Next exhibition

Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving
Eva-Maria Bolz, Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen, Andy Holtin

Opening: 31.05.2013, 8 PM
Exhibition runs 1 June - 21 July, 2013
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment

Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving is the fourth and final exhibition in the Synaesthesia series at Art Laboratory Berlin. It presents three artists, each of whom has (grapheme) synaesthesia - Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen (DK), Eva-Maria Bolz (D) and Andy Holtin (USA). Each has a unique form of expressing their synaesthetic experiences in their artwork.

While the three previous exhibitions synaesthesia dealt with art history, with media or with performative aspects the exhibition Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving devotes itself to selected artistic strategies for decoding the phenomenon of synaesthesia. It is significant that all three artists experience different forms of synaesthetic perception.

The Danish artist Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, professor of video in Aarhus, Denmark, experiences grapheme and spatial synaesthesia. Since 2003, she has created an extensive video archive of interviews about the multi-sensory perception of synaesthetes that document the experiences of individuals and at the same time make the unbridgeable gap between this topic and the audience clear: "Since each synaesthete, whom I met confronted me with a new spectrum of aesthetic perceptions, I realized that probably no common space of representation is to be found, but only an individual one. "


Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Why is Green a Red Word?, video stills, 2003 - 2010

New and old works brought together in Why is Green a Red Word? investigate the relationship between language, translation and visual thinking. Lyngkær Pedersen follows a documentary approach, by focusing on the interview and therefore creating space for an unsuspected diversity of synaesthetic expression on a global scale. For example, she interviewed Gregory Sean Kielian, who during the filming leads us through the countryside near the Berkeley University in California, as he speaks of his individual synaesthetic colour-space perception. The walk has been deliberately filmed in black and white by Lyngkær Pedersen. Colours appear again only in the video interview when he explains to her, for example, the perceived colour of the stripes on his passport. In another interview, for example Lyngkær Pedersen meets Lisa Nyberg, who experiences a form of number-space synaesthesia. In this interview, the artist has used the questionnaire method and asked synaesthetes such questions as: "how many inches away from your arm is in January?" or "how big are the days of the week?" Lyngkær Pedersen has transferred the answers to in drawings, which are then corrected by Nyberg in conversation, thus a three-dimensional temporal perception is transferred to a two-dimensional illustration. These and other findings were presented by the artist at the conference Synaesthetics and Kinaesthetics in October 2010 at the Center for Literary Research in Berlin

The grapheme and lexical synaesthete Eva-Maria Bolz lives and works in Berlin. Her work is dedicated to an exploration of the relationship between colour, text and perception. In her individual form of synaesthesia she feels an unchanging association of colours to numbers, letters, as well as whole words (lexical synaesthesia). Perception becomes a filter through which letters, words - text in itself - are translated into colours and transformed from a set of well-known characters into a message that can only be detected by means of a particular synaesthetic sensibility.

The project which Eva-Maria Bolz presents at Art Laboratory Berlin, follows her subjective perception, that colours and letters form a specific code through which a text can be translated into blocks of colour. Each letter corresponds to a specific colour. When the artist has deliberately used texts that contain intense colour descriptions such as Oscar Wilde's The Rose and the Nightingale, she asks us not only to explore the perceived differences, but also to experience the text through the eyes of a synaesthete.


Eva-Maria Bolz, The Rose and the Nightingale, (Oscar Wilde), 2013, detail

In the exhibition Bolz will present five selected texts in the form of large colour plates. For the implementation of the panels she has opted for direct print behind acrylic glass. This emphasises the fact that the synaesthetic colouring of letters, numbers and words is not only limited to colour. In addition, often different opacities, textures and a certain three-dimensionality in synaesthetic perception are present, which do not explicitly effect individual blocks of colour. This perception can, in part, be visualized by the use of acrylic glass.

In addition to the colour plates, documentation is created in the form of an artist book, presented in a small edition (and bound by hand). Here the artistic creative process is shown through illustrations, colour tests and texts. Furthermore, a small edition of small format prints is planned, which will also included with the documentation.

Andy Holtin, an art professor at the American University in Washington DC, has grapheme synaethesia, associated with a particular colour-number association. He sees numbers in specific colours, moreover, this is influenced by a partial red-green colour blindness, affecting certain nuances. Only at the beginning of his university studies did Holtin discover that his specific graphic-numerical synaesthesia was not shared by all people.



