In her videos, performances and installations, Rossella Biscotti (* 1978 in Molfetta/Italy, lives and works in Brussels and Rotterdam) investigates the bearing of historical events on the present moment, as well as tensions running between official and alternative understandings of history. Her work is shaped by intensive research processes, in which she pursues the traces of seemingly minor episodes in world history. The editioned photographic work here on offer by the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, The City (2019) came into being in the context of Biscotti's video-installation of the same name from 2018. The work focusses on the archaeological digs at Çatalhöyük in south Anatolia, where 18 settlement strata document the formation of a Neolithic society in the period between 7,500 and 5,700 BCE – a “proto-city” today understood to be one of the first urban centers of the world. Çatalhöyük, which was distinguished by its egalitarian structures, is still today in the process of being investigated within the framework of a research project that is also characterized by flat hierarchies and open exchange, as Biscotti shows in her narrative work, which verges on the documentary genre.

Biscotti's works have been recently been shown at: daadgalerie, Berlin (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2018); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2018); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016); Swiss Institute, New York (2016); Portikus, Frankfurt/ Main (2016); Museion, Bolzano (2015); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015); Wiels, Brüssel (2014); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2014); Sculpture Center, New York (2014); Secession, Vienna (2013); Venedig Biennale (2013); Istanbul Biennale (2013); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012).