Berlin>Collegium Hungaricum>Vertigo of Freedom

The exhibition Vertigo of Freedom (Schwindel der Freiheit) explores the darker side of freedom and the anxiety and dizziness it is capable of producing. Artists work in a field in which an unbounded, uncompromising quest for freedom is essential. It is they who feel its tremendous weight most intensely, for art is the only realm of human activity that requires absolute freedom, one without limitations. Although the concept of freedom is, in general, tacitly understood as being positive and coherent, there are still, more than twenty years after Europe (Schwindel der Freiheit) explores the darker side of freedom and the anxiety and dizziness it is capable of producing. Artists work in a field in which an unbounded, uncompromising quest for freedom is essential. It is they who feel its tremendous weight most intensely, for art is the only realm of human activity that requires absolute freedom, one without limitations. Although the concept of freedom is, in general, tacitly understood as being positive and coherent, there are still, more than twenty years after Europe's reunification, extremely different ideas about what freedom means in Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern Europe (not to mention what it means among non-European cultures). Indeed, we do all not stand upon a firm, common ground - the current financial crisis has made that quite clear. It is the artists, as the most sensitive membranes of society, who can - and should - reflect this conflict in their work, just as a seismograph measures the vibrations of an earthquake. In this sense, Vertigo of Freedom presents various ways in which artists have dealt with freedom after the end of the Cold War.

- Kata Krasznahorkai Berlin, October 2012

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