Dialogues 2003

Morten Schelde

I am in my apartment trying to write a text on my work. In the background, the first Star Trek movie is running. A little while ago, I was watching CNN,s preparations for the upcoming september 11. Outside my open window was just a minute ago the sounds of a weddingparty going on at the church across the street, playing the wedding march and some songs of Nena and Joe Cocker.

These clashes of different realities is very much what my work is about. I like working with a diversity of pictures, collecting and combining them. I am interested in the psychological and emotional impact they have on me, and in the way pictures are dealt with in the media and in art. How do we encounter them as individuals?
In general, I am interested in producing images reflecting an individual voice, while trying to find underlying structures of what ties us together in communities and larger groups.

Specifically, I have chosen drawing as my primary medium. I started working with drawings because I like the slowliness and simplicity of the process, and chose to work mostly monochromatic after having tried out doing fullcolour drawings...which turned out to look like the work of 10 kindergarden-kids. Working in just one colour is to me about emphasising the drawing as surface, and it gives me the possibility to work with shifts of ambiences between the individual drawings. Like the differences between CNN, Nena and Joe Cocker.

mortenschelde@hotmail.com

Wolf von Kries

Bei den hier vorgestellten Arbeiten handelt es sich zumeist um ortspezifische Interventionen, in denen die Funktionsweisen sozialer, ökonomischer kultureller Strukturen hinterfragt werden. Dabei werden bestehende Mechanismen oder Objekte durch kleine Eingriffe isoliert, konzentriert oder simuliert und erhalten so eine von der herkömmlichen Anwendung abgehobene Bedeutungsebene, die seine Funktion zugleich auflöst und bestätigt.
Wolf von Kries lebt und arbeitet in Berlin.

in English:

Most of the presented works are site-specific interventions that question in one way or the other the functioning of our social, economical or cultural structures. They consist of little manipulations of existing mechanisms or objects, which are either isolated, concentrated or simulated thus adding a meaning beyond its original function, which it affirms and dissolves at the same time.
Wolf von Kries lives and works in Berlin.

vonkries@nexgo.de

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September 3. um 19.Uhr

The artists Sofia Hulten and Pia Lanzinger will present and talk about their work.

Sofia Hulten:

'Sofia Hulten's action videos investigate the border between the mischievous and the absurd. In Fuck It Up and Start Again, 2001, a young woman destroys an acoustic guitar and tapes it back together, only to smash it and repair it again-and again-until only an unruly mass of fragments remains. Grey Area, 2001, follows a woman in a gray flannel suit hiding in the most unlikely places in an office: Gray carpets, open umbrellas, and filing cabinets all provide camouflage for concealing office help. Her latest video, Ohne Titel (Untitled), shows a woman attempting to put together an old set of metal shelves with packing tape. Sped up slightly, the video exaggerates the frustrated efforts of a do-it-yourselfer, who, appropriately, disappears in a ball under her unlikely and unstable creation. (text by Jennifer Allen)

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Pia Lanzinger:

"Mit Sicherheit in München eine Sonderermittlung"
In einem Klima, in dem die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Veränderungen der Globalisierung mit ihren Deregulierungs- und Flexibilisierungstendenzen die Menschen verunsichern, kann mit dem populären Schlagwort "Innere Sicherheit" erfolgreich Wahlkampf betrieben werden. Die Angst vor anderen und vor Verbrechen spielt eine immer größer werdende Rolle in den Medien, während Politiker vom 'Recht auf Sicherheit' sprechen. Innerhalb dieser Diskussion präsentiert sich München gern als die sicherste Millionenstadt Europas. Unter dem Titel "Mit Sicherheit in München eine Sonderermittlung" organisierte Pia Lanzinger im Rahmen der Ausstellung "Exchange & transform (Arbeitstitel)" Führungen im Umfeld des Münchner Kunstvereins, das mit seinen Regierungsgebäuden, Wirtschaftsunternehmen, dem amerikanischen Generalkonsulat und exklusiven Geschäften zu einem der bestgesichertsten der Republik zählt. Mittwochs um 13.30 Uhr wurde der Kunstverein sechsmal zur Ausgangsstation und zum Treffpunkt für Sicherheitsinteressierte und die Künstlerin zum Tourguide. Während der "Sonderermittlungen" war Pia Lanzinger als Moderatorin gefragt, die zwischen den Fragen der Gäste und den Antworten der Gesprächspartner vermittelte. Dabei entlockte die Gruppe ihren Gesprächspartnern spannende Fakten und Meinungen über die Sicherheitsvorkehrungen der jeweiligen besuchten Institutionen sowie deren Sicherheitsideologien. Pia Lanzinger öffnete Türen, zum Beispiel zum Hochsicherheitstrakt der Bayerischen Landesbank oder zum Erkennungsdienst der Polizei, die normalerweise verschlossen bleiben.

