Jan Rothuizen

The work of the Dutch artist and writer Jan Rothuizen is not easily categorized under one heading. Rothuizen employs photographic works, personal texts and on-site infiltrations to detach images from their original context, in order to present them anew in full vulnerability and implicit pliability.
The artist's self-portrait in progress composed of existing portraits that he considered to be resembling himself 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' , a crossword puzzle based on personal questions and a collection of 'missing'-signs, gathered from different places and united on one tree: what binds these works is the reflection of a longing.
The capturing of an image and its inherent ambivalence: Rothuizen operates from the knowledge of its impossibility. It turns his work into a paragon: a reflection on human signifying and its inadequacies, and with that, or maybe rather, a monument of longing as such.

At Sparwasser Jan Rothuizen will review some earlier projects and show a project he is currently working on in Berlin.

 Deborah Ligorio

Space - living, urban and social. I am interested in making abstract concepts visible and working somewhere between the personal and the public.

A constant interest in my research is the adaptability of people in relation to the spaces they live in. This subject is addressed by the Custom Habitats series (web project: www.deborahligorio.com) including Modular Tent, 2000-01 (installation) ­ ideal habitats shaped according to the needs of the individual, i.e. homes that visualize traits of individuals' personalities.
Urban and social space is the central theme of a series of video animations in which they are reviewed with a narrative approach ­ Density, 2002, Hyperdevelopment, 2002, and SizeScape, 2003. This series of videos adapt and appropriate the language of music and design, indirectly commenting on larger issues through individual existence.
In Emptiness, 2001 (video animation), lines and squares slide one beside the other to create an abstract aerial view of the city, while the emergence of empty spaces refers to both an emotional and geographical vacuum.
Views from above are also featured in Landscape, 2002 (video animation) and Maps, 2001-03 (C-Print), where aerial views incorporate the dual meaning of urban-area and information-landscape maps. D L

 Karen Yasinsky

Karen Yasinsky makes animated films using traditional stop motion animation. She will talk about her reasons for using this medium and her interest in video art as cinema, the power of melodrama and sound. She presently the Philip Morris Arts fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

 Barbara Prokop

At the center of my artistic practice lies a focus on the phenomenon of pop-culture and the "cult" surrounding celebrities. How are stars understood and what effect do they have on the masses who relate to them with idolization? Cultural, social and political factors cloud the image that we have of celebrity personas but where is the line between the cliché of a star's image and the individual's projection of themselves onto the star. The work concentrates on mainstream and pop-culture to question who and what in today's society really has the power to enable change. It is pop-culture's ability to function as a tool to create change politically which my work sets out to explore by looking at the point were everyday life, politics and stardom meet.

 Jessika Miekeley

birthday, 2:39min, col., silent, 2001, 
pool, 2:19min, col., silent, 2002
a film, an evidence, a testimony and a secret which is not revealed. a narrative hovering in between two mediums. a sunny Sunday around a pool, seduction and surface. birthday, blow ups and a forensic analysis of what could/ would happen. something about anticipation and a posthumous storytelling around issues of fear and control, public and private spaces.

 Colonel

"I will speak about my emergency manifeste
and different practise and reflection about the medias
(speed /transport/fluidity /penetration....)"

In Germany last year Colonel has exhibited at the Sprengel Museum Hannover
and at Sparrwasser HQ in Torstrasse in the exhibition "Clockwise" and at our stand in "art forum berlin" 2002 .

In June 2003 Colonel will be exhibiting at Galerie Olaf Stüber in Berlin .

link to
Emergency room:

colonel home page

colonel coming projects

 Dolores Zinny & Juan Maidagan

 We are originally from Rosario, Argentina, since 1994 we live and work in Manhattan. We arrive to Berlin in 2002 invited by the DAAD, as artists in Residence.
We began working in collaboration in 1991. Our ideas are realized in drawings, models, objects and installations, and they intervened museums, cultural institutions and public spaces. Most of the times we focus in situations within the transitions and boundaries of the exhibition spaces.

 Teresa Seemann & David Galbraith

David Galbraith and Teresa Seemann are a New York City-based art collaborative. Their collaboration started by merging sculpture and sound in tactile, phenomenological and sometimes interactive installations. Their dialogue and practice grew and developed into an unique body of work that combined cultural and perceptual ideas of space, body and technology presented through a variety of mediums including: architectural structures, drawings, paintings, graphic design, found objects, sound and sculpture. Currently they have been working with video that often in its final output takes the form of animation. However their techniques which involve the use of water-colors, photos, photo-copies and referential sound along with other analog mediums combined with the editing abilities of software and digital space are a continuation of earlier studies into new media, mediums, technology and perception. Galbraith & Seemann´s two-person shows have been at Innocence & Mystery, Berlin, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and the Soap Factory, Minneapolis. They have participated in group shows including ones at P.S.1/MoMA and Kunst Werke. Galbraith and Seemann have MFA´s from the California Institute of the Arts and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program together in 1996-97.

