CTM festival exhibition

 I recently attended the opening art exhibition of the CTM festival at Kunstraum Kreuzberg, a turn of the century hospital turned art space. Each year, musicians and creative people come to Berlin to exhibit and perform their work in the city. The CTM festival centres on music and sound but they also collaborate with the concurrent Transmediale festival and its focus on the visual arts.

  The exhibition covered many areas around music, media and the current reality of being creative in this genre. One artist from Mexico, Pedro Reyes presented a large automaton project in the exhibition. Disarm (Mechanized) is a collaboration with Reyes and a media workshop in Mexico city called COCOLAB. The project constructed musical automatons out of guns that were donated through a campaign to rid the Mexican state of Sinaloa of weapons. The idea was to create something positive and useful out of an object of destruction as a commentary on the sale of arms around the world, thus creating an alternate ideology for a society plagued by gun violence.

  Each piece created out of discarded weapons represents a version of a musical instrument. In most cases the visual similarity is evident however all are distinctly unique due in no small part to the source material. The percussion instruments had a metallic resonance but the stringed instruments had a fairly traditional sound and the entire ensemble was able to play individually or together in a harmonic style. It had moments reminiscent of digitized, sampled or electronic mechanical notes which were right at home with a Berliner's ear for the alternative techno or dubstep club soundtrack. I can't quite say it was an award winning composition however that was never the goal of Reyes and his team. Its visually compelling while at the same time opening the subject of weapons in our society for commentary (no to mention recycling as a means of disposal of the problematic objects).

  The over all shape of each automaton is obviously heavily influenced by the source materials and by the traditional musical shape of instruments. Perhaps its just by chance but I can see shapes reminiscent of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical work of the 1970's, most famously used in the Hollywood film Alien. No doubt this band would be at home in Giger's Swiss castle home.

Until next time,
Andy

Surreal exhibition

I recently visited both Museum Berggruen and Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg in Charlottenburg to see two shows. Both collections showcased complimentary work from the early 20th century of experimental and surreal subjects. Artists involved range from the well known, Picaso, Dali, Piranesi, Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray etc too a few lesser known.
  A good portion of the work on display at Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg is actually from the Neue Nationalgaleries collection which is now undergoing renovation until 2019. So its a blend of work from influential artists displayed by theme rather than chronological order.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Max Ernst

Hans Bellmer

  A discovery for me was the work of Hans Bellmer. Apparently he's known for photography but here he has paintings made with Gouache and an element of chance. A very liquid layer of pigment is applied and further added to with faces or figures pulled out of the resulting collection of shapes.

Hans Bellmer

  Here Bellmer has soaked paper (I believe) and pressed it onto a board, massaging it into a collection of folds and wrinkles to begin the shape. On top of this, he has painted white lines to define edges and shadow of the face. Its rather similar to a 3D computer graphic wire frame model that didn't come into existence for another 50 years.
  I saw another artists work, in Vancouver I think, many years ago doing similar looking illustrations with clear cello tape on black which produced a great look. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of that artist however I can't help but think that this may have been inspired by Bellmer.

Hans Bellmer, self portrait

Checkout the shows if you're in Berlin as they have many more interesting works. They're on until August 2016 if not longer.

Until next time,
Andy

Not so silent exhibition at Delphi

I recently went to the "Projektionen" exhibition put on by Art van Demon. Art van Demon is a nonprofit organization founded in Heidelberg in 2007 by art students. Now with a Berlin branch, the group put together this exhibition which coincided with 100 years of the Delphi theatre and film production in Berlin.

 The Delphi silent film theatre is located in the northern district of Berlin called Weißensee. During the 20's this was the ultra hip cultural location of the city. Great stars of the era like Marlene Dietrich and Fritz Lang are said to have been there at this time. The street Gustav-Adolf Straße had a great many silent film theatres and Berliners flocked to experience the new medium. This was also a film making area of Berlin and films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were filmed in the area.
  The cinema survived WWII but damage later caused it to be closed for many decades. Only recently has a new owner come forward with plans to revitalize its former glory as a new centre for the arts.

  It was a treat for me to be in a theatre with such provenience let alone also enjoy a gallery exhibition. The renovations are a work in progress so the theatre still has the feel of having been abandoned. The lights are rather low but well designed to bring out the Art Deco styling from the 20's architecture.

The hall leading to the auditorium with the main lobby behind.

The bar at the back of the main seating area, box seats above.

View from the balcony box seats, on the right is a long seating area with tables.

The Deco design details around the proscenium arch.

Looking back from the orchestra pit.

  Up in the balcony was an installation work by Jae-­Yong Choi, a cloud of plastic strands spread out over some of the original theatre seats. More of his work here.

 During the evening there was a presentation by Matthias Conrady on the subject of film which seemed to focus on zombie films. Unfortunately my German wasn't good enough to follow his thesis but numerous images and clips from various low budget slasher films were shown.

  Work was hung around the theatre and on temporary surfaces in the centre. The work here is from Marlet Heckhoff and Masaki Hagino.

  Part of the evenings events included an animated film that rotoscoped clips from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and isolated movements from a number of scenes. A film by Will Kempkes & David Dommel.

