SimultanProjekte 2025
02. – 23.08.2025

Opening:
02.08.2025 16:00

Finissage:
23.08.2025 16:00

We stand outside, the sun is shining in our faces, looking out at the dreary expanse before us. With the trees swaying peacefully in the wind and the cracked concrete floor, it looks like a neglected place –a lost place. Suddenly, a boundary appears before us, something artificially closed off: in the middle of the courtyard are construction fences hung with fur coats. They mimic the fences a few meters away that surround the Simultanhalle. We are familiar with these unwelcome fences from last year. They serve to deny us entry to the actual exhibition space. But now the fences themselves have become a work of art. In the center, they form a new speperation –a space that we can walk around and perhaps even gain insights into. Unlike the Simultanhalle at present.

The fence protects both people and property on both sides, while at the same time separating us from the latter. The fence permanently changes the cityscape, but it also reflects the working people behind the fence. The furs lying on top of the bar-riers in Rebekka Benzenberg‘s installation “pretend to be” are reminiscent of posters bearing messages. According to Benzenberg, however, they can also be read as meta-phorical war banners. As a product of nature, animal skin has long protected humans from cold temperatures. At the same time, however, the history of fur is defined by rulers, the bourgeoisie, and wealth. Fur is a gender-fluid tool of power representation.

Fur and fences seem to be very similar, even related to each other. Owning fur is a form of differentiation. The goal of the owners is to set themselves apart from the collective experience. However, most people in our society do not experience luxury, butrather the opposite. Fur almost blatantly denounces (contemporary) injustices. It is also inextricably linked to the male gaze on female eroticism and often appears in pop culture as an iconic symbol –whether in connection with stereotypical representations of sex workers or as an expression of nouveau riche lifestyles. It becomes a disguise for what one wants to be. Thus, in Benzenberg‘s work, the fur coat becomes a declaration of war. It becomes streetready. In the courtyard, the fur coats, but also thefence, are exposed to the weather conditions. The fence will bear no traces, but the fur will. The structure of the hair changes from that of a combed, domesticated animal to that of a street mutt.

The installation reflects not only a timeless assessment of this dead animal skin, but also a clear stance against capitalist accumulation. Silvia Federici describes in her book “Caliban and the Witch: Woman, the Body and Primitive Accumulation” that protest as a means of resistance did not originate in our century. On the contrary, strikes, street fighting, and property damage have been used as protest strategies since at least the Middle Ages.It is a long-lasting process this struggle for equality one that seems endless. The repetitionof injustice makes the absence of outcry seem almost perverse.

In Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street (2011), Judith Butler describes how political action is needed to shift boundaries. Such political action becomes possible when bodies encounter each other in a (public) space. In the space between, a new space is formed. The physical and sensory coming together of people is seen here as a material necessity for political and artistic work.

“In this way, my body does not act alone, when it acts politically. Indeed, the action emerged from the ‘between’.”

This highlights how important it is to create spaces that enable exchange in the first place, even if we then meet again in a diOerent place. The prerequisite for this coming together is ensured by the private body. This means that the private body performs structuring and materialistic care work to secure our existence –invisible and unpaid –so that the public body can then take up space to fight for basic needs. With “pretend to be”, a shift and visualization of limitations and needs into the public sphere takes place, very much in line with Butler‘s thinking. Places are needed to form alliances: Simultanhalle can be one of these places for us.

In the exhibition ABER, Rebekka Benzenberg deals with the construction of an inside and an outside. With this negotiation, she produces a dichotomous outcry. She attempts to draw attention to the fact that seri-ous political outcry should be louder today than ever before, but is conspicuously absent. Benzenberg‘s works incorporate queer-feminist perspectives, not as a programmatic statement, but as a critical view of authority and norms. Women* have been artificially excluded from spaces for a very long time. A heteronormative monopoly still prevails. We believe that the boundary implies its own abolition. It calls on all of us to act against it, in protest of any kind. For creating art can be subversive, not necessarily, but potentially.

Text: Julla Kroner, Aenne Lowisch, Mara Unger