THIS IS POOR!

THIS IS POOR! Patterns of Poverty

(2023-2024)

Video, Dur. 20min, HD colour, sound

Credits
Kerstin Honeit in collaboration with:
Karin Honeit, Hannelore Honeit, Choir (Members of the Berliner Strassen Chor): Billy Becker, Waltraud Beukert, Xenia Brühl, Dean Mergen, Arcana Moon Schikora, Jessica Páez, Michaela Richter, Emma Cattell, Nadja Hermann, Ljupcho Temelkovski, Eren Aksu, Marlene Denningmann, Antto Logy, Max Schneider, Jochen Jezussek Polepositon d.c., Magda Tuzinkiewicz, Dorothea Tuch a.m.o.

Still: THIS IS POOR! Patterns of Poverty

With her new work, premiered at the KINDL – Center for contemporary Art Berlin, Kerstin Honeit continues her artistic exploration into the portrayal of hierarchies and their associated visual language through various media. The result is an experimental documentary video that weaves loosely connected individual sequences into a revue-like narrative. In
THIS IS POOR! Patterns of Poverty, the artist examines social structures that foster massive economic inequality through the lens of class discourse. In this poetic narrative of resistance, the artist collaborates with members of the Berlin Street Choir and her family, juxtaposing “decors of poverty” from her home interior with the architecture of the Steglitzer Kreisel in Berlin. This iconic victim of luxury real estate speculation was once a communal site as the seat of the district authority and a social welfare office.

Exhibition view – M1 Video Room at KINDL, Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2024

The artist delves into the recurring patterns of structural poverty, simultaneously exploring the formal aesthetics of the visual language of patterns and their potential as a form of resistance. Decors captured on videos and photos from Honeit’s family archive are deconstructed and reconstructed through a kaleidoscopic effect, generating new images that elude static interpretation. This visual strategy rejects simplistic portrayals of resistance as solely violent acts. The kaleidoscopic visuals and clips from the East German educational television programme English for you – which the artist was also able to watch as a child in West Berlin – are projected onto a screen, serving as the backdrop for a staged performance where the artist performs together with her parents.

Exhibition view – M1 Video Room at KINDL, Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2024

In THIS IS POOR! Patterns of Poverty, Honeit lays bare the production processes behind the staged performances – from the artist’s audible stage directions to the repeated rehearsals involving members of the Berlin Street Choir. For Honeit, the rehearsal itself becomes a stage for testing social concepts – practicing an uprising solely defined by gestures of solidarity and care.

VOICE WORKS / VOICE STRIKES

Kerstin Honeit. Voice Works / Voice Strikes

Ed. by Kerstin Honeit / Fiona McGovern
With contributions by Dela Dabulamanzi, Kerstin Honeit, Benjamin Liberatore, Yasmine Modestine, Marc Siegel

The voice labours constantly. It is particularly a worker when it is silent and on strike.

Against the background of Kerstin Honeit’s artistic practice, this publication examines the (film) voice from the aspect of labour. It discusses vocal connections to structural exclusions, as well as resistant and emancipatory gestures: the voice as a worker. From different perspectives and working practices, it illuminates forms of (translational) labour that are applied to the disembodied voice of cinema and its mediated extensions. In doing so, the contributors devote themselves to the hidden processes of a ‘voice normalisation’ as it is practised in commercial film dubbing in a racialising or classist manner. Equally, this publication is interested in the queering potential that is inherent in the disembodied voice too. The production processes involved in creating coherences between bodies and voices are made visible here; as fluid and in relation to structures and politics, therefore condense ways of seeing and hearing into ambiguous, multiple resonances.
Via an augmented reality app, excerpts of Kerstin Honeit’s video work become accessible on film.

Contributions:
Dela Dabulamanzi; We don’t have to wait for Hollywood anymore / Es ist hinfällig, auf Hollywood zu warten
Kerstin Honeit; The Voice as a Worker / Die Stimme als Arbeiter*in
Benjamin Liberatore; Strike and Instrument / Sich verweigernde Stimmen und anschlagende Streiks
Yasmine Modestine; Un (acoustique) délit de faciès / (Akustisches) Racial Profiling
Marc Siegel; Dubbing and the Dandy / Dubbing und der Dandy

Editor of the publishing house: Michaela Wünsch (b_books)
Translation: bellu&bellu (English) / Daniel Belasco Rogers (Deutsch)
Copy editing: Michaela Richter (Deutsch) / Emma Cattell (English)
Graphic design: Anna Voswinckel
Photos, images and printer’s copy: Carsten Eisfeld (Eberle & Eisfeld)
AR-App: Carla Streckwall & Alexander Govoni – Refrakt

Supported by the Berlin Department of Culture and Europe

ISBN 978-3-942214-40-7 112 pages, publishing b_books, distribution/ buying x@bbooksz.de
English/German, art/film, queer, decolonial/anti racist

Book Cover: Kerstin Honeit. Voice Works / Voice Strikes, ISBN: 978-3-942214-40-7

Why or Why not?