Pia Lanzinger, lebt in München; Veröffentlichungen als Textautorin in Katalogen und Zeitschriften. Seit 1991 Ausstellungstätigkeit und verschiedene Arbeiten im öffentlichen Raum: Zu Mädchenkultur entstanden die Projekte "Das Mädchenzimmer" (München 1997), "Das Mädchenzimmer REVISITED" (Zürich/Wien 1998/99) und "The Girl's Room Tour" (Schottland 1999). Teilnahme mit einer Stadtrundfahrt zum Thema Geschlechterrollen bei "Dream City" (München, 1999), mit vier Hörstücken aus einem Phonomaten und über Telefon bei "Erlauf erinnert sich..." (Österreich, 2000) und mit einer Sammelaktion für unbekannte Geschichten bei "Log.in" (Nürnberg 2000). Bei "RE_public" auf der Expo Hannover und im steirischen herbst (2000) veranstaltete sie Expeditionen hinter die Kulissen der offiziellen Ausstellung. Über die Rolle "der Frau des Künstlers" entstand am Beispiel von Agnes Dürer eine Videoarbeit in der Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2000). In der Gondelbahn "Flying Mozart" konnten Interessierte, während sie über der vom Tourismus geprägten Landschaft schwebten, den Träume und Gedankenflügen der Einheimischen lauschen (Wagrain/Österreich 2000). Für die BewohnerInnen einer im Entstehen begriffenen Trabantenstadt organisierte sie "Wohnwanderungen" und gab die Zeitschrift "Schönes Wohnen in der Messestadt Riem" heraus (2001).

Pia Lanzinger Texte online english / deutsch

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August 27. um 19.Uhr

Susan Philipsz and Kenneth Balfelt

SUSAN PHILIPSZ
My work deals with the spatial properties of sound and with the relationships between sound and architecture. I am particularly interested in the emotive and psychological properties of song and how it can be used as a device to alter individual consciousness. I have used sound as a medium in public spaces to interject through the ambient noises of the everyday. Using my own voice, I attempt to trigger an awareness in the listener, to temporarily alter their perception of themselves in a particular place and time.

Susan Philipsz is from Glasgow, studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee and then completed an MA in Fine Art in Belfast. She has been based there for the past 8 years were she was a Director of Catalyst Arts, an artist run gallery and also founded, and is co-director of grassy knoll productions, a mobile arts organisation. She was awarded the PS1 International studio programme in New York in 2000. Since completing the fellowship she is currently doing an artist residency at Kunst-Werke Berlin. She has recently been chosen to participate in Art Pace 2003, San Antonio and in the next Triennal of British Art, Tate Britian 2003. She was shortlisted for The Glen Dimplex Artist Awards Exhibition at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2001. She participated Manifesta 3, Ljubljana, and has shown in the Melbourne Biennial, 1999 and the Tirana Biennial, 2001.

Biography
and
text about Susan Philipsz
written by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, March 2001.
http://www.sparwasserhq.de/talk/susan.htm

Susan Philipsz will participate in the exhibition "The island and the aeroplane", opening the 26. of September at Sparwasser HQ

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KENNETH A. BALFELT

I work with functional and context
related projects that can serve as "a modest proposal"
or real model for socio-political changes.

Through functional art projects I engage in real life
situations. I use the art viewpoint to infuse new ways
of dealing with problems. I wish to change.

I do not reject the art institution as it is an
important place to experiment with ideas.

