Now Wave: Beth B – Glowing

silent green presents

+++ For all those who would like to relive our summer exhibition Now Wave: Beth B - Glowing - the exhibition catalogue is now available here at playloud! With texts by Andreas Döhler, Beth B and Christoph Dreher as well as the original soundtrack by Jim Coleman.+++

With Now Wave: Beth B – Glowing silent green is dedicating an extensive exhibition, and retrospective to the US-American artist – including numerous world premieres.

The artist and filmmaker Beth B has been creating transgressive and transformative work for over 40 years. Beth B (born 1955) began her artistic work in the late 1970s in the No Wave scene, a New York underground movement whose name ironically refers to New Wave pop culture. In this context, female musicians and visual artists confronted popular forms with avant-garde anti-art. Throughout her prolific career, B has produced over 30 films within the documentary, experimental, and narrative genres and continues to return to her interdisciplinary works. Collaboration with other artists is an essential aspect of her work, for example in her film portraits of Lydia Lunch and Ida Applebroog.

In the exhibition, B has developed provocative and innovative approaches to challenge societal conventions, embracing the underdog, and focusing on the human condition. Based on writings and music of individual artists, Now Wave: Beth B – Glowing plumbs the eternal search for connection, our perception of the body and its physical mutation, gender (mis)representation, patriarchal power, self-determination from a feminist perspective, and the trauma of war.

The centerpiece of the exhibition in the Betonhalle is Glowing, a three-channel video installation and music event with artists who will perform their stories onstage simultaneous to live music and multiple projections of the Glowing films. Director Beth B creates a cinematic experiential landscape for the universal stories of artists Nick Flynn, Little Annie, No Anger, Vincent Dubuis, Robert O. Leaver, and Evelyn Frantti Glowing confronts perceptions and assumptions concerning heartache, disability, mental illness, and addiction alongside the visceral music by Jim Coleman and accompanied by Vincent Dubuis, Robert O. Leaver, and Phil Puleo.

Alongside other works, the sound and video installation Near Death, a collaboration between Beth B and Jim Coleman, has been specifically designed for the Betonhalle of the former crematorium at silent green.

As part of the retrospective The War Is Never Over, numerous films by Beth B from the late 1970s to the present day will also be shown in the Kuppelhalle of silent green, accompanied by conversations with the filmmaker and live performances by Lydia Lunch, Nick Flynn, Robert O. Leaver, No Anger, Jim Coleman and Chris Spencer.

The soundtrack to the exhibition Now Wave: Beth B - Glowing is available at the webshop of play loud! productions.
 

Booklet – Now Wave: Beth B Glowing
 

Exhibition
Thursday, 15.– Sunday, 25. August
Opening: Thur 7 pm / Doors: 6.30 pm
Opening Hours: Mon–Fri, 2 pm–8 pm / Sat–Sun, 11am–8pm
Admission free
 

Film Screenings & Performances:
Tickets for Single events or All-In-One-Pass

Media partners
Berlin Art Link I art-in-berlin I taz I The Berliner

Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).