Performing Arts in America 1875-1923


The advent of the twentieth century has been hailed as the beginning of the modern age. A combination of technological advances and societal freedoms led the way to a new world where - among other things - entertainment for the masses became a thriving industry. The upbeat mood of America was reflected in its theater, its popular songs, the craze for ballroom dancing, and above all in the newest of popular fads, the motion pictures. At the same time, America was forging its own classical culture worthy to compete with its European forebears.

Performing Arts in America 1875 -1923 features an authentic look at this past, from the Broadway theater and Tin Pan Alley to the art of dancer Loie Fuller and composer Charles Griffes, all brought to you in original documents. Captured in the then new techniques of photography, recorded sound, and film, the performing arts of the early twentieth century come alive as never before, preserved by The New York Public Library and brought to you a century later via the Internet.

A cornucopia of wonderful photographies
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Strictly Berlin Media Art from Berlin

curious dog at the opening, photography Ilse Ruppert

...........only till friday

This exhibition brings together a plethora of parallel approaches that take different expressive forms. In Berlin a formulation of similar concerns can be seen to pervade all spheres of art, be it music, the visual arts, film, theater or performance. Artists from many countries, not just from Germany, have made Berlin their home, at least for a time. Their goal is not the apparent reproduction of reality, but rather to liberate the depicted reality from its usual temporal and semantic contexts and to give it meanin g in new combinations. Not the copy of reality, but concepts of reality, in which an interpretation reveals itself to be only one of many possibilities. The option of retelling is rarely applicable to these forms of expression, and identifying the recognizable usually does not get one very far either. The viewer is forced to think about himself and his own experiences; only then does the pleasure of viewing emerge, albeit without any guarantee that the enigma will be completely revealed.


GdK
Opening hours: tue – sat 11.00h a.m. – 7.00 p.m.
Potsdamer Str. 78
D-10785 Berlin

Finnisage Fri 31th march 8 pm
Surprise Program:

Slideshow "Das war Strictly Berlin / Strictly Berlin Review" Ilse Ruppert
"Kleine Volksberuhigung ! / Little consolation of the People" hütte
hilton.(Margita Haberland)..
"Notausgang mit Kegeln in den Keller / Emergency Exit - Bowling in the
Basement"

Lee Mayr

Hostage Drama at the Bank of Rome, 2003, from "fear & fiction", 2002

from the series "in asia", 2002

There´s a moment of movies in the narrative photography of Lee Mayr
(She blogs as well)

R.I.P. Stanislaw Lem



Since I was a young Katz I spend uncountable hours devouring the books
of polish science fiction writer and philosoph Stanislaw Lem.

A family in a tube (can be squeezed out), drawing by Stanislaw Lem

Indeed, Lem's very breadth may be his most distinguishing characteristic; as one of his most astute reviewers, J. Madison Davis, has written, "One cannot dislike Lem; one can only dislike parts of him."
There are many reasons to read Lem. His stories, charged with invention and wit, never fail to entertain. At the same time, no living writer has used fiction to engage scientific problems as seriously as Lem, who views prognosis as one of literature's most important functions. Ours is the age of cybernetics and genetics. We stand, precarious, on the verge of making not just new choices -- for that is simply the human condition -- but the new sorts of choices that technology makes possible; and there is little other than imagination available to guide our next steps. Stanislaw Lem shows that science fiction, now more than ever, is good to think with, and he has revealed rich new possibilities for the genre.Nathan M. Powers, 1 October 1999


Tribodice with child, drawing by Stanislaw Lem


"For moral reasons I am an atheist—for moral reasons.
I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally."Stanislaw Lem, 1984

Stanislaw Lem died today at the age of 84 in Kraków

book sculptures by Matej Krén

Omphalos - height 250cm

Gravity Mixer - height 350cm

Matej Krén contructs stunning sculptures from books published in the country in which one is to be built. And so the works absorb a local context, integrating the content, history and vernacular of that country's local culture.

Idiom, opening
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Love Neutral Pierre Coulibeuf


Yesterdays opening of Love Neutral by Pierre Coulibeuf at play
was among the highlights of the biennale-weekend.
« Lost Paradise » and « Love Neutral» are part of a cross-disciplinary project which brings together various artistic disciplines : cinema, photography, sculpture, architecture, literature and painting....the exhibition presents
projections of “cinematic paintings”, frozen scenes which push back the frontiers, in this case of artistic categories: the still photographic image, and the moving cinematic image overlay one another in such a way that the limits between them become indiscernible. Subject (portrait/close-up or landscape), fixedness (photo/shot with characters or landscapes), and length (photo/unique shot) are put into a relationship of reciprocal tension.»
(from the artist´s statement)
The installations are very well executed, in a way that the gallery space becomes part of the work itself.
Highly recommended.

