So apparently there's an event that started in Toronto called Artspin which is a tour of art spaces and location based performances. Last year a group of organizers brought it to Berlin, I missed that but this year managed to catch it. It was so successful last year that the organizers got a bit of grief from the police as the tour is on bike, about 300 of us. So this year they registered the event with the police and therefore we had a police escort:) The curator for this years show was Emily Perry.
The idea is to tour around a section of the city with artists studios, galleries or event spaces open for the group to visit. This year it was in Treptow and Treptow-Köpenick in the east of the city. This includes a huge abandoned industrial complex that's now home to studios and a gallery.
So it began just outside of the entrance to Insel der Jugend at the far end of Treptower park. To begin there was a beat box artist (Das Friedel) who went through the paces of a beat performance that could have been straight out of a Berlin club dance track. I'm not a musician but it sounded very good to me. You can hear and see more here.
After that everyone followed the lead bike into nearby Planterwald forest as we made our way to the next venue. As we moved out, the prerequisite bike mounted amp and thumping sound track gave us out road tunes. The route took us past the classic abandoned amusement park Spree park. You can see photos of my visit to that here. As we moved past I noticed that there is now a new fence around the place so the city seems more serious about keeping visitors out. We were directed to a large clearing deeper in the forest that was setup as a playground for kids amongst the trees. This was the site for a dance performance by three dancers/performers. I couldn't tell you the story but it was interesting. Their site.
Next we mounted up and with police clearing the way, headed farther east through Niederschoneweide and then over a pedestrian bridge spanning the Spree river to arrive at the former industrial area and Platz am Kaisersteg. Here there was in installation work of stretched plastic around poles by Lukas Adolphi. A short walk revealed the gallery space, G11 carved out of an old factory with paintings, sculptures and films playing in the cellar. I was impressed by some of the work as well as the space. A quick look through this blog will attest to that love of old spaces.
The last stop at this site was at an old crane where a silk dancer, Bronwen Pattison, had attached her fabric to the crane towering above us all. She then gave us a amazing performance climbing up the fabric and repelling down to music. In this arena and with the now setting sun it was a great finish to this location, ending with a great round of applause. You can see some photos on her FB page here.
Heading out from here, we went west, past the old east German radio station building, site of an amazing rave a few years ago. Now the land around the building has been cleared so its far less likely to be used for much. No doubt this site has been bought by developers. We finished the tour down the street at another old factory, partially cleaned up. At this site there was an installation by Graffiti Research Lab. This is a large scale projected image of a digital version of graffiti called Blitztag. They've coded up a custom paint program that interprets your pen strokes with wild colours and smears. The person painting is doing so with a laser pointer on the side of the building, probably 20 metres square. Its quite effective but after a few people took turns painting various things it quickly got a bit "same old thing". It might have been better to play back an animation of previously created images and animations to show what is possible besides your name or a simple face. At least change the colour palette every few minutes.
Just behind this site was the river Spree and a fairly new beach club complete with pool which was the site of the after party. This also featured and an installation by Liquid Sky Berlin.
During this whole trip there were events happening along the way as we peddled, Telephone Based Bike Performance (not sure where this was), Between the Lines, Opera and cheer leaders to keep the pep high.
So if that wasn't enough you can also check out the offical site here:
http://www.artspin.berlin/
Cheers
Andy
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