Many of our new Danish friends put together a show called, "The Space Convention", which took place in a open commercial space donated to them for 2 months by a Danish real estate company. The opening was Friday the 18th and we headed over there about 8pm. Since it was their own show, the opening lasted until after midnight and then we continued at a local bar until about 3am...making it more like an opening/party.
The Space Convention
As you can see from this pic that one of the artists sent out, the space was very nice, pretty large...and (coming from SF) unbelievably free. From those back windows you can look out onto the Spree. The show was good and it was nice to have so much time to talk to all the artists about their work. All of the people in the show are friends in the same Danish art school (one person graduated last year and the rest graduate this summer). The title/theme was "a forum where the participating artists exchange concepts on space and present their notion of understanding space."
The artists were: Mika Andersen, Jens Axel Beck, Morten Espersen, Nils Grarup, Morten Kaer, Claus Larsen, Simon Lindhardt, Karen Petersen, Louise Schrader, and Kirstine Stroemberg.
Many of these artists are getting ready to head over to San Francisco for the final installment of the Deadpan Exchange exhibition. The opening with be Friday, Feb. 8th at the Lab and if you are in SF you should stop by to check it out.
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All week I have had German class and that has still been pretty fun. Last week we learned vocabulary used in government forms (like single, married, first and last name, etc.) and general things people have in their houses (lamps, windows, chairs, etc.) and how to ask people things like, "Do you have children?" and "Are you married?". This week we have been learning food related vocabulary and about how to order in restaurants.
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On Thursday, R and I went to check out a studio space (which was actually just a 3 room apartment) in Wedding, an area of town northwest of the Mitte. I took this pic of "Gang Wear". I think the picture speaks for itself...but I will add that the sign on the door says 'La Familia' in some sort of old English font someone might have tattooed on their abdomen.
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We have been watching a lot of Adam Curtis documentaries. R and I had seen 'Century of the Self' awhile back, but in the last week we have also watched a 6-part series called 'Pandora's Box' and the newest, a 3-part series, called 'The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom' (2007). These two series really could go together, with the newer/latter picking up where the former left off. 'Pandora's Box' covers the Cold War and focuses largely on the Soviet Union, the USA, and Britain. 'The Trap' focuses on how the ideas of freedom developed during the Cold War are (still) effecting us today. I really like these documentaries because they seem to offer a larger picture than most attempts to describe our current or recent past situations. They also do not favor the 'right' or the 'left' but are critical in a more general and overarching way...which can rarely be said of anything in our current, extremely polarized political environment.
Also, Curtis' style of documentary relies entirely on montaged imagery from the period he is discussing, with commentary written and narrated himself. The result is a surprisingly entertaining AND insightful combination of primary image sources narrated with a history of the theoretical context in which they were created. He basically tracks the ways economic, political, and psychological theories have developed throughout the last century and what has resulted when they become dominant ideology...many times paradoxically with the opposite kinds of results that were intended or desired. If this sounds vague...it is because Curtis has an amazing ability to be very specific when talking about a very big picture. Watch some if you get the chance...and then let me know what you think because I would love to discuss these films further.
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Berlin: Sunday, Jan. 27th at 4:07pm
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
A Quick Update on what has been going on for the last week and a half
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In order to try and illuminate my vague posting about Curtis I found this quote from an interview with him that offers an example of something discussed in the third part of 'The Trap' series.
"The thing that I find fascinating about the whole Iraq venture, which is really what I look at in the last film, is the way that they went into Baghdad with an economic plan which basically said that you get rid of all the elitist institutions that have ruled this society and spontaneously then people will rise up as these individuals in the marketplace. That was the idea, they had no other idea, and that's a very narrow idea of freedom...a narrow economic idea of freedom which has no meaning or purpose if you are a complicated society divided along nationalist religious and political religious lines."
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