About

bi'baxchange aims to showcase cross-border collaborations with cultural actors, project spaces and initiatives. Based on interdisciplinary and transnational cooperation projects, bi'baxchange seeks to exchange ideas, perspectives and know-how. In lecture performances, pop-up exhibitions, readings and presentations, bi'baxchange focuses on the decentralized, rhizomic connection between art, design, academics, participation, urban space and local activism.

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German-Turkish Film and Video Culture in Berlin

Concept by Can Sungu

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URBAN TRANSTOPIAS

Video installations on the facade

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URBAN TRANSTOPIAS

Urban Transtopias takes the close links between transnational urbanity and cinematic fiction as the inspiration for a series of interventions in urban space. Running in parallel to the current program, video projections await passers-by after dusk: every evening, between 5 p.m. and midnight, the façade of Sinema Transtopia illuminates the dark Berlin nights. The artistic video installations presented cross borders, creating links between fictional and urban space, cinema and society, and ultimately between identities, film cultures, and languages. This is a transtopian space in which "cross-border ties and connections converge, are reinterpreted, and condense into everyday contexts" (Erol Yıldız).

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Events

Video programme ART IN DARK TIMES

Art in Dark Times sets out to discuss some of the acute issues afflicting our contemporary societies such as misogyny, racism and historical revisionism. The video programme is a continuation of the discursive programme that has already started earlier this year at bi’bak and brings together three video works. By referring to the story of the okapi brought from Belgian colonies to Antwerp Zoo in 1919, Jelena Jureša's Ubundu (2019) questions the reckless exploitation of nature by modern societies and the cultural projections that accompany this arrogance. Yael Bartana's Inferno (2013) traces the ideas behind the construction project of the third temple of Solomon in Sao Paolo and the inherent self-destructiveness of this neo-conservative mindset. Fatoş Irwen's Şiryan (2012) exposes the increasing pressures placed on the freedom of artistic expression, but also alludes to the perseverance in dealing with such inflictions. 

The videos are presented during Berlin Art Week on the facade of SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, the cinema experiment by bi’bak at Haus der Statistik.

UBUNDU
Director: Jelena Jureša, 2019, 17 Min.

INFERNO 
Director: Yael Bartana, 2013, 22 Min.

ŞIYAN
Director: Fatoş Irwen,, 2012, 10 Min. (shortened version)

Jelena Juresa was born in Novi Sad and currently lives in Ghent. She has been extensively working with the questions of cultural identity, gender, politics of memory and oblivion through the media of photography, video and text. In her work, she relates individual stories and questions of identity to the collective processes of oblivion and remembrance.

Yael Bartana’s films, installations and photographs explore the imagery of collective identities and the politics of memory by means of ceremonies, public rituals and social diversions. Her film trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, which discusses the relationship between Judaism and Polish identity, was shown at the Polish pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale. Bartana has also been expanding her work within the cinematic world by presenting projects such as Inferno (2013) True Finn (2014), and Pardes (2015). Bartana's works have been exhibited around the world and are part of museum collections which range from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Fatoş Irwen was born and raised in the historical Sûr neighbourhood in Diyarbakır, Turkey. After graduating from the visual art department at Dicle University, she began teaching in secondary schools in Batman, Diyarbakır and then Istanbul. She has contributed to several contemporary art exhibitions and performance events. Irwin has been recently released from three years of imprisonment. She remains banned from teaching.

More Event times:

  • 10.09.2020 19:30
  • 11.09.2020 19:30
  • 12.09.2020 19:30
  • 13.09.2020 19:30

video installation on the facade by Sina Ataeian Dena

AHVAZ

“I come from Ahvaz in southern Iran, the capital of the oil industry, the most polluted city on earth and one of the hottest places in the world. Global warming has made the soil drier and, when strong winds set in, sandstorms rage. The fine dust pollution in Ahvaz is 52 times higher than the maximum tolerable limit for one’s health. A tsunami-like wave of cancers is expected.” (Sina Ataeian Dena)
Sina Ataeian Dena captured the images for his video work in Çınarcık near Yalova/Turkey as well as in the south of Tehran.

The video will be projected on the facade of Sinema Transtopia from 03.09. to 31.10.2021.

Ahvaz will be shown as part of the Studio Bosporus. Festival for the 10th Anniversary of Tarabya Cultural Academy, which is hosted by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul.

Sina Ataeian Dena, born in 1983 in Ahvaz, Iran, shot his first animated short films and video clips for theater productions during his university studies, has made video installations, worked as a visual effects supervisor, and developed material for computer games during his university studies. In 2009 his animated short Especially Music won the international competition of the Tehran International Short Film Festival. Dena has also worked as a writer and director on commercials, documentaries, and TV series. In 2015 he made his first full-length feature film, Paradise(original title: Ma dar Behesht), which he directed, co-produced and for which he wrote the script. Paradisemade its world premiere in August 2015 in the main competition of the 68th Locarno Film Festival, was nominated for the Golden Leopard and was awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize and Swatch Art Peace Hotel Award.

