Inner Mornings, Or the Forms of Counterculture
How can the evolution of contemporary art serve as a lens through which to understand the history of counterculture—a phenomenon that continues to influence artistic approaches today? This question serves as a guiding force behind the exhibition »Inner Mornings, or Forms of Counterculture«. Building on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau—whose poem The Inward Morning gives the exhibition its title—as well as on the writings of Michel Foucault and Félix Guattari, the concept of counterculture is understood here as active, discursive, and transformative.
Across four thematic sections—“Claiming the multiplication of points of view and voices”, “See, show, divert and denounce”, “Rereading history, another story”, and “Shock, shake, upset, move the lines”—the exhibition presents photographic practices that rewrite historical narratives, set the boundary between the center and the margins of society in motion, question relations of power, and render visible aesthetic strategies of irritation and resistance, thereby opening up alternative artistic, political, and imaginative spaces.
The interplay of three major collections—the Falckenberg Collection and the collections of the FRAC des Pays de la Loire and the Musée d’arts de Nantes—further gives rise to a dynamic institutional dialogue. How is counterculture collected, mediated, and understood in different contexts? What emerges is a multifaceted picture of art as a means of questioning social realities and opening up new perspectives.
The exhibition was initiated and curated by Emilie Houssa, Director of the Centre Claude Cahun, in collaboration with Dirk Luckow, Artistic Director of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, and Goesta Diercks, Exhibition Manager of the Falckenberg Collection.
Supported by the Office of visual arts of the Institut français Germany and the French ministry of Culture.