Christin Berg, Visual Arts, 2020

*1982 in Berlin, lives in Berlin und Paris

Christin Berg’s films are intended for the cinema screen and made in the spirit of arthouse feature films. She usually works with an ensemble. The texts for her films are poetic and pursue an atmosphere of a heightened state of the senses. She completed her studies in scenography at the Fachhochschule Hannover and Slade, UCL London, and ended her education as a Meisterschülerin at the Städelschule Frankfurt. Her work has been exhibited at national and international institutions including the Cité internationale des artes Paris, Musèe du Louvre, and Kunsthalle Hamburg.

www.collectivescreening.com

Villa Serpentara Fellowship

What Matters

Work Presentation 2022

“What Matters” was the question andtatement of 2022 presentation of works by the JUNGE AKADEMIE, the interdisciplinary and international artist-in-residence programme of the Akademie der Künste. In an exhibition and a multifaceted programme including screenings, concerts and readings, 29 fellows from all of the Akademie’s art sections presented sound and video installations, photographs, sculptures, paintings and performances they developed during their studio residencies in the Hansaviertel in Berlin and at Villa Serpentara in Olevano, Italy.

“What Matters” is not to be understood as the title of a thematic exhibition but rather indicates the diversity of questions, perspectives and realities that are interlaced in an artist residency, while emphasising their urgency. The exhibition focused on the artists’ individual approaches that encompass a broad spectrum of themes: from questions about the transformation of societies and their expression in relation to the urban space and landscape, to interrelations between the individual and social systems such as state, religion and the economy, to reflections on body images and conceptions of history, personal archives and the intertwining of nature, technology and culture.

What matters is artistic testimony, poetic resistance and the imagining of sustainable futures in the face of global tipping points – whether climatic or political in nature. Two years into the pandemic and the associated restrictions, “What Matters” was the most comprehensive presentation of works to date by the JUNGE AKADEMIE.

To quote one of the fellows: “What matters? Make them see…”

Beyond the Now

A film installation by Christin Berg, cinematography Jakob Stark

Beyond the Now is an expressive, intimate drama, in which the characters giving monologues or gesticulating awaken memories of birth, deconstruction and death. The film is a personal examination by the artist of the legacy of a forest, like her own critical interpretation of the Romantic epoch. The paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries are a reflection of the past but also reveal escapism and utopian futures.

 

This discrepancy between the state of what is and the hopes of the past is the basis of the work. Berg comments on a time full of paradoxes by building tension into everyday situations and leaving the end open.