Kenneth Balfelt is an artist, living and working in Copenhagen. Due to several recommendations and as we know that Kenneth Balfelt is very active at the scene in Copenhagen right now, we have invited him to Sparwasser HQ to show his work.

link to Kenneth Balfelt homepage

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30. juli um 19.Uhr

Claudia Reinhardt und Annika Lundgren

Claudia Reinhardt

die Künstlerin zeigt ihre inszienierte Fotos und einen neue Video.
Sie ist mitgründerin das kunstmagazin NEID

Claudia Reinhardt arbeitet mit inszenierter Fotografie. Meist ist sie selbst
das Model ihrer Inszenierungen in denen sie sich - oft ironisch gebrochen -
mit geschlechtsspezifischen Rollenbildern auseinandersetzt. In ihren
Videoarbeiten, die eher im trashigen Format produziert sind, werden
Geschlechtsidentitäten getauscht, verwandelt und dekonstruiert.
Sie ist Mitbegründerin von Neid (Kunstmagazin) und arbeitet in weiteren
femistischen Zusammenhängen als Autorin und Fotografin (Blau Berliner
Frauenzeitschrift).
Ihre neue fotografische Arbeit hat den Titel "Killing Me Softly" und zeigt
die Selbstmorde von zehn Künstlerinnen.
Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Leben und Sterben dieser Künstlerinnen
verwandelt sich in den fotografischen Inszenierungen in eine Interpretation,
die einen Vorschlag dazu macht, "wie es hätte sein können". Auch hier nimmt
Claudia Reinhardt selbst die Rolle des Modells ein, an dem diese
Versuchsanordnung durchgespielt wird. Keinesfalls geht es um eine
authentische Darstellung der Tat.
Die Auswahl, die dem Zyklus zugrunde liegt, ist von dem Interesse an den
Biografien und Werken diser Frauen geleitet, deren Tod in den Fotografien
nachinszeniert wird.
Ausgangspunkt sind die der Realität zugehörenden Selbstmorde, mit denen sie
ihrem Leben ein Ende gesetzt haben, und die unterschiedlichen Todesarten,
die sie dafür wählten.

Fotografien anschauen!

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Annika Lundgren
Something about my work:

Starting out working with sculpture, and later installation and video, my
work eventually took on a purely conceptual form, including
performative elements. My later works can probably be described as a
kind of "public arrangements", where I frequently utilize a known or
allready existing form, manipulating it by loading it with a different kind
of content. My project "Public Educational Tours", for example, consists
of a series of guided bus tours, questioning the issue of history writing.

This way of working is for me a possibility to get in touch with an
audience outside of the art scene (thus -for purely selfish reasons-
trying to create a dialogue different than the one being had inside it),
while simultaneously providing a way for the audience to approach my
work without nessecarily having to negotiate the barriere of the concept
"art".

And it is a lot of fun for me, which is essential.

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23. juli um 19.Uhr

Dellbrügge & deMoll

"Bildbeschreibung"

Parallel zur Ausstellung in Sparwasser HQ 18. Juli bis 18. August: Kunst-Werke '93 Sparwasser HQ '02:

1993 bezogen Dellbrügge & de Moll für ein Jahr ein Dachgeschossatelier in
Kunst-Werke Berlin. Ein wiedergefundener Film aus dieser Zeit bildet nun den
Kern der Ausstellung "Kunst-Werke '93 Sparwasser HQ '02". Die 36
Schnappschüsse erinnern an Aufnahmen eines Tatorts. Das Ambiente ist
menschenleer und verwahrlost. Jedes Objekt könnte sich als Indiz entpuppen:
die Aktentasche, die leeren Haken am Schlüsselbrett, die Sektflasche neben
der Handkasse. Als Indiz wofür?
Kunst-Werke Berlin hat sich vom besetzten, produzenten-betriebenen Ort mit
rhizomatischen Aktivitäten zur arrivierten, staatlich subventionierten
Institution gemausert. Wer hätte das damals ahnen können? Enthalten die
Fotos versteckte Hinweise auf die bevorstehende Karriere? Waren die Weichen
bereits gestellt?
Sparwasser HQ hat alles noch vor sich

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2. Juli um 19. Uhr

Ina Wudtke, Berlin
die Künstlerin zeigt Dj T-INA, Ina Wudtke & the NEID Magazina

Kirstine Roepstorff, Berlin/ Kopenhagen
Die Künstlerin präsentiert ihre Arbeiten.

