JUNGE AKADEMIE – Open Studios
The JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste opens its studios in the Hansaviertel for presentations by four fellows working in the visual arts, architecture, and film and media arts. On view will be video works, research, objects and installations by Mahsa Aleph, Aboozar Amini, Oleksandr Burlaka and Alina Gorlova. As a place where international voices and history(-ies) connect, the artistic works bear witness to the impact caused by war, crises, and authoritarian regimes worldwide. What aesthetics can be used for artistic testimony and to keep us from forgetting?
In her projects, visual arts fellow Mahsa Aleph reinterprets the content of classical Persian literature and translates the abstract core of the words into tangible artistic processes. The historical memory of materials and objects is also a central motif of her installations. In her Open Studio, she provides insights into the development of her work.
In addition to his practice as a documentary filmmaker, Aboozar Amini is a film and media arts fellow giving online classes to girls in Kabul who have been excluded from attending university since the resurgence of the Taliban. In his contributions to the Open Studio event, he negotiates the abrupt withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan via various film clips. Amini also addresses the devastating assassinations the population has continually been subjected to over the past decades, including targeted attacks on school classes.
In her film installation Witnessing the Crime, developed for the Open Studios, Alina Gorlova, film and media arts fellow, deals with personal responsibility in the context of war crimes. Visitors become witnesses to the multiple local and global consequences of war – for people, animals and the land .
Oleksandr Burlaka’s (architecture fellow) project, Architectural Atlas of the Black Sea Coast From Chornomorsk To Serhiivka, 2018–2022, is an ongoing photographic exploration of this coastal region in Ukraine. The strip of land has been severely affected by wars and economic transformations from the 19th to the 21st century. Today, the Russian war of aggression has again dearly cost its people and severely damaged or destroyed the region. The architect combines images from this photo study with slides from his family’s archive for the Open Studios.