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

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