Doro Albrecht, Berlin
die Künstlerin zeigt "Turbulenzen und Beziehungsfelder".

Dj T-INA, Ina Wudtke & the NEID Magazina

Informationen zu meinem Projekt NEID sind unter <www.thing.de/neid>
einzusehen. Das Sprengel Museum Hannover hat dieses Jahr meine Installation
<Vinyl Soundscapes> fuer die staendige Sammlung gekauft in der ich als DJ
T-INA performe.

In meinen Istallationen verwende ich Techniken wie: Mixing, Serialitaet und
Re-representation. Es geht bei meiner Arbeit um das Sichtbarmachen von
gesellschaftlichen Strukturen, besonders auf Deutschland und die westliche
Welt beszogen.

Vorweg gibts eine kurze Diashow zu meiner bisherigen Arbeit sowie eine
brandneue Animation mit elektronischer Musik von mir. Im Anschluss zeige
ich zwei aktuelle Bildserien: benedictine monks & jewish orthodox
believers.
Naechste Woche trete ich mein Istanbul Stipendium an, wo ich den dritten
Teil ueber fundamentalistische islamische Glaeubige fotographieren werde.
Ich freue mich darauf am Dienstag ueber meine geplante Installation
'believe' zu erzaehlen.

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Kirstine Roepstorff

A theme crucial to Kirstine Roepstorff's art in general, is her ongoing query of what does and what does not constitute meaning on the level of society as well as that of the individual. In her cotton thread installations, Roepstorff reflects this basic semantic question in quite a formal manner when she transforms a tangible, everyday object like a chair into something almost invisible and definitely not solid. As Marx said: "All that is solid melts into air". In a way, Kirstine Roepstorff uses her art to underline the semantic fragility of modern life, and the therefore inherent randomness of the values and conventions on which society rests.

If Kirstine Roepstorff's light, poetic thread installations give you an idea of an artist working in silence and with an understated vocabulary, her large and 'loud mouth' banners proclaim the opposite. Roepstorff's colourful banners are richly decorated in rhinestones, embroideries, pearls, paint, ribbons and fringe. Moreover, the banners have powerful and sometimes quite aggressive modes of expression that evoke an aesthetic associated with political activism. Roepstorff appropriates the style of good old Russian agitprop as well as that of women's lib of the 70s. There is a strong sense of appeal - to act politically, overthrow tyrannies or make revolutions. And then, observing the works at close quarters, you discover the small print: personal texts about anger, sadness or failed love. In fact the banners do not convey a global message. Nor do they advocate a collective movement. Still, Kirstine Roepstorff appropriates an aesthetic from a time in history when there was a belief in a common cause and communal action. It could be viewed as a nostalgic gesture or even as an act of irony. But this really is not how Roepstorff's banners function.

Kirstine Roepstorff seems to use the activist mode of expression to emphasise the individual's right to fight for her dreams be they ever so personal. Roepstorff puts her individual worries and beliefs into enormous, noisy tapestries, insisting that there is such a thing as a one-woman revolution.

Extract from a text by Pernille Albrethsen 2001

link zu einem zusetzlichen Text http://www.sparwasserhq.de/kirstine.htm

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Doro Albrecht

Turbulenzen und Beziehungsfelder

NET.TOURS ist ein Vernetzungsprojekt und erforscht mögliche Beziehungen von
Feldern, die sonst nicht zusammengedacht werden, die durch räumliche,
gesellschaftliche, politische, kulturelle Barrieren getrennt sind. Zu bestimmten
Themenfeldern entwickelt Dorothee Albrecht Reisen, besucht Projekte und
Positionen in verschiedenen Ländern und setzt einzelne Teile oder auch Zusammenhänge
in Beziehung zueinander. Sie interessiert sich für Strukturen, die Einzelne
über Gruppen, Projekte und Vernetzung von Gruppen und Themenfeldern mit
grösseren Zusammenhängen verbinden - und zwar weltweit. - networking ? Gefüge
werden entwickelt, die verschiedene auch widersprüchliche Fragmente in Beziehung
setzen, veränderbare Netze entstehen. Die einzelnen Positionen relativieren
sich gegenseitig, sie entwickeln sich in Abhängigkeit voneinander, eröffnen
weitere Beziehungsfelder, Konstellationen, die sich immer wieder neu
formieren.
Präsentationen werden in Ausstellungszusammenhängen entwickelt, sind
gleichzeitig aber auch über den Internet-TV-Kanal NT.TV (www.nt-tv.net) für eine
grössere Öffentlichkeit verfügbar.

