as part of residency 108’s artist in residence program, this month i will be realizing an original series of works incorporating the 108 acres as both a starting point and installation site.
while researching and interacting with the landscape and wildlife of the property, i will be documenting my process and work online here.
this project is ongoing from 30 april – 28 may.
this performance took place on 16 may, en route to the deutsche zentralbücherei für blinde from the leipzig hauptbahnhof.
roughly three million dandelion seeds were gathered in goethe’s park an der ilm. the seeds were relocated to a suitcase and then transported to leipzig by train. after carrying the suitcase to the entrance of the deutsche zentralbücherei für blinde [german central library for the blind], the suitcase was opened and the seeds handed out personally as ‘post’ to passing pedestrians.
as dandelion plants reportedly have medicinal properties which combat memory loss and decrease the effects of dementia, the spreading of these seeds by way of this intimate, person-to-person method is intended to cure the repeating spells of memory loss human history continues to experience.
about aera efas
this work is an on-site installation on a piece of land in jacksonville, texas, a location harboring increasing anti-immigration sentiment in the last several years.
this structure creates an enclosed space for a chosen subject; the area immediately beneath it is protected from all harmful elements in its surrounding environment.
as sunlight, additional nutrients, gasses necessary for plant life and new seeds are also stopped from entering the secured area, the natural result is a stagnation, decline and eventual decay of the life being contained.
life cannot exist without risk.
more about aera efas.
wishing a wonderful new lunar new year to you and your loved ones, with all the playfulness, sociability and creative energy the monkey has to offer.
work by fellow artists based in Shanghai will be shown in the first whywhy art group exhibition opening this weekend. community hospital is housed in shanghai’s newest art space – a former chinese medical clinic in jing an district.
the show explores, defines and even tempts to “cure” the various matters tackled by participating artists in the work on display within the walls of the former medical facility.
feautured work by artists abby robinson [us], ash hempsall [uk], christian chambenoit [fr], christian de laubadère [fr], christian demaitre [be], daniele mattioli[it], girolamo marri [it], joyce rohrmoser [at], konstantin bayer[de], *llnd [fr], maya kramer [us], monika lin [us], pascale pollier[be], piers secunda [uk], roland darjes [de], susanne junker [de], tom lee petterson [us], vilnis ausinš [lv], wu yandan [cn], zane mellupe [lv].
community hospital runs from 5 september – 10 october, 2015.
work by susanne junker.
work by vilnis ausinš
work by abby robinson.
work by christophe demaitre.
the community hospital concept was created and curated by zane mellupe.
for more, see the whywhyart website.
grateful and very excited to officially be located now in a new stellar workspace.
thanks to enklave berlin for allowing me to join their creative community housed inside this lovely brick building deep in the heart of neukölln.
email for studio visits, directions.
fellow artist from Shanghai days, sergey balovin brings his talent and energy to brussels this afternoon for an experimental happening presented as part of THE STROKE OF A PEN group exhibition during it’s last week at ifa gallery.
sergey has spent the last few years traveling around the world engrossed in his project, IN KIND EXCHANGE.
in a commitment to sustain all his daily needs while strictly avoiding monetary transactions, he has been able to survive exclusively through goods exchanged with people that are excited to trade tangible, useful things to him for beautiful, customized portraits he makes on site.
sergey was trained classically as a painter in russia before setting out on the path he navigates now, as an artist with no use for a monetary system.
I recommend visiting if you are in Brussels then.
wishing you a phenomenal new lunar year filled with all the inspiration, tranquility and graceful progress the year of the goat has to offer!
新年快乐!
work by alec von bargen
taking a short break from the berlin winter and dropping back into shanghai briefly: i will be participating as one of the artists in residence at the swatch art peace hotel until 22 january, 2015.
although the time will go by too quickly, it is wonderful to be back in the mainland working alongside the other 17 artists here on the bund again after my initial residency here in 2011.
the other current fellow artists in residence include alexandre and john gailla, elena monzo, dominique othenin-girard, yuan jinhua, chiara luzzana, sofia ortiz, zhu ye, sandro del pistoia, juliana ong, george van wetering, bao lixin, jovanna tosello, son kwang-ju, maria pazcontreras buzeta, phillip reed, and heidi bryce.
it’s so refreshing to see how many positive changes have happened since i was last working in this building three years ago. looking very forward to this time of heavy creative focus while working in an old and much-loved home.
thank you to everyone that came to blo atelier’s open studio event as part of lange nacht de bilder last thursday and friday: it was a lot of fun.
rumors have surfaced of another open studio event to happen here soon… more details on this and more upcoming blo events can be found on their website here.
as part of lange nacht derbilder 2014 – hosting various project spaces, galleries and artist studios based in the lichtenberg district – blo atelier presents performances, workshops and audio + visual work by its artists.
