red by berlinbookclub is a noncommercial exhibition room in Berlin-Mitte dedicated to exhibiting documentary positions in the current contemporary art discourse.

About berlinbookclub

The name bbc is exemplary for what we stand for. While originally named the Berlin Book Club lol, an ironic title for a chat group for art theory and literary criticism, we realized that its abbreviation, the bbc, was even more fitting for us: Like our namesake, the globally operating British Broadcasting Corporation, our goal is “to provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them.” It is our conviction that all artworks, regardless of medium and degree of abstraction, have an inherent documentary character. They contain a fragment of the reality that conditioned their existence and are therefore keys to access deeper understanding of the world we live in. We want to examine these characteristics, bring them to light, and deconstruct and contextualize their indexicality in order to contribute to an integrative social discourse and open up insights into the multitude of parallel realities. To illustrate what we do best, we slightly edited, decontextualized and appropriated a quote from Hito Steyerl’s “In Defense of the Poor Image”: The bbc “[…] is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about [the artworks] own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short: it is about reality.” The project will run from October 2024 until October 2025.

Satoshi Fujiwara
BLEACHED
29.11.—31.01.

For his series of photographic prints Bleached, Kobe born and Berlin based artist Satoshi Fujiwara uses his camera to document the contemporary German neo-Nazi scene at the Rudolf Hess memorial march. In his work, by using image manipulation to remove colors and symbolic elements, the act of bleaching becomes a multifaceted phenomenon. Fujiwara’s critical survey is shown within the newly founded exhibition space red by berlinbookclub. The space is dedicated to exhibiting documentary positions of contemporary art in order to contribute to an integrative social discourse and open up insights into the multitude of parallel realities. Made possible by Sammlung Hoffmann, exhibitions by berlinbookclub will be presented at red until October 2025.

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