 Ed Osborn

Ed Osborn is an artist whose pieces use sound as a primary material and take many forms including installation, sculpture, radio, video, performance, and public projects. His works combine a visceral sense of space, sound, and motion with a precise economy of materials. Ranging from rumbling fans and sounding train sets to squirming music boxes and delicate feedback networks, Osborn's kinetic and audible pieces function as resonating systems that are by turns playful and oblique, engaging and enigmatic.

Ed Osborn showed an installation in Sparwasser HQ in autumn 2001 "Air Driver". In his talk he will be talking about his newest works.

Ed Osborns homepage

 Annika Lundgren

"Meanwhile, back at the Ranch"
is an ongoing piece, consisting of a series of performances build around short, fragmentary stories and presented though spoken text, music and images.

The contents of the piece gradually develope and change through a continuous introduction of new material, so that every new performance is a different one.

"Meanwhile, back at the Ranch" 1+2
performed at the exhibition space ZDB, Lisebon in connection with the exhibition "Life Policies" 2002

"Meanwhile, back at the Ranch" 3
performed at the exhibition space Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, in connection with the exhibition "Fundamentalists of the new order" 2002

"Meanwhile, back at the Ranch" 4
performed at the exhibition space Planet 22, Geneva 2003

"Meanwhile, back at the Ranch" 5
will take place at the exhibition space Sparwasser HQ, Berlin as a contribution to "Consequenses of summer" 2003, dialogues on artistic production and contemporary cultures.

Simon Starling

I am happy with the idea that my practice functions as a kind of parallel universe,
perhaps operating in the realm of the outmoded or obsolete. Holding up a mirror to a contemporary reality. Investigating the roots of contemporary issues rather than the issues themselves. For example two projects from last year perhaps have an interesting relationship to contemporary ideas on
globalisation but they look to earlier manifestations of this phenomena.

'Flaga (1972-2000)' involved looking at the history of the production of the Fiat 126 in Italy and Poland. This car was produced under two very different regimes over an exceptionally long period of time for a car. The small red 126 that I bought in Italy and drove to Poland would still fit body parts manufactured in 2000 in Bielsku-Bialej.

And 'Kakteenhaus', made at Portikus in Frankfurt, investigated the phenomena of the increasingly large Tabernas Desert in Andalucia, via the introduction of cacti into the region as props for the production of Spaghetti Westerns in the late 1960's.

I guess these objects and ideas are reinvigorated to serve as investigative tools for understanding today.
I engage with these ideas on a very human level. It's not polemical in any way. Both 'Kakteenhaus' and 'Flaga (1972-2000)' are essentially works about the flow of energy around the world, and that is really fundamental to what I doing.

Michael Stevenson

Representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, the Trekka, the only ever 'home-grown' car becomes a complex metaphor for national identity. Cultural aspirations are placed side by side with the belated production of a motor car.

Designed as a simple agricultural utility vehicle, the Trekka and its peculiar production scheme are closely linked to the protectionist trade policies that characterized New Zealand in the 1960s.

The whole concept of this unusual car was to fill a niche in the then tightly regulated New Zealand economy. The Trekka was in fact based on a chassis and motor sourced from the Czechoslovakian car manufacturer Skoda. 'Free Western enterprise' bartering with a Communist Bloc country at the peak of the Cold War is but one of the anomalies the Trekka's story highlights.

New Zealand anticipated a leading role for itself in the event of cold war end game, it would be the island of survival, the only first world country to remain completely untouched. Government planning, which at the time favoured self-sufficiency and import substitution overlapped with such thinking.

Oliver Zwink

Leaving the secure shores of abstract painting in 1997, I started work engaging with urban space. The development towards building city-models and bringing them into a state of decay was a result of my interest in mapping unconscious spaces. As a starting point I used the surface of my face and photographs of urban spaces. Settled between "Anti-Utopia" and "poetic transformation" these models, made out of light paper, became somehow
three-dimensional paintings .

Relating to these works I will talk about some drawings, two works on video and recent projects which involve the architecture of the gallery space.