The opening was also the official presentation of a new book by Pierre Coulibeuf
“...comme une ombre lointaine /...wie ein Schatten in der Ferne”




play
25th March - 30th April 2006
The gallery is open Wed – Sat, 2 – 7pm
hannoversche str. 1, 10115 berlin

The new scenesters Pedro Velez about the art scene in Puerto Rico

Flyer for the Bukakees "I’ve been fucked" performance

New artist-run spaces are popping up under every coconut tree on the island of Puerto Rico. Judging by both quantity and quality, the scene is vital. But the perception could be misleading, especially in an uncertain economy, where any downturn is sure to hit artists the hardest. The fact is, this small Caribbean colony of the United States can’t support its own cultural product.
Faced with this reality, young artists are increasingly forming collectives and pooling their energies in mutually beneficial ways. These "New Scenesters" have taken to heart lessons learned from local musicians, launching their own exhibition spaces, publications, performance groups and social organizations in order to survive, not only economically but emotionally.







Alia Farid with her work 3Ayuni, at Tagron in San Juan

For 3Ayuni, Farid attached a group of fake eyelashes to the wall in a work of considerable delicacy that also seems to deal with questions of genre and displacement.

It was at one of those after-opening hangouts that we came across a flyer with the image of a topless woman and a headline that read "The Bukakees" and "I‘ve been Fucked." The advertisement was for a private performance of the Bukakkes, a group founded by Bernice Gonzalez that is part punk band and part performance art troupe. The all-girl set ranged from hardcore punk to sweet pop. Gonzalez’ voice is drowned out by her instrument, the bass guitar, which she can barely play.

Overall, the act is aggressive and confusing, not least because the troupe seems to include a person who hangs out in the audience, harassing viewers by insisting, constantly, "I’m in the Bukakees, I’m with the band." At the end of every song, and there are only two, the sexy debutante gives a speech to the audience, in which the word "fuckers" is used vehemently. This anti-feminist performance is one of the smartest and most entertaining I’ve seen in a long time.

read more at artnet
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Kosmonaut Piggy




Shown here is the brave little piggy having a last drink
before it enters the spaceshuttle for its heroic mission

Follow its way to outer space in this touching documentary

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Hugh Symonds















Music video director Hugh Symonds set up a gallery with beautiful photographies shot with a mobile phone camera

art-science and evolution of consciousness
A new project from Barcelona: www.res-qualia.net

“From Res-Qualia we believe that the artistic work should find its position to give an answer to the human evolution. The utilization of science and technology in arts should not be used just for achieving its own purposes, but to offer a parallel view point and, in the best case, to think that art could help in the development of the science.”


Media Dirt by Timo Kahlen, 2004, three glass cylinders, several loudspeakers and the sound of interfering radio frequencies.

Videos by Timo Kahlen have been successfully screened
as part of the electronic painting, curated by Daniela Butsch,
during the Directors Lounge 2006

gracias loreto

Jane Birkin by Gainsbourg



> > > >

Objet trouvé pour aru


Ling long women's magazine, Issue No. 110, 1933

video'appart


opening march 22 with a performance by Tatiana Cruz

Vidéo’appart march 23 - april 9
presnts 37 videoartists in 15 private apartments

Les artistes qui participent à Vidéo’appart ont été invités à proposer un projet de vidéo dans un espace habité : l’appartement. Les créateurs avaient, comme seule contrainte le respect des lieux et de ses habitants. Aucune thématique ne leur avait été imposée.
Néanmoins, un lien unit l’ensemble de ces travaux :l’Autre.

among the artists is Andreas Sachsenmaier whom I mentioned some days ago

Andreas Sachsenmaier "Mojo", installation, 2006


opening tonight, 6pm at Immanence 21, av du Maine 75015. Métro Montparnasse

Directors Lounge 2006 in review

The infamous Directors Lounge Ducklings


The lazy bunch of Directors Lounge finally managed to put
some pictures and impressions from the february show online.
Lots of drunken directors.

Dream Walking wins Cinéma du réel Grand Prize

Dream Walking, an independent Chinese documentary, has just received the Great Prize of the festival "Cinema du Reel" held in Centre Pompidou in Paris (March, 10th to 19th).

Since its creation in 1978 by the "Bibliotheque publique d'information", Cinema du Reel has developped into a major documentary cinema festival, a reference event in which the public as well as the professionals discover new films and new filmmakers, in which today's documentary filmmaking confronts with the best of documentary cinema history. Workshops and special events complete a program supported by a numerous and enthusiastic audience.

Dream Walking (Meng You) - Huang Wenhai, 85min, China, 2005
They are painters, musicians, poets, performers. In the suffocating Beijing summer, they improvise a film, invent their life, discuss literature, art and religion. If they enjoy nakedness so much, it is perhaps in order to abandon the absurd roles that society imposes on them.

