The group exhibition “Seating Arrangement” with Samantha Bohatsch, Camille Clair, Valérian Goalec, Lane Heatherington, Jáno Möckel, Malte Niels Möller, Tanita Olbrich, Katharina Schilling, Miriam Stoney, Alex Thake and Eva Lillian Wagner opens October 29, 6–10pm, with a reading performance by Samantha Bohatsch at 8pm. Curated by Vivien Kämpf and Robert Bergmann. With the generous support of Stadt Wien Kultur and Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.

"The events of human life, be they public or private, are so intimately bound up with architecture, that the majority of observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in the full reality of their behavior from the remnants of their public monuments or the exhibition of their domestic remains." (Honore? de Balzac, La Recherche de l‘absolu, 1834)

– Where are you going?
– I’ll be right back. I’m going for a walk.
– We have 20 guests for dinner. Only you would think of taking a walk now.
– I hadn’t thought of that, maybe you’re right, but I promise to return as soon as possible. – You’re not leaving this place.
– Please, I beg you, let me go.
– Fine then, leave, but never set foot in this house again.

"The temporary, fleeting, and transitory that characterises hospitality marks the guest as unfixable in space and time. At the same time, a state of exception applies to them, through which they are not only released from their everyday existence, but through which they can also release others from it. It is this moment of intangibility that makes the encounter with the guest so uncanny and represents the impulse for the regulatory control efforts." (Beatrice von Bismarck, Das Kuratorische, 2021, translated from German)

– Lucas took off. What’s wrong with him? A disappointment with one of you?
– He was unhappy here so we’re better off without him. There are many "Lucas" in the world.

"Who can deny the pleasure of reading a room, and that it only improves with similar dinners? You learn to see irrelevance as it starts to yellow a painter’s complexion like the early stages of a cancer. You can hear the money laughing in his ripped jeans, all the way across the room. You can almost taste an artist emerging in a dealer’s mouth. Eventually you are even able to spot the missing people and predict the newcomers." (John Kelsey, Rich Texts, 2010)

– The desire to get out overwhelms me. – I feel the same.
– Where can we go at this hour?
– Yes, it’s late and a terrible night.

– I have a friend who’d let us spend the night.
– I can come with you. I’m going far, I can take you by taxi wherever you are going. – You stay and wait for me.

"Yes, but I have my doubts about being a part of this culture, or any. How about getting outside of the whole thing?" (David Rattray, How I Became One of the Invisible, S.139)

– But this is an insanity, an insult. How dare you leave when my guests are about to sit at the table?

(Dialog excerpts from Luis Bun?uel's "The Exterminating Angel" from 1962.)