Isaac Julien – Playtime

Location
PalaisPopulaire, Berlin

Curator
Philipp Bollmann

In 2023, the film Playtime by Isaac Julien was screened in the spacious rooms of the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin, accompanied by photographic works created during the filming process, which the artist considers autonomous works of art.
Curated by Philipp Bollmann and developed jointly by the Wemhöner Collection and the PalaisPopulaire with Deutsche Bank AG, the exhibition presents Playtime to re-examine this work from a contemporary perspective—a piece that is more relevant than ever, as capital plays a role in all political, social, and societal spheres and influences the lives of almost everyone on this planet.

Five years after the profound global banking and financial crisis, Isaac Julien presented the film Playtime in 2013. In this work, Julien addresses a fundamental question: How can capital be visualized?

Using the stories of six protagonists—individuals active in both the worlds of art and finance—Isaac Julien found narrative imagery that speaks to the global interconnectedness of capital. In these images, macroscopic and microscopic perspectives are linked in a dialectical manner.