Rirkrit Tiravanija • Die Balkone 2021

From 1998 to 2004, the apartment on Greifswalder Straße was Rirkrit Tiravanija's Berlin residence. Sharing it with art restorer Eva Wein., the place served as their private retreat while at the same time hosting numerous dinners and get-togethers with friends from the local and international art world. The rarely or never shown artworks installed in the apartment for Die Balkone, are related to this time and place in one way or another, unfolding the apartment as an archive.

Greifswalder Strasse, 1998 Eva and Ulrike, 1998

13', b/w and color, S8, 24 FRPS, no sound 13'47'', b/w and color, S8, 24 FRPS, no sound

Rirkrit Tiravanija started working with super 8mm film when he was enrolled in the Experimental Arts Program of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto in 1981. The first of the two films presented here was shot in front of the apartment on Greifswalder Straße, the second shows Eva Wein (on cello) and her sister Ulrike (on violin) playing classical string music in the very spot inside the apartment were the film is being shown. Both films were digitalized in 2013 and later edited together with other super 8 mm films from 1981 to 2003. The resulting compilation was first shown in Tiravanija's 2017 solo exhibition at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York.

208 East 7th St, Apt. 21, 1994 untitled 2008 (gatos negros), 2008

49'42'', color, Hi8, 29,97 FRPS, sound 6 h 10', color, DV, sound

While residing in the apartment on Greifswalder Straße, Tiravanija kept his New York apartment that he had been living in since 1982. At the same time he maintained his close ties to Thailand, with Bangkok and – increasingly – Chiang Mai forming his third home base. The video “208 East 7th St, Apt. 21” (1994) was shot in Tiravanija's New York apartment. The video “untitled 2008 (gatos negros)” is the central element of a video installation of the same name. It was shot in Tiravanija's house in Chiang Mai.

Slide Show, 2021

With reference to the curators' idea to include Eva Wein's and Rirkrit Tiravanija's apartment into this year's edition of Die Balkone, the slide show shows images of some of Tiravanija's works related to issues of the domestic – of house, home, shelter, and sociability, but also of memory, history, and time passing. The works were made in between 1998 and 2003, as part of a much larger body of work created during this time span. The information given in the slide show also indicates the world wide mobility that was a typical feature of Tiravanija's artistic practice at the time.

All exhibits assembled by

Jörn Schafaff

Rirkrit Tiravanija (born in 1961 in Buenos Aires) was raised in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada. He studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1980–84), Banff Center School of Fine Arts (1984), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1984–86), and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in New York (1985–86). Since the 1990s, Tiravanija has aligned his artistic production with an ethic of social engagement, often inviting viewers to inhabit and activate his work. He lives and works in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai.

Jörn Schafaff is a Berlin-based art historian who preferably works in between disciplines. A co-founder of the Cultures of the Curatorial Study program in Leipzig and scholar at international art schools and universities,he has published widely on issues of contemporary art. His book Rirkrit Tiravanija: Set, Szenario. Situation: Werke 1987 – 2005 (Cologne 2018) is the first monograph ever published on the artist's oeuvre. He is head of the Rirkrit Tiravanija Archive in Berlin.

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ist ein in Berlin lebender Kunsthistoriker, der bevorzugt zwischen den Disziplinen arbeitet. Als Mitbegründer des Studiengangs Kulturen des Kuratorischen in Leipzig und Wissenschaftler an internationalen Kunsthochschulen und Universitäten hat er zahlreiche Publikationen zu Fragen der zeitgenössischen Kunst veröffentlicht. Sein Buch Rirkrit Tiravanija: Set, Szenario. Situation: Werke 1987 - 2005 (Köln 2018) ist die erste Monografie über das Schaffen des Künstlers überhaupt. Er ist Leiter des Rirkrit-Tiravanija-Archivs in Berlin.

Övül Ö. Durmusoglu is a mentor and program coleader in the Graduate School in University of the Arts in Berlin and a visiting professor for Art and Discourse at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Braunschweig. In her work as a curator, educator, and writer, she acts between singular languages and collective energies, worldly immersions and political cosmologies across geographies.