Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
Artist Discussion

As part of the exhibition entitled "Don’t Start With The Good Old Things But The Bad New Ones" at C/O Berlin, Adam Broomberg and Ann-Christin Bertrand will introduce the exhibition and the overall artistic creation of the London-based artist duo Broomberg & Chanarin. Erdmut Wizisla, head of the Bertolt-Brecht-Archive at the Akademie der Künste, will introduce.

War, violence, terror, murder and genocide – a bloody trail of brutality runs through humanity's history. The narrative of conflict is deeply rooted in our collective and individual consciousness and since its invention, it has attracted photography to the places of human suffering and misery. The artists Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin have co-opted two highly influential books – Bertolt Brecht's War Primer and the King James Bible – and use them to confront the media documentation, publication and dissemination of such images. For this, they juxtapose passages that deal with specific acts of violence with images of often shocking brutality or tenderness. The images found on the Internet or in the Archive of Modern Conflict serve to prevent overly facilitated consumption of text and image. In this way, the artist duo questions our viewing habits and forces us to be critical viewers who do not indifferently lose ourselves in media spectacles.

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin are known for intertwining their methods, photojournalism and fine art and creating provocative and ambiguous interpretations of history and current events in this way. During the discussion in the exhibition, questions relating to artistic conception and authorship, the role of photography in the reporting of conflicts and the overall artistic creation of the London-based artist duo will be debated and presented together.