Catalogue > At random

TRUST US 2017, Video Installation Very often journalists are contacting us to write a story about `refugees` in the context of higher education, their living in Berlin, or simply because they`re looking for some “traumatized” characters for their stories. We usually reject these requests. But this time we received an award of a multinational company and it came with a sum that we urgently needed in order to continue our programme. This time they wanted to produce a video, a one shot sequence. They seemed nice, but their task was to produce emotional images featuring the bodies of the refugee students, underscored by the voice of the white professor contextualising their movements and giving meaning to the frames. We told them this is not how it`s going to work. No one wanted to provide their ́bodies ́ to fill those frames of narration. They said: „TRUST US, it will look good“ Finally we agreed: THEY WOULD FILM US while WE WOULD FILM THEM. We decided to edit the material WE shot and combine it with texts spoken by us, relating to the week long discussions we`ve shared. The whole thing became an installation shown at 3. Herbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theater.

The *foundationClass was established at weißensee academy of art berlin in 2016. Its aim is to provide equal access to formal art education for people who have fled or migrated to Germany. It tries to create a social space where everyone’s resources are acknowledged and validated and where new formats of skill sharing and knowledge transfer can be developed. Ultimately, the *foundationClass wants to question the norms, conventions, and the habitus of art institutions and the industry as a whole. Situated within the institution but rejecting to embody it, the *foundationClass scrutinizes the art academy as a powerful site of knowledge production. Refusing to be integrated into an economy of difference, we aim to formulate strategies that position us outside of the grid of representation. Together we want to find answers to the question of how an art school of the future would look like if it genuinely recognised migration as an essential societal factor. As a collective the *foundationClass contributed TRUST US as a multichannel video installation to the 3. Berliner Herbstsalon, a festival for contemporary art by the Maxim Gorki Theater.