BERLIN.- For the first time in its history, the Julia Stoschek Collection presents an ensemble of solo exhibitions, performances, and screenings of works not included the collection. Over the course of a year, six exhibitions—three in Düsseldorf and three in Berlin—will open successively, beginning in March 2019 and running until April 2020. They will be accompanied by screening and performance programs, artist talks, lectures, and readings at both locations.

horizontal vertigo will feature commissions and new productions as well as existing works by a group of international artists whose interdisciplinary time-based practices share focused perspectives infused with feminist, queer, and decolonial critique in resistance to restrictive concepts of identity, history, and representation. Each project deals with a specific context driven by the artist and what the artwork affords, creating a web of associations and stories over time that is both fluid and multivalent.

The curatorial framework for this year of programming is inspired by the writing of artist, writer, and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha. The title is quoted from Cotton and Iron (1991), an essay in which Minh-Ha foregrounds plurality and “non-totalness,” challenging systems of binary opposition and definitive categorizations. “In undoing established models and codes, plurality adds up to no total,” writes Minh-ha. “This non-totalness never fails either to baffle or to awaken profound intolerance and anxieties. Every reaching out that remains non-totalizable is a ‘horizontal vertigo’ in which the exploring explored subject can only advance through moments of blindness,” therefore “a commitment to infinite progress is also a realization that the infinite is what undermines the very notion of (rational) progress.”

“Echoing this commitment, horizontal vertigo does not propose one overarching theme but thrives on the multiplicity of narratives and narrators at hand,” says curator Lisa Long. “I am dedicated to each individual artist and exhibition but also interested in exploring the inherent plurality of the entire program without prescribing a “right” way of reading it. horizontal vertigo ‘speaks to’ and not ‘about’ the participating artists, to quote Minh-ha, embracing dialogue instead of representation.”

horizontal vertigo is curated by Lisa Long (b. 1988 in California), the first external curator to lead a year-long program at the Julia Stoschek Collection. Long is an independent curator and writer currently based in the Rhineland, Germany. She received an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a B.A. in Art History and Musicology from the University of Cologne. Long has curated solo and group exhibitions as well as events in Germany and the US with works by Julie Becker, Patty Chang, Anna Griz, Chris Kraus, Peter Miller, Katharina Monka, Marina Rosenfeld, Cindy Sherman, und Carolee Schneemann among others.

Artists: Sophia Al-Maria, Morehshin Allahyari, Meriem Bennani, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, A.K. Burns, Dorota Gawęda und Eglė Kulbokaitė, Sky Hopinka, Rindon Johnson, Chelsea Knight, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Arjuna Neuman & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Colin Self, Martine Syms, Jon Wang, Eduardo Williams, Anna Zett.