Eyal (Ceramic Artist), and Sigalit Landau (Artist), in addition to Shlomit Bauman who was a participant in the original exhibition in Berlin.

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