HAMBURG.- In a time of increasing global crises, wars, humanitarian strife and ecological catastrophes, we are facing growing national and individual delimitation and isolation. More and more, visions for collaborative solutions and coalitions of action are disappearing, from which new concepts for networking and forms of mutual participation might emerge. Love, by contrast, is a positive, driving force of our existence that also affects our collective interactions. Despite its commercialization and depletion through the global mechanisms of consumerism, it retains its transformative potential. Against this backdrop, the exhibition explores the societal perspectives given by a committed “politics of love” based on diversity, as outlined by the political philosopher and literary theorist Michael Hardt. In his essay “The Procedures of Love” (2012), he characterizes this form of love as a practice of passion that connects us in our differences and multiplicities.
A relevant historical point of reference for the exhibition is the Art-of-Peace Biennale, which was launched in 1985 on the initiative of the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou at the Kunsthaus Hamburg and the Kunstverein in Hamburg. The idea for a concerted art event in the name of peace took shape in 1983/84 while Filliou was teaching at the Hamburg University of the Arts in collaboration with his students and colleagues. Following the premise that peace is a form of art rather than an abstraction, artists were invited from around the world to develop “their individual contributions to this collective (re)search”: perspectives envisaged by Filliou in the Biennale catalogue for the joint creation of peace as “an alternative to doom” connected with the horrors of war.
40 years later, the exhibition Politics of Love assembles works by both emerging and established international artists, who in various ways are addressing openness, empathy and affection as energies that can bring us together in the multifariousness of our respective particularity and otherness and provide inspiring, sustainable paths into the future. These current approaches are juxtaposed with recollections of participatory projects that took place as part of the Art-of-Peace Biennale. The focus of the exhibition lies on an inclusive, multi-voiced bonding that posits a multitudinous “we” in the place of individuated disconnection, bringing about a productive, collective potentiation of difference.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive programme, which encompasses moments of networking and care and establishes connections to existing structures in Hamburg’s social realm. Among many other events, the performance series Cooking with Mama by artist Hiwa K will take place in public spaces on three dates. Members of local communities with different cultural backgrounds will prepare family dishes for the audience. The act of cooking becomes an opportunity to enter into a dialogue – about traditions, family and the political dimensions of food. An open call invited the public to participate in the project Politics of Love with works of mail art. The submissions are accessible to visitors as part of the exhibition.
An online publication provides further context to the topics addressed in the exhibition, information on the works on view and documentation of the accompanying participatory projects. The website is a collaboration of the Kunsthaus Hamburg and students at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. It was designed and programmed by Sarah Iller, Maja Redlin and Leonie Voltz from the Digitale Grafik class of Prof. Konrad Renner.
Artists: Mounira Al Solh, Francis Al˙s, Isaac Chong Wai, Anna Ehrenstein, Amna Elhassan, FAIRY BOT (Jon Frickey, Thies Mynther, Sandra Trostel), Robert Filliou, Parastou Forouhar, Green Go Home (Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu), Johan Grimonprez, Elza Gubanova & Leon Seidel, Shilpa Gupta, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Soyon Jung, Hiwa K, Rebecca Katusiime & Emmanuel Oloya, Tilman Küntzel, Lulu MacDonald, Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya, Sabine Mohr, Dan Peterman, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Wolf Vostell
