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Auto Detailing
Chantal Kauffmann, Jonida Laçi

The start for the exhibition Auto detailing consists of the reciprocal relation between Textile as a medium and the car as an object. Both of the mentioned narrations underlie a stereotyped ascription to gender roles within a binary system. The two objects function as metaphors for questions in a bigger frame:
 
Nothing we deal with or look at is unfree of connotations. In contrast to Hegel's idealistic dialectic, according to Marx's materialist dialectic we are, so to speak, shaped by our outside world and our surroundings. One could go so far as to say that all objects, but also all dispositions and structures that form our world, are only founded on certain attributions. Thus it happens that the subjectivity to which we ascribe or are ascribed ourselves to, either does not exist or is assigned to something that falls out of the norm. Now, in the reception of our own position and these circumstances, we are again subject to our perception, which in turn is constituted by our "knowledge" and the social context in which we move. While each of us is part of this infinite dialectical movement that creates a common social reality, this also holds the potential to rewrite it. In the process, there is not one "group“ that defines the norm, but „groups“ that manage to express their interests more strongly. They rise above the interests and perceptions of others, give greater relevance to their own perspective and thus establish norms that marginalize and oppress others. Their access to cooperation is based on a binary way of thinking, rooted in a history that is only thought from their own position and not seen as a construct but postulated as truth. 
 
How do you inscribe yourself in areas where you are nonexistent or exotic? How does one participate in discourses and possibly rewrite them without dominating others? How is a multiplicity possible without falling into arbitrariness? When is the moment when interpretation is replaced by performance? Isn't it all like a big game in which the consequences can reach into the unbearable?
How do you fill a position in a story in which you exist but are not part of writing it? Where does the non-existence or inferiority become visible? Did I only imagine it?
How does one approach such a paraphrase without accusing others or creating a new exclusion? How does one succeed in a reinterpretation that makes a multiplicity possible?
 
Even if these questions are not new, they are no less topical.

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