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25. Juni um 19. Uhr:

Marie Römer Westh, Kopenhagen
Arbeiten von einer in Dänemark zunehmend ausgestellten Künstlerin.

Lasse Lau, Berlin
Der dänische Künstler präsentiert CUDI und individuelle Projekte.

Egill Sæbjörnsson, Berlin
der isländische Künstler zeigt neue music videos, Animation und
andere Arbeiten.

Marie Römer Westh 2002:
"In my artwork I am interested in working with communication and
sociality. It is the attempt to investigate, enlighten, advocate and
stimulate the encounter and communication between people both inside
and outside the art institution that interests me. I have made
different tables to creat a common and
social space for people to meet, and interact directly with artworks
of different artists.
Bordtabletisch
In my home an essential piece of furniture. Outside my
home a mediator for contacts?

I do everything at my table except sleep and watch TV. I eat meals,
big and little, I am on the phone, I work, relax, meet friends, family,
xand strangers. I change my
nephew¥s diaper and teach him to sit
properly at the table. I cut fabric for new clothes and repair old,
do accounts and write appointments
into my calendar, let things pile up and clear them away, set the
table and light candles, spill something
and dry it up again. When I go outside my home tables in various
shapes play a central part in my dealings
with other people. Everywhere I go The Table is an essential piece of
furniture for various kinds of
meetings. It serves as the meeting point in cafes and restaurants and
at conferences larger groups gather
around It. It appears as desks and counters, in banks when we cash
money, in stores where we spend it, in
any kind of private, public or religious office where various aspects
of life are managed. It exists as the
bar in pubs and clubs where profundities and trivialities, secrets
and lies are shared among friends and strangers. It is the surface
over which we exchange opinions where we agree and disagree open and
close deals - over or under The Table as the case may be. We throw
things on The Table and clear It by certain dates.
The Table is a social piece of furniture, we gather around It, yet It
keeps us apart physically, thus It becomes a symbol of civilization
itself, It promotes mental contact instead of physical. The surface
that It offers opens up a room and makes the exchange of ideas
possible. It stimulates communication, It is the
very furnishing of democracy - everyone is equal around The Table.
Without It maybe we would bang
heads, losing our language. Is this maybe the reason why It exists
everywhere and cannot - as the bench and the bed - be split up into
individual units?"

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Lasse Lau
I will talk about two projects.:

1. CUDI

CUDI - Centre for Urban culture, Dialogue and Information,
established together with the artist Lise Skou in an apartment in the
suburb Vollsmose 2000. Vollsmose is the outskirt of the city Odense
in Denmark and the majority of population in this suburban area have
a non-Danish background. The apartment was our private home and a
platform for inhabitants and visiting artist for social gathering,
dialogue, critical thinking and generation of new ideas, that was
realized and exposed in the area.
The project was established as an reaction to the medias
representation of a reality, criminalizing and people with a
non-Danish ethnic background. And further more the project was in
reaction to authorities explicit way to marginalize people in
general. CUDI homepage

2. PARK - Privacy could only be had in public

In the winter of 2000 members of the city council in Copenhagen
ordered bushes removed from H.C. Oerstedsparken, a centrally located
park in Copenhagen. The reason they removed the bushes was to
prevent gay people for having sex in the park.
In the summer of 2001 I therefore made an "exhibition" in the park
where the idea was to create a counter public-space, and in the same
time to criticize the city for sterilizing and commercializing public
spaces. Furthermore to criticize Copenhagen's gay associations for
not responding to this visible and apparent attack on gay rights.