Montse Badia

Short Statement about Curatorial Practice

The transformations of contemporary artistic practices outline the need of questioning and redefining the roles of the curator, the artist and the system in which they are immerse. In context of change of the temporary and spatial conditions of the development and the presentation of projects, it is necessary to adapt to new requirements. The exhibition can be considered like the top of an iceberg whose unseen body is a previous process or can be considered as one possible format among many others. The curator is confronted to new demands and to a redefinition of his/her practice. Sometimes the curator is more the initiator, the one who invites or proposes, in other occasions is more the provider, the producer and the organiser. The task of the curator consists on working together with the artists (better not using them as illustrators of his/her ideas), on putting in contact ideas and people, becoming the editor of a process.

Assuming the premise that the discourse of art can take place in any context and at any moment, the big challenge is to raise the right question at the right moment and to have a real projection in society.

Lise Nellemann

Lise Nellemann/Sparwasser HQ, responsible for the program since 2000.
Combining a tight international exhibition program with an intensive communication activity (ideas lab), Sparwasser has become an vital element of the art scene in Berlin. Being aware of the tradition of cultural activism and the highly political consciousness of the Berlin art scene many dialog events are catching up on the problematic of the political situation on a global street level, and so producing the curatorial condition for future exhibitions.
Sparwasser has existed since summer 2000. Within this period 90 group exhibitions and many events have been organized in- and outside of Head Quarters. Approximately 800 participating artists/ theorists have been connected to a network used to distribute information and exchange knowledge. Exhibitions, video screenings, artists talk, and live sound performances attract a broad audience, and thereby SparwasserHQ has become known as an active forum and as a meeting point.

Curatorial strategy:
All exhibitions are made on the basic of collaborations and research among artists, developing the conceptual, theoretical and organizing strategies as a consequence of this collaborative process.

Annika Eriksson

In her videos Annika Eriksson works with individuals or groups to whom she
offers the chance of presenting themselves within her video framework,
whether it be, for instance, in the form of a small performance, the account
of a chosen passion or simply an introduction to one's person, citing name
and profession. This is a concept she has implemented, among others, with
the brass and drum orchestras of volunteer fire departments or postal units,
a dance theatre group of the handicapped, a series of collectors, the entire
staff of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, students of the curator's course
at the Goldsmiths College in London or personnel at the Sao Paulo Biennale. All the presentations are based on a precise concept that, on
one hand, provides exact definitions of the form and content of the
presentation and, on the other, always leaves room for those in question to
fill ad libitum. For example, the presentations of the collectors are
structured along the following lines: the collector stands before the video
camera, introduces himself and names the object of his collection. Then the
collector speaks freely as long as he thinks it right or as long as he has
something to tell about his collection and his passion. He then ends with
the set phrase "thank you" and Eriksson switches the camera off. This
pattern provides a formal frame for the recurring individual presentations
that assigns the collector a genre and makes them comparable. As viewers we
are sensitised to the distinctions between the collectors' presentations:
each one uses his room for manoeuvre differently, presents his own activities
in various ways and portrays himself in his own fashion. This is similar to
what occurs with the orchestras: their guideline is to march from the left
into the video frame one at a time and to group themselves with their
instruments frontally to the camera. Their exit takes the same course in
reverse. In the time in-between, the orchestras' sole task is to play the
song "Sour Times" by the pop group Portishead in an interpretation that is
left completely up to them. Since none of these ensembles ever play pop
music, it is an exercise that gives them the freedom to deal with the theme
as radically as they like. There is no set recipe. In this way the margin
Erikson allows the participants is also a challenge, because it can or must
be filled. Eriksson's projects always ask how individuals deal with the
possibility of an authentic self-presentation or performance as well as what
the relationship is between the individual and the collective. >Thursday, 31
October, 7 p.m.

Sren Grammel, for "Es ist schwer das Reale zu berüren", Kunstverein München 2003

Heman Chong

Heman Chong will in his talk include his project MurMurMur, which is shown at the Venice Biennale (Singapore Pavilion) . He will talk about his upcoming project for Ars Electronica , which opens in September in Linz.

Heman Chong showed two projects in Sparwasser HQ, in March and April 2003:
"Lost (Found Tracks)"
and
Heman Chong and Isabelle Cornaro:
"The End of Travelling" (Trip to Asiatown and Back)

He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.

