Memory Is a Strange Bell

The positions on display combine an examination of social, political and historical issues with a critical reflection on power relations, norms and ideologies. Using a broad spectrum of aesthetic approaches and media - including video, sound, photography, painting, drawing, installation and performance - the works negotiate different, sometimes contradictory spaces of experience and reality. They address visible and invisible power structures that determine individual and collective perception in both physical and digital space and shape the canonization of knowledge and cultural forms of expression.

Other works revolve around the phenomena of memory - its processual nature, fragility and inherent ambivalence. The title of the exhibition also refers to this, inspired by a line from a letter from the American poet Emily Dickinson (*1830 †1886) to her sister: "Memory is a strange Bell - Jubilee, and Knell". In the metaphor of the bell ringing, which marks both joy and loss, memory becomes legible as an ambivalent, dynamic process - not as a static fixation, but as an ongoing, complex movement. At the same time, the quote alludes to a present that is characterized by paradoxical tensions, a constant oscillation between multiple crises and the pursuit of progress and growth.