IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
video programme
popcorn and bar
in the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof
Keren Cytter, Maya Deren, Johanna Domke, Annika Kahrs, Melanie Manchot, Vanessa Nica Mueller, Stella Rossié & Nicola Gördes, Yorgos Sapountzis, Jeremy Shaw, Stacey Steers, Rebecca Ann Tess, Jaan Toomik, Tobias Zielony
Everything seems different at night. Familiar shapes and everyday boundaries become obsolete, inside and outside begin to blur, and time and space grow closer and denser. Our perception expands at night. It lets all kinds of supernatural forms slip in while breaking free from the grip of logical conclusions.
The night brings out the menacing and the uncanny, but it also holds much creative power, as illustrated in the story of Genesis. After all, God created light out of darkness and saw that the light was good. Hesiod’s Theogony also features Nyx, who was a menacing figure who formed the earth out of the dark chaos. But it was Sigmund Freud who introduced the concept of the unconscious to the discourse of cosmonogy, describing it as the part of the human psyche where the day’s events collect and are reconstructed and named in dreams.
Wandering around at night is a way of appropriating the unknown and of letting go of what is familiar – of letting go of oneself. The nighthawks among us yearn to lose themselves and feel completely free from the structures of time and space. In their exhilaration, they become empty darkness themselves. They become the night that creates the shapes and universes that will influence their own future selves. The end of an eventful night out on the town is often like waking up from a dream rich with vague memories that will return as something strangely familiar in the nights to come.
Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof will be showing the video programme “In the Heat of the Night” 8 November 2014 from 12 am to 20 pm, featuring works by Keren Cytter, Maya Deren, Johanna Domke, Annika Kahrs, Melanie Manchot, Vanessa Nica Mueller, Stella Rossié & Nicola Gördes, Yorgos Sapountzis, Jeremy Shaw, Stacey Steers, Rebecca Ann Tess, Jaan Toomik and Tobias Zielony.
The following selection of this program can be viewed online for 6 weeks at blinkvideo.de.
Keren Cytter, Rose Garden, 2014
Johanna Domke, Sleepers, 2007
Melanie Manchot, Dance (All Night) Paris, 2011
Vanessa Nica Mueller, Halbe Nacht, 2012
Jeremy Shaw, 7 Minutes, 2003
Stacey Steers, Night Hunter, 2011
Rebecca Ann Tess, A Crime Must be Committed, 2010
Jaan Toomik, Truck, 1997
Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof
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