THE CAPACITY FOR ADEQUATE ANGER
Vika Kirchenbauer

This film is only available for viewing at Berlinische Galerie.

"THE CAPACITY FOR ADEQUATE ANGER" (2021) constitutes an attempt at a personal and self-reflexive form of artistic critique that considers contemporary art, in its production as well as its presentation, from a perspective of class. Alongside questions around the intersections of negative affect and political agency, the work problematizes notions around upward mobility that the field of contemporary art both produces and presupposes. Deploying an essayistic approach, the video work reflects upon the manifold meanings of distance in both its subjective and social senses. Two strands are connected that have shaped Vika Kirchenbauer’s practice over the past ten years: The personal and autobiographical explorations of societal power relations, and the preoccupation with established routines of looking at and experiencing the physical or visual presence of marginalized bodies in the exhibition space.

The piece complexly negotiates distance, both as personal circumstance or necessity, but also as a resource considered a prerequisite for seeing and experiencing, as well as for critical or artistic engagement. This thus gives rise to a series of underlying questions: What does distance signify in relation to one’s own life, past, and social positioning? And who are afforded the privileging aspects of distance, in contrast to those whose lives and bodies remain intimately affected by politics and its effects?