EN    DE

Why Black Ferk

“Ferk” is derived from the Ger­man word “Fer­kel,” which means young pig. The pig is a very social, intel­li­gent, and curi­ous ani­mal close­ly relat­ed to humans. It is an often under­es­ti­mat­ed crea­ture. 

The image of a black piglet with one ear stand­ing up and one flop­py ear also stands for the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects of exis­ten­tial crises and ill­ness.  

At the same time, he’s also a good friend of the black dog (an Eng­lish euphemism for depres­sion). Ferk also ties in with past works by Matthias Moll­ner and his part­ner at the time, Ger­da Schorsch (MOLLNER & SCHORSCH, 2010/11).*

A black pig in a fence looks at the viewer. Two more pigs can be seen in the background.

Pho­to cred­it: A.-K. Begemann

Black Ferk is not a schnitzel restau­rant (!), but it empathis­es with its his­tor­i­cal role mod­els, the artis­tic avant-garde of the “Zum Schwarzen Fer­kel” tav­ern on Unter den Lin­den, in Berlin. Just like back then, the Black Ferk stands for cross-bor­der exchange and an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach.  

In Eng­lish slang, “Ferk” is also a clever and some­what soft­er alter­na­tive to “fuck”/”what the fuck”. “Fer­ky” is also used for “cool”. 

“Fer­k­ing” can also mean snoop­ing or rum­mag­ing around in oth­er people’s things. 

The Mid­dle Eng­lish term “firken” or “fer­ken” means “to con­tin­ue”, while the Old Eng­lish “fer­cian” means “to bring”, “help”, “sup­port” or “car­ry”. 

“Ferk” is a word with many dif­fer­ent mean­ings, often only known to the per­son using them. 

In this same vein, Black Ferk Stu­dio wants their projects to address dif­fi­cult top­ics, stretch­ing an arc between seri­ous­ness and irony as a result.

* „Nie­mand­s­land“ (2010/11), „Die Unzähm­baren“ (2011)