Andy Holtin, Corrections, video still, 2009

In his video Corrections you can see how a hand colours in the numbers of different signs and nameplates in photographs. Corrections demonstrates the gap between the object and subjective sense perception as well as the personal impressions of the artist himself. By speeding up the video, the act of colouring in appears grotesque as the act of artist's hand achieves a form of splapstick.

During this final exhibition the synaesthesia series, Art Laboratory Berlin will host an international interdisciplinary conference Synaesthesia. Discussing a Phenomenon in the Arts, Humanities and (Neuro)science.
(5 & 6 July, 2013, Glaskasten Theatre, Prinzenallee 33, next to Art Laboratory Berlin)


Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (Kuratoren)
rapp@artlaboratory-berlin.org
cdelutz@artlaboratory-berlin.org

Presse: Olga Shmakova
olga.shmakova@artlaboratory-berlin.org

With the generous support of:


Media partner:


The Synaesthesia series is supported in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.



Current exhibition

Synaesthesia / 3: History of the Senses
Carl Rowe & Simon Davenport
Sergio Maltagliati & Pietro Grossi

Opening: 22 March, 2013, 7PM
Exhibition runs: 23 March. - 12 May, 2013 (closed Easter weekend 29-31 March)
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment
Performances: 22 March, 7PM; 23 March, 2PM & 7PM ; 24 March, 2PM & 7PM

History of the Senses deals with the phenomenon of synaesthesia from the point of view of art and media history. The two artistic positions refer back to different movements from the 20th Century giving Art Laboratory Berlin's four-part exhibition series on synaesthesia a historical component, whilst nevertheless dealing with contemporary issues.

Simon Davenport & Carl Rowe // Banquet for Ultra Bankruptcy
The British artist Simon Davenport and Carl Rowe currently work on a number of artistic projects that combine the performative with artistic research on a cultural history of the senses. Simon Davenport sees synaesthesia as a means to unsettle and disorient. In earlier performative works, for example, he combined heavy drum beats with the spraying of steam and the recitation of poetry. Carl Rowe's art projects, on the other hand, combine socio-political commentary and humour with culinary methodology. An important art historical reference point for him is Filippo Marinetti's Manifesto La Cucina Futurista (1930).The manifesto promoted the renewal of the Italian food system with the aim of the strengthening, revitalization and spiritualisation of modern society. It simultaneously included colours, shapes, textures, smells, sounds and noises.


Carl Rowe & Simon Davenport,
A Banquet of Ultra Bancruptcy, 2013

A Banquet for Ultra Bankruptcy, developed for Art Laboratory Berlin, is based on the Marinetti's manifesto, which forms the starting point for a series of performances followed by an exhibition. The overarching theme of synaesthesia provides a basis for the study of aesthetics, politics and participation, as well as for the reactions of the participants. A Banquet for Ultra Bankruptcy is made up of five performances for six guests. During a six-course menu selected foods are combined with images, sounds and scents. Each course is designed as an aesthetic experience, allowing the audience to participate in simultaneous sensations.

Sergio Maltagliati & Pietro Grossi // CIRCUS 8
The Italian composer Pietro Grossi (1917 - 2002) was one of the first programmers to contribute pioneering work in computer generated music. In 1964 he was among the first to introduce the experiments of John Cage to Italy. A year later he became the professor of electronic music at Konservatorum Luigi Cherubini in Florence. He also used his composing programs to develop early computer graphics. With the use of "QBasic" he developed the program "HomeArt".Sergio Maltagliati studied under Pietro Grossi in the 1980s and developed new methods of musical compositions, in which the score underwent a significant visualisation. Maltagliati has reworked the Grossi's original programs by adapting the programming code to create a generative program that simultaneously produces sound and abstract colours and shapes.

Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati Circus 8, 1986/2008

The work Circus 8 (1986/2008) consists of eight pieces and is based on Grossi's HomeArt programs, which automatically generated sound. Maltagliati has expanded Grossi's principle with software programs and added visual graphic variations. The visual data generated by the computer approximates the graphic score for a sound composition (cf. John Cage). Whilst the work Circus 8 adds a media historical dimension to Art Laboratory Berlin's Synaesthesia series, it also brings an important new component into the discussion: the computer as artificial brain with its own form of digital synaesthesia.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)

Artist statement by Carl Rowe & Simon Davenport

Contemporary Art Turns to the Dinner Table: Art Events Gone Gourmet in Hg2 Magazine

 

With the generous support of:

The Synaesthesia series is supported in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.

 

Media partner:

 

 

 

 

 

 

previous exhibitions:

26.1.2013-3.10.2013

Synaesthesia / 2: Space and Perception
Madi Boyd
Carrie C Firman

 Artist talk with Madi Boyd 10 March, 2012 at 3PM

Inquiries into the nature of Space and Perception are the basis of Art Laboratory Berlin's second exhibition in the Synaesthesia series. Synaesthesia, the experience of two or more sensory impressionsat the same time, is both an artistic paradigm and neurological phenomenon. Two installations by Madi Boyd and Carrie C Firman explore the connection between perception and experience of mind and body from a synaesthetic point of view.

Madi Boyd is a synaesthete from Great Britain, whose artistic work focuses on perception and the brain. In collaboration with neuro-scientists, Dr. Mark Lythgoe and Dr. Beau Lotto, from University College London her work incorporates and combines installation, film and sculpture. Her recent project The Point of Perception explores how much information the human brain needs in order to know what it is looking at.

Carrie C Firman is an emerging electronic artist from the US. Her work is inspired by studying and experiencing the crossing of senses. She sees synaesthesia not only as a sensory phenomenon, but also a fantastic world interface, responsible for completely unique perceptual experiences.
(More information)

 

 

 
 

27.10.2012 - 16.12.2012

Synaesthesia / 1: The Orange Smell of November
Barbara Ryan
Annette Stahmer

28 October, 2012, 4PM - Artist talk and workshop with Barbara Ryan
16 December, 2012, 3PM Artist talk with Annette Stahme

As part of the new series Synaesthesia, Art Laboratory Berlin presents the first exhibition The Orange Smell of November with new works by Barbara Ryan and Annette Stahmer.

The artist Barbara Ryan’s perceptions of the world are underpinned by her polymodal synaesthesia which in turn forms the foundation of her artistic work. She experiences her synaesthesia »as something that is in her parallel conscious – as opposed to something that is in the subconscious, creating a duality of vision«

The work of the Berlin typographer and artist Annette Stahmer revolves around language, the relationship between voice and writing, the act of writing, palimpsests and synaesthesia. The two videos in the exhibition - A ist blau and Synästhetische Bilder I - IV - show the artist's mother, a synaesthete who connects vowels with certain colours.
(More information)

 

1.9.2012 - 14.10.2012
Time & Technology

Embodiment of Time.
Yasuhiro Sakamoto with Iñigo Giner Miranda
Dave Hebb

Opening: 31 August, 2012, 20 Uhr

As part of the current exhibition series Time & Technology the exhibition Embodiment of Time presents new works by Yasuhiro Sakamoto mit Iñigo Giner Miranda and by Dave Hebb. The Japanese artist and scholar Yasuhiro Sakamoto and the Spanish composer Iñigo Giner Miranda have developed the installation Visible Canon. String Quartet without Strings for Four Loudspeakers and an Art Machine, shown in the front room, especially for this exhibition. The work transforms the complex time structures of contemporary and classical music into an acoustic-visual model.

The video installation Monitor by the American artist Dave Hebb is a video and photographic documentation of an environmental intervention extending over a one-year period. Hebb placed a computer monitor outdoors and over the entire year documented changes to the environment several times a week. His piece is played on old computers and monitors and is inherently unstable, a common problem of technology as it becomes obsolete. This self-reference is also shown through the display of the video on the same type of monitor that is the subject of the piece itself, which is presented more as an object of media archaeology than merely a means of presentation
(more information)

24.03.2012 - 29.04.2012
Time & Technology

Fantastic Time Machines
Shlomit Lehavi
Sam Belinfante & Simon Lewandowski

Opening: 23 March, 2012, 8PM
Artist talk with Shlomit Lehavi: 30 April, 8PM

The exhibition Fantastic Time Machines presents new works by Shlomit Lehavi and Sam Belinfante & Simon Lewandowski. The two contributions deal with the phenomenon of time through synchronicity, simultaneity and succession. These artists have developed special forms of imaginary time machine.

