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Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) presents Anja Kirschner and David Panos. Ultimate Substance

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) presents Anja Kirschner and David Panos. Ultimate Substance, an exhibition on view 1 December 2012–27 January 2013.

Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Ultimate Substance, 2012. Video still.

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein shows new work by Anja Kirschner (b. 1977 in Munich) and David Panos (b. 1971 in Athens). In recent years, Kirschner and Panos have established themselves internationally, taking a significant position in artist video and were awarded the 2011 Jarman Award. Most recently their work has been exhibited in locations including: Artist Space, New York (2012), Liverpool Biennial (2012), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2011), and Kunsthall Oslo (2011).

Their video Ultimate Substance (2012, 34 min), presented for the first time in Germany, will be staged in a setting of sculptural elements. The film departs from the hypothesis that the advent of coinage, which first emerged in ancient Greece, led to the fundamental division between sensual and abstract forms of experience. The metaphysical outlook of Greek philosophy and mathematics can be seen as corresponding to the abstract experience of monetary exchange.

Ultimate Substance was filmed in and around the Numismatic Museum of Athens and in Lavreotiki, a nearby mining district, where industrial scale extraction provided the silver on which the classical Athenian city-state was founded. Abandoned in Roman times, the mines were re-discovered in the 19th century making Lavrio the first factory town of the modern Greek state. In the 1970s the local mining industry was again dismantled. Today the factory ruins house an educational museum on mining history.

The artists collide choreographed movements of labour, geometric proofs, and archaeological and contemporary everyday objects, contrasted and assembled into a reflection on economy and the prehistory of industrial labour. Kirschner and Panos propose the introduction of coinage as crucial to the rise and development of the Western philosophical tradition and science, which even today dominates the way in which we comprehend the world.

Curated by Sophie Goltz and Kerstin Stakemeier.

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)
Chausseestraße 128 / 129
10115 Berlin, Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 12–6pm, Thursday 12–8pm
www.nbk.org