The exhibition is a provocative as well as pensive response to the anniversaries being celebrated – 2021 also marks 160 years of German- Japanese friendship. These occasions are met with artistic as well as ethical and spiritual questions:
What do we actually know about time? How must we change our lives – and our cultural perspective – to save our plant and our existence?
The artworks enable a view from very different positions on our globe to stones, which are regarded here not only as a resource, rough, uneventful, powerless, but also as a medium of geological and planetary knowledge. Listening to the Stones is also imbued with the hope for a symbolic restart by listening to stones as advisers and companions enabling us to relearn and rethink perspectives on the past and future.
Curated by Miya Yoshida in collaboration with Kerstin Flasche and Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz / Kunsthaus Dresden
With Martin Chidiac, Liam Floyd, Peter Krüger, Harald Kunde, Bettina Lehmann, Josef Panda, Christoph Rodde, Anna Till, Pascal Storz, Susanne Weiß, Su-Ran Sichling, Manfred Wiemer, Miya Yoshida, Jens Zander, Sven-Karsten Kaiser and many others.
On the opening weekend of the anniversary exhibition, persons who have accompanied the long history of the venue or whose paths have crossed will gather as narrators all over the building to briefly relate their very personal encounters with the Kunsthaus. This deliberately incomplete storytelling is not necessarily about establishing the truth, but perhaps also about myths and rumors – in any case, it is about each story being invigorated by direct encounters and exchange.
During the first year of German unification, when the Kunsthaus Dresden was founded, it was also entirely up in the air as to what the future would look like – it was and is crucial to act, to jointly develop ideas and visions and bring people together in the context of art.
The singer and composer Viktoria Leléka addresses the theme of the anniversary year – the wonderful ability of contemporary art to change places and people and their relation to each other – in a composition written specifically for the Kunsthaus, which can be repeatedly heard in the building as a musical intervention during the opening weekend.
This project is supported by the artists' contacts programme.
