Mir, Aleksandra – Büro Friedrich

14 September – 13 November 2004

John Baldessari, Monica Bonvicini, Andrea Fraser, Martin Gostner, Eva Grubinger, Erik van Lieshout, Marko Lulic, Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Piper, Tino Sehgal, Annika Ström, Barbara Visser, Franz West.

Curated by Jörg Heiser.

The exhibition is funded by the Berlin Capital Culture Fund, the Mondriaan Foundation, and the art section of Austria’s Bundeskanzleramt.

A common resentment against conceptual art is that it was too didactic. The exhibition brings together work by artists that tackle the problem head-on: they undermine the authority of educational forms yet do not simply renounce knowledge and critique. Humour and role play are the disarming weapons used in performance, video, installation, painting and sculpture. New ways open up beyond the cul-de-sac of a false choice between harmless hermeticism and patronizing gestures.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Adrian Piper’s pivotal piece “Funk Lessons” (1982-1984), a video based on a performance by the artist teaching – a mostly white – audience of students basic and advanced dance routines of funk and soul music. Another classic example is John Baldessari’s “Baldessari Sings LeWitt” of 1972: the artist sings, like a lay preacher, the famous, stern Sentences on Conceptual Art by Sol LeWitt, to the melody of famous songs, among them the US anthem. Or Franz West’s cross between a pedestal and a lectern “Laocoon’s sprimgy head (Lessingmstudy)” of 2002, with a paperback copy of Lessing’s ‘Laokoon, or on the divisions between painting and poetry’ casually placed inside of it. In the book, Lessing plays off sculpture, which according to him was static, against poetry, which was in motion. West counters the assumption with an amorphous, reddish lump mounted with a rusty steel spring onto the top of the lectern.

Works by 13 artists from 6 countries will be on display throughout the whole space of BüroFriedrich from September through November 2004. BüroFriedrich is a non-profit international venue for contemporary art that has already put on several exhibitions dealing with the history and present of conceptualism. Complementing a group of classical pieces (Piper, Baldessari), there are some recent works (Fraser, Grubinger, van Lieshout, West) and some commissioned exclusively for the exhibition (Bonvicini, Gostner, Lulic, Mir, Sehgal, Ström, Visser).

A series of lectures at Münzclub (Münzstr. 23, Berlin Mitte), taking place on Mondays from 13 September, will address the question of didactics in direct exchange with the audience: some of them will take the form of ‘interview’ (Adrian Piper on 8 November, Aleksandra Mir on 13 September), while others will cross over into performance (Barbara Visser, on the opening night, 11 September). A catalogue which will encompass some of the material from these lectures will be published after the exhibition.

Funky Lessons at Münzsalon
Münzstraße 23, 10178 Berlin
admission €4, Members free

Every Monday 8p.m. Jörg Heiser talks to:

13 September Aleksandra Mir (English)
20 September Martin Gostner and Marko Lulic (German)
27 September Kerstin Grether and Klaus Walter “The Funky Lessons of Pop Music” (German)
04 October Thomas Bayrle “The Funky Lessons of Teaching” (German)
11 October Tino Sehgal (German)
18 October ‘No Talk’ – Funky Lessons Surprise Film
25 October Monica Bonvicini (German)
01 November Eva Grubinger and Annika Ström (English)
08 November Adrian Piper (English)

John Baldessari 'Baldessari sings LeWitt', 1971 — John Baldessari ‘Baldessari sings LeWitt’, 1971, 15 min b&w

John Baldessari 'Baldessari sings LeWitt', — John Baldessari ‘Baldessari sings LeWitt’, 1971, 15 min b&w

18 May – 20 Jun 2002

Dave Allen (Glasgow), Michelle Alperin (Los Angeles), Nairy Baghramian (Isfahan), Basserode (Nice), Dominic Eichler (Ballarat) und Ninon Liotet (Chaumont), Omer Fast (Jerusalem), Sofia Hultén (Stockholm), Alisa Anh Kottmair (Baltimore), Joep van Liefland (Utrecht), Liu Anping (Sanyan), Yvette Mattern (San Juan), Hester Oerlemans (Schijndel), Ines Pais (Lissabon), Christine Rebet (Lyon), Anselm Reyle, Egill Sæbjörnsson (Reykjavik), Özcan Sen (Berlin), Chiharu Shiota (Osaka), Kei Takemura (Tokyo), Alexandra Trencséni (Würzburg), Geerten Verheus (Amsterdam), Yin Xiuzhen (Peking), Rommelo Yu (Caloocan City), Dolores Zinny & Juan Maidagan (Rosario)

Here and Now invites artists who live now here in Berlin. As a snapshot of the locality „Berlin”, it asks the question how the city is capable of absorbing and producing difference. The necessity to react to the new situation dominates the works of the artists, that settle down in Berlin for a while. It is not the cultural idiosyncracies that are an issue here, but the demanding processes of location and re-location. The newcomers enact consciously, what the old-establishment has always unconsciously performed – blending in and displacement are universal subjects. The national parameters are dropped without dictating an international style. So the increasing mobility doesn’t necessarily have to lead to the homogenization of culture. For Appadurai, one of the central figures in the debate about cultural difference, the diasporic cultural sphere (in his book „Modernity at Large”) is the motor of present and future culture production. Cultural identity is not thought of as substance, but is being produced with the help of „imagination” in the search for membership, in the formation of group identity. Cultural identity „happens” as a process, most apparent in the moment of orientation in a new environment. A city can work then, when the intellectual and institutional infrastructure is supportive in this search; the task of a metropolis like Berlin could be, to support this without homogenizing. Are the networks – the official and inofficial – open enough to allow diversity and enable the „translation of cultures”?

Here and Now is a snapshot – an encounter of young artists, who practice this translation in different media. The formal preconditions and the structural consequences of these translations are thereby central to their work; so they deal with dramatization, with the „logics of starting-point”, with mobile networks, with the language of opposition, the staging of non-places, with wanting to disappear and the desire to be on the road and part of the „travel culture”.

With Here and Now BüroFriedrich opens its new space. Together with the gallerists of the Jannowitzbrücke there will be an opening with an open end with drinks, food and music. Sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.