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Egill:
"At the moment there is a video in BuroFriedrich, some photographs
and a video in Galerie Georg Nothelfer and a show in Frisr Beige in
Auguststrasse 83. There are some videos on festivals and travelling
shows. Works from me were also in ARS01 in Kiasma, Helsinki 2001 and
North in Kunsthalle Wien 2000.
Homepage: http://www.eaglestuff.net

My works are centered around photographs, computer works, video and
music. At the moment I am an employee for an Icelandic ghost
called"Mori". Ten days ago I was in Alma Lv museum in Sweden where I
dug a hole in the ground for him. It was 60 cm wide and around 1
meter deep.

In Sparwasser I would like to show some of my music videos and
animation works and other previous works and end with talking about
Mori a little bit. "

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Jean Lee, Born in Wakefield, UK, currently living in Berlin, Germany, Studied at Goldsmiths College, UK.
Makes painterly installations with references to pop art and sculptures out of plants dressed up in Versace colours. Recent works have been wallpapered installations with objects derived from Pink Panther cartoons and collaged real and fake plants, transforming banal everyday objects into glamorous art objects.

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Jeroen Offerman, born in Eindhoven, NL, 1970, studied BA Sculpure in Breda, NL and MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, UK.
Works include installation, sculpture, performance and video.
Themes range from romantic nature through urban landscape to pop-music and popular culture. Recently Offerman practised for three months in a row to learn to sing Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' entirely backwards. This was performed and video-recorded at the steps of London's St.Paul's Cathedral. The audience at Sparwasser will get to see this video and possibly get a demonstration of how the video-performance was done originally!! This will then be a premiere! Rock On!

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.

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Sean Reynard

Sean Reynard, born in St.Helens, UK 1971, studied St.Helens Technical College (Expressive Arts)
then Sheffield Hallam University UK BA Fine Art.

He will present and talk about his short videos, often improvised tales of frustration
and death. For Sparwasser he will present a selection of recent work, including Unkle God,
where God visits his niece in her bedroom and Mam, which shows what he had to deal with
every single day of his adolescent life.

video still

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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

video still

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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.

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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.

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Zeigam Azizov

London-based artist and theorist Zeigam Azizov (born 1963 in Baku) draws on
practices from cinema and critical theory in his attempt to place the artist in
a context where, in Foucault's words, in our modernity "documents are rendered
to monuments and monuments are rendered to documents".
The excessive effects produced by this kind of rendering are cut and mixed and
open a space for the soft topology to negotiate missing moments from the
experience of modernity.

Based on his recent project "Migrasophia" (from migration and philosophy), this
discussion will explore experiencing the distorted knowledge of the global
connectivity, which became possible arguably by means of the migration of
knowledge.

Zeigam Azizov's recent migrasophic detours "Vokal Aphasia" and "Migrasophic
transformNation" are or will be shown in SKIF (St. Petersburg), inIVA (London),
Bauhaus Foundation(Dessau) and the Venice Biennale.

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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

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Stefan Saffer

Working as part of an art/architecture team (Together with Kathrin Böhm,
artist/London and Andreas Lang, architect/London) I am generally
interested in the existing dynamics between formal and informal
structures that are imminent to our everyday life; where individual
interests collide with institutionalized structures.
Recent and current projects create new overlaps between different and
differing interests and expectations. The wish to apply our practice to
concrete situations meets an interest in generating new spaces and
possibilities for engagement and development.

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Dominic Hislop

Dominic Hislop, born in Dumfries, Scotland, studied BA Sculpture in
Edinburgh and MA Fine Arts in Glasgow. He moved to Budapest in 1996 and met
the Hungarian artist, Miklos Erhardt, with whom he shared an interest in
discussing strategies of engaging with social issues and a broader public in
art. Together they initiated the project group, 'Big Hope' and have worked
on a number of participatory projects involving certain marginalised social
groups as both project participants and audience. A key aim of these
projects was to present the self-representation of the participants'
perspectives. In such projects, the role of the artists has been as
facilitators, who set up the framework for a dialogue, monitor the process,
accommodate new directions then finally present the results.

