Möbius (Berlin)

Posted: 2016/09/27 ˑ Tag: ,Berlin,Damsgård,Germany,Möbius,Publication,Solo show

Opening: Sunday, October 2, 2016, 7 p.m.
Venue: uqbar, Schwedenstr. 16 | D -13357 Berlin, Germany
Duration: October 3 – 29, 2016
Opening hours: Thursday – Saturday, 2.30 – 6.30 p.m., and by appointment
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The Shepherd

As part of the series deepspace eins sechs, a cooperation of the neighbouring project spaces in Swedenstrasse 16 for the 7th European Month of Photography Berlin, uqbar presents the exhibition Möbius by the artist duo Miho Shimizu (born in 1976 in Tokyo, lives and works in Tokyo) and Øyvind Renberg (born 1976 in Oslo, lives and works in Berlin). A recurring principle in the artist’s longstanding collaborative practctice is to bring together disparate elements to form new meaning and life metaphors.

Chance and unpredictability are central themes in Shimizu and Renberg´s video, Möbius. The film is conceived as a silent movie. A Punch & Judy puppet theatre brings together a renaissance Green Grocer, a Shepherd and a Japanese in their puppet alter-ego form. By engaging in a single-player, nonsensical board game the Shepherd then leads a flock of sheep, a gang of banana juggling sailors and a party of rococo styled hedonists up a tower evoking the fossilized shell of an ammonite. When they reach the top on the tower’s spiralling steps, they tumble to the ground, forming new seabed sediments.

Local actors take turns in playing the characters, while set pieces and costumes reoccur between the scenes. The project was shot on locations and sets in Europe, Japan and the US, including the Damsgård 18th century Country Mansion in Bergen whose intricate interiors and gardens formed the basic concept for the film – life as a story woven together by thoughts, memories and external impulses.

Shimizu and Renberg´s installation at Uqbar will include masks, wigs and costumes, and set pieces from Möbius, among them a part of the “ammonite steps” tower staircase. The exhibition will be accompanied by a book published with Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen that presents a larger body of work leading to Möbius.
Produced with the support of The Norwegian Arts Council