Berlin: Round 4 on the FLOOR!!!

Raab Galerie had its opening Tuesday night (June 17) for Efraim Habermann -- so instead of burdening them with our chaos we had the artists pickup and dropoff at our place in Kreuzberg. Kinda turned into a party, but with awkward questions like "Wait, are you my partner?" Made bruschetta, ate cherries, and drank beer the whole sun-drenched day. Everyone's been working mad hard turning out the work, but thanks to everyone for kicking back a second and having a silly time with us.

The rest of the pictures from the swap are up on the Found Gallery Flickr stream.

Getting Etymological

Guest blogger Sini Matikainen reflects on the origins of nostlagia and its place in Berlin, as our version of the project, 'You can never go home again,' forces the artists to confront their concepts of identity in relation to place. Above, the Trabant has become a symbolic East Berlin correlative for the GDR days.

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Can you ever go home again in Berlin?

The word “nostalgia” was born in 1688, created by a Swiss scholar to describe a condition afflicting homesick youngsters. The condition was characterized by “meditation only of the Fatherland” and “disturbed sleep.” The word itself is composed of two parts: nostos, Greek for “return to the native land,” and algos, the word for pain. This was more than traveler’s anxiety or sighing over a photo album: it was believed to be potentially fatal.

Today, “nostalgia” and homesickness are considered very different concepts: while homesickness is place-specific, nostalgia is “a longing for a lost time.” It may also include “a yearning for home, but it is a home faraway in time rather than space.” Homesickness can be cured, but nostalgia cannot – and the kind of home people are nostalgic about is seriously unattainable, existing only in the past and romanticized memory.

Berlin is especially suited for a project focusing on the unattainable past, since its own history has left its share of orphans and homeless. From the 1930s onwards, Berlin has had a long history of changing in such a way that some of its residents can never really go home again. From those forcibly and tragically expelled during the 30s and 40s to families divided by the wall in the 50s, Berlin created a number of homeless and heartbroken individuals who would never find the city again as they remembered it. Berlin itself, as a divided city within a divided country, had an uneasy place within Germany and the world as a whole.

Post Berlin Wall, the GDR still has its nostalgic fans. The Ostalgie movement of the 90s (another invented word, combining the German word for east with the word for nostalgia) reflected a generation still mourning some aspects of the GDR, as exemplified by the film Goodbye Lenin. The movie shows a young man desperately trying to recreate East Berlin, ostensibly to prevent his ill mother, who was in a coma while the wall fell, from dying of shock once she realizes what has happened. It quickly becomes clear, however, that he’s working equally for himself – because his memories of his mother are tied so closely with the GDR, he hopes that preserving the GDR means preserving her.

For generations of Berliners, memories of the GDR are still inextricably linked with those of childhood. The still-present GDR fascination – from widespread Communist kitsch for sale to tours in a tiny Trabant – allows tourists and Berliners alike to experience some of the authentic Ost Berlin experience. Some GDR-era foodstuffs have even been brought back due to popular demand.

Berlin, then, is an ideal location for meditating on the idea of home. How German artists view their GDR-era childhood homes? How do people newly moved to Berlin view the city – do they still long for their birthplace or hometown, or has the city that’s constantly changing become a new home? What kind of image will arise from the collaboration – universal underlying themes about the nature of home or a highly individualistic picture of what home means?

Berlin Round 3

Berliner artists are coming to our heimat on Tuesday to dropoff --- marking the end of the first two full back-and-forths (we are holding 3 total). The second act already has seen its share of drama, but it would be a shame to just dismiss it as merely drama.

Some of the artists have become very interested in complete transformation of the pieces. Some of the work exists outdoors. Some artists have kidnapped the pieces, forcing photo shoots in very curious locations.

I'll stop talking now (that's the point, right). Look at the pictures.

