Slavs and Tatars’ first solo institutional exhibition in Germany turns to the enigmatic German writer and philosopher Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), a Königsberg native who died in Münster; a premodern-postmodern thinker who brought the consequences of Lutheran theology to bear upon the burgeoning Enlightenment. The center of the collective’s site-specific installation in Westfälischer Kunstverein is a pickle bar, an idea first introduced by the artists at their solo show Society of Rascals at Raster in 2016. Another work from our own exhibition was also remade into its English version: a Hammer and Nipple wallpaper covers the wall of the gallery saying “The Soured Rule / No Mother’s Best / Curd Milk Oozing / from Its Breast”. Thus, elaborating on the motifs from Pickle Politics—the collective’s latest cycle of works—the show places language and performativity at centre stage as a means to better understand the limits of reason and what it means to go sour on power.
On the occasion of the exhibition there was also a German-English reader published with an essay by Slavs and Tatars as well as texts by Hamann. The publication, Kirchgängerbanger, is available in an edition of 1000.
