30/07/2022, 5:00 pm,

When it moves, strengthening its skin

, Kunstverein Bielefeld

How does specific spaces shape the way we relate to each other? When it moves, strengthening its skin is a program of performances and installations that takes place over two consecutive Saturdays in the surroundings of two exhibition institutions in North Rhine-Westphalia: in the garden of the Kunstverein Bielefeld and the public Bunnemannplatz as well as a multistory parking garage located in the immediate vicinity of the Dortmunder Kunstverein. Both programs are under one title. They share a careful attention to the way we inhabit spaces in the context of their respective symbolic and visual particularities and explore the conditions of communal experience. When it moves, strengthening its skin brings together diverse contributions by international artists such as Elisa Barrera, Bitsy Knox, Nils Amadeus Lange, Mira Mann, Sveta Mordovskaya, PRICE, Margaux Schwarz and Noemi Weber, who explore the links between relationships and interactions in movement and spatial appropriation.

The kick-off will take place on July 30, 2022 in the garden of Kunstverein Bielefeld. Enclosed by a historic wall, the garden acts as a shelter in the middle of Bielefeld's city center - a space protective of the bodies connected to the history of the building to which the garden adjoins. At 5 p.m., Bitsy Knox will open the afternoon with a performance staging itself in the fictional future of the institution. Her contribution anticipates a time when everything is in ruins, sinking into the ground and being digested by worms - an image for transience, death and recycling, and thus a confrontation of the audience with its individual experience of the present. At 6 p.m. Mira Mann presents a choreography in collaboration with the K-Pop dance group Iridescent Wings on Bunnemannplatz, a public square near the Kunstverein in front of the sculptural Merkurbrunnen. Under the eyes of Mercury, the Roman god of trade, the transformation and hybridization processes of transcultural phenomena are questioned. The square, enclosed by buildings and the Golden Tulip Hotel (formerly Hotel Mercure), shares the feeling of a shelter with that of the garden, but reinforced by the belief that the sculpture of Mercury's fountain is meant to bring prosperity to the city's inhabitants. At 7 p.m., the public is invited to return to the Kunstverein's garden. Nils Amadeus Lange will conclude the program here. Through acts of lament, whose object of despair remains unknown, he will probe together with the audience the effects of exuberant sentimentality: do we open ourselves to others when we collectively manifest sorrow?

One week later, on August 6, When it moves, strengthening its skin will take place at the Dortmunder Kunstverein. Starting at 4 pm, the neighboring parking garage and the plateau above it on Emil-Moog Platz will be reinterpreted as a meeting place for artistic interventions.

Visitors are invited to perceive the artists' contributions, some of which were developed especially for the two venues, outside of a conventional exhibition context and to question them about their effect and meaning in an environment that is often architecturally and spatially unfamiliar to art.

When it moves, strengthening its skin takes place at the invitation of Paolo Baggi and Florentine Muhry.

Bitsy Knox is a Berlin-based artist, performer, poet and radio presenter. Her work has been presented among others at Klosterruine, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, MACBA. Her writing has appeared in several publications and will be published by e-flux and Sternberg Press in 2022. Her experimental music and poetry radio show Something Like airs monthly on Cashmere Radio and 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Radio.

Nils Amadeus Lange lives in Zürich and works as an artist, performer and lecturer. After studying theater at the Bern University of the Arts, he expanded his practice to various media, with a focus on dance and performance, which he develops in numerous international projects. His work has been shown at various institutions such as Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Zürich, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw.

Mira Mann lives in Düsseldorf, where she studied at the Kunstakademie under Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Her performances, installations, publications and collaborations have been shown in groups and solo exhibitions such as Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Urbane Künste Ruhr/ Dortmunder Kunstverein, Lantz'schen Skulpturenpark and Simultanhalle Köln.