Zweckgemeinschaft is a German word describing a “partnership of
convenience” an alliance based on an advantage, or on a spread out
or specific common interest. This union could be transitory or
long-lasting, determined by chance or simply by practical reasons
defined by specific situations. The configuration of the three words
- zweck, intention; gemein, common and schaft, handle - summarizes
in one word a diffused behaviour, common to various people and
situations, through a manifestly pragmatic spirit yet free from any
moral implication.
Zweckgemeinschaft can be considered a word considerably far from any
kind of romantic ideal embodied in a utopian imagery of existence,
yet possessing a realistic base independent from any kind of
conceptually defined structure. Its definition is applicable both on
an individual and collective level, as many recent examples in the
contemporary social and political sphere demonstrate: fragmented
nations recomposed under the name of the unification of the
communities, where the explicit, and sometimes legitimate practical
interests represent the real reason of transformation. Since the
reunification of Germany the city of Berlin presents itself as a big
puzzle in incessant arrangement, composed of agglomerates that speak
different languages gathered in a free territory, facing a constant
economical instability yet withholding an immense creative richness.
Through the works of 22 artists with dissimilar experiences,
interests and researches, Zweckgemeinschafft aims to
explore art’s ability to gather, listen, trace and pursue parallel
thoughts and directions, while shedding light on distinctive
situations, digging within a personal and common memory without ever
forgetting to keep a threshold open for interpretation. The
exhibition questions the potential strengths of the processes of
creation (Schafft), association, layering, adding and subtracting,
borrowing the peculiar characteristics of the German language, in
its creation of concept-words. The act of assemblage and disrupting
without following fixed rules and the impossibility of translating,
if not metaphorically, becomes a critical and independent space to
explore, cut out in a social and political situation usually
imposed. In the same way, the works presented in Zweckgemeinschafft
are the result of decompositions and re-compositions on a formal and
conceptual level: spaces in which to construct and dismantle, in
which the individual segments do not find peace if not in their
final agglomeration, ready to project and question a beyond. The
unexpected, the disorders, the fantastic worlds, the spontaneous
associations, developed in their silent potential state of rupture
and interruption, become spaces for construction, which underline
the exchange of positions between the deviated and the deviant, in
the attempt to illuminate an independent and alternative direction
and possible newly conceived conscious, critical Zweckgemeinschafft.
Initiated by DUVE Berlin, FEINKOST, KLEMM'S, KWADRAT, Maribel Lopez
Gallery
