Büro für Sozial-Politische Raumfahrt
- a STATE of mind

press release

Between February 11th and February 24th, the rooms of Sparwasser HQ serve as a public office for dialog and investigation. The topics of our inquiry are social and political methods and practices within the discourse of art production. We seek to reveal different national power structures that produce cultural, as well as capitalist, values. We aim to unwrap ideas of territorial democracy and the inability to adjust to globalization and the individual. How are communities, language, democracy, and otherness (the alienation of cultural diversity) part of national power structures? What meanings are embodied by the artistic and aesthetic production of values? To what extent can these values be used to display cultural diversity and to gain democratic equality?

During the initial, fourteen-day discussion period, we bring together five different art practices, each employing different working methods within the social-political field, to discuss artistic and political discourse and contexts. Each day, the dialog will change and thus renew our perspective. We invite the public to participate in our informal exchange. A meeting room, also containing a small library, will be open for the public during normal hours. Evenings, guests are invited to discuss specific topics; this dialog will be documented (video, still, tape, text).

Culture Palace, a multi-user website, is open for exchange daily from 4 to 5 pm.
Access at http://www.sparwasserhq.de
Due to technical problems, Culture Palace is an email discussion forum, not a chat room - Emails will be answered as they arrive to mail@sparwasserhq.de

Material documentation is available for viewing February 25. - March 9,
at Sparwasser HQ, Torstrasse 161, Berlin Mitte.

March 8. and 9., the final weekend, the exhibition will be open until 11 pm, in order for the audience/participants to share and discuss final result of the project.

Transnationale Republik, vertreten durch:
Jakob Schlandt (TR), Tammo Rist (TR), Jakob Zoche (TR), Johannes Raether
(TR),...

Die Globalisierung wird vorangetrieben von den "global players": global handelnden Wirtschaftsunternehmen, die längst schon wie transnationale Supermächte handeln und so die Wirkungsmöglichkeiten der althergebrachten Nationen einengen.

Wer jedoch verteidigt heute unsere globalen Bürgerrechte? Können Nationen überhaupt transnational handeln, oder blockieren sie sich vielmehr gegenseitig? Ist das klassische Modell der Gewaltenteilung überholt, müsste die globale "vierte Gewalt" des Geldes nicht besser berücksichtigt werden? Entspricht die geopolitische Einteilung der Menschen in Nationen unserer Zeit? Sollten wir nicht von Coca-Cola, Shell und Microsoft lernen, wie Interessen global durchgesetzt werden können?

Diese Fragen führten zur Gründung der Ersten Transnationalen Republik, deren Bürgern nicht eine zufällige Ähnlichkeit ihres Geburtsort von Wichtigkeit ist, sondern ihre Ähnlichkeit im Geiste und ihr Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl.

CUDI Statement
(Lise Skou (DK) Lasse Lau (DK))

Who we are.
CUDI is a Centre of Urbanity, Dialogue and Information run by two artists.
CUDI is established in an apartment in Vollsmose, Odense, in the summer of 2000. Vollsmose is bounded on the outskirt of the city and has a multi cultural climate - 60% of the 10.000 inhabitants have a foreign ethnic background, divided between 78 different nationalities.
The apartment is our private home and the residence of visiting artists but it also houses various exhibitions and art projects. Furthermore the apartment will form a framework for talks, films, evenings of story-telling and other social activities.
CUDI works as a platform for development of ideas, art projects and exhibitions within sociality, contemporary art and -culture. CUDI deliberately operates in the cross field between art, architecture and social activities, acknowledging the fact that contemporary art, society, shaping of space and critical reflection today make a coherent field of meaning.
A common denominator for CUDI's multifarious projects is to influence the
haping of public spaces while enthusiastically seeking a dialogue with the community in order to establish a platform for social gathering, for dialogue, analysis, critical thinking and the generation of ideas.

What we want.
We want to create a meeting-place for the many ethnic groups who live in this community. CUDI's many varied activities all take their starting point in the social and cultural conditions and premises of the area. It is important that we and the visiting artists carry the projects through in collaboration with the other residents and base the projects on their ideas, needs and wishes. The keyword is dialogue. We want to accentuate the resources of the area. We want to establish a forum where a dialogue can take place, where ideas are generated, projects are created and visions
arise.

Why.
CUDI is a reaction to the medias representation of a reality that is in opposition to ethnic minorities. CUDI is a reaction to the authorities marginalization of social loaded families. CUDI wants to change or displace existing social norms and structures to obtain more cultural visibility and democratic equality. Through formation of network CUDI wants to encourage and strengthen the identity of the area.

Culture Palace
(Lise Nellemann)
Due to technical problems, Culture Palace is an email discussion forum, not an internet chat room. Culture Palace is a virtual extension of the project space, Sparwasser HQ. It is an email-forum, accessible, by internet, to participants located both in and outside Berlin. Culture Palace will mirror and continue the dialog started at Sparwasser HQ during the collaboration period from February 11. to 24. 2002. Culture Palace will create contact between artist groups and initiatives that work within a socially and politically -engaged artistic praxis. The forum continues until the end of the exhibition on March 9., and in a different form until the end of June 2002.

Copenhagen Free University
(Henriette Heise (DK), Jakob Jakobsen, (DK))

Namediffusion
(Marion Baruch (F/It)

Ursula Biemann
Video screening
From the series "Begehren in der Globalisierung"
"remote sensing" 20.02 at 9 pm, Z-inema in Z-bar, Bergstrasse 2, Berlin Mitte
"writing desire" 24.02 at 5 pm, Sparwasser HQ

"Writing Desire"
Video by Ursula Biemann, 25 Min., 2000, English
Das Begehren in den Zeiten der Globalisierung: Die Kommerzialisierung der globalen Geschlechterverhaeltnisse am Beispiel des boomenden Brautmarktes im Internet.

"Remote Sensing"
Video by Ursula Biemann, 53 Min., 2001, English with German subtitles.
"Remote Sensing" streift durch die Territorien des globalen Sexhandels und zoomt aus orbitaler Sicht ins Leben von Frauen in Suedostasien und Osteuropa. Das digitale Video entwirft eine Medien-Topographie, in der die Sexualisierung der Frau im globalen Kapitalismus oft in widerspruechlicher Weise mit neuen Technologien verbunden ist. Gleichzeitig versucht Remote Sensing eine vielschichtige Gegen-Geographie zu kartographieren, welche Grenzoekonomien, Schmuggelpfaden und alternativen Ueberlebenssystemen Rechnung traegt, in denen Frauen zu Hauptakteurinnen geworden sind.