NADA: Act 3 – The Exhibition 2017

NADA Act III: The Exhibition was commissioned specifically for Jasmina Cibic’s solo exhibition at Hous Esters, Kunstmuseen Krefeld and filmed on location at Hous Lange and Hous Esters designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe between 1927 – 1930. The script for the film is assembled from archival transcripts, political discussions, reports and personal letters surrounding Germany’s presentations at world expositions in 1929, 1937 and 1958 and their legacy. Cibic devises the script into three positions: the Artist, the Curator and Germania engage in a discussion about the aesthetics and style of the artworks and architecture that should be exhibited at an undisclosed event of national interest in order to ensure international success. Whilst engaging in the discussion, the women work on the artefacts and their display within a set specifically built in Hous Lange encompassing mainly two styles: that of figurative representation and that of an abstract positioning. They are sculpting, polishing, curating and destroying physical manifestations of their words, shifting their position of picturesque allegories into an active political stance. Their scripted sentences combine diverse ideological positions through time and space pointing to the universal code of merging life and art in a service to the state in order to affect society. What can we learn from the history’s more sinister accounts of this most awkward relationship is one among many questions Cibic’s work raises through its tireless and variegated archaeologies.

NADA Act III: The Exhibition follows the first and second chapters of Cibic’s NADA project which examines three of European modernism’s star architects and the role their work played in national representation. The starting point for Act I is Vjenceslav Richter and the Yugoslavian pavilion he designed for the Brussels World Exhibition in 1958. Act II takes place in Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus City Hall (1937-1942), whilst the third act addresses Mies van der Rohe’s Krefeld architecture of the 1920s in the context of the political discussions concerning the appropriate representation of Germany at world fairs of mid 20^th Century.

Nada: Act 2 was co-commissioned by European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead and supported by Arts Council England, Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University and Waddington Studios London.

Nada: Act 3 was co-commissioned by the Kunstumuseen Krefeld and supported by by Arts Council England, Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University and Waddington Studios London.