The Kunstverein Arnsberg presents "The hidden chapters of my lost insistence", an exhibition by Ulf Aminde in three acts. The exhibition consists of a journey, an exhibition and two screenings.

Act 1: the journey

A coach travels from Berlin to Arnsberg on the day of the opening. Artists, curators, cultural journalists and theorists accept Ulf Aminde's personal invitation and travel to the Sauerland. A bus full of friends, a kind of butter ride with a program.

(" ...and the question of selling out: What strategies do I have to use in order to make a statement despite representation clichés and art market laws? A statement, perhaps, that revolves around something unsaleable or at least plays with the idea of selling each other until it doesn't matter who is exploiting whom, because everyone wants to play and fiddle. This is probably the key insight: anyone who is not in a position to offer themselves for sale in social interaction still believes that they have something that should be protected, an intrinsic authority that cannot be sold. I want to have and play with this instance, this misunderstanding. If you don't give it away, you don't get it back...")
  
Act 2: the exhibition

Ulf Aminde is presenting a new, previously unseen work at the Kunstverein. The film installation "urban tai chi" is a compilation of self-shot film material and footage found on the Internet. It shows figures on the street in a state of intoxication, in a deep sleep, helpless bodies suspended between standing and falling, gravity and weightlessness. The state "in between" triggers an oppressive feeling of indecision, reminiscent of the bittersweet night of self-forgetfulness. This unresolved state is hardly noticed by passers-by, at most they smile at it. Only the attention of the camera creates the grammar of a stage (the street) with actors.  
 
Act 3: the performance

I.)
As a counterpart to the exhibition, a performance by Ulf Aminde will be staged with five actresses from the Arnsberg Women's Ensemble and the Art Critics Orchestra. In a kind of public rehearsal, the extension to the work in the Kunstverein poses the question of a subjective dissolution of boundaries on the level of a language that plays with itself in order to bring the meaning of the concept of urgency to the stage. 
 
II.)
Seestücke, 3 drama sketches by Schiller, ran for one season at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Ulf Aminde and two other artists were invited to make a contribution to the question of the topicality of Schiller's search and struggle for the concept of the oceanic and the otherworldly. Ulf Aminde invited a hardcore band into a container, placed it on stage and quoted 5 female performers and 2 female boxers in front of the audience in a kind of staged stage direction. During the performance, the five women are in a kind of personal, energetic state of emergency, which seems both conjured up and coordinated by the director's voice. At the point at which the performers begin to resist the sequence and grammar of the performance, an (agreed) disintegration of the stage direction begins and a possible state of emergency (of a community) begins to become visible. The Arnsberg women's ensemble will make a guest appearance on the evening of the last performance of Seestücke, thus enabling visitors who were in Arnsberg to exchange ideas between two of Ulf Aminde's working methods.
Das Arnsberger Frauenensemble wird hierzu am Abend der letzten Aufführung der Seestücke einen Gastauftritt haben und somit für den Besucher der in Arnsberg war, den Austausch zwischen zwei Arbeitsweisen von Ulf Aminde ermöglichen. 
 
Ulf Aminde *1969 in Stuttgart, lives in Berlin, studied visual arts and combines elements of theater, performance, visual arts and film in his work. Solo and group exhibitions, productions including Volksbühne Berlin, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Schirn Frankfurt, Jet-Berlin, Kunsthaus Dresden, GAK Bremen, ZKM Karlsruhe, BerlinBiennale4, deSINGEL Antwerp, various gallery exhibitions.

the program:

Friday, 26.03.2010:
10.00 Outward journey Berlin-Arnsberg
19.00 Opening of the exhibition at Kunstverein Arnsberg
20.00 Performance with the Arnsberg Women's Ensemble and ACO in the KulturSchmiede
21.00 Concert by Art Critics Orchestra and Wendy in the Kulturschmiede
23.00 Disco

Overnight stay at the Sauerland Mountain Club

Saturday, 27.03.2010
10.00 Return journey Arnsberg-Berlin
19.00 Performance, visual play in "Seestücke", Volksbühne Berlin
(with a guest performance by the Arnsberg women's ensemble)