The British artists Sam Belinfante and Simon Lewandowski produced The Reversing Machine (A Theatre of Kairos and Chronos) especially for this exhibition. The installation alludes to the notion of Kairos as opportune time, as opposed to Chronos, the course of time. The work Time Sifter is by the Israeli born and New York based artist Shlomit Lehavi who works primarily with new media and multi-channel video. Her video installation Time Sifter explores collective memory, collective forgetting and time based media as a contemporary time machine.
(More information)

 

 

27.01.2012 - 11.03.2012
Time & Technology

plan b (Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers) Navigating the Everyday

Opening: 27 January 2012, 8PM

Navigating the Everyday presents works by plan b, the British artist duo Daniel Belasco Rogers and Sophia New, and is their first solo exhibition in Germany. Since 2003 and 2007 respectively, Daniel and Sophia have been recording every journey they make every day using GPS devices. Additionally all areas of their digital communication (e.g. mobile phone text messages) are evaluated and processed artistically. Their work represents an artistic research by means of a digital archiving of their movements.

Over the years this practice has become part of everyday life, a form of private and personal 'sousveillance', in which the artists generate their own data, thereby reflecting the approach of those private and public agencies who collect all available data.
(More information)

 

 
 

25.11.2011 - 15.01.2012
Time & Technology

Gretta Louw: Controlling_Connectivity
Performance and exhibition

Online performance: 2-12 November, 2011
http://controllingconnectivity.tumblr.com/

Opening: 25 November, 2011, 8PM

14 January, 2012 3.30PM: Tour of the exhibition and Artists' talk with Gretta Louw
+ plan b (Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers) and Igor Štromajer; moderation: Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators).

The exhibition project Controlling_Connectivity by the Australian artist Gretta Louw is a reflection of the latest forms of digital communication. Her online performance (2- 12 November 2011) has laid the basis for an exhibition which will include screen capture footage, photographs and an installation. For 10 days the artist was available 24 hr/day for discussions, emails, comments, or interviews - of both private and professional nature - for any internet user wishing to take part in the project.
(more information)

Artist book: Controlling_Connectivity. Art, Psychology, and the Internet by Gretta Louw

 

 

 

10.09.2011 - 16.10.2011
Bärbel Möllmann - VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts
Opening: 9 September, 2011 8PM
Book Release Party - VISIONS NYC by Bärbel Möllmann: 30 September, 2011, 8PM

In VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts the Berlin-based artist and photographer Bärbel Möllmann has gathered a series of amazing portraits and interviews with New Yorkers from Summer 2001, recording their individual plans, goals and dreams, and from Summer 2002 recording their reactions to the events of the previous year.

When she began her unique artistic project in July 2001, Möllmann could not have imagined the attacks on the Twin Towers that would occur only two months later. The actual events of 9/11 are not directly seen in the images, but rather felt as a historic turning point in the interviews and photos taken both before and after September 11. The project is rather about individual New Yorkers and their respective fates, which are brought convincingly near in these artistic photographs and authentic interviews, which shows just how strongly the city of New York and its residents changed in the aftermath of September 11.
(more information)

 

 

29.04.2011 - 26.06.2011
Artists in Dialog: Al Fadhil & Aissa Deebi

My Dreams Have Destroyed My Life. Some Thoughts on Pain
29 April - 26 June, 2011, Fri - Sun, 2-6PM and by appointment
Opening: Thursday 28 April, 2011, 8PM

Round table discussion Al Tahrir: The Day After, 1 May, 2011, 3PM

My Dreams Have Destroyed My Life. Some Thoughts on Pain was first conceived by the artists during a common artist residency in Taiwan. Both artists had lost brothers in respective conflicts in their countries of origin. Al Fadhil has lost two brothers to the wars in Iraq. One brother died in the Iran-Iraq war. Fadhil's father, as the parent of a 'martyr,' were granted an audience with the dictator Saddam Hussein, which was documented with a photograph.

