Klara Lidén at KW Berlin – No Way Out?
- Jonas
Klara Lidén’s current exhibition “Kunstwerke” impressively reveals what it is like living in the city and what power human-made spaces hold over us but fails to move beyond the status quo.
At KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Klara Lidén brings elements of urban space into the museum. Trash cans, advertising panels, temporary passageways for pedestrians, and discarded Christmas trees (unfortunately, now removed) produce a sense of in-betweenness—a hybrid constellation in which inside and outside blur. Overlooked on the street, these objects appear within the exhibition context almost as if placed in a laboratory, their isolation making them appear like components of an experiment set up by Lidén. The resulting environment invites close observation, yet it remains up to the viewers to arrive at their own “results.” This openness—both a strength and a weakness of the exhibition—appears to be actively intended by the artist and curation. While the objects themselves were once in actual use, here they are largely stripped of their purpose: advertising panels show no advertisements, torn stacks of posters are covered over in white, illuminated signage has been stripped of its symbols and content.
At the same time, the urban exhibition setting provides the stage for several of the artist’s video works. These offer a more concrete insight into Lidén’s artistic concerns. Across different scenarios, we see her negotiating the relationship between her body and the urban environment. In The Myth of Progress (2008), she performs the moonwalk in the street. Michael Jackson’s iconic dance move suggests forward motion while in fact moving backward. The urban background slides past the artist, overtaking her, making her appear powerless.
This sense of powerlessness towards one’s surroundings runs through most of the video works. In Grounding (2018), Lidén moves through New York’s financial district, repeatedly falling, only to get up again and continue as if nothing had happened. Paralyzed (2003), shown at the entry of the exhibition, depicts the artist dancing in a Stockholm subway carriage, exploring its spatial constraints by hanging from poles or lying in the luggage racks. While she appears to rebel against behavioral norms, she nonetheless remains confined within the space available to her—true escape is not possible. Through her own body, the artist renders visible the overwhelming force of human-made spaces.
This inevitably raises the question: how is “space” produced, and how might it change? Here, it is useful to turn to the ideas of French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre. His thinking helps situate Lidén’s practice while also offering a framework for reflecting on our own movement through the world. For Lefebvre, space is not an “empty container indifferent to its material contents,”¹ but is shaped as much by physical conditions as by social forces. Space, he argues, is “produced” by society and unfolds across three interrelated levels:
Spatial practice, or “perceived space,” describes the lived, everyday condition of our environment—the adaptation to and alignment with given structures: walking on the pavement, crossing the street at a traffic light. Representation of space, or “conceived space,” is the result of theoretical constructs emerging from fields such as politics, architecture, and media. It describes the systems of thought—most notably capitalism in our present moment—that shape spatial organization. Finally, representational space, or “lived space,” exists in between. Through personal and collective use, space can be appropriated and altered—stairs become sites for skaters, for instance. Such shifts in usage open the possibility for the formation of alternative spaces.
Timotheus Vermeulen, Professor of Media, Culture and Society at the University of Oslo, succinctly summarized the interplay of these three dimensions in his article Space is the Place published by Frieze as “the dynamic between top-down plans, bottom-up experience and the negotiation between them.”²
Lidén’s exhibition largely remains within the realm of “perceived space.” Despite her gestures of rebellion against spatial conventions, her work tends more toward the revelation of existing conditions than toward proposing alternative uses. This is most clearly articulated in her display of everyday elements of public space, but her videos, too, largely operate within this mode.
In this way, her work generates an awareness of the power of space—undeniably a first step toward more deviant, and thus potentially transformative, actions: “Buildings do not control our lives. They reflect the dominant values in our society […] but we can live in them in different ways from those originally intended,”³ as articulated in the introduction to the influential essay collection Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment written by the Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative.
The first step is becoming aware of these dominant values, and this is precisely what Lidén’s work achieves. At the same time, the exhibition leaves one missing a certain artistic utopia—or perhaps dystopia—of the kind found in for example in Gordon Matta-Clark’s “building cuts” or David Hammons’s Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983), which likewise engage with the relationship between society and space.
Standing out from the otherwise sober, laboratory-like exhibition is the work Teenage Room (2009). The installation consists of a completely black spray-painted structure resembling a bunk bed in a military barracks. Inside, personal belongings are neatly stacked in boxes alongside a laptop—also entirely sprayed black. An axe is attached by a rope to the door of the room, and a small hatch in the wall opens toward the outside world. In the Berlin exhibition, this leads to the lockers in the entrance area of the KW; in its presentation at the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, it opened onto greenery.
This complex work opens up a range of questions and possible interpretations. The teenage bedroom—typically a place of retreat and self-expression—one might think of posters, one’s first stereo system, perhaps a diary—takes on a threatening quality here. What kind of conditioning must a teenager undergo for their room to look like this? Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative’s idea comes to mind once more: our environment as a representation of dominant societal values—instilled in us from an early age. The small opening in the room may then represent a slowly closing possibility of escape; for adults, it is too small.
Lidén seems acutely aware of this now-impossible escape, as if her exhibition were pushing against an insurmountable system. One senses a certain degree of desperation—most explicitly seen in Untitled (Trashcan) (2010), in which she rises from a desk and climbs with her entire body into a nearby trash can until she completely disappears from view. Yet even in KW‘s large hall, a sense of unease persists. The large advertising panels, calmly rotating their now-absent messages, seem to suggest: it does not matter what is advertised here. Our existence is secured.
And yet, a first step has been taken. Through her exhibition, the artist makes us aware of our predicament. The way out, however, remains ours to find—art is not responsible for providing it.
Klara Lidén “Kunstwerke“ is on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin until May 10.
(1) AnArchitektur e.V., 01 Material zu: Lefèbvre, Die Produktion des Raumes (Berlin, 2002), 6, https://anarchitektur.org/aa01_lefebvre/aa01_lefebvre_dt.html.
(2) Timotheus Vermeulen, “Space Is the Place,” Frieze, April 24, 2015, https://www.frieze.com/article/space-place.
(3) Matrix. Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment. London: Verso, 2022, 9.