Our first meeting was with Ariane Műller director and founder of Starship Magazine which states on its website that is will accompany the hundred years of mankind to 2098. She spoke to us about Starship’s conception in 1998 and its early operation. The magazine is produced on an ad hoc basis when funding is available. They also produce exhibitions such as The Like of It Now Happens, Excess and sustainability at Silverman Gallery in San Fransisco and have published other books such as Picture a Moon Shining in the Sky, a conversation with the German artist Martin Kippenberger.
We then met with Anette Schafer and Miles Chalcraft co-directors of Trampoline based in Berlin and Nottingham, UK. Trampoline programmes work at the intersection performance and technology. Set up in 1998 they spoke about the changing approaches to curatorial selection of work to the present day. They told us about First Play Berlin a festival that featured work using mobile and gaming technology and performative practice and about the Radiator Festival. Future projects include the organisation of a residency in rural Germany for 10 artists from visual art and performative backgrounds.
After a quick lunch and a stopping off to see the resident bear in the nearby park we visited artist Martin Kaltwasser in the Hansapark area which consists of a series of blocks of flats designed by Walter Gropius. Martin Kaltwasser, who collaborates with Folke Kőbberling told us about their ongoing project Ressource Stadt – City as a Resource: One Man’s Trash is another Man’s Treasure. Using recycled materials they build architectural constructs, often in collaboration with the public to stimulate dialogue around architecture, sustainable living and migration. They will soon be featured in Wysing Arts programme.
After this meeting we took taxis and drove through the Tiergarten, past the Siegesaule (Goddess of Victory statue as featured in Wim Wenders Wings of Desire) to the Skulpturenpark, the forth Berlin Biennial venue. The Skulturenpark, a piece of urban wasteland where the Berlin Wall once cut through, was first used as an art-space by a collective of five artists KUNSTrePUBLIK e.V in 2006. Ironically they named the area the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum which meets neither with one’s expectations of a kempt parkland nor with one’s expectation of public or traditional sculpture.
Our final meeting of the day was with Tanya Leighton for a drink at the Ballhaus (Ballroom) on Augustraße. Tanya Leighton is soon to open her own commercial gallery in the old West Berlin near the shopping area of the Kufurstendam. She spoke to us about the art market in Berlin, the challenges of setting up one’s own gallery and how she selected the artists that she would represent. She also told us about some of her previous projects such as a film programme of Pop Cinema screened at the ICA and Tate and her previous posts at the Whitney Museum, ICA – Pennsylvania and Dundee Contemporary Art.
Later that evening a few of us went to The Production Unit’s reading group (a collective based in Berlin comprised of artists engaged in discussion on the crossover of politics and aesthetics). The discussion was focussed around a text by geographer David Harvey who has been delivering seminars in New York on Marx’s Capital. The discussion was centred around the art market, the economy and its positioning to politically engaged practice, the discussion was interspersed with an interval featuring popular music about money.
Afterwards – we joined the rest of the group for traditional German Schnizel.
2 comments:
Ariane Muller & Starship Magazine… I liked how a project could be so flexible. She even had an ad-hoc way of talking about it flitting between current and past projects and the state of the city… it all seemed to suit the way Berlin is.
Visiting the area Martin Kaltwasser lived in was interesting enough but I found his work fascinating too. He’s very much concerned with political, climate, green and social issues and this can lead to dreadful work in less skill practitioners. It brought to mind though how one would curate such an artist? With hindsight I would of liked to ask him his experience of working alongside curators and what roles they had played on past projects.
For me the Skulpturenpark was the most successful venue of the Biennial. I enjoyed the way it broke down what a public art space could be in a way that would be difficult in the U.K. what with our Health&Safety executive. I liked the way that members of the public were sort of adding to the show by stacking things up here and there or trying thinks together. It had the feeling of being a live performance space… an ongoing event. It also strangely felt like it was after the event as well… by that I mean it felt like a music festival ground that had the remnants of shows. The trampled grass, scaffold sculpture and discordant music in the background. Loved that Susan Hiller piece. I didn’t like the video piece about the love affair with the Berlin wall. I could see why the piece was there at this venue but maybe it was the way it was shown that made it feel like it had been crow barred in there… forced upon the sculpture park. It was unbearably hot in there too.
I didn’t have schnitzel… I had gammon and sauerkraut. Yum.
My favourite day! We started off with Ariane Mueller at Starship magazine. I really enjoyed having the chance to visit this amazing semi-circle shaped block of flats hanging over the centre of Kreuzberg and to hear about the various communities that exist in parallel there. The Starship output seems to work because of the strength of the group behind it who came across as well-read, laid-back, witty and mysterious.
Next was Trampoline. I was fascinated to hear about their ways of working, in particular their plans to transport a group of dancers/moving image artists to a countryside retreat this summer and have arranged to interview them about this project and the possibilities for new media in the rural sphere when I return to Berlin in November.
Then Martin Kaltwasser, which I was really excited about because I felt like I was being introduced to a new Thomas Hirschhorn, whom I have been obsessed with for ages. Shame about the horrifically embarrassing moment when my pronunciation of ‘Hirschhorn’ was so bad he didn’t recognise it! I loved these projects and was thrilled with our free books. I liked how Kaltwasser not only included his family in his projects. I would have liked to have met the rest of the gang. For those of you who were equally enamoured, remember he is at Wysing Arts Centre in rural Cambridgshire this summer. http://www.wysingartscentre.org/
After this we went to the Skulpturenpark. This reminded me of a project I wrote about in Nottingham in which a group of artists explored an urban brownfield site accompanied by a local botanist. The asphalt floor at KW Kunstwerk came to mind again as we traipsed around the wasteland which was, by UK standards, probably unsafe and definitely no white cube. The curator, I felt, gently mocked us as we explored the site, going “is that pipe art?” and “are those bits of coloured plastic something?”… It undermined the whole process of art-viewing and art-experts, to an extent, which I thought was uncharacteristically fun of the Biennial. I was tickled by cruel visions of the international art set trying to negotiate the potholes and sand dunes at the opening! Finally, I loved that film about the lady in love with the Berlin wall. Terrifying, bizarre and hilarious I want to watch it again!
Then we met Tanya Leighton for a (well-earned) drink at the beautiful ballroom garden down the road from KW Kunstwerk. I was struck by the fact that Tanya seemed to have no ‘early career’ to speak of, in that she seemed to have done one super thing after another since Glasgow School of Art. Let’s hope Vanessa follows in her footsteps eh? Her publications in particular were beautifully produced- remember that fold-out one? Hopefully I will get involved with her newly-opened gallery in November so I will report back to you all then.
My schnitzel was the bomb.
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