(2020)

Video, Dur. 06:46 min, HD colour, sound

Credits
Jochen Jezussek / poleposition dc, Mat Hand, Sarah Thom

The work Why or Why not? was commissioned by the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Lars Henrik Gass, the festival director, asked filmmakers during the lockdown in Germany to make a video contribution to negotiate the question: Can and should one make films now?

The challenge of producing a film without a crew in front of or behind the camera was less interesting to Honeit than examining the massive shift in perspective of one’s own actions in the face of a worldwide pandemic. That is why she reduced the question to Why or Why not?, which is less about the possibilities or impossibilities of continuing an (artistic) practice in a lockdown, but more about questioning in general a continuation of life ‚as before‘ in the age of the Capitalocene.

The camera, which was set up in the streets of Berlin during the first lockdown in March 2020, frames several tableaux vivants of the new Corona everyday life, commenting via analogue text panels that are held into the picture. Two opposing narratives are presented in uncanny familiarity.

In August 2020, the Goethe Institut Montreal invited video artists from Canada and Germany to submit their ideas on the topic „The City in Times of the Virus“: Will nature reconquer the inner cities? How do social rules and medical hygiene rules affect our bodies? How will we move in the urban space? How will we interact in the era of social distancing? – The eight selected videos will be projected after dark onto screens placed in the storefront windows of the Goethe-Institut Montreal on Boulevard St. Laurent until March 2021.

The Jurys’ statement: In pandemic times the „new normal“ shouts at society. Kerstin Honeit analyzes the imperatives of (post) Covid-19 logics by deconstructing the new reality through a (self)reflective work. A Filmmakers point of view which shows the ambiguity of daily affirmations that affect artistic creation (or not). Peter Haueis

Jury: Anna Lena Seiser, Anyse Ducharme, Miryam Charles, Peter Haueis, Annette Hegel

Why or Why not? will be shown at Goethe Institut Montreal as part of the exhibition projectin January 2021.

[ˈzi:lo]5

(2019)

Video / Installation, Dur. 17:17 min, 4K colour, sound

Credits
Jessica Páez, Ben Brix, Emma Cattell, Mieko Suzuki, Jochen Jezussek / poleposition dc, Philip Whitfield / WEFADETOGREY, Seeley Questing, Laurie Young, Joshua Schwebel, Luc Dunberry, Nikolaus Heveker, Esther Fisher, Anthony Wayne Howell, Amélie Lampron, Jean-Bernard Vidal

[ˈzi:lo]5

Silo 5, once the largest granary in the world, was celebrated by architect Le Corbusier in 1927 as a glimpse towards a utopian modernity and an aesthetic future of architecture. Since the 1990’s Montreals gigantic silo complex has been an industrial ruin, far too big to be demolished. The abandoned granary, now an unintended monument to colonial global extractionism, marks as a place of storage the starting point for the video piece [ˈzi:lo]5. The work approaches different gestures and technologies of preservation and collection and therefore – simultaneously and inseparably – also questions of overwrite, delete or rewrite.

Seen from the perspective of a near (queering) future, collections expose themselves as accumulations of gaps and omissions. These voids become resonating bodies, having the potential to open up spaces for other practices of intermediate storage.

[ˈzi:lo]5 was supported by n.b.k. Berlin; Senatsverwaltung fur Kultur und Europa, Berlin; Goethe Institut Montréal;
Montréal, arts interculturels and La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Montréal

[ˈzi:lo]5 premiered at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg (2020) as part of the German Competition.

It was awarded by the 34th Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media with the Norman Award 2021. The Jurys’ statement:
This movie really thinks inside the box. But inside that box is another box. And then another. And what is it that must be kept so well hidden? Shapeshifting objects, that can either be symbols of resistance or dominance, of cultural freedom or appropriation. It all depends on how we pack or unpack them. For a layered yet playful work dealing with colonial and patriarchal heritage the jury awards [‘zi:lo]5 by Kerstin Honeit.

Jury: Andrea Martignoni, Marlene Denningmann and Thomas Renoldner

TALKING BUSINESS

(2014 / 2015)

3-Channel Video Installation, Dur. 13:00 min, HD colour, sound

Kerstin Honeit – Talking Business – Filmstill — Installation view *Talking Business*, Kerstin Honeit

Talking Business, Text by Marc Siegel

The drama begins with the script. In an overhead shot of a grey table, we see a woman’s hands lay down two scripts for Talking Business before she sits down on the table next to them. Her face is not visible. The sound of her actions and the highly amplified location sound of an empty room give way to the overblown music that typically accompanies dramatic moments on film or television. Black out. New scene, different screen. Same music. A medium shot now situates the table in a studio setting: green screen, prominent white lights, and a small portable projection screen in the back. The woman, perched on the table in blue violet overalls, faces away from the camera, while reading one of the scripts. She is accompanied by a second person, an elegant woman dressed in a dark suit with a thin black tie, sitting at the table, also reading the script. The music segues into a dialogue between two women; the sound quality of the recording suggests a film or TV soundtrack. An elderly female voice expresses uncertainty about how to greet another woman. “Mrs. Carrington” is the newcomer’s name as indicated by white text against the black background of the first screen, which serves as a kind of displaced subtitle/translation for the aural exchange. This text is progressively highlighted, Karaoke style, so we can speak or mouth along and thereby take part in the unfolding drama between the script and these women, between the written and the spoken word. By the time the third screen is activated and the studio setting returns, empty this time except for projected images of the women’s encounter on the rear screen, it has slowly become clear, that Kerstin Honeit’s three screen video installation Talking Business (2015) is much more about the business of talking than about the talk of business.

