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

48 hour Stunden Neukolln

In Berlin in mid June there are a large number of artists who participate in the 48 hour Stunden Neukolln. The area called Neukolln is the hub of the creative centre of Berlin and has a large number of ateliers/studios. For 2 days these studios are open to the public to visit and see each artists work. There were way too many to see in two days so I'm sure I'll find all new work next year. A stand out among the crowd this year was Invalid Robot Factory. This is a collective of finish artists who take discarded materials and create sculptures. The "invalid robots" with walkers were quite well done and did many laps of the main room. Some very fine wood carving skills and mechanical abilities:

Life size wooden sculpture with great detail.

All discarded tree stumps and branches.

 Well worth a visit to their studio to check out the latest in Finnish creativity and make sure to check out the site for the Stunden Neukölln weekend this year.
-Andy

Lange Nacht der Museen (Long night of Museums)

  Back on January 28th, I went to The Long Night of Museums which happens twice a year. About 70 Museum's and galleries are open from 6 pm til 2 am, one ticket covers everything and transport on the U-Bahn, all for 15 Euro's! There are also performances happening at various locations.
  I hadn't been to the National art gallery before so this was an opportunity to get a preview of the collection and decide if it was worth a second look later. Its worth another visit :)

The national gallery entrance has this amazing life size sculpture.

  After that I went to the National Museum which I visited last year. It was busy but not too bad and I found a few items I didn't see last time.

A great sculpt of a stylized Octopus.

I came out of the museum to find a new layer of snow falling.

  Next up was an installation of photographs in an old bunker. Annoyingly they don't want pictures taken so you will be more inclined to buy a book. But those books never do a building justice.

The exterior of this amazing place

The front door. Rather thick walls!

Deeper inside you find a reconstruction of a check-in desk (on the left) and floor guide on the right.

Maze like hallways and rooms.

  Since I had to sneak a few pictures I couldn't get a shot of the exhibition of photographs. They were in light boxes mounted in these small rooms. The black and white photos were on one layer with a colour transparency mounted in front. The effect was similar to a Lenticular 3d image. My photo's aren't the best but it is a great building and worth a visit via the local tour website:
www.berliner-unterwelten.de/

All the hallways look like this, very disorienting.

  Next up was the Museum for German Film and Television. I didn't have time to do this justice so I went through the film side to see if it was worth visiting again. It is.

Life size robot Maria.

Not the originals but a good reproduction of these amazing designs from "Metropolis".

Maquette's of death and the seven deadly sins from "Metropolis".

The death mask of F.W. Murnau.

A fantastic way to suggest the epic scale of the futuristic cityscape, two story tall mirrors:)

  After the film museum, I met some friends at the Museum of Musical Instruments. They were playing the 1926 version of "Faust" by Murnau with live organ accompaniment. That is a stunning film, no surprise as it came a few years after "Nosferatu".
  If you find yourself in Berlin in January or August look for this event, really worth the effort. But have a plan as there is LOTS to see.
www.lange-nacht-der-museen.de

Cheers
Andy

Day trip to Leipzig

  I went on a day trip to Leipzig with a group of photograph buff's recently. We got there about 12 and wandered around, found a good example of Art Nouveau architecture with a very obvious Japanese influence:

 

Nearby is a gallery mall from about 1900 called Specks Hof

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to check this out and it looks like most of the classic details have been removed. This ceiling section was an exception.

Nikolaikirke with great columns.

The most impressive site is the memorial to Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig, Volkerschlachtdenkmal. It is huge...

I walked from the old city centre and you definitely see it from a long way off.

See the people?

Rather humbling sense of scale and loss when you think of all who died to make this necessary.

With all this stone it feels like the Mines of Moria and here's Gimli.

Walking into the interior crypt of this massive monument felt a bit like a set from an Indiana Jones film or perhaps Dune.

No matter where you go in Europe, somethings always being cleaned.

I expected Salah to poke his head out and quip about the tomb full of "asp's"

If you are only slightly claustrophobic, DON'T climb the spiral staircase.

Great doors in this place.

Almost at the top

  Once at the very top you can't see any of the monument just a great view of the city, a nearby castle and Nuclear power station belching out steam. I forgot to stretch out and hang the camera over the edge to see if I could see these great figures from the top down. Next time.

Andy