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To watch people being prepared for a surgical operation, and to see the fear in their eyes, is quite unsettling, even in a museum environment. But nothing compares to witnessing the sheer agony of a person who is tormented by actual and accute pain, either physical or mental. However, this is exactly what the organizers of the Schmerz (Pain) exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Berliner Medizinhistorische Museum der Charité want visitors to experience. The exhibition explores the manifold expressions of pain and to achieve this goal it combines and confronts artistic works and medical, folk-art, religious and everyday objects. Depictions of the crucifixtion of Christ are presented together with recordings of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, while in the next room a modern interpreation of human suffering is being given by Nathalie Djurberg in an animated film that shows the bloody beating of a submissive man. Thanks to these unique combinations and juxtapositions the show succesfuly traces the boundaries between art, medicine and cultural history.

But the exhibition also manages to cross the physical boundaries of both museums as it spills out onto the streets that link the Hanburger Bahnhof and the Medizinhistorische Museum. Referring to the Stations of the Cross numerous billboards depict the works that are shown in the museums together with pictograms that symbolize various causes (i.e. a razorblade) of pain are being placed along the route. Visitors are free to choose which museum to begin their tour with.

Go to website exhibition Schmertz/Pain
Go to website Hamburger Bahnhof

[photopress:skor.jpg,full,pp_image]Tonight at 11, the top floor of the Post CS building, the Stedelijk Museum hosts the fourth annual SKOR-lecture. This time the topics will be intellectual property and free public space. The publication of the book (Open 12) was mentioned here before.

Speakers are McKenzie Wark (AUS), Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at the Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research in New York, author of A Hacker Manifesto (2004) and Gamer Theory (2006), and Stephen Wright (UK), researcher at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris.

More information on the SMCS website.