The extensive social, economic, and political processes of debt are deeply ingrained in realities, histories and representations on global and local scales. Between promise, coercion, and presumed guilt, an abstract understanding of debt—despite its formative impact on people and environments— is based on a suggestive charge and impersonal measurement. In the exhibition, close readings of materials and narratives follow such prevalent notions and representations, modes of extraction, and possibilities of withdrawal.
As part of the exhibition opening Miriam Stoney will perform Council of Scales at 22:00.
The Performance Council of Scales is the first act of an unwritten theater play. At the same time, the performance functions as an activator for the installation of the same name which Miriam Stoney presents in the exhibition.
Caprice, the protagonist of the play, is looking for a “ruler”. A term which is consciously ambiguous in this context. However, instead of meeting said ruler, she comes across the five scales of the Council of Scales. Its dial is replaced with dead horses – a motive symbolizing a wondering path in a British idiom, a way leading to nowhere. Caprice starts a conversation with them.
In both, installation and performance, Miriam Stoney uses imbalances in different scenarios: as plays on words/puns and ambiguities, ambivalences, mistranslations and misunderstandings. She uses this installation as a stage to discuss the impossibility of real comparisons of attributes, even if they are made of the same substance – be it language, color or horses.
19:00 Opening
22:00 Performance Council of Scales by Miriam Stoney
You Breathe Differently Under the Weight. Debt and Credit
07.06.–07.09.2025
with Alice Creischer, Moyra Davey, Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Toon Fibbe, Lili Huston-Herterich, Santu Mofokeng, Natascha Nassir-Shahnian, Jochen Schmith, Miriam Stoney
Cooperation
The project is initiated by the University of Bremen and GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, and realized in cooperation with Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg and University of the Arts Bremen, Klasse Temporary Spaces.
Funding
Der Senator für Kulur der Freien Hansestadt Bremen
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
Manfred und Ursula Fluß-Stiftung