As well as some of his own interventions/installations in public space,
Dominic will present and then discuss various site specific participative
projects undertaken by Big Hope in Budapest, Zagreb, Torino and Berlin,
including the project, 'Talking About Economy' which was shown in Sparwasser
as part of the exhibition 'Nomad Job' in March 2003.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Julika Gittner,

born in Cologne, D, 1974, studied BA Fine Arts at Goldsmiths
College, UK
and BSc Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UK

My works cover sculpture, photography, video and are informed by a dialogue
with my architectural projects and vice versa.
Both explore the monstrosity of society's order and control mechanisms.
Recent works include sculptures based on the statistical analysis of the per
capita consumption of material per day ('economic units' no.:1-7). The
participants were portrayed with models of their personal daily allowances outside
their homes.
The projects 'Designing Dyslexia' and 'Planning Madness' are architectural
investigations into the spatial impact of planning bureaucracy in the City of
London and Ahmedabad in India.
Loopholes within the planning process are revealed and used to create space
for free interventions in existing physical and social structures.
'Planning Madness' proposes a retirement home built by 900 idle workers
using 5 million bricks in a period of 26 years.

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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.

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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.

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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 28 group exhibitions and many events have been organized. Approximately 200 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.

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Nezaket Ekici

Artist Statement:

The idea, the thought, the draft are the bases for the
execution of my artwork. Ideas come from everyday
life situations, social and cultural atmospheres. Then
the idea expresses itself in the performances and
installation art. As well as this, I use the body as a
means of expression.

The artistsic idea is expressed using the body alone,
as part of the installation and within the context of
an audience.

The subjects I deal with are time, movement, space,
material, body, action/interaction. I try to create
works of art that leave for the viewer, free space
for associations and new possibilities. I take a
special situation from everyday life and without
illustrating this one for one; I place it into a new
context.

I aim to create art where all of the elements are
connected together to form a whole work of art (
Gesamtkunstwerk)

artists homepage

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Rui Calçada Bastos

"He uses video and its potentials in the same way
others use a pencil.From a minimal technical
repertoire is born a living world of images that does
not simply unfold itself on the screen, but rather
uses it as its starting point."
Doris Von Drathen in IDENTIDADES Catalogue.2003

"... a central place in Calcada Bastos' works: within
a fictional space bearing biographical features and
intertwined with personal memories, his work circles
around the complex substance of identity and the
melancholy of isolation"
Kathrin Becker.. in B Magazine 2003

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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.

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Eoghan McTigue

'Mercedesstern' is a 16mm film of a huge illuminated Mercedes
logo that rotates slowly and evenly above the Europa Centre on
Tauentzienstrasse. The Europa Centre was built in 1965, four
years after the Berlin Wall was erected, the area marked the
'new' centre of west Berlin until the wall came down in 1989. In
my work I'm interested in investigating forms of display in the
built environment, I'm also interested in the way we approach
and accord value to works of art in the context of museums and
galleries. The projects I've been working on recently mix
photography or film and architectural space to explore the way
these different elements interact and create meaning.

Eoghan McTigue was born in Galway, Ireland in 1969, he studied
Fine Art at University of Ulster, Belfast and then completed an
MA in Art and Architecture at the Kent Institute of Art and
Design. He has recently completed a year long residency at
Kunst-Werke Berlin (2002). He is currently preparing a solo
exhibition for the Context Gallery in Derry (2004) and a film
commission to be screened at the Project in Dublin (2004) and
the Goethe Institute Inter Nations (2004).

He has had solo exhibitions at the Project, Dublin, Old Museum
Arts Centre, Belfast, Proposition Gallery, Belfast, Golden
Thread Gallery, Belfast and at the University of Illinois,
Chicago. Other recent exhibitions include 'Freespace', PCBK
Provincial Centre for Visual Arts, Hasslet, Belgium (2003), How
things turn out, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
(2002) 'Greyscale/ CMYK', Tramway, Glasgow (2002), D.A.E., San
Sebastian, (2002), Source magazine (2002), Plug In Institute for
Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, (2001), Eurojet futures, at the
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2001) The International
Language,, grassy knoll productions, Belfast (2001), ARCO Art
Fair,, Madrid, (2001)

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