
Let’s see if this works
Video from the exhibition Let’s see if this works // 17, 18, 19 September in Circus Schatzinsel
Let’s see if this works
Oh, what thunderous times of disarray, disorder, bedlam, pandemonium, turmoil, disruption, depression and upheaval. Shall I dare to characterise this toxic mess we have gotten ourselves into? The weariness of the disease anxiously manifesting itself in the creepy term Delta, the thunder-dome of revolt under which identity-left and neo-fascism clash into each other, while the weather gods are delivering scornful punishment upon some more than others, warning us of probably unavoidable dark times ahead. As uncertainty and hesitation makes its way into almost every decision that lies upon us, what shalt thou do young artists burdened by an everlasting existential crisis mixed with cancellation, postponement and a sense of urgency to respond to what we’re going through?
Let’s see if this works responds to these absurd circumstances. An exhibition that unfolds itself in an unlikely location in Kreuzberg along the May-Ayim-Ufer. Once a factory bombed in the second world war, then an adventure playground and now a circus, standing in the tradition of the French Nouveau Cirque. A renewed silhouette of the circus deriving from the 60s. A rather intellectual concept of entertainment which condemns animal cruelty and delivers a show with a coordinated aesthetic, lights, gymnastics, story-telling and much more. Are we the clowns or the dancers? Moving through the manege reserved for laughter, contemplation and astonishment. Is this perhaps a possibility to see through this mess of this world by taking in such a space of harmonising absurdity?
The exhibition will spread out through the circus tent and the garden along with a public program of performances and music that will take place everywhere and in between. Works delving into dreams, the perception of the inner mind and the surreal. Artists exploring the tension between sexuality and violence, authority and power, Space and the body, race and hatred, the real and the artificial. Grasping situative moments as they melt away between our fingers. .