---(see them all here)




















In other news, Turkey won against Czech Republic in a come-from-behind 3-2 victory. The below video is what happens in Kreuzberg (where we're living) when Turkey wins:

Los Angeles: Round 1 + 2

Things in Los Angeles have gotten off to a great start. Swap's 1 and 2 turned out some great work by a crew of wildly talented artists. Swap 3 is coming up tomorrow. Can't wait to see what is in store. Here is a small sampling of what the pairs have been putting together. We won't barrage your senses with too much imagery here – you can see it all on Flickr (round 1, round 2)

Berlin: Round 2 w/ the Bs

There was much shock, excitement, and even a hint of joy as the A partners came to pick up what the B partners dropped off on Monday. A sampling of photos from this round below [rest of the set available on Found Gallery Flickr]











See you on June 13 at Raab. What up LA?

Berlin: A Partners Bring It

An exciting first showing by the Berlin A-partners (excuse the vernacular, LA). We received a handful of canvas-based pieces and another handful of sculptural. Some were raw materials passed around -- there was even an electronic PDF explaining how to find the artist's pieces planted throughout the city. B-partners, mount up. Looking forward to seeing how you listen, and what you make.

These are a sampling of the pics (rest on Found Gallery's Flickr):








































P.S. -- To continue with the undiscussed soccer motif that keeps popping up...Currently we are in a café while the Euro 2008 (soccer championship, for those in US) is broadcast on a projector. The opening ceremony involved a few snow queens [yes, that's what I mean], an inflated skiier slaloming through abstract white boxes, and thousands of people dressed in leotards half-red / half-white rolling around on the field -- ostensibly changing the color of the logo they are supposed to collectively resemble (soccerball with fire -- the Euro logo). A challenging collaboration for all, nonetheless. How do they know what to do? Thinking of you!!!

Tschuss!!!

Berlin project begins

[image courtesy cottonijoe]

Our Berlin artists have recently begun working on the project, as of the 1st of June. We held a face-to-face meeting with the artists last weekend to go discuss all types of questions regarding the logistics and thematics of what is to take place this month. We will share some photos of the first dropoff very soon [and subsequent ones as well]. Artists have been working in a wild variety of formats [we've had everything from stretched canvas to Google Earth files to potato to .pdf as mediums coming from the A partner].

Eagerly awaiting Monday's dropoff from B partner - jonny

you can never go home again

Chris and I would like to take the time to share the thematic direction in which we are directing the Berlin version. Here below, we have a portion of what we co-wrote to the artists. We have already seen one piece come back, have a few tomorrow, and the remainder coming in early Thursday. We'll post some news as it becomes worthy. - Jonny

[ps - we may or may not publish the photo series we took of each other to create elements for the postcard. Part mugging, part Irene Kai, part smut. We'll see.]

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You can never go home again

The title of the show refers to an American cliché, which proposes that as we move through life our assertion of what is "home" invariably changes. Many of you are not native to Berlin, Germany, or Europe itself. Some of you may have been born and raised here. You represent a typically diverse population of a large metropolis. We are interested in the proximity or distance, both cultural and emotional, from what you consider home.

Your task is to reflect on what home means to you. Where do you come from, and where do you find yourself now? Discover how your partner expresses these reflections and incorporate them. Your piece should claim a unified idea of home, or the absence of home. How do you answer the questions, 'Where are you from' and 'What is your home?' As the process develops, you should try to recognize what you and your partner have in common as artists and as people.

Some initial ideas that popped into our heads as traditional forms of expressing a unified home included flags, banners, badges, coats of arms, and currency. More modern forms of expressing identity [for everyone, not just artists] include self-portrait photography, avatars, logos, icons, emoticons [:P, :>/, etc.]. Think about how you already use visual shorthand to present yourself and how your friends, family, and colleagues do too.

We encourage you to present yourselves using your own unique set of symbols, colors, materials, and styles. Feel free to reference recognizable symbols and their common associations, but please be creative and utilize your own iconography and/or reimagine common symbolism. Remember to communicate your ideas with your partner throughout the creative process -- without using words.

We encourage you to be confident not timid, bold but not antagonistic, thoughtful but not passive.

Joint Custody LA Kick-off

Today, Sunday June 1, marks the official kick-off of the Los Angeles edition of the Joint Custody Project. Twenty-two artists will be collaborating over the next month, to the theme of Double-Up:Double-Down. Our 'A' collaborators got the ball rolling over the weekend – purchasing supplies, picking mediums, formats, etc. The first swap day is Wednesday, June 4 (check your calendar for drop-off, pick-up times) – we'll make sure to post select photos from the first round. Best of luck to our participants – we're excited to see what you come up with.

