Tag: Group exhibition

Standort Berlin, Places to Stay #2+X (Strange Fruit)

18 April through 10 May: Xu Tan (VR China), (continuing: Johan Grimonprez , David Powell, Sean Dower, Purple).

Traffic Jam, part 4 (through 25 May) Lee Bull (Korea)

The extensive installation of Xu Tan added another layer to the pre-existing presentation at BüroFriedrich. With six series of projected slides, video screenings and objects of papier-mâché and real fruit spread throughout, this work discretely imbued the ongoing exhibition with imagery from contemporary urban life in China. Scenes of high-tech urban development were confronted with low-key esthetics of everyday life. His installation forced a dialogue with the works installed earlier by other artists.

The video library ‘Dorothy doesn’t Live here Anymore’ was enlarged by a constant addition of films and reading material. In dialogue with Johan Grimonprez, the video library was opened for the addition of films or books by the public, which began to play an increasingly active part in using and supplementing the proposed archive.

Discussion:

20 April – Under the title ‘The Making of the Video library’, Johan Grimonprez and his partner, Herman Asselberghs, introduced and discussed the work with the public.

Standort Berlin, Places to Stay #2+

21 March through 20 May: Sean Dower (GB), special guest: Purple (Number One) (F),

(continuing: Johan Grimonprez, David Powell).

Traffic Jam, part 3 (through 18 April) Liew Kung Yu (Malaysia).

As a new work in the exhibition, Sean Dower’s ‘Clothes Recycling Video’ played on questions of identity and above all the recycling culture of the second-hand clothing hype. Dressing culture is also the subject of special guests, Purple Institute, from Paris. Almost unknown in Berlin, the magazine was presented in Berlin for the first time as ‘Purple Number One’. The summer issue of the artists’ magazine was launched in a redesign: the previously published single issues ‘purple prose,’ ‘purple fashion,’ ‘purple fiction’ and ‘purple sexe’ now came in one volume provocatively stating the indivisibility of lifestyle, sexual preference and imagination.

Standort Berlin, Places to Stay #2

24 Januari – 10 May 1998

24 January: opening guest: Mo (D), artists: (through 20 March) Joëlle Tuerlinckx (B), Marijke van Warmerdam (NL), (through 20 May) Johan Grimonprez (B), David Powell (GB).
‘Traffic Jam,’ billboard project: part 1 (through 14 February) Zhou Tiehai (VR China); part 2 (through 20 March) Xu Tan (VR China).

In the second part of ‘Standort Berlin – Places to Stay,’ Johan Grimonprez (B) realized the installation ‘Dorothy doesn’t Live here Anymore,’ a videothek/library as an homage to

television culture. It offered visitors a vast variety of home-copied VHS tapes and related reading. Amongst a specific selection of documentaries and feature films, his pseudo-documentary ‘Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y’ was on view in Berlin for the first time. Fresh coffee and cookies provided a cosy living room atmosphere for more than 100 days.

The new video loop, ‘Another Planet,’ realized for BüroFriedrich by Marijke van Warmerdam, was installed at the end of the corridor – a reference to an eternally repeated notion of the end (of all films). As a direct transition from language into image and the transformation of abstraction into pictorial perception, this work formed an unexpected chain between the videos in Johan Grimonprez videothek and Joëlle Tuerlinckx light installation. Joëlle Tuerlinckx made elementary, sensitive interventions in the show as well as in the office practice. Her flashlights installation, ‘Untitled,’ transformed the whole building temporarily into a transparent structure of intense light. The work ‘Büroarbeiten – Arbeits-notizen’ reflected on the activities in the Büro.

‘Clubscrew,’ an installation with shoes, handbags and bricks by David Powell was his

personal, funny, bizarre, at times destructive comment on a well-known everyday life situation – the club.

Standort Berlin, Places to Stay #1

1 November 1997 – 15 Januari 1998

1 November, 00.00, ‘Floppy on Halloween,’ the opening of BüroFriedrich by Dick Donkey’s Dawn, a live performance by Sean Dower (UK), Oliver Hangl (A), Georgina Starr (UK).

17.00: opening exhibition ‘Standort Berlin, Places to Stay’ – opening guest: Cookies, artists: (through 16 December) Rineke Dijkstra (NL); (through 18 January) Daniele Buetti (CH), Alicia Framis (E), Aernout Mik (NL), Carsten Höller (D), Georgina Starr (GB); special guests Zapp Magazine (NL) and Assaf Etiel (IS).

The midnight music performance of ’Floppy on Halloween‘ showed how the artists practice the contemporary position of crossover between art and popmusic. The opening event took place during the art fair ‘Art Forum Berlin.’

The accent on popular aspects of culture was continued in this and other episodes of ‘Standort Berlin, places to stay.’ Georgina Starr’s installation was a vocal interpretation of Charles Manson’s poem ‘Eyes of a Dreamer.’ Rineke Dijkstra’s video projections, ‘The Buzz Club’ and ‘Mystery World’ show confronting portraits of teenagers dancing in clubs in Holland and England. Daniele Buetti’s work shows how identity and public appearance are used in our lifestyle-oriented culture by the public relation strategies of the industry; in his work, the names of multi-nationals appear as tattoos on parts of the human body printed on wall-paper that decorated the walls of one of Büro-Friedrich’s rooms. Conventions of beauty and underlying identity were the issues, whereas the ‘Pealove Room’ by Carsten Höller (a room to have sex in, under influence of drugs, without touching the floor) proposed a playground furnished for a maximum of sensorial experience.

The installation of Aernout Mik transformed the office into an ambiguous space of observation: the viewer was confronted with a situation in which the video projection ‘Kitchen’ – a couple of old men involved in a kind of boxing match – merged with the daily activities in the office. At the exhibition opening, this aspect was intensified by a live act of two people, who separated themselves in a private corner in the office. ‘Zapp Productions’, an innovative production platform based in Amsterdam, were also invited to present their video magazine ‘Zapp’. They showed unpublished video recordings of exhibitions of artist like Mariko Mori, Peter Land, Kirsten Mosher as well as a tape of Arnoud Holleman recorded in an urban situation, namely, the closed world of a group of homeless people.

Outside BüroFriedrich, a billboard of Alicia Framis was created as a part of the work ´blood friendship´. This billboard image showed in public the intimate act of making friendship between two people. In a back part of the building Assaf Etiel installed ´Paparazzi´s´, an extension of ´Sniper´, an art/club-oriented meeting point in Berlin-Mitte.