Kerstin Honeit – Talking Business – Filmstill

Talking Business turns on the tense initial meeting of Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins) and Krystle Carrington (Linda Evans) in the first episode of the second season of the Reagan-era TV series Dynasty. But Honeit spares us the spectacle of the famous cat fights that marked the women’s relationship, secured the show’s ratings and guaranteed Alexis and Krystle a spot in the camp archive of drag impersonation. Instead, she cleverly subjects the scene of the women’s initial meeting to a series of displacements, from one screen to the other, from English to German, and–most strikingly–from on-screen pretense to off-screen investment.

The off-screen of Honeit’s Dynasty is peopled first and foremost by Gisela Fritsch and Ursula Heyer, the actresses who lent their voices to the characters of Alexis and Krystle for the German synchronized version of the show. Working closely with the two septuagenerian voice actresses–Gisela Fritsch sadly died during the course of their collaboration–Honeit teases out the tensions between speaking a part and playing it, between dubbing glamorous women and embodying them. At one point over the course of rehearsals with Honeit, Heyer reflects on the empowering act of employing Alexis’s turns of phrase in her daily life: “I thought if I use my own words, I won’t manage to engage people. But when I said a sentence like, ‚It’ll snow in hell before I see you again,‘ then people laughed.” “You were always so much more Alexis than I was Krystle,” notes Fritsch.

Kerstin Honeit – Talking Business – Filmstill

Talking Business is a further contribution to Honeit’s ongoing artistic investigation of the voice, embodiment, and the technologies of audio-visual synchronization. Think for instance, of her earlier installations On and Off (2010) and Pigs in Progress (2013). Whereas in these pieces, Honeit employs her own body as the site of synchronization – the space from which social and political discourse speaks – Talking Business focuses instead on the bodies of professional actresses known primarily for their voices. Honeit is, of course, still visible in Talking Business. She’s the elegant woman in the aforementioned shot, the dandy recognizable from her other work. In the studio setting, she even dubs herself from earlier rehearsal footage with the actresses. Throughout the piece, however, she functions more like a moderator, who enables Heyer and Fritsch to give voice not merely to the words written for famous TV stars, but to those describing their own conflicted relationship to female embodiment and mediated presence.

That said, Talking Business does not strive to present some kind of demystified real life that was obscured by the fictions of a script or the industrial and technological production of glamor. What Honeit’s after is rather a critical laying bare of “the technologies of gender,” to invoke a concept from film theorist Teresa De Lauretis. That becomes clear in one of the most powerful moments in this new work. We hear an audio recording of Heyer’s resonant voice as the affected Alexis, and at the same time watch archival footage of the actress‘ transformation into Joan Collins at the hands of a hair and makeup artist. We see as well–on another screen–an image of a spinning reel-to-reel audio player atop Heyer’s newspaper clippings about her life as Carrington/Collins. Honeit’s synchronization of sound and images across these screens brings into focus the mediated and discursive production of a split female subjectivity, one produced at the intersection of representation and self-representation, at the crossroads of social technologies, institutional and critical discourses, and media practices.

Kerstin Honeit – Talking Business – Filmstill

And the third screen? That one’s reserved for amateurs like us, to read along and engage in our own acts of synchronization, however invested or subdued they may be in the space of a commercial gallery. Honeit’s gesture towards interactivity does not necessarily implicate gallery visitors in talking business, but it certainly gives us a chance to experience how awkward, alienating and empowering it can feel to take a screen star’s words into your own mouth.

Marc Siegel, Berlin August 2015

Talking Business was awarded by Monitoring (an exhibition of time based media as part of the Kasseler Documentary Festival).

The Jurys’ statement: In Talking Business, Kerstin Honeit explicitly, yet elegantly, breaks through the hidden mechanisms of media presentation. Role playing is made obvious, re-staged, interpreted and recycled in form of artistic self-references. Icons are dressed down and cycled back into the whys and wherefores of everyday life. What do we mean when we speak the language of media – and who is speaking?

Gerhard Wissner, Wolfgang Jung, Gerd Mörsch, Tanja Langenbach

Since 2015 Talking Business has been screened and exhibited at many festival and shows:
Berlinische Galerie; Video Art at Midnight, Berlin; Kasseler Dokfest; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein; Off Biennale, Cairo; Projections – Rotterdam Art Fair.