car installation with video projection.
Video, 10'30", sound, color.

February 19, 2023, 5 pm onwards
Location: In front of Halle 3, Dragonerareal, Obentrautstr. 19-21, 10963 Berlin.
Enter through Auto Klas.

“Clan crime, the distinct registration of racialized communities, leads to the ethnicization of crime and goes hand in hand with racist control practices as well as the undermining of common constitutional principles.”

Quote from clans of berlin (2023) by Anna Ehrenstein and Rebecca Korang, part of the car installation of the same name.

For CARPARK, Anna Ehrenstein, in collaboration with Rebecca Korang, produced the video work clans of berlin (2023), which is projected onto the front windshield of a dark blue Opel Astra. Located on a public parking lot near Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, the work investigates the presence and use of the term “clan crime” in German media and current political campaigns. The artists expose the targeted use of the expression and discuss its potential as a neo-colonial weapon to spread fear and resentment towards communities viewed as marginalized, as well as the general racialization/ethnicization of crime in Germany.

The artists apply a collage-like, Photoshop aesthetic to counteract and underline their subject with visual narratives—and, in some cases, even to pursue it ad absurdum. In their video essay, the artists play the role of the narrator, using their own bodies to visualize clichés in reporting on “clan criminality.” The commodification of Orientalisms as a Westernized canon of clichés is thereby reflected, appropriated, affected and exaggerated. Through the conscious appropriation of symbols read as Orientalist, Ehrenstein establishes personal references to the marginalization of her own diaspora. The images also highlight the intersectionality of existing forms of racism.

In Anna Ehrenstein’s transdisciplinary artistic practice, the reciprocal relationship between the representational and the self-conceptual is a leading motif. Ehrenstein uses found footage, personal video and photographic material, installation, and sculpture to mirror the intersections and divergences between popular and high culture and their socio-economic and political conditions. Rebecca Korang uses her own body to open up spaces for reappraisal, imagination, and co-determination in the collective, in the form of installative video works and contemporary choreographies.