More Event times:

  • 31.10.2021 17:00

I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER, 3-channels video installation on the facade
The multi-screen installation takes you on a journey which explores the relationship between the 'othered' cultures and the Western colonialist gaze. As the video loops, we encounter the indigenous womxn who half-heartedly entertain the audience, like lost children, symbolising the historical exploitation of the native cultures that are being appropriated and stolen. Sarnt Utamachote explores the uncanny relationship between ‘othered’ cultures, and the Western colonialist gaze.
 
The installation will be shown on the façade of the SINEMA TRANSTOPIA every evening from 19:00 to 00:00 from 09.11 to 30.11.2021. 
 
As part of the project SİNEMA HERE'N THERE funded by the Berlin Project Fund Urban Practice
 
Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ) is a nonbinary filmmaker and curator. They are a co-founder ofun.thai.tled, an artist collective from the German-Thai diaspora, with whom they curated the un.thai.tled Film Festival Berlin and Beyond the kitchen: Stories from the Thai Park. Their video installation I Am Not Your Mother (2020) was exhibited at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and their short film Soy Sauce(2020) was screened at OutFest Fusion LA, Xposed Berlin, and Queer East London 2021, among others.

More Event times:

  • 26.11.2021 17:00
  • 27.11.2021 17:00
  • 28.11.2021 17:00
  • 29.11.2021 17:00
  • 30.11.2021 17:00

Video-Installation on the Facade, Isaac Chong Wai, Hong Kong/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany 2014, 11 Min.

The Silent Wall – Berlin

The video The Silent Wall – Berlin depicts Chong trying to cover the bullet holes from the second world war on a wall in Berlin, recalling the quota of bullets the soldiers had to shoot daily. To not have to shoot at people, some shot the same wall over and over again. In the video, the sound of the city falls into silence gradually. Tuning out the noise of the city, the silence leads us to a gentle intervention into a confounding history of pain.  

Kurartiert von Popo Fan
The installation will be shown every evening from 19:00 to 00:00 at the facade of Sinema Transtopia.

 

Isaac Chong Wai graduated from Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University with a BA in Visual Arts and Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, with a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. He engages themes of collectivism and individualism, geopolitics, migration, historical trauma, identity politics and public sphere. These themes are explored through range of media, including performance, installation, painting, video, photography and multimedia. He works and lives in Berlin and Hong Kong.

Motorcyclist's Happiness Won't Fit Into His Suit

Al motociclista no le cabe la felicidad en el traje

There he is, proudly sitting on his beautiful motorbike, which he wouldn't lend to anyone. He is sure that only he can explore the jungle. Through a reversal of roles, Al motociclista no le cabe la felicidad en el traje is a playful reenactment that points to the hybris of the colonial conquerors in an exploration of the dynamics between man and machine, reality and representation, past and present. 

The installation will be shown on the façade of the SINEMA TRANSTOPIA every evening from 19:00 to 00:00 from 22.01 to 20.02.2022. 
 
As part of the project SİNEMA HERE'N THERE funded by the Berlin Project Fund Urban Practice

Gabriel Herrera is a Mexican film director who graduated from Escuela Nacional de Artes Cinematográficas in Mexico City and at the Polish National Film School in Łódź. He has directed several short films and video works and is about to shoot his first feature film. He lives in Mexico City where he teaches film and studies film theory.

Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu

My Burden Is My Soulmate

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and SAHA Association. Supported by Neustart Kultur, BBK, SAHA and Schwules Museum.

Thanks to Vera Hofmann, Kristina Kramer, Ali Emir Tapan, Hasan Aksaygın, Alper Turan, Banu Karaca, Umut A. Akkel, Erden Kosova, Performistanbul, DEPO Istanbul and Versus Art Project for their support during the realization of the process.

Starting from a research on resistant and tender images of the marginalized body, My Burden Is My Soulmate is about how to address grief, anger and compassion when one is an incessant target of hate and disgust, how to embrace the wound and how to shoulder the burden. By engaging with “tableaux vivant” corporeality but extending the tableau’s timescale to hours, My Burden Is My Soulmate delves into physical and emotional limits, boundaries and the potential of the human body throughout the lines of queer vulnerability, strength and care.

The installation will be shown on the façade of the SINEMA TRANSTOPIA every evening from 20:00 to 00:00 from 07.04 to 24.04.2022.

Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu mostly focuses on queer vulnerability, chronopolitics and necropolitics in her* practice, ranging from performance art to video, installation, and public interventions. She* was the 2020 fellow of the Berlin – Istanbul residency program held by nGbK, ZK/U and DEPO Istanbul.  

        

More Event times:

  • 24.04.2022 20:00