THE HEIST: A Tour Guide
Pibao Gongsi (Liu Chao, Hannah O’Flynn, Tian Guoxin)

02.09.23, 18:00–20:30, Meeting point at BPA//Raum, the tour to Museum Island starts at 19:00

03.09.23, 13:00–15:30, Meeting point at BPA//Raum, the tour to Museum Island starts at 14:00

Please note that BPA// Raum will be closed once the tour started.

Collective Pibao Gongsi transforms BPA//Raum into a tourism office. It serves as the starting point for The Heist: A Tour Guide, a walk through Museum Island for your voyeuristic delight. On this tour, Pibao Gongsi will be sharing personal anecdotes and stories about the Island: from the militaristic-capitalist expansion of the empire in the 19th century to the museum’s intrinsic contribution to imperial aesthetic expression. In erecting and running such monolithic monuments, we ask ourselves: what labour stayed hidden underneath, powering the machine of beauty? The stones that house the impartial sciences wept. Their tears brushed the walls in shining white.

Pibao Gongsi is formed by Tian Guoxin, Liu Chao and Hannah O’Flynn under the umbrella of the collective with the rubbles of old palaces. It researches how empire represents itself, as well as the relation between aesthetics and imperial power. It looks at how the practice of art, infrastructures of exhibition making and of cultural knowledge production are indebted to the relentless efforts of empire-making. Pibao Gongsi is a collective effort to look at how art and exhibition practices can be thought of outside, beyond and before imperial self-representation, even while Empire continues to be our daily experience.

BPA// Raum is a platform for artistic exchange. It is operated by BPA// Berlin program for artists and organized by Sophia Yvette Scherer and Anna-Lisa Scherfose.

BPA// Raum
Sophie-Gips-Höfe 
Sophienstraße 21
10178 Berlin
Enter through red passageway

Image: Tian Guoxin & Hannah O'Flynn via Midjourney