Kerstin Honeit - say it like it is

say it like it is, the slogan-like title of Kerstin Honeit's first
solo-exhibition at cubus-m, suggests two things. Firstly,
that a gallery can serve as a site of plain speaking and,
thus, offers a forum for political discourse despite its
commercial focus. Secondly, the title suggests a close
connection between explanatory power and the veracity of
spoken language with its potential for political action. "Say it
like it really is, do it like it really is“ - so a line of lyrics from
the socially critical and politically active hip-hop group Public
Enemy, who also use their concerts for public protest. The
political potential of Honeit's practice lies in the discrepancy
between "saying" and "doing" that she stages, and the
spaces for action that she thus creates.

Thematically the three video works presented in the
exhibition, Joint Property (2013), Pigs in Progress (2013)
and On & Off (2010), address the process of gentrification in
Berlin, and along with questions of personal property and
memory. What unites the works is an examination of the
medial embodiment of voice and the implicit process of
appropriation and attribution within it. The latter is
particularly evident in movie dubbing, a longstanding
thematic interest for Honeit. The voice that we hear does
not correspond to the body that we see. In the history of
cinema, especially in politically volatile times, this has
provided an opportunity for manipulation with respect to
the actual spoken word, and it still does so today in terms of
the gender performance of voice.

Honeit engages with these implications by taking a
seemingly neutral position in her work and, as in Pigs in
Progress and On & Off, acts as a medium for borrowed
voices of various figures like politics that she reproduces in
playbacks and thereby literally embodies.
Conversely, in Honeit's double-projection Joint Property,
which was produced specifically for this exhibition and can
be seen from the street, her own body undergoes a
transformation through increasingly absurd props, images of
this transformation are projected alternatingly. In this way
not only are clear gender assignments increasingly blurred,
but at the same time aspects of desire and longing are
invoked. As a consequence processes of attribution and
appropriation become almost indistinguishable. This principle
of ambiguity manifests itself in the words, such as
"economy" and "night out," which are called out in different
voices in between images of each transitioning figure and
that refer equally to the previous as well as the subsequent
figure.
In Kerstin Honeit's work "doing" also always implies "doing
gender," which is simultaneously promoted and foiled
through "saying (gender)."
Fiona McGovern