And so it was that I first saw this exhibition a few days after the opening, with a small group of Kunsthalle visitors and a guide.
What struck me first: the continuities. Here too there are bodies, locations, and machines, and many of the questions raised by Jackie Karuti's work are asked again. But now, not least because of the ground she laid, they seem much more precise and direct.
There are, however, differences. For a start, these artists had the chance - and they have taken it - to make the whole Kunsthalle into a space of their own. And then: this is neither a group show nor the work of a single artist, but a collective exhibition of the work of a collective, NTU.
What exactly this means is not, for good reason, immediately clear. "Do they live together?" asks one visitor. No, not really... then again: of course. In the sense that we all live together and, as it says in the Saaltext: "All work is collective. Life is collective." But not always to the same degree.
Gathering, reading... lesen, lecture, collection. "Everything worthwhile is done with other people."
The artists involved in NTU keep their names and identities: except for one installation and, of course, the exhibition as a whole, the works are attributed to Nolan Oswald Dennis, Tabita Rezaire or Bogosi Sekhukhuni. More than three individuals, more than one new thing: this kind of collectivity mounts an implicit critique of the world of big names, solo exhibitions and monographs which continues - quite perversely, when one thinks of early movements such as Dada - to shape contemporary art.
But different ways of working make it possible to think in ways that challenge more than western notions of individuality. This is just the start.