Aissa Deebi's younger brother Nasim died in Israeli police custody in 1999. Deebi's works in the exhibition will trace his and his brother's connection to the land they grew up in. A series of holographic photographs will depict the route from Deebi's childhood home near Haifa to the coast, a route Deebi and his brother often took together when they were younger. The superimposition of geography, memory and historical space come together in Deebi's installation to form a palimpsest of the personal and the political.
(more information)

 

 

22. 01.2011 - 13.3.2011
Sol LeWitt: Artist's Books

Opening: 21 January 2011, 8PM
Sol LeWitt_Symposium: 19/20 February, 2011

The American artist Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) was an influential figure in minimalism and is considered one of the most important representatives as well as co-founder of American conceptual art. The term "conceptual art" goes directly back to LeWitt: "If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps - scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations - are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." (Paragraphs, Artforum, June 1967)

LeWitt's intensive artist books production was extremely versatile: he used different designs and formats as well as varied techniques from color lithography to offset printing. Finally the phenomena of reproducibility was part of the concept: "Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced." (ibid.)
(more information)

 

 
30.10.2010 - 28.11.2010
Stardust Boogie Woogie
Tania Antoshina, Mo Foster, Marcela Iriarte, Christian de Lutz, Jane Mulfinger, Bob & Roberta Smith, Jessica Voorsanger.
curated by Francesca Piovano

Opening 29 October 2009 8PM

Finnisage: 26 November 2010 8PM
Special event: 30 November 2010 A reading by Mo Foster at the East of Eden bookstore

Stardust Boogie Woogie

When Andy Warhol declared that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, he probably didn't realized how true that was going to be. It is no longer necessary to have a particular talent, nowadays absolutely any one who is prepared by whatever means to be entertaining, can become a 'celebrity'. Then mass media, along with popular culture, will see that celebrities are consumed as spectacle giving them a package of meanings that has nothing to do with their intrinsic value.

To explore the issues of celebrity cult and modern heroes and to put them in a multifaceted international context, the exhibition Stardust Boogie Woogie has brought together 7 artists from different countries and backgrounds. Their work is around the notion of stardom and its related lifestyle (Jessica Voorsanger, Jane Mulfinger, Marcela Iriarte), of socialist personality cults (Christian de Lutz, Tania Antoshina) and of popular culture (Bob & Roberta Smith, Mo Foster).
(more information)

28.8.2010 - 26.09.2010
Artists in Dialog

Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic - Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Opening: 27 August 2010, 8PM
Workshop: 4 September, 2010, 2-6PM

The exhibition Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots is a collaboration by the artists Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic and part of the series Artists in Dialog. Both work on the border between art and life and environmental sciences. Together they have chosen the immediate area around Art Laboratory Berlin (the Soldiner Kiez) as a place to investigate interactions between the local human population and urban flora and fauna. The exhibition functions as a laboratory for the production of maps, drawings, models and prototypes. Wunschgarten is a series of dialogues: between the artists and the local community, between city dwellers and nature, between urban planning and urban wilderness. Toland considers the project 'habitat hacking' and Milicevic describes the project as 'reconstructing cross-species life worlds'.

(more information)

 

 
29.05.2010 - 27.06.2010
Artists in Dialog

2-1/4-n/2 x 21/4-n/2
Heidi Hove & Jens Axel Beck

Opening: Friday, 28 May, 2010, 8 PM
Performance/ work in progress (open to the public): 31 May - 3 June, 2-6 PM
Artist talk: Saturday 12 June, 2010, 6PM

The exhibition 2-1/4-n/2 x 21/4-n/2 by the Danish conceptual artists Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck is the first exhibition in our new series Artists in Dialog. Both are interdisciplinary artists, whose practice includes sculptural objects and installations as well as architectural, spatial and social interventions. A point of convergence in their work is a focus on daily life and the public and private spaces that we daily travel through. Their work examines how we navigate and organise ourselves in the world. Through simple and diverse manipulations, the daily and the recognisable are brought out of their regular condition.
(more information)

 

 

 

24.04.2010 - 22.05.2010
OFF FENCE.
Art on the Californian-Mexican Border
Michelle Chong
Katya Gardea Browne
Ed Gomez
Luis G. Hernandez
Camilo Ontiveros.