claudia clemens | jorge lequite | johannes bucholtz | almut muller | kathryn gohmert | feryel atek | nancy gorlach | thomas knoof | till gruhl | claudia hirschberger | daniel rabe | luz schewinski | maria fernandez verdeja | sabine alex | conni saaid rabe | constance schrall | nils bornemann | michi sheffler | hana el degham | johnny kortlever | irina novarese
for more information about lange nacht de bilder 2014, blo atelier and its artists, please visit the blo atelier website or the facebook page.
it would be great to see you there.
thurs – fri, 6 – 7 nov | 18:00 – 24:00
kaskelstraße 55, 10317, berlin – lichtenberg
s7/s5 nöldnerplatz
images below from the new studio space at BLO ateliers, berlin! see the BLO website for more info on the facilities and other artists based in this post-industrial wonderland. more details coming soon about our upcoming open studio event on 7 november. stay tuned to this blog for more information or subscribe to my newsletter here for updates closer to the date.
just in case you wanted to know a bit more about the other six artists I’m spending nearly every waking minute collaborating with during these last several weeks – you can read more about them and their brilliant work now on the AFFECT website.
[josé cori]:
josé cori was born in freiburg, germany in 1989. he studied both visual arts and aesthetic at pontificia universidad católica de chile, in chile [2008-2013]. he focuses mainly on installation and painting, and now lives and works in berlin.
[rune bosse:]
[bio-poem] if i was a plant, in the summer of 1987. sprouting between the forest and the beach, on southern zealand in denmark. then i would grow, become interested in growing. later in life through being moved and moving, collect nourishment from different soils and places, play with, and on, the different grounds. i would learn and seek inspiration in my natural surroundings. it would be a trigger in my work. both thru questioning the world, how is it put together? and the possibilities of assembling it in new ways. I often would find myself confused and not sure of where i was going, then locating the starting point or origin, would make it possible to create a line and see a connection, it would give me direction knowing the nature of things. maybe from two thousand and nine till eleven putting my roots in the royal danish academy of fine arts and afterwards taking part two and a half year in the institute for spatial experiments lead by olafur eliasson in berlin. still playing with things that grow.
[kathryn gohmert:]
kathryn Gohmert [1983] is from the united states. she received her ba in art from the university of texas at austin before relocating to the uk, then china. in the last six years, while based mainly in shanghai, she has been working throughout china in a succession of studio spaces that include the songzhuang artist village in beijing and 696 weihai lu in shanghai. her range of mediums now include illustration, video, mixed media, installation and performance art. She is currently based in berlin.
[jol thomson:]
despite years of university educations, along with all the accrued debts, he still cannot specifically name more than five types of trees [of which he assumes there must be many many others]. and while preferring not to align himself with a specific nation, he anyways profusely enjoys maple syrup and “the great outdoors,” though not enough to know the systematic classifications or taxa of the types of things that might be “out there.” while waisting his time reading and thinking about things he could never fully comprehend, he becomes occasionally bored and resorts to making sounds into volumes, rhythms and patterns – or he goes swimming – or he just stares off into deep space. . . recently, upon trying to decide whether his capacity to remember was getting better or not, he realized he simply couldn’t recall how it was in the past anyways, quickly forgot the whole endeavour, and got to the task of rearranging a collection of favourite stones kept on and around his working table.
aviv benn:
aviv benn [b.1988,] is a tel-aviv based artist. through direct, expressive paintings and while using a scope of visual language ranging from street to folk art, aviv explores in her work imagery from classical painting and folk art – referencing often the symbols of skulls, masks and self portraits – alongside the investigation of “inner worlds,” as can be seen most recently in her latest series, dealing with the concept of death anxiety. benn’s thick oil paintings often combine “direct” materials primarily used in street art – xerox transfers, black and white prints and [of course] spray paint. aviv holds a bfa from the bezalel academy of arts and design in jerusalem, where she graduated with honors in 2013. she is mainly based in tel-aviv and jerusalem.
[alice bucknell:]
alice bucknell is a visual artist, writer, researcher and thinker based in chicago, il. her practice is located at the intersection of art, aesthetics, and social spaces. her anthropological research takes up the social authority of public/installation art and the production of art spaces [i.e. artist collectives] in the urban environment as a platform for both knowledge production and sharing. as a visual artist she considers topics of memory and commemoration; the phenomena of nostalgia, embodiment, and affect; in addition to the aesthetics of atmosphere and [be]longing. She considers her art practice to be an additional form of fieldwork. she is currently investigating the role of contemporary art in constructing new narratives of social experience within both the built and imaginary environments of detroit and berlin, paying particular attention to the ways in which visual and performance artists can [re]activate the space and politics of emptiness in the modern cityscape. this experiential-experimental project, taking the form of both a publication [upcoming, 2015] and a website, also explores the ways in which abandonment and urban voids have in turn become aestheticized; the relationship between history, fantasy, memory; and the productive and hazardous possibilities that shape these changing social, spatial, and visual dialogues.
