Kunstmuseum Bern @ PROGR: Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer

Die Videoinstallation (2008) The video installation Chinesisch von Vorteil (Chinese is an Advantage) (2008) takes up the matter of language barriers confronting everyday dialogue between Europe and China. In this ingenious video installation we can discern an undeniable fascination with Chinese contemporary culture, just as we also can in the parallel exhibition Big Draft – Shanghai: Chinese Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection in the Kunstmuseum Bern. The video installation adopts a very novel and very pragmatic approach, documenting the many possible misunderstandings arising between the different cultures.

In both videos within their installation, Sylvie Boisseau and Frank Westermeyer scrutinize community identities and appropriation of space. In this context they investigate the special role language plays by drawing attention to students of a Stuttgart language school. There teenagers with a migratory background learn their Chinese parents’ or ancestors’ mother tongue, seeking a deeper consciousness for their cultural roots, while mature Germans learn Mandarin as a foreign language. With these videos Boisseau and Westermeyer reveal different views of a foreign country that, for some, is seen as the country of one’s origins, for others a projection of a different way of life.

Sylvie Boisseau, b. 1970 in Paris

Frank Westermeyer, b. 1971 in Essen

The two artists have collaborated since 1996. They now live and work in Düsseldorf and Geneva. www.filmerei.de

The artist couple will be represented in the Kunstmuseum Bern by their most recent work, the video Y con ansias están esperando los barcos que traerán los nuevos hermanos a sus costas (2010), in the thematic group exhibition Dislocación: Cultural Locations in the Age of Globalization (03.18.-06.19.2011).

Address

PROGR
Zentrum für Kulturproduktion
Waisenhausplatz 30, PF 7558
3001 Bern