About

Membranes Out Of Order responds to the current ethical and cultural challenges posed by the interplay of biotechnology and ecology. It focuses on the thought-provoking practice of artists Margherita Pevere (IT/DE), Theresa Schubert (DE) and Karolina Żyniewicz (PL/DE) and involves international guests. The artists themselves will curate an innovative exhibition concept based on their artworks and research materials that will be presented to the audience for the first time.

The 4-weeks exhibition at Kunstquartier Bethanien is accompanied by a program of talks and curatorial guided tours tours, thus involving a broad and diverse public. A distinctive feature of the project is a special focus on accessibility for visually impaired people, an aspect otherwise underexplored with regard to bioart practice especially in independent art contexts.

With Membranes Out Of Order, Kunstquartier Bethanien is for the first time dedicating a project entirely to bioart. The exhibition creates an interdisciplinary field between art and scientific research. At a time when society is confronted with expertise previously reserved for experts due to the pandemic, the positions of Margherita Pevere, Theresa Schubert, and Karolina Żyniewicz anchor art as a cognitive stance, performative act, or link to nature in a consistent examination of the interface between one’s own body and everyday experience.

With the disclosure of their own working processes, the directions of the exhibition fan out, like a cross-section through the structure of a membrane. Six exhibition rooms are dedicated to the different approaches of the three artists, making visible in documentary form what would otherwise remain hidden from an audience: Drawings, laboratory journals, photographs, and other instruments are just as accessible as the fully realized works, and lay equal claim to valence and reflexive potential.

Pevere, Schubert, and Żyniewicz are responsible for the exhibition both artistically and curatorially. For Membranes Out Of Order, they allow their respective positions to clash, overlap, merge, and derive from one another.

Creating access, disclosing processes, and communicating content remain thematically prioritized in a broader context in the exhibition’s mediation as well: In cooperation with the German Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (DBSV), low-barrier mediation concepts such as objects that can be experienced haptically, descriptions in Braille, and audio descriptions become part of the exhibition.