[daniel almgrenrecén:]
daniel is working as choreographer, performer, movement coach, workshop facilitator and project manager. he is systematically problematising choreography as creative practice by looking in to the fields of education, management, architecture and design thinking. daniel holds a ba in choreography from sndo at the amsterdam school of the arts and has also studied theology and drama. since 2011 he is through his work exploring the notions of home that have so far resulted in the experiential works native realm in 2012 and near that place in 2013.
our first publication, trial-by-fire-style.
all the joys and frustrations of the book-making process performed in a single day.
this “book sprint” project was facilitated by john holten, co-founder of berlin-based publishers, broken dimanche press. see more of john’s work here.
the birth of a book in images:
This entry was posted in related, workand tagged on August 11, 2014.--
the idea behind the skill exchange workshop, led this weekend by the individual artists collectively making up AFFECT’s current artists-in-residence group, was that each artist had a very specific technique / methodology which had been purposefully developed in their life, becoming fine-honed to the point of near superpower level.
with the ultimate design of passing on unusual skills to strangers and thereby empowering them, each artist devised the details of the specific workshop they felt most masterful and capable in leading.
topics included how to successfully avoid conversation on airplanes, traveling backwards at top speed, composing haikus, nordic rope-tying techniques [survival], how to successfully avoid paying rent, the art of climbing trees like a ninja assassin, and the ancient dutch technique of expertly cloning plants.
my tree-climbing workshop.
my tree-climbing workshop.
my tree-climbing workshop.
plant-cloning workshop by rune bosse.
haiku-writing workshop by jose cori.
how to avoid conversations on airplanes by alice bucknall.
it’s today! hope to see you, 6 – 9 pm, at agora for the AFFECT module ii SKILL EXCHANGE workshop. join us this gorgeous saturday afternoon to learn how to rescue people from drowning, climb trees, avoid paying rent, clone your plants and more…
see our listing on artberlin.de here for more information.
the second edition of AFFECT: agora’s program for collaborative artistic practices is pleased to invite you to partake in the first collective event developed by the current artists in residence: alice bucknell [us], aviv benn [il], daniel almgrenrecén [se], josé cori [de], jol thomson [us], kathryn gohmert [us], rune bosse [dk].
right at the beginning of the “contextualizing” phase of the program, facilitated by diego agulló, the recently arrived participants have been learning from one another specialized skills, abilities and super powers — such as the world famous texan tree-climbing technique, how not to pay your rent, northern rope survival – just to name a few…
on the occasion of “AFFECT PRESENTS,” an event format developed by agora to celebrate the presence of their new residents, the artists decided to extend the dynamics of this introductory phase of the program and share it with an open audience in a series of short workshops accompanied by virgin smoothies.
join us in a day of mutual exploration and skill exchange.
when: saturday, 26th july
time: 6 – 9 pm
where: agora collective
mittelweg 50, berlin-neukölln
[AFFECT is conceptualized by agora collective e.v. and module ii is moderated by fotini lazaridou hatzigoga, facilitated by diego agulló, sarah lewis, yves scherer, john holten, judith lavagna and coordinated by paz ponce.]
www.agoracollective.org/affect
feel free to join & share the event on facebook here.
this is a great interview with the the talented moderator of our current AFFECT module ii project, fotini lazaridou, [who has also worked with projects in china off and on for the last few years].
we’ve had a productive day here in the workspace of AFFECT’s top floor full of creative discourse, multi-disciplianry inspiration, and the early developments of the concept and structure behind what will be some spectacular final work.
also being undertaken at the moment is the collective formation and release of two publications, under the brilliant guidance of john holten from renegade publishers, broken dimanche press.
see the photo documentation below for proof that artists [and their egos] from different disciplines and countries are not only able to work together within a shared space, but even live to tell about it … while producing something nice along the way.
more is coming soon. in the meantime, please enjoy this ridiculously short video of performance artist, daniel almgrenrecén, helping us warm up between sessions.
also be sure to take a look at the FUEL ARTISTIC EXCHANGE project if you haven’t yet [20% there already].
Dance: Daniel AlmgrenRecén, Melba Kolektyw (Marysia Stokłosa, Ilona Trybuła, Rafał Dziemidok) Music: DJ Lenar Festival Ad Libitum + SIC!l 23.Oct.2011 @ Labor...
I created this video with the YouTube Video Editor (http://www.youtube.com/editor)