Citing the title of Donna Haraway’s last book, Boudry/Lorenz refer to the trouble of cohabitation, of “living and dying together on a damaged planet“. On this background, the exhibition brings up negotiations around the concept of the ‘human’, the question of agency, and the right to have rights.
The Right to Have Rights shows a performer (MPA) who speaks the text of the so-called 1951 Geneva Convention (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees), a protocol by which 145 states guaranteed wide-ranging rights to people on refuge and which in theory is still valid at present. Instead of delivering this statement in a lecture hall and addressing an audience, it is here re-located to an empty runway at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. The performer's speech has been partially altered through digital processing and is turned into a piece of electronic music that does not quite seem to derive from a ‘human source’. The work raises the questions: who is seen as ‘human’ and who can access rights?
Working as a duo since 2007, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz propose films and performances that revisit filmic and audio material from the past, excavating unrepresented or illegible moments of queer history. These works present a corpus capable not only of traveling across epochs, but also of imagining links between those epochs – thus foreshadowing the possibility of a queer future.
Their work is/has been exhibited at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, DE (2020), Lace, Los Angeles, US (2020), Pavilion of Switzerland at the 58. Venice Biennial, IT (2019), Joan, Los Angeles, US (2019), Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, DE (2019), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US (2019), Schinkel Pavilion, Frankfurt, DE (2019), Art Encounters Timisoara, ROU (2019), Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, DE (2019), Skaneskonst, Malmö, SWE (2019), CentroCentro, Madrid, ESP (2019), Highline Art, New York, US (2018), Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, FR (2018), Moscow Museum of Modern Art, RU (2018), Badischer Kunstverein, DE (2018), Coreanna Museum of Art, Seoul, KR (2018), Biennale de Rennes, FR (2018), Jumex Museum, Mexico, MX (2018), Le Plateau, Paris, FR (2018), ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, US (2018), Participant Inc., New York, US (2017), Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX, US (2017), Tent, Rotterrdam, NL (2017), New Museum, New York, US (2017), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL (2016), Beirut Art Center, LB (2016) (selection).*
