EN    DE

The Black Ferk Manifesto

Black Ferk Stu­dio address­es soci­etal upheaval, blind spots, and taboos, and tries to give mar­gin­alised groups in par­tic­u­lar a voice. It advo­cates for the vis­i­bil­i­ty and recog­ni­tion of chron­ic ill­ness­es and neu­ro­di­verse peo­ple, who are “oth­ered” by society.

The artis­tic work at Black Ferk Stu­dio high­lights the dark side of human exis­tence and lays bare what is usu­al­ly hid­den, ignored, or refuted.

The stu­dio faces the rejec­tion and triv­i­al­i­sa­tion of chron­ic ill­ness­es by re-drama­tis­ing and unveil­ing a stark real­i­ty. It places a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on severe, mul­ti-sys­temic and/or com­plex diseases.

Art, sci­ence, and soci­ety all meet here at Black Ferk Stu­dio. The Stu­dio endeav­ours to be a place of exchange for artists, researchers, chron­i­cal­ly ill peo­ple, peo­ple with lim­it­ed abil­i­ties, lovers of art, patrons, and “oth­ers”. In this sense, it’s a space of dis­course and com­fort, because it is both provoca­tive and rais­ing awareness.

The Black Ferk Stu­dio also address­es poten­tial solu­tions to sit­u­a­tions of (glob­al and indi­vid­ual) crises, such as the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ties and relat­ed activism.

The Black Ferk Stu­dio is research and fact-friend­ly, and oppos­es con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and anti-sci­en­tif­ic worldviews.

Black Ferk isn’t a dark space, pre­cise­ly because it deals with such seri­ous, exis­ten­tial top­ics — it’s quite the oppo­site. Dark humour and the absurd are meth­ods as well as weapons in the fight against mad­ness and the unspeakable.

Black Ferk Stu­dio is vehe­ment­ly against forms of tox­ic pos­i­tiv­i­ty, and prob­lema­tis­es the pre­vail­ing dog­ma of being moti­vat­ed and achiev­ing (stay­ing healthy by work­ing hard on your­self). It crit­i­cis­es the phi­los­o­phy that ill­ness and dis­abil­i­ty can always be avoid­ed by work­ing hard, or are the fault or fail­ure of indi­vid­u­als. Black Ferk Stu­dio acknowl­edges the unpre­dictable: It can hap­pen to any­one, no one is invincible.

The phys­i­cal body and its rela­tion­ship to space form the start­ing point of the artis­tic works. Per­son­al and col­lec­tive liv­ing sit­u­a­tions and trau­mas are made vis­i­ble as a result.

The stu­dio works with mul­ti­me­dia forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion: Objects, draw­ings, images, instal­la­tions, pho­tographs, videos, per­for­mances. Black Ferk Stu­dios’ meth­ods are trans­dis­ci­pli­nary and, among oth­er things, focus on doc­u­ment­ing human abysses, as well as over­com­ing them.