False Emotions

Exhibition concept by
Gesine Braun

Emotion: feeling, sentiment, sensation, passion
Émotion, émouvoir (frz.): to move, to excite
Émovere (lat.): to move out, to root up

The artists

Gesine Braun, München, Germany
Linn Berman/Kahty Chenoweth, Los Angeles, USA
Steven Duval, Edinburgh, UK
Duncan Ganley, Houston, USA
Tina Gonsalves, Melbourne, Australia
Riikka Jokihao, Kolari, Finland
Mabel Palacin, Barcelona, Spain
Ludwig Schwarz, Dallas, USA
Raewyn Turner, Auckland, New Zealand
Wolfgang Stehle, München, Germany
Qingsong Wang, Beijing, China

In our gobalised culture, feelings are cut out of the most diverse areas of life and again, after being modified in the cycle of media, fed into our consciousness. Almost unnoticed, emotions and perceptions develop second-hand, which seemingly explain our life or determine our longings. Since the present is constantly reproduced and accessible in this way, it becomes immediately memory, never being present.
The exhibition seeks to interrupt the "secure view" of the cinema and of pictures of the spectacle, which govern life. It wants to integrate the view of the spectator into the installations and to confront him with the creation of the pictures.

The Kunstbunker Tumulka, former high shelter from the Second World War, is used for years as bright, clear showroom. In this exhibition, it is closer to the "Black Box" of the cinema than to the White Cube of the museum. Nevertheless, there will be no stories on display, but, at best, experimental situations in order to uncover emotions.

The only interesting venture is the liberation of everyday life, not only regarding a historical perspective, but for us, and immediately. This inflicts a dying of alienated forms of communication. The cinema must be destroyed, too!
(Guy Debord, 1978)

© 2002 Gesine Braun