With “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1969/70) the poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron wrote one of the most important protest songs of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken-word-performance is just as much an appeal against racism as it is a critique of the representation of political protests in the media: Revolutions defy being captured in (media) images, their historic complexity and immediate discharge of physical force go beyond the scope of visual representation. Nevertheless, in times of mobile cameras, YouTube, and Facebook, images as witnesses of political events have become decisive evidence and even motors of political movements – the events on the Tahrir-Square in February of 2011 offer only one of many possible examples. Foremost, the relationship between text and image plays a crucial role: Only by means of a textual localization do images dispersed in digital space receive their context and hence their potency as instruments of political pressure.

Conscious of the fact that protest movements neither can be compared in their content nor musealized in the context of an (art) exhibition, “Languages of Revolution” focuses on works of art dealing with one common denominator of many protest movements: their language.

Against the background of globalization, it becomes significant that similar buzzwords, signs, and slogans are used for completely different political movements, thereby undergoing considerable transformations. For the artworks brought together in “Languages of Revolution”, the following questions are of central relevance: Which language-codes and visual signs do different political movements employ? Which changes or ideological coloration is their language thereby subjected to?

Exhibition: “Languages of Revolution”
from 17 April 2012 until 22 May 2012
Wed–Fr: 12–6 pm

Lichthof, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin
 

At a point of mergence between scripture and image, the exhibition shows works by international artists who explore the strategies of political appeal and public refusal.
With works by: Nikusha Chkhaidze, Maurice Doherty, Elín Hansdóttir, Constantin Hartenstein, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Dan Perjovschi, Nasan Tur, Sandra Schäfer, Santiago Sierra, Klaus Staeck, Clemens Wilhelm, Qi Zi. Curated by Jana Johanna Häckel

Kleine Humboldt Galerie is a student-run initiative for organising and curating
exhibitions at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Katharina Lee Chichester
Kleine Humboldt Galerie
Email: info@kleinehumboldtgalerie.de