Highlights from ‘Fault Lines’

Article and photos by Sofia Bergmann // Aug. 14, 2018

The former Australian Embassy to the German Democratic Republic, which is now a studio house containing a project space called x-embassy, held one of the first events for Project Space Festival earlier this month. The event, titled ‘Fault Lines,’ showcased a number of installations and performances, some alluding to Australian culture and how to cope with its colonizing past.

The works in the ongoing exhibition include an installation of Australian parliamentary books spread on a table called Text, 2018 by Archie Moore from the Aboriginal nation of Kamilaroi, and a video that satirically reimagines the process of being officially recognized as Aboriginal by the Australian government called The Blaktism by Megan Cope from the Quandamooka nation. In what was once the lobby, a slideshow of old maps and scriptures is projected onto the wall.

On the evening of the Project Space Festival event, the slideshow was accompanied by a performance that highlighted, yet again, the overarching theme of the past, present and future of Australian cultural discussions surrounding ideas of belonging, national identity and how to move forward without neglecting a difficult history. In a similar vein, for her performance Clean Square, Sonya Schönberger removed weeds from the garden and placed them into pots. While gifting these newly potted plants to the audience, she brought notions of invasiveness and belonging into question.

As visitors wandered through the repurposed building and lounged on couches spread around the venue’s garden, Berlin Art Link documented the event.