Opening: Friday, 23. April 2010, 20 Uhr
Artist Talk with Michelle Chong: So. 25. April 2010, 4PM

The exhibition project OFF FENCE. Art on the Californian-Mexican Border is an artistic platform with five positions, exploring the cultural overflow, overlap and tensions in the border region of Southern California and Northwest Mexico. The artists come from Los Angeles and Mexico City.
(more information)

 

Azin Feizabadi, from Repititions-Revolutions -Rituals

  

28.11.2009 - 07.02.2010
Art and Law IV

Creative Rights. On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft

Azin Feizabadi, Gilbert & George, Christian de Lutz, Triple Candie
The Creative Rights Library with documentation on Shepard Fairey vs AP, Richard Prince vs Patrick Cariou, Creative Commons, The Fair Use Projekt, Piratpartiet, etc.

Opening 27 November 2009, 8PM

Workshop: "Copyright and related topics for artists. musicians, filmmakers and other creative producers" with Andreas Lichtenhahn (lawyer), in German.
28 November 2009, 15h

Creative Rights. On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft investigates questions concerning the use, re-use and misuse of images and information in the contemporary art world from artistic, legal, political and philosophical viewpoints.

Since the late 1970s appropriation of images and information by such artists as Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince has become a common and accepted technique, part and parcel of postmodernism's critical approach. Indeed it follows a tradition that goes back through pop art and nouveau realisme to Dada and cubist collage. Not without ethical, aesthetic and legal controversy, a number of law cases involving appropriation seems to have increased in recent years involving artists such as Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Shepard Fairey. The exhibition Creative Rights consists of three parts: The exhibition with four artistic positions, the Creative Rights Library with extensive material on the presented artists and other recent law cases as well as a workshop on the theme of copyright.

(more information)

 

 

02.10.2009 - 15.11.2009
Art and Law III

Seized - Critical Art Ensemble
& Institute for Applied Autonomy

Opening: 2. October 2009, 8PM
Artist Talk: 4. October 2009, 4PM
Film Screening: Strange Culture, 2. November 2009, 7.30 PM (see events)

The exhibition Seized by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) is the third part of our series Art and Law. The exhibition documents the FBI raid on the house of CAE member Prof. Steve Kurtz in May 2004, following the death of his wife Hope. In the weeks prior to the raid Steve and Hope Kurtz had been preparing for an exhibition examining GM agriculture at Mass. MOCA.

An emergency worker of the fire department responding to Steve Kurtz's 911 call found materials in their houserelated to the upcoming exhibition suspicious and informed the FBI. The raid, conducted by FBI-officers wearing hazmat suits, and blocking off a half block radius of the home, caused much media attention. (more Information)
Photo copyright 2009 by Michael J. Mulley
 
 

30.05.2009 - 28.06.2009
Art and Law II
Ztohoven. Media Reality

Filmscreening: On Media Reality
by Vladimir Turner. Followed by artist talk: 29 May, 8:30pm

The Prague based artist collective Ztohoven use their work, often interventions in public space, to scrutinise the creditability of mass media and advertising. In their action Media Reality, which took place on 7 June, 2007, they ‘hacked’ into the Czech weather channel ČT 2 and added the image of an atomic explosion to the live image of a mountain valley. The channel pressed charges under laws against “indecent behavior” and the “diffusion of false information”. In two separate legal actions members of the group were acquitted. At the same time, Ztohoven were awarded the first NG 333 prize for contemporary art from the Prague National Gallery, in connection with Media Reality

Besides showing the work Media Reality and related court documents, Art Laboratory Berlin will present the German premiere of the film On Media Reality, which documents the legal and artistic aftermath of the action. The film’s director Vladimir Turner will be present at the opening on 29 May.(more information)

 
 

21.02.2009 - 29.03.2009
Art and Law I:

CAT. Monstration

Lecture by Maksim Neroda (CAT): 22 March 2009, 5PM

The CAT (Contemporary Art Terrorism) collective from Novosibirsk creates situations in public space, which lay bare the absurdity of the way in which political power functions. Unprepared passers-by were drawn into the process of creating critical artistic statements. For organizing a May Day monstration - a counterpart to a classical May Day demonstration - in which marchers carried individual banners with apolitical, often poetic or non-rational slogans, the artists were sentenced to pay a fine. The exhibition Monstration shows video works and documents of the public reaction by means of legal documents and mass media reviews.
(more information)

