Armin Linke

Negotiation Table is a photographic project produced on the occasion of the 13th Berlin Biennale. In this work, Armin Linke revisits the painting The Congress of Berlin 1878, preserved in the ballroom of the Berlin Senate Chancellery. In the original canvas, Anton von Werner depicts the conference dominated by the leading European powers of the time, including Otto von Bismarck, the Russian diplomat Count Pëtr Shuvalov, and the Austro-Hungarian minister Gyula Andrássy. Through a careful use of proxemics, chiaroscuro, and compositional structure, von Werner emphasizes the implicit hierarchies governing the relationships among the figures, visually articulating the underlying balance of power. Linke’s intervention, by focusing on part of the painting, amplifies its political and symbolic dimension, inviting a critical reading of the dynamics represented. The Congress of Berlin marked a reconfiguration of power in the Balkans: the strategies of Vienna and London aimed to contain the expansion of the Russian Empire, while the national aspirations of local populations were largely ignored, laying the groundwork for the outbreak of the First World War. Another enduring consequence was the formalization of the Ottoman status quo in the holy sites of Jerusalem, with the regulation of rights of worship and property – many of which remain in force today. Six years later, Bismarck mediated a second Berlin Conference, which formalized the colonial partition of the African continent. Within this context, the doctrine of terra nullius was applied to justify the occupation of territories arbitrarily deemed “ownerless,” legitimizing practices of dispossession and repression of indigenous populations. Negotiation Table offers a reflection on the persistence of power structures and on the ways in which historical images continue to shape and condition our understanding of the present.