ZACK! 2024
The ‘Zack!’ project began with the two artists' desire to achieve more clarity within contemporary video and performance art, as the art form seemed to be increasingly eluding the understanding of the ordinary viewer due to its increasing conceptualisation and overproduction.
While an overabundance of words, actions and movements work against the clarity of the mediums of video and performance, the duo The BERG and Ludwig Dressler decided to take a productive step back by giving more space to the minimalism of conceptual considerations in a new time context again. ZACK's main aim concentrated on the connection between the two artistic positions by giving their individual performative actions a common space for the first time.
The simple performative actions of the two artists were presented in the exhibition space on two equally sized screens which these videos served both a self-exploration and communication between the artists. They contain their own actions, references from art history, directions, repetitions yet also instructions for the audience. The artists draw on protagonists of art history known for their simple but radical performative actions, such as Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Valie Export and John Baldessari, and explore how the clarity of these early works can be brought back into contemporary art, taking into account a changed art audience and its new needs. This approach can also be read as a counter-draft to the current economised productions of performance, which culminates in choreographed spectacles.
Performative art in particular was and is capable of creating an important dialogue with the public, and this dialogue is to be rekindled through the easy accessibility of the works of the two artists.
In the second room, the public will find a small catalogue or edition in which the duo document the actions performed in the exhibition. After the exhibition, visitors can use this quasi-guide to locate their own trains of thought within art based on this simple format.
Exhibition images from Alex Jeskulke