#natureandstate ist eine rasend intensive Abfolge von Räumen, eine riskanter, ernsthafter Versuch, sich mit Technik, Kunst, Theater, Zeichnung, Malerei, Bühnenbild, Sound, Light & Magic rauszuwirbeln aus den visionsarmen Lähmungen der Gegenwart. Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

The exhibition uses a particular methodology of theater, working with script as the source of the storytelling: Parallel to the recent manifestation about humanity’s roots in the book The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber and David Wengrow, the focus shifts to questioning the main idea of the state as a denial of the state of nature, considering how prehistoric communities historically made their own decisions of how to live. The exhibition uses the search of how our ancestors might have lived and imagines a future via early feminist science fiction in the novel The Disposessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin.

In this way, through investigating continuity, disobedience, and possible forms of transformation in relation to the state of stateless and the genealogical relationships between future and past, the new chapter peacefully departs from a quote by Ursula K. Le Guin: “(…) we have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars.”

With Michael Akstaller, Cansu Çakar, Olga Chernysheva, Ipek Duben, Alia Farid, Will Fredo, Nicole L’Huillier, Kavachi, Grada Kilomba, Robert Lippok, Constanza Macras, Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Hani Mojtahedy, Ersan Mondtag, Manuel Rossner, Christoph Schäfer, Muhannad Shono, Sorawit Songsataya, Ayman Zedani, u.a.

Opening weekend: July 8–10
With performances and artist talks

Performance: O Barco/The Boat by Grada Kilomba, July 8, 7pm, and July 9, 5pm

Performance: Becoming Sculptures by Ersan Mondtag, July 8, 8:30pm and July 9, 3pm

Artist talks: July 9, 12–2pm, and July 10, 12–2pm
Artist talks with the team of Kunsthalle Baden-Baden