  The final performance of the night was from two dancers, Marisa Akeny and Lukas Steltner in modern dress who created an interpretive dance.

  On the main stage was a striking triptych by Felix Wunderlich. The imagery, painting style and application are great and I look forward to seeing more from this artist.

  Up in the balcony was an installation by Rimma Elbert. A collection of household items in a small film set like presentation that invited the viewer to participate in the scene.

The surface of the sculpture played off the painted walls of the interior of the theatre

  The ladies at the entrance teased about there being a hidden cake in the exhibition. One geometric sculpture hanging on the wall looked like a good candidate and later in the evening it was taken down by the artist Kristiane Kegelmann and promptly carved up for the crowd.

The promise of free cake brought us all running.

  It turns out that Kristiane Kegelmann is an accomplished pastry chef who honed her skills at high end bakeries in Austria. This was quite evident when tasting this delicious sculpture. No packet cake mix here, simply top notch Torts with fruit, chocolate and loads of Marzipan. Vielen dank Kristiane!

And in the grand tradition of the smoke filled clubs and bars of Berlin, the evening ended with everyone puffing away at the bar in a scene reminiscent of an opening night at the cinema a century before.

Until next time, Ciao.
Andy

ArtSpin around Berlin

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

Art, machines, fire and steam.

Recently the creative enclave in Friedrichshain called Urban Spree held a group gallery show and retrospective of a collective called Mutoid Waste Company. The show was a selection of work from 24 international artists with the overall theme of robots, mechanical creations and a little steam punk as well.

Pneumatically operated femme fatale with moving arms, legs, neck, head and hat/hair.

Something going on over there.

  Outside the gallery there were various installations and sculptures from numerous artists. One was the above fire display. It was a cold night so this was a crowd pleaser in a few ways.

  What appears to be a jerry-rigged stage for a fire performance is in fact a mobile fire organ. The stage is covered in stands, lights, cables and pipes. It appeared to be set up to create a light show but instead, flames were erupting from metal stage lights. The flatbed truck was converted into a series of fire mortars that have been tuned to create a musical note. So in the middle is the conductor with a laptop playing notes which are coming from the "lights". Not entirely effective musically but then pioneers need time to tune and develop their creations.

Steam driven kinetic sculpture.

  Next to the musical act was another fire based creation. A metal fire stand with this perfectly round metal sphere resting on top. Quite the creation. It was filled with water and rested on circular rails over the fire. The water inside generated steam which escaped through vales and drove it slowly around the fire ring.

Local flora and fauna.

My guess would be Mutoid created this...

Mechanical....orchestra.

  This was a curious creation. A mass array of electronic relays and mechanical switches all somehow connected and "controlled" to activate in unison for a few minutes of noise and sound. The end of which was signified but an all together last blast. By which time the room was somewhat smokey with the smell of electrical burning. Copious notices on the walls warned of dangerous electrical currents in the various components. Its at this point that you may notice wires draped across the ceiling... hmmm, lets go before this becomes audience participation.

Specimens nailed down for examination.

  Moving inside the main gallery now. Part of the show was dedicated to the amazing group called Mutoid Waste Company. Apparently they started in England in the 80's and patterned themselves on Mad Max and Judge Dredd. They could be considered the European version of Burning Man perhaps. They moved from England with a brief stay in Germany and are still going today and operating in Italy.

  I believe the pictures above shows the groups location in Germany where they had access to a huge industrial site with abandoned vehicles, tanks and a Mig 21 aircraft apparently!

There's a video that will give you some idea of what they were doing back then. This was actually filmed in a huge wasteland in West Berlin in 1989. It was an old train station site but had been destroyed and the site left empty and over grown for decades. Its surreal to see buildings I recognize in the background as its now a cool park to BBQ with friends and a beer in the summer. Keep that in mind while you watch this.

  There's also a short documentary about their time in England hosted by... Hugh Laurie!

  There was a video playing at this gallery event showing raw video that is to be incorporated into a new documentary that will debut in the Berlinale film festival in 2014.

Learning to walk again.

  This was one of a series of crazy compressed air robots that could be operated via an old video game joystick (1 Euro to play). The pneumatics were very basic, either closed or wide open so making this thing walk was more like a series of seizures. Loud, looney and fun though.

Great character in this guy.

  This dog was one of the better small sculptures. The recycled parts seem to be tailor made for this guy. At least a few of the bits are off an Audi of some sort.

That's all for this week
Andy

"Resonant Platinum Records"

Back in the summer I visited a very cool art gallery/performance space inside an old water reservoir made of yellow brink. Its called the Singuhr - Hörgalerie and is amazing inside. For this event a Canadian artist, Gordon Monahan created a sound installation. The tones were generated by 12 discs which hung from metal strings. A small motor on each controlled how much each would vibrate and send differing resonance tones to mix and combine in the space.

 The effect was to walk into a reverberating brick beat box. With the lights tinted red it was a surreal experience. Got some interesting shots...

Opening night.

More info about the space and the artist here:
http://www.singuhr.de/