 

 
 

29.18.2008 - 04.01.2009
Curators from East and Central Europe III:

Mari Laanemets
Hier wäre das Leben leicht
(There, Life Would Be Easy)

The exhibition revolves around issues of design, of the construction of surfaces we are surrounded by in everyday life: from textiles to texts, to street and city. One of the underlying intentions of the exhibition is to reflect on how these formal constructions organize our behaviour, give our lives a scheme, a program, and on the sedimentation of ideology in forms.
Participating artists: Kadi Estland, Anton Koovit, Sirje Runge, Killu Sukmit, Tere Recarens and Florian Wüst.(more)

 

 
 

24.10.2008 - 16.11.2008
Curators from East and Central Europe II:

Elena Sorokina
Subjective Events, Sometimes Recorded

Tour of the exhibition: 02 November 2008, 3PM
Workshop 24 October 2008, 6PM

In everyday language, an event is a notion that embraces two different meanings - a happening violating limits or, in the opposite, invigorating them. One is destructive, the other restrictive; one is closer to the chaos of a revolution, the other to a meticulously performed ceremony with a set of rules. The work in the exhibition focuses on the second meaning: initially, it comments on contemporary rituals or pronounced interest in social codes, which often re-emerge in times of crisis and insecurity. Through recording, staging, or enacting some examples of today's ritualistic behavior the artists examine how the so-called "flexible personalities" engage in a performance of specific and mainly self-imposed rules. (more)

 

 
 

30.08.2008 - 28.09.2008
Art and Science III

Reiner Maria Matysik - Failed Organisms

Artist's talk: 31 August 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 28 September 2008, 3PM

The Berlin artist Reiner Maria Matysik (born 1967, Duisburg, Germany) works in manifold ways with concepts for future organisms. In the course of the last years he has created his own new system of post-evolutionary life forms at the borderline between art and biology. In his installations, videos, actions and publications the term "biological sculpture", coined by Matysik himself, plays a vital role. (more)

 

 
 

30.05.2008 - 29.06.2008
Art and Science II

Marcus Ahlers - Transposed Nodes

Artist's talk: 14 June 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 29 June 2008, 3PM

The artworks of Marcus Ahlers (born 1974) functions on the borderline of visual arts and science. On one hand they explore visual metaphors for the human body in its surroundings, making reference to social and architectural space. On the other hand they are receptacles for electro-chemical reactions, which take place within them. (more)

 

 
 

29.03.2008 - 04.05.2008
Art and Science I

Dmitrij Bulatov - Senses Alert

Artist's talk and workshop: 29 March 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 27 April 2008, 3PM

Contemporary Art already long ago turned away from a solely anthropocentric point of view. Currently in Science Art, it is concerned, among other things, with ecological phenomena and is investigating the existence of newly emerging life forms; Art and Science have been combined. The Kaliningrad based artist Dmitrij Bulatov views the contemporary art scene as a kind of petri dish of living material for his investigations. Coming from his own artistic experience he has investigated this sphere and explored its dynamics and spatial vectors. In connection with his scientific research and artistic practice, Bulatov has staged an active evolutionary dramatisation of ‘post-biological’ forms whose paradoxical development may completely change our idea of the surrounding world. (more)

 

 
 

26.01.2008 - 2.03.2008
Eastern and Central European Curators I:

Denisa Kera and Pavel Sedlak
Cosmopolitics - New Media Art from the Czech Republic

Workshop with Denisa Kera (curator): Curating New Media: 27.01.2008 5 PM
Artists Talk 01 February 2008 8PM
Tour of the exhibition 0 2 March 2008 3PM

The Czech new media art scene could be characterized by a latecomer strategy which in recent years is turning its disadvantages into a source of advantage. As video art and other trends from the 1980s and 1990s were never strong in the Czech art academies, young artists feel free to experiment and often develop very promiscuous relations to different traditions, trends and technologies. (more)

 

 
 

