If one assumes that reality is produced in a process of interplay between experience and comprehension, dealing with the past plays a special role. Whilst documents, narratives and memories are valuable stocks of knowledge, they also have a considerable influence on our perception. At the same time they convey meaning and take on an intermediary function: they open up spaces for thought between reality, tradition and insight. In this way – based on specific biographies, events and places – various approaches, new interpretations and stories can be created.
In the exhibition, works from the GfZK collection will be shown alongside selected works of art that – sometimes in an analytical or documentary way, sometimes with a narrative and speculative approach – examine and evoke moments of reality. The installations, video pieces and photographic works focus on moments of transition and of fundamental change that affect not only certain mind-sets and the life paths in question, the social and urban environments involved. Moreover, they mark interfaces between objectivity and subjectivity, the points at which, in works of art, there is a shift in position between observation, concern, participation, appropriation and authorship.