B-LA-M Video Art Nights

Video art from Berlin | Los Angeles | Mexico

28 October 2025: Goethe-Institut Mexico City

Presented as part of B-LA-M, a three year art exchange created to deepen the relationships between the independent art scenes of Berlin, Los Angeles & Mexico City.

As part of this exchange, a two-night video screening features works from artists living and working in either Berlin, Los Angeles, or Mexico City and ranges from the surreal to the hauntingly poignant. The screenings will take place on October 28th at The Goethe-Institut Mexico City and October 29th at the Tamayo in Mexico City, each featuring a separate program of unique works.

Curated by Clemens Wilhelm, Juri Knoll, and Andrea Paasch, and organized by Carl Baratta.

VIDEO PROGRAM: BERLIN

Curated by Clemens Wilhelm

David Krippendorff: From the trilogy Lament: KALI, 2017, 9 min

In “Kali”, the lyrics of Nina Simone’s rendition of Pirate Jenny, the song from the Brecht/Weill “Three Penny Opera”, are rewritten and transformed into a monologue performed in Arabic by actress Hiam Abbass. The film tackles issues of oppression, exploitation, and injustice; its title refers to the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, time, and change. Although presented as dark and violent, the goddess Kali also stands for the annihilation of evil forces, which perfectly reflects the spirit of the text: an angry plea for vengeance over injustice and oppression.
www.davidkrippendorff.com | insta: @davidkrippendorff

Giorgio Cappozzo & Robert Gschwantner: The Perfect Circle, 2007, 9 min

The video “The Perfect Circle” starts showing the picture of a circular lake in the centre of the drawing-board designed city of Lingang New City in China. It is the latest example of modern spatial design referring back to the Park of Versailles created by André Le Nôtre in the 17th century. The video thus only appears to have been shot in an utopian landscape, yet this space is real: The topography of Versailles is an artificial nature anticipating the later dominant European urban planning with its main transverse and diagonal axes connected by circular, semicircular, and star shaped spaces.
www.robertgschwantner.com | insta: @robertgschwantner

Yuki Jungesblut, Heikegani, 2022, 5 min

A lonely crab moves to the incessant beat of abstracted classical dance music (Ravel‘s “Bolero”).The crab becomes a performer, fighting with and courting its own mirror image. It laments its eternal anger.
The Heikegani (Heikeopsis japonica) is a species of crab native to Japan, with a shell that bears a pattern resembling a human face which some believed to be the face of an angry samurai. It is a local legend that these crabs are reincarnations of the Heike warriors defeated at the Battle of Dan-no-ura as told in The Tale of the Heike.
www.yukijungesblut.net | insta: @yuki_jungesblut/

Katie Vida, Chaosmosis, 2025, 8 min

A Snapchat montage considering the theme of chaos and readymade technological detritus, including unlikely textures and narrative sequences.
www.katievida.com | insta: @v_i_d_a_v

Martina Morger & Lukas Zerbst, Cleaning Sappho, 2018, 8 min

Being specifically interested in women’s history and domestic labour, the series “Cleaning Her” centres around sculptures created by women artists. Many public sculptures are in poor condition and in need of care. The artist Martina Morger traces the surfaces of each object in both a caring and cleansing act. Playing with the tropes of the archetypal maintenance worker’s role, which mostly occurs unnoticed by urban society, her action draws attention to undervalued labour and forgotten objects. In this case cleaning Sappho, a sculpture by Adelaide Pandiani Maraini in order to shine a light on the utterly neglected sculpture.
https://lukaszerbst.com/portfolio/ & www.martinamorger.com | insta: @lukaszerbst @martinamorger

Nathalie Grenzhaeuser, Sketches, 2016, 8 min

“Sketches” explores the Arctic landscape between nature and scientific research. The video is part of the “Arctic Series”, a body of work that reflects on the relationship between nature and technology in the form of climate research facilities. The footage was shot in March 2015 at the AWIPEV Research Base in Ny-Ålesund, Spitsbergen.
www.grenzhaeuser.com | insta: @grenzhaeusernathalie

Thadeusz Tischbein: Kingdom of the Animals (Reich der Tiere), 2024, 16 min

A grand tour of Germany’s National monuments: Thadeusz Tischbein has been on a journey to Germany’s largest National monuments, some of the heaviest chunks in the nation’s digestive tract, so to speak. And there he came across all sorts of animals, which do not accidentally come into conversation with mythical creatures and animals from legends and myths. After all, the Brothers Grimm were also involved in the fairy tale of the ancient nation called Germany.
www.tischbein.org | insta: @thadeusz_tischbein