23.11.2007 - 6.01.2008
Art and Text III

Prinzenallee: a Play without Dialog by Birgit Szepanski

Artist's talk: Sunday, 06 January 2008, 5pm

In her installations, the Berlin artist Birgit Szepanski composes an aesthetic form of urban space using word and image, in which the walls, floor, windows and doors of the exhibition space become part of the art work. Taking regular walks through urban localities is a major part of the artist's production process, during which she collects thoughts, words and images of the city for her exhibition projects in Germany and abroad. There is a correlation between the architectural and bibliophile aspects in her artist's books, photographs, films and audio pieces.(more)

 

 
 

28.9.2007 - 28.10.2007

Art and Text II

Christian de Lutz - Ekphrasis

Christian de Lutz has worked as a photographer and visual artist since moving to Europe in 1994, after having worked in painting and video in New York during the late 1980s and early 1990s. During these years de Lutz has built up a considerable photo archive, which he has used as the basis to create his current images. The original analogue photographs have been processed through digital imaging software; some information has been taken away, while new information has been added. In the last seven years the artist has increasingly worked at the periphery of image and text. By means of a digital montage of photography and source code or algorithmic texts his pictures have generated a palimpsest-like layering of pictorial and literary signs.

As part of the exhibition series Art and Text, Art Laboratory Berlin is presenting a selection of de Lutz's most recent Source Code Images. (more information...)

 

 
 

31.8.2007 - 23.09.2007
Art and Text I

Farkhondeh Shahroudi

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of book art, drawings and a digital work by Farkhondeh Shahroudi as part of the series Art and Text.

Born in Tehran in 1962, Shahroudi has lived in Germany since 1990. She is both a visual artist working in a variety of media: sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, video and computer, and a poet writing in Farsi and German. Her work indeed functions like a series of hyperlinks between art and text, between tradition and technology. (more information)

 

 
 

30 June- 22 July 07
Art and Music III

Viktor Alimpiev - Two Songs

Viktor Alimpiev, whose work Summer Lightings was shown at the 4th Berlin Biennale in the Former Jewish Girls' School, combines different artistic fields in his cinematic work: visual arts, music, theater and dance. In his films he has worked with the human body and more recently with song and speech. During the 2005 Venice Theatre Biennale he directed the play We're Talking about Music in Italian language together with Marian Zhunin. In Linz in 2006 he created the video Wie heisst dieser Platz? in German. (more information)

 

 
 

25 May - 17 June 07
Art and Music II

3-ROOM-CONFERENCE. A Live Performance with an Exhibition by the Berlin Tiefenrauschorchester

The 3-Room-Conference is a performance project, which was organized by the Berlin Tiefenrauschorchester especially for the rooms of the artspace Art Laboratory Berlin.

In connection with his painting Inbetween (2001) and his film projection Cloud Pieces (2005) Leo Königsberg will realize a sound collage on his space cello. This audiovisual production will be taken further by the live act by Christian Glass' electronic acoustics. The dance performance by janusz de woyciechowski, in relation to his film Titania (1970), which will be projected in the art space, will develop this interdisciplinary experiment through the human body in movement. (more information)

 

 
 

30 March 07 - 20 May 07
Art and Music I

The Artist Group PG – video works

The Group PG was founded in 1998. It now consists of Ilya Falkovsky, Alexey Katalkin and Boris Spiridonov. PG is a play on words that can be interpreted differently, for example as “Criminal Group”, “Hydrant” or “Hand Grenade”.

The group activity is multifunctional. It publishes its own magazines and postcards, releases musical albums, makes comics and performances. (more information)

 

 
 

'pre-opening' 23 February 2007
Film screening:
Bildungscamper.
Der Blick des Patriarchen

A documentary film by Nicola Hochkeppel
2004, 62 min                          

A 1960's and 70's West German vacation idyll. The Hubert J. Wagner family of Cologne – all nine of then – trapped between the „simple life“ romanticism of camping and the educated middle-class ideal of classics-based scholarship. Tax consultant Wagner, the arch-catholic clan patriarch, suffers no amendments to his meticulous plans for the rigorous summer pilgrimages. Using the family's home-movie footage (1965 – 1975), the documentary film LEARNING BY CAMPING also chronicles a chapter of German social history during the heyday of the flourishing welfare state.(more information)
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