Dream walking was presented by Zhu Rikun of Fanhall Studio, Beijing.
An extensive screening of independent chinese cinema, curated by Zhu Rikun
and Marina Foxley for Directors Lounge is in the pipeline.

Congrats to all involved in the making of Dream Walking from Team Director Lounge.

Allah yistur min il rab3a

Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things- possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel… It’s difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war... Allah yistur min il rab3a (God protect us from the fourth year).

read more at Riverbend´s Baghdad Burning, a Girl Blog from Iraq

update: just noticed that Baghdad Burning won Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog at the sixth annual weblog awards, the 2006 bloggies.
Congrats, well deserved.

Dada

Francis Picabia. Jésus-Christ rastaquouère. Illustrated by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Paris: s.n., 1920.

Tristan Tzara. Vingt-Cinq Poèmes. Illustrated by Jean Arp. Zurich: Collection Dada, 1918.

The International Dada Archive provides links to some of the major Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive. Each document has been scanned in its entirety. nice
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Nuernberg Juergen Teller

from the series Nuernberg













at Fondation Cartier


Kristen McMenamy, Kate Moss

Juergen Teller initially photographed celebrities, and then quickly graduated to shoots for youth style magazines such as The Face and i-D. He is regarded as one of the most influential of contemporary fashion photographers. Some highrez-pics of his work can be found here

between classroom and kitchen Erika Ritzel

Classroom Drawings

there´s a touch of haunting memories from childhood
in the silent photography of Erika Ritzel

kitchen (a work in progress) enlarge
thanks Paul
( who points out that it's the kitchen that's the work in process, not the photo )

Gimme Gimme Octopus




I first heard about Kure Kure Takora a.k.a. Gimme Gimme Octopus at Mitternachtskino (german) and the description made it hard to believe this children-series from the early seventies actually exist. 5minutesonline gives the following summary
"The most accurate summary of this late 60's Japanese kids show we have read states: "An octopus and a peanut are in love with the same walrus." Playing kind of like a Sesame Street segment on an entire sheet of acid, Gimme Gimme Octopus boggles the mind with it's impenetrable story lines and bizarro characters.
wmfu has more

including a short movie (QT)

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rock art in the libyan desert





Late January 2003 Zarzora Expeditions and Jacopo Foggini separately announced the discovery of a major new rock art site in the Western Gilf Kebir. In February 2003 we have located and visited this amazing shelter.
A unique feature of the site is the innumerable negative hand prints, and the many strange headless animals. It has been suggested that perhaps it's a mythical 'rain creature'. There are several little 'swimmer' figures associated with the strange creatures. via

Katsura Komiyama

Fri. 03.03.2006 tokyo bbs

from TOKYO polaroid plus



I first stumbled across Katsura Komiyama´s beautiful polaroids some 18 month ago, pointed there by a note from Joerg.
By revisiting the page of Katsura Komiyama I found several new photographies from the last weeks that are as stunning as his polaroids.

nervous fluffiness at share

Nervous, Interactive audiokinetic object, Bjoern Schuelke 1999/2003

Restless Régine posted some impressions from the Share festival in Turin,
among them the charming work "Nervous" by Bjoern Schuelke
The interactive audio-kinetic object “Nervous” is a bright, orange and fluffy hemisphere.
When approached, it become nervous, start to beep and move frantically.
The Nervous body contain a Theremin. It is one of the first electronic music instrument in history, invented 1917 by Leon Thermen in Russia.
The Theremin works electronically and provides an electromagnetical field which can be influenced by the dynamic body-capacity of the spectator.
The changing frequencies of the theremin trigger the mechanic, the orange plush body starts to turn… a curious dialogue starting between the spectator and the object. Are the human emotions interfering with the emotions of „nervous”?

Here´s a video of the fluffies in action

high-heeled blossoms Willie Cole

"With a Heart of Gold"

Willie Cole has often depended on found objects for his sculptural works, so when he recently came upon a supply of several thousand pairs of high-heeled shoes, it was time to go back to one of his original inspirations. Cole went into a secondhand shop and decided on high-heeled shoes because they seemed to be present in abundance. Sole to Soul is a collection of circles which represent lotus blossoms that die and bloom once more, works that stem from Cole's connection to Buddhism.

quoted from and found at Art MoCo

Ruido from the heart of of Havana
























still from Ruido by Yoel Díaz Vásquez CU 3 min, DV, 2006


Tonight at SXSW Oscar winner Charlize Theron will be in attendance for the World Premiere of the documentary, EAST OF HAVANA, which she produced.
East of Havana is an unflinching close-up on the lives and friendship of three young rappers compelled to address their generation's future from the confines of a Cuban ghetto. Soandry, Magyori, and Mikki possess theundeniable talent and charisma