Or Gallery Berlin is pleased to present Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ in Speaking about, with, or nearby?, for the sixth in our speaker series Inclinations hosted by Patricia Reed.

At the outset of her film Reassemblage (1982), an experimental documentary about Senegal, the Vietnamese filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha says “I do not intend to speak about. Just speak nearby.” With these words, at the very beginning, she problematizes the anthropological gaze and discourses objectifying the “other.” As an alternative to a position of “speaking about”, she neither proposes to speak for, nor to speak with, nor to speak as, but to speak nearby. This nearby includes distance and closeness at the same time: a “speaking that reflects on itself and can come very close to a subject without, however, seizing or claiming it” (Trinh T. Minh-ha). To a certain degree, we understand our curatorial and institutional work as such a “speaking nearby.”

Inclinations:
A monthly speaker series at Or Gallery Berlin, hosting philosophers, artists, curators, and…

The presentation of work revolves around the posing of a question that is the thrust of a guest’s activities. It goes without saying that questions may not be answered, but are grappled with in their unresolvability. An inclination is the force of attraction to a question (without a straightforward response), yet also to each other, as a community who partakes in a common quest(ion).
Hosted by Patricia Reed.

# Arriving at a question is already a departure.
# Questions are a declaration of departure.
# Arriving at a question in thought or activity is also the creation of a trajectory, of inclining oneself towards an unknown goal, yet not without direction.
# A question inclines a departure in a particular way, but a question itself is generic – it propels all modes of seeking some thing. Questions possess the force of bending and swerving ideas/action.
# A question is the confrontation and departure from a lack. To arrive at a question is to arrive at a gap in knowledge, action and speech – a gap that cannot be immediately filled in without the inclination towards something other.
# A question is indisciplinary; the inclining magnetism of a question knows no disciplinary bounds.

In Kooperation mit der Botschaft von Kanada/In collaboration with the Embassy of Canada