Channeling presents new acquisitions alongside other works from the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST’s collection. Different perspectives may emerge in the space between objects. This space relates to the distance of time between the works’ making and their positioning in the exhibition. The collection was formed in 1981, and the museum opened in 1991. How have sensibilities and discourses changed since the museum’s foundation? Channeling suggests a movement toward a particular destination or object, or the flow along a specified route or through a given medium.
“The whole of your body except your hands and feet are over black emptiness. Your feet are on slabs of stone sloping downwards and outwards at an angle of about thirty-five degrees to the horizontal.” Serving as a review and advice for climbing the architecture of Cambridge, England, The Night Climbers of Cambridge is a 1937 book published under the pseudonym “Whipplesnaith.” A series of photographs document the practice of a group that went by the same name, comprising anonymous students who climbed college buildings and townhouses in the 1930s.
In Un film dramatique (2019), Éric Baudelaire lets schoolchildren in the 6th grade at Collège Dora Maar reflect on and work with film. Over a four-year period, their understanding of the medium develops in parallel with an awareness of their position in society. Living in the “Neuf-Trois” (the 93rd district) of the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, the children, as they negotiate their teenage years, openly address social violence, identity, and power relations.
Wheat bread, artificial flowers, soap bubbles, and surfboards become associated with foams in a work by Dan Graham. Foams (1966/2001), a wall text in four sections, lists and describes a material to the point of dissociation. Consisting of a wholesale-size piece of acoustic foam, Park McArthur’s sculpture Polyurethane Foam (2016) absorbs sound and physical impact. Across from two wall-mounted works by Donald Judd, Untitled (86-24), 1986, and Untitled (89-47), 1989, Polyurethane Foam reacts to the conditions of the exhibition space while also affecting the experience of it.
The most recent work in the collection—Just a Soul Responding (2023) by Sky Hopinka—captures imagery such as roads and landscapes and the process of traditional canoe making. The video combines voice-overs, text, and music to describe the traumas of land dispossession and the colonization of North America. The inherent violence within American society and its presence in popular culture become apparent in the contrast between a wooden canoe and muscle cars. The sculpture Untitled (1997/1998) by Cady Noland, consisting of a whitewall tire and an aluminum pipe, attests to how violence does not only appear in roaring machines but is ingrained in decoupled material parts as well.
Channeling proposes to expand our understanding of earlier acquisitions and donations while maintaining attention to the context constituted by the collection—a context into which new works enter and with which they necessarily engage.
The exhibition is curated by Julia Eichler and Lukas Flygare.
The name of this exhibition is Channeling.
Channeling usually means:
To make a path.
For example:
To make a path for water to flow along.
So that it flows from one place to another place.
Channeling can also mean:
Moving towards a certain aim.
Or moving towards a certain object.
This can be flowing along a certain channel.
In this exhibition channeling means that there is a subject.
The subject here is works of art in the museum‘s collection.
This subject is like a framework.
The framework allows people to look at these works of arts
in many different ways.
There is a lot of freedom within this framework:
A lot of room for different opinions.
It is not just about the opinions of the people who put the exhibition together.
This freedom allows us to see the works of art differently.
Even though the works of art have been around for a long time.
We can see changes.
For example:
How we speak about different subjects in art.
Subjects such as society and politics.
There is always a space between two objects.
This space is never the same.
It depends on:
— When the objects were made.
— How the objects are set up in one room.
People see the objects in the room differently.
People see the space between the objects differently.
And people understand the space differently.
This is the basic idea of this exhibition.
It is an exhibition of works of art from the collection at the
MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST.
This collection began in 1981.
And the museum opened in 1991.
A lot has changed since then.
People have had different experiences.
The world has changed.
Our knowledge about the world has changed.
And our own knowledge has also changed.
The subject of the exhibition covers all of these ideas.
The exhibition is about:
— What has changed in this space of time?
— What were people affected by in those days?
— What subjects did they speak about then?
— What subjects do we speak about now?
— What is important today?
These next works of art are very important to the exhibition:
The Night Climbers of Cambridge
This work of art is from 1937.
It is a collection of photos and texts.
The 14 photos are of the City of Cambridge in England.
You can see university buildings.
And other old buildings in Cambridge.
You can see people climbing up the buildings.
These people were students.
They climbed the buildings at night.
This was in the 1930’s.
The students were called The Night Climbers of Cambridge like this exhibition.
This exhibition includes written texts.
The texts are reports about the climbers in Cambridge.
And they give tips of how to climb old buildings.
Un film dramatique
This is a French film.
The film is by Éric Baudelaire.
He made the film in 2019.
The film is about school children in sixth grade.
Their school is in a suburb of Paris.
They talk about films and making films.
The school children worked on this subject for 4 years.
They think about their role in society.
They speak about being an outsider.
They speak about prejudice.
Prejudice is when people think badly of others.
Even though they do not know the other people.
Just a Soul Responding
This video was made in 2023.
It was made by Sky Hopinka.
The video is set in America.
You see the roads and different scenery.
And you see how canoes are made.
The first people living in North America
built their canoes in this same way.
In the video you hear music and someone speaking.
It is about how people lost their land.
And the pain this caused them.
This period of time is called colonisation.
Colonisation means that some countries ruled over other countries.
Hundreds of years ago people from Europe went to America.
They took over the land.
And shared it out between themselves.
They were violent and treated these people badly.
They made the people leave their land.
The people who lived in America at that time suffered badly.
They could no longer live as they used to.
Their knowledge about nature and crafts was lost.
The old canoes remind us of the violence from America’s past.
And that the first people were forced to leave their land.
Cady Noland also looks at this subject in her work of art.
She created her work of art in 1997 and 1998.
You can see a black tyre and a metal tube.
These are parts from an American car.
American cars impress people.
They attract a lot of interest.
The cars are a sign of power.
But also a sign of violence.
You see this violence in the history of America.
And you see it in modern American cars.
But you also see it in their loud engines and car parts.
The artists created their works of art at different times.
But they are both are about violence in American society.
This collection in the exhibition shows both older works of art
and newer works of art, side by side.
It is like a conversation between now and the past.
It says a lot about the changes in art.
About how we used to see art.
And how we see art today.
Julia Eichler and Lukas Flygare are responsible for this exhibition.