Global Alien

The past week has been staggered and rather busy. Staggered, because we have resorted back to the American clock while working late nights on a collaborative grant proposal and staying awake to watch live feeds of the democratic debates. The project proposal was finished and submitted this morning, if accepted we may embark on a cross-country U.S. tour to produce a book called 'Live/Work: by artists, for artists' incorporating on-location photography and editorial writings.



WH, an artist that S knows from Skowhegan, arrived in Berlin last week to spend the next month working on two projects funded by recent grants he was awarded. He came to Berlin because of his interest in German Expressionist films , he creates videos that complicate the how these films portray race through black-face, savages, and minstrels. He came over for curry dinner the other night and we discussed our feelings of displacement and where to relocate after Germany, a topic that has influenced us to write a book, and asked his opinion about the question 'New York vs. anywhere else'? Tonight we may attend a screening of Metropolis with him at Babylonia where the music score will be performed by a live orchestra.

We all attended an opening at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien on friday called 'GlobalAlien', which is also the name of the artist collective exhibiting work in the show. Above is a photo of S attempting to interact with one of the works in the show. This piece consisted of a box-like room, where you enter into a hall of mirrors built around a Theremin, a musical instrument that responds to your presence. The endless repetition of yourself as an image and the feedback noise of the Threremin seemed to allude to the self-conscious experience of individuals living in foreign cultures. Almost more poignant was the fact that when we entered the piece it was not responding, a total lack of communication. (It was working for the Germans ahead of us?) There were a few sculptures in the exhibition and an anti-branding campaign piece where you could iron phrases on to the clothes you were wearing. Most of the show consisted of videos and performance, two processes that lend themselves to this culture on the move. When you pack your bags all you need to remember to bring is your body and a camera.

Visiting the exhibition it also occurred to me that Global Alien was an inclusive theme, and that I held a position in this culture. Instead of being the other 'other' (the group of people implicated as 'not global aliens'), I was the 'other'. So be it that we are resident aliens (and probably not the political rallying point of this conversation), but it was then that I realized that I was part of a group of aliens. However, this did not create a sense of commraderie. Being a foreigner in Berlin is as close as you can get to being a 'majority minority' as anywhere in Germany, like the demographic groups in Texas whose votes have become the recent focus of presidential campaigns.