Events
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22.7.2014 | Crash Pad c/o KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Asta Upset

Screening and discussion with Max Linz, Isabelle Graw and Juan A. Gaitán

In his filmic debut Asta Upset (Ich will mich nicht künstlich aufregen) of 2014, director Max Linz bundles a spectrum of questions concerning the relation of art, cinema, and critique. These include the fate of project-oriented and publically funded cultural labor, subjectivity as it is formed by neoliberalism, the urban public sphere that has fallen prey to capital, the city of Berlin, and current forms of political protest. In the course of the action, curator Asta Andersen gets tangled up in these circumstances while at work on her exhibition Das Kino. Das Kunst. Her disorientation is filmically juxtaposed with documentary footage of the recent anti-gentrification protests at Kottbusser Tor. Linz also engages with the legacy and institutional failure of past leftist projects, such as New German Cinema, and combines his plea for a political aesthetic with a distinctive will to style.

In collaboration with the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Texte zur Kunst presents a preview of Linz’ film at Crash Pad at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, which already attracted a good deal of attention at the last Berlinale and will only enter distribution in early 2015. Juan A. Gaitán, curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale, introduces the event. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director and authors from the current Texte zur Kunst-issue Berlin Update.