Introduction

Besides the communication function, naming is linked with religious rites and works as a form of (national/cultural) identification even in such globalized realities. Naming is sometimes still used as a signifier of social status. 

As Boris Groys claims, “Everything is imposed on us: our religion, name, gender, nationality, parents…everything. I see it and I’m confused, but I have to live with it with this table, this art, this media, my own name.” But what does naming mean nowadays when identities are becoming more fluid and shape up new forms of resistance and coexistence? 

Throughout art history and up to the Surrealist movement, giving titles to artworks was a seemingly representational process, a mirroring of the subject highlighted in the work. With modernity, names and naming have become tools for indexing objects, citizens, topologies and other day-to-day life segments. Nowadays, certain institutions change their old names due to previous ignorance and lack of awareness towards specific socio-political histories. Names which connote racist dimensions are put under scrutiny, names are being erased and reconsidered. Naming has always been political. 

Giving new names or titles is a way to create fragmented identities that can alter the patriarchal and colonial heritages superimposed over past and future generations. Some names are speculations for something else to happen, for the event, for fascination and unknown territories and they resist exact definitions or meanings in recent times. Therefore, naming can inject disruptive descriptions and associations, can highlight political stances and new radical ways of being and thinking. Titling and framing work together, contaminate and redefine each other. 

For an artist, giving titles is part of the artistic process. How can the content of a work be further ramified by the dimension of a title? The meanings carried in the language of titles, and the power dynamics associated are to be investigated. Titling as well sparks affective and humorous perspectives, a level of disruption of the semantic field. Ritualistic and performative dimensions conjugate titling in exploring their rather intuitive and metaphorical realms. 

This group exhibition tackles naming and titling as art practices that involve a personal, contextual, and subversive approach to creating an alleged identity (Apparatus 22). Labeling and namedropping, naming as poetics (Ioana Nemes), are to be unpacked and reflected upon through the artworks. From the work of Stefan Bruggmann that depicts titles which can be freely used by others (Bruggmann “quoting” in return Martin Kippenberger’s work 241 Picture Titles for Lending to Artists), from Vlad Brăteanu’s protest banner that questions the process of institutional validation in the arts, the switch of two street names from a lower and an upper class street in Frankfurt (Christian Jankowski), to a fictive corporation that provides life and identity alternatives for its exclusive clients (Maria Guta), or to bird calling the names of well-known male artists (Louise Lawler).  The title of this exhibition is borrowed from Stefan Bruggmann’s showtitle artwork.