A Space Between. Albert Weis discusses ‘The border’ at Deutscher

Sandra Johnston and Richard Ashrowan, That Apart, 2019, multipart video work, installation view; photograph © Deutscher Künstlerbund, courtesy of the artists

A Space Between

ALBERT WEIS DISCUSSES ‘THE BORDER’ AT DEUTSCHER KÜNSTLERBUND, BERLIN.

SOME PLACES IN Berlin today still bear a certain tension which reflects the postwar era of the divided city. A similar kind of tension is also visible in some parts of Northern Ireland, where fences, provisional walls, abandonned army posts and waste lands mark the former border. Close to where the wall once stood in Berlin’s city centre, which once divided the city into east and west, the Deutsche Künstlerbund (a nationwide association of German artists) hosted an exhibiton about the Northern Irish issue, titled ‘the border’, which was scheduled to run from 11 September to 13 November 2020.

The exhibition examines the ways in which history is constructed and how it affects the daily lives of citizens. ‘The border’ concerns itself with the conflict in Northern Ireland and the underlying forces of identity, nationalism and religion. Looking back to the Troubles, it is possible to understand how political tensions emerge, what dangers they harbour and how fragile democratic societies can be. Northern Ireland, however, also represents how a violent conflict can be overcome. Following Brexit, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will become an exterior European border. This will potentially result in a further partition of the island of Ireland, which some worry could be the trigger for new troubles.

This project grew out of visits to Belfast at very different times – once when the walls and war infrastructure still were present, and later, when they became witnesses of the past. In the exhibition at Deutsche Künstlerbund, the space was divided into different zones by a metal structure, forcing the visitor to decide for him or herself how to behave and how to move within these spaces. The structure is reminiscent of the provisional barriers in Belfast, separating neighbourhoods and protecting premises from violence.

The structure also supplied space for Sandra Johnston’s multipart video work, That Apart, and text-based work, Wait it Out – both of which were

Mairéad McClean, No More, 2013, video, installation view; photograph © Deutscher Künstlerbund, courtesy of the artist Declan Clarke, Group Portrait with Explosives, 2014, installation view; photograph © Deutscher Künstlerbund, courtesy of the artist

previosly shown as part of her exhibition, ‘Wait it Out’, at Project Art Centre, Dublin, in 2019. That Apart (produced with Richard Ashrowan at Project and at IMMA) uses improvisation processes to examine states of physical reaction that arise in relation to a specific situation and in the moment of making. Wait it Out recalls personal notes and memories of the Troubles and relocates the visitor into the vague terrain of the early days of the peace process.

Mairéad McClean’s two video works, No More and Broadcast 32172, refer to the internment policy of Northern Ireland’s then Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, who introduced imprisonment without trial. McClean’s father, a civil rights activist, was among those arrested and interned in the notorious Long Kesh internment camp. McClean set the two videos in a loop, showing them on a cube monitor which was set in a separate corridor, providing a specific viewing situation. Sound was an important aspect of these presented video works, precise and disruptive while also being part of the physical action. All sounds were transmitted on earphones, which overwhelmed and isolated the listener, while leaving the space hauntingly silent.

Declan Clarke’s Group Portrait with Explosives, was presented in the centre of the exhibiton space. The film traces the paths of agricultural exports and those of the plastic explosive Semtex from former Czechoslovakia to Northern Ireland during the period of civil war in the 1970s. Group Portrait with Explosives interweaves the historical-political narratives of these two places with personal recollections of South Armagh in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where the artist spent time during his childhood. Mark Clare’s video, Territorial Integrity, Self-determination, takes the viewer on a Black Taxi tour through Belfast’s neighbourhoods, while the driver explains the various politically-charged murals.

Susanne Bosch created a new series of collages from newspaper reports she collected between 2006 and 2012, when she lived and worked in Belfast. These articles focus on various annual processions commemorating the Battle of the Boyne. Bosch juxtaposed this archival material with Hannah Arendt quotes and current headlines about the Black Lives Matter movement, as a way of highlighting other sociopolitical and humanitarian values. Entitled Für eine aufstrebende Zukunft (For an Emerging Future), these paper works were fixed onto the window, which separates the space from the outside. Eoghan McTigue’s multipart photographic work, The Glass Album, consists of contact prints made from broken glass plate negatives. These aerial photographs show the coastline of Donegal and Northern Ireland and refer to historical photographs taken by James Glass in the late 1870s. The contact sheets record the landscape as well as the damage. There is a sense of the landscape being scarred and broken, fractured and distant.

‘The border’ opened in early September, right after the first lockdown, when exhibitions were briefly possible again in Berlin. Artist talks and film screenings were meant to accompany the exhibiton but were not possible, due to COVID-19 restricitions. The second lockdown then marked the end of the exhibition in late October, two weeks earlier than planned. Visiting the exhibition was a rather physical experience, both in terms of the intense subject matter and the physical ways in which visitors navigated the space, sounds and artworks, each with an individual reality, presence and emotional intensity. This physical aspect was all the more resonant since real-life encounters with art haven’t been possible for many months, both before and after this exhibition. Closed museums and institutions, reduced public life and ongoing restrictions – these shut downs created an atmosphere of insecurity that may also foretell what we will face this year with Brexit.

Albert Weis is an artist who lives and works in Berlin.