Jasmin Werner : The Structure of Claim

In the organizer's words:

The Structure of Claim by Jasmin Werner is the first exhibition in the series for fear of continuity problems, which explores memory and remembrance in the poster frames in the outdoor space and part of the interior of the GAK. One after the other, we invite six artists to put these concepts up for discussion in their works in very different ways.

In her sculptures and installations, Jasmin Werner deals with transnational movements and questions how these are reflected in architecture, among other things. She traverses the power that spaces, buildings and façades exert over the present and memory with images and narratives of what is otherwise often left out. In The Structure of Claim, she interweaves supposed truths and values with diasporic realities of life.

In the poster frames, Jasmin Werner shows suggestions for modifying the building facades of existing museums. While the respective overall views of the museum façades are unchanged, she has inserted individual window shutters into the detailed drawings, which are

hand-painted advertising for money transfer companies. Representative architecture thus directly encounters the contemporary, everyday effects of extractive practices, which are directly and indirectly linked to the collections behind them. As places of memory, knowledge and representation, museums are spaces in which claims to power, ownership and self-image are negotiated and shaped. The façade programs and window designs thus form the architectural and memory-political framework for the global social conditions from which Ria, Western Union, MoneyGram and Co. derive.

Werner's installation in the interior brings together shelf structures on which papier-mâché replicas of cell phones are placed. The multi-part work refers to the widespread shadow industry of so-called click farms in the Philippines. In the click farms, people move between similar shelving systems to constantly operate cell phones, click links and give likes, thus generating income and attention in which they themselves only participate to a limited extent. Some of the papier-mâché cell phones in Werner's installation are raw, others show home screens or chat histories, while still others are hand-carved and look out of the shelf as three-dimensional eyes. They embody ritual and religious references, but also negotiate closeness and distance. In diasporic work, cell phones and digital communication are often the only way not to lose contact with one's neighbors and homeland.

Between the claims of ownership and power relations thematized in the works, real human relationships and memories are all too easily forgotten or overwritten - for example, the memory of the historical foundations that created today's low-wage working conditions in the Philippines or how the collections of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the Überseemuseum in Bremen came about. While the prestigious museum buildings occupy central locations in the cities, the money transfer companies are mostly located in peripheral areas. While objects from all over the world are readily accepted, the global diaspora often receives much less recognition. In her work, Jasmin Werner brings together these parallel, closely linked but rarely visibly touching systems and questions the logics of representation.

Representation is a form in which the memory of the past affects the present. Which memory is updated in this way depends on the current needs of those remembering. Events are selectively faded in and out. What is represented is determined by the self-image and world view. Self-image and worldview are in turn shaped by representation. The title Structure of Claim is therefore to be understood ambiguously. On the one hand, it describes the clash between representation and the real living conditions of large sections of the population. On the other hand, it also describes how Jasmin Werner undermines their respective logic by focusing on the fragility, tipping points and instability of narratives, supposed truths and value systems.