Peter Spillmann

Meine künstlerische und kulturelle Arbeit ist thematisch ausgerichtet
und projektorientiert. Die unterschiedlichen Projekte entstehen
meistens im Austausch und in Zusammenarbeit mit KünstlerInnen und
TheoretikerInnen, in wechselnden Konstellationen und in Bezug auf
einen bestimmten inhaltlichen und sozialen Kontext. Dabei haben sich
im Laufe der Zeit drei Themenfelder ergeben - die kulturelle
Konstruktion von Landschaft, symbolische und rituelle Dimensionen der
Ökonomie und Institutionskritik bzw. selbstverwaltete kulturelle
Praxis - innerhalb derer alle Projekte an denen ich bisher beteiligt
war oder die ich initiert habe, ansetzten. Für mich steht nicht der
Werkcharakter der Kunst im Vordergrund, sondern vielmehr ihr
inhaltliches und gesellschaftliches Potential. Daraus ergeben sich
strategische Überlegungen zu aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Funktionen
von Kunst, KünstlerInnen und Kultur und ein kritisches Verhältnis zu
den darin agierenden Institutionen und Subjekte einerseits und
andererseits Initiativen, eigene Arbeits- und Diskurs-Zusammenhänge
aufzubauen und zu stärken.

Ausgehend von drei ganz unterschiedlich angelegten Projekten
"Klöntal" (1996), "Route Agricole" (2002), "Backstage" (2004), die
alle etwas mit Imaginationen und Begehren im Zusammenhang mit
Landschaft und Natur zu tun haben, möchte ich Überlegungen zu Kontext
und Strategien einer thematischen kulturellen Praxis anstellen und
die eigenen Positionen und Interessen darin befragen.

 Laura Bruce

Laura Bruce's works explore the relationship between
the real and the surreal in small town, domestic
situations. The idea of the everyday interuppted by
defamiliarity, abstraction or even mystic is a central
issue for Laura Bruce. She uses her family, friends or
her own person as protagonists in her work in general,
and in her videos, follows a feature film- or
docu-drama-like strategy, essentially revealing
psychological structures of relationships, family
roles and social mechanisms that we recognise from our
own experience. Her work functions like material
depots stationed between actual situations, thoughts
and encounters, and symbolic memory.

Joanna Rajkowska

I donít have any language that I would call my own. In every project I am using the language already invented, sometimes highly developed, sometimes very simple. The use of ready languages creates a platform on which I meet other people, I communicate with them or - in most cases - I am with the others in the simplest way - physically. 

I use myself in my work as a material, vehicle, tool, as a person, bunch of chemicals and as a medium. In all cases I am trying to get out of myself, to find a way out and rather to become someone else than to find any kind of identity. 

I was taught by a painter, a mystic and Eastern Orthodox Church philosopher, Jerzy Nowosielski. The tradition of icons where the subject is not being represented but is being present in the painting directed my way of thinking. My professor used to tell me: you will paint this vase right if you become it. Now, when I have a message to get across, I have to become this message quite often. I make things happen rather than I show that things happen.  

Here are a few notions about the latest project: Artist For Rent, in which my services could be employed by anybody interested in it.  

Artist for Rent was about spending time. My time was being consumed by other people and in this very way it was getting its quality. In many situations I had the impression that I am living a double life, although in fact I was living no life, neither mine nor someone elseís. This was all about losing and about disbelief that anything can be saved.  

The first question was, Ñwhat can I honestly offerì. I had to admit, I had nothing to offer. ÑWhat do you want from me, what shall I do?ì - letting people answer these questions freed me from the responsibility of choice. I was giving people exactly what they wanted, I was not offering anything. Every single task was about their needs and choices. I think art should be a mirror in this very way. 

You get what you want, not what I want you to get. I am not able to put myself in a position of someone who knows more and knows what you need. I think an artist has a social role not necessarily because of a creative skill but rather because he/she is able to change a few things in life of others. For example a way of spending time.  

I was trying to be useful in a fundamental way. Not showing that an artist can be useful, but to be useful. Everyone, especially artists are entirely focused on their own work. They are quite often blind and dead for others. Alike car dealers, light designers, mothers, salesmen, directors, film makers and workers, all of them have their own universe. Why should I create a new one, while I can simply jump into one of them and fill up a temporary hole.  

Artist For Rent was also about a certain way of being with other people. I think about the safety of a relationship. You have a task for me. We spend time together doing it, working on it. We do not communicate, except a necessary exchange of technical information, we are not trying to understand each other. The expectations are clear and fulfilled. I am working for you but I ask for a more creative part - for the documentation of an event. I am giving you the energy to do it.  

Eoghan McTigue