Explore Jakob Kudsk Steensen's exhibition 'Berl-Berl' in Berlin

Emma Enderby is the guest curator for Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s exhibition project at LAS (Light Art Space). She is a curator, writer and lecturer of modern and contemporary art. She is currently the Head of Programs and Research, Chief Curator at Haus der Kunst, Munich, as well as the Curator-at-large at The Shed, New York.

The work of Jakob Kudsk Steensen felt perfectly attuned to LAS and as a new and evolving institution and the questions posed in our interdisciplinary approach. Steensen shifts between the analogue and the digital, new technologies and scientific discourse, futuristic landscapes and complex soundscapes. He creates wholly immersive experiences that reorient our perception of time and space. In a sense, the artist is grappling with a dichotomy that faces us all – how the virtual and the real intertwine.

play an essential role in Berl-Berl, which for the artist connects both to the exhibition’s location and to the ancient Slavic traditions of using songs and narratives to navigate the swamps at night.

In collaboration with musician Arca, sound artist Matt McCorkle and sound designer Lugh O’Neill a site-specific soundscape was produced for the immersive installation. Arca’s song and voice morph with the sounds of the wetlands. The swamp and the club are not so different – both are spaces of metamorphosis. Just as our ancestors navigated nature through song, one might go to Berghain to practise new forms of traversing the present, new forms of transformation.

The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin became a fitting partner to enrich this exhibition. The artist was given access to their sound and object archive of fauna and flora, which he wove into Berl-Berl. With outreach as a core value, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin has also organised a comprehensive educational programme, in collaboration with LAS.