05.09.2009 - 13.12.2009
Berlin

Scenes of conflict and antagonism, scenes of disagreement and discord are motifs for the opening exhibition of the Burger Collection.

With this premise, Conflicting Tales engages with subjectivity, not an interior view, but an engagement with the field of tension that opens between the individual and society.

Consciousness is posited as a problematic: how does the individual deal with societal ideas, rules, and models?
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Reality may not exist as such but is constructed, told, sometimes transformed and even distorted.

Fact and fiction are not exclusive of one another but rather, form a complex and subtle relation. Position changes perspective; where truth seems evident, the viewer may encounter shifting metaphors.

Contemporary mediatized society has pinnacled the problem of narration; its credibility and validity, and with this its societal and political dimensions.
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Language existing as sound as well as in written, oral and visual forms is a phenomenon but may also be interpreted as metaphor for abstract realities and systems with language-like structures.

Function and status of language vary according to history and culture. In both East and West, language is pivotal within contemporary art and artistic practice.

This exhibition aims to develop a transcultural perspective on the medium of language at the same time familiar and inexhaustible.
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History is constructed through scientific and popular narratives of the past. Archives and memories are its material fundaments, which are again and again actualized and transformed through techniques of showing and telling.

Past realities are made manifest within different contemporary perspectives each told from various points of view thus acquiring a status of meaningfulness or urgency.

Understood as a dynamic field of knowledge, voices, atmospheres and realities history adds up to a complex pool of narratives.