In the Oberlichtsaal at the Kunsthalle Basel the Berlin-based artist group the Honey-Suckle Company show their new installation ‘non est hic’. Honey-Suckle is one of 38 flower remedies used in Bach Flower Therapy. It helps people to learn from the past in order to get a new perspective on the future. The members of the HSC met in 1995 in Berlin, where they live and work today. Based on their shared need to find new ways forward in the Berlin of the 1990s, they developed collective actions, projects, concerts and self-organised venues (Neue Dokumente, Allergie Raum, Galerie berlintokio, etc.). Much in the spirit of an avant-garde production team, and adopting the path of many artistic or spiritual communities of the last two centuries, the HSC developed their own style, clothes and music. At the time, they have succeeded in keeping control of the distribution and mediation of their own work, while operating stealthily on the fringes of the art-world, or just outside it.
The projects by the Honey-Suckle Company hover between installation, anti-fashion, new music, photography, video and dance performance. Each of the members is specialised in a different domain, and the sum of the different abilities results in works based on refusal of individual authorship. The HSC samples Bauhaus and the Russian avant-garde, recreates the instruments of medieval wandering musicians, and plots references to the Lebensreform movement of the 19th century. These appropriated aesthetics are given parts in associative installations, which aim at producing a totality of experience for the viewer.
The HSC’s new installation ‘non est hic’ will pursue the idea of a borderless and indefinite reality, using light, sound, sculptural pieces and architecture made of second-hand material and dyed silk. Otherworldly, extra-sensual and yet real, “it is not here”, and yet is fully ‘hic et nunc’, here and now.
The Honey-Suckle Company, who celebrated their 10-year jubilee in 2005, are: N. Pleasure, Simone Gilges, Petr S. Kisur, Nico Ihlein, Zille Homma Hamid, Friedrich M. Lloch. Since 1999 the HSC has been collaborating with the musician Konrad Sprenger.
A record, titled ‘non est hit’, with an accompanying booklet was produced for the exhibition, on which, for the first time, music productions from former projects by the HSC, as well as the soundtracks of the exhibitions ‘Ohn End’, 2005 at Cubitt Gallery, London and ‘Eswerde’, 2003 at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart are included.
The exhibition is supported by: Martin Hatebur
Exhibitions and projects of the Honey-Suckle Company (Selection): 2006 ‘Eau d’Ohn End’, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch / 2005 ‘Ohn End’ and book ‘Eaude’, Cubitt Gallery, London / 2003 ‘Eswerde’, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart / 2003 ‘Hurdy Gurdy Raum’, Neue Dokumente, Berlin / 2001 ‘Odessau’, Allergieraum, (Artists in residence) Kunstwerke Berlin / 2000 ‘Neuband’, Sonarfatival, Barcelona / 2000 ‘Jil Sander +’, in the frame of the exhibition series: ‘I love Fashion’, Project room ffwd, Berlin / 1999 ‘Neu West End’, in the frame of the exhibition series: ‘children of Berlin’, PS 1, Contemporary Art Centre, New York / 1999 ‘Neon for a better crack’, Galerie berlintokio, Berlin / 1998 ‘HSC 3D’, Berlin Biennale, Berlin.
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