-Brady in LA

(image courtesy d-)

A Word From Shana and Tad

Art-making is fundamentally an expressive act, mainly undertaken in private if not solitude. Artists determine the viability of a work before revealing it to audiences, and are directly invested in its meaning, in the communication of their singular vision through their objects and images. Exhibition curating is on the whole more interpretive than creative, however there is also a dimension of self-expression, as curators are asked to apply their own original ideas in framing and selecting elements in the service of meaning. In both cases, collaboration is typically a choice, partners known and invited with deliberation, with communication lines wide open.

As everyone knows, the Joint Custody Project turns the creative process on its head, setting up blind collaborations between strangers intended to both challenge personal and aesthetic boundaries, to force a relinquishing of control over what matters most. To trust. What has been more unexpected is the degree to which our experience of curating the show parallels what we are putting the artists through. We had never met before agreeing to work together, an artist and a critic, but like the artists, we just took the chance.

A great deal of our work was done on line, via email relay. We chose not to impose any strict idea or precondition on our choices, to use intuition as a guide, trust that patterns and linkages would suggest themselves to us and that titles and themes could be articulated later, when things were clearer. We each went back to our studios and drew up initial lists and tentative pairs, and started shuffling our decks. We later explained ourselves, made compromises, played word games and all the rest, and the result, the lineup if you will, reflects each of us equally but is nothing either one of us would or could have done solo. We hope your collaborations go as smoothly.

Below we’ve pasted a few passages from our correspondence, salient comments and exchanges which we hope offer some insight into what went on during this process, in case anyone is curious about what we were thinking.

After the first round, we edited each other. Tad said this: “I do like a lot of your pairings...only a few cases where I know the people well that I sense disaster. Check out so-and-so’s website. I think it’s worth including and they would play well with others. From your groupings I really don’t like the works of this person and that one…”

That part was pretty smooth, our tastes proved different but compatible. One very interesting exchange came up when we were doing the matching. As a writer, SND at first was really excited about cross-pollinating mediums, photographers with painters, sculptors with performance artists, that kind of thing. But as an artist, Tad felt that pushing people way outside of their practices is presumptuous. “I would be pissed off if I was paired with someone way outside of my practice. Like what I am supposed to do with this wet painting or what am I supposed to do with this data DVD if I am a painter?”

Good point. So that being settled, we turned our attention to the theme and title for the show. We didn’t want to be too narrow or arbitrary with anything like portraits (unfair to abstractionists) or a restricted palette or some poem to respond to or etc. We started throwing words around like hybrid, twin, mirror, uncertainty, I Ching, Carl Jung, Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, duality, romance, fate… SND wrote: “We have been talking about duality as a formative principle of life as well as contemporary art in general, additionally highlighted by the specific, literal nature of this project. For my part I was very attracted to the esoteric implications, you know, all that Hindu and Buddhist stuff about what is real and what is an illusion, the connection between the mind and the body, abstraction and figuration being a perfect example of how these things manifest in art…”

Meanwhile, Tad, who in the beginning was all about ambiguity and open-endedness, started following the gallery’s original theme about children who grow up with two homes and multiple families after a divorce or the pushing of gambling and addiction to always go double or nothing.

But in the end SND managed to talk him out of that, perhaps in the process of judging her visceral reaction against that direction failing to thoroughly contemplate her resistance to it, but so what. No babies.

In the end we were thinking about Double or Nothing, but we realized that nothing was no longer an option, so we went with Double Up/Double Down. It has action, it references the binary authorship situation, it reminds you of the risk, the gamble as it were, but without such stark stakes or finality as Double or Nothing. We think it’s vague enough that no one will feel controlled but has enough specificity to generate a range of associations and spark a range of emotions and narrative threads in individual artists…

Oh and Tad hated the word partner. We changed Partner to Collaborator in the literature, just because..

-Shana & Tad

Images courtesy elliotcable and weddingcakes