Kapute Szene, Köln

BAT. Olivia Mole & John Russell

3. September 2026, Thomas Venker Art BAT John Russell Kapute Szene Köln London Olivia Mole Pub

BAT
Olivia Mole
John Russell

Kapute Szene,
Kyffhäuserstraße 31, Köln
5 Sept – 5 Nov

Opening Friday 4 Sept 6-9pm

DC OPEN Opening Hours Friday / Saturday 5/6 Sept 3-6pm

Of course, this cute-crazy BAT, ravenous and euphoric, is spreadeagled on the outside of the window, suctioned on the glass like a bug on a windshield, demented, wild, transfixed, in the thrall of the mirror inside the room.

The mirror hangs on the wall of a pub in London, or somewhere like that. A commuter pub, next to Waterloo Station let’s say. A place where you can get a drink before you catch your train.

The situation has desire and failure smeared all over it. The bat is desperate to get in but can’t, pinned by its own obsession. The harder it presses up at the window, in its vortex of self regard, the worse it gets.

But hey … the bat has reached the mirror …

… reflected—simultaneously mediate and immediate. See that’s the trick with a mirror, it puts you in two places at once. You’re here, and you’re there.

As our therapist explained: ‘The Here pointed out …’ but not as ‘an immediate knowing [of the point]’, rather as a ‘movement from the Here that is meant through many Heres into the universal Here which is a simple plurality of Heres, just as the day is a simple plurality of Nows’.

The mirror can reflect ‘anything’: displace, replace, unplace the entirety of ‘whatever’, but also, right now, you’re looking at a specific thing. A beautiful dialectical turn. Or a portal where you can watch disaster and horror unfold. The witnessing is blocked. Stuck fast on spectating. Misaligned. Everywhere and nowhere, the beautiful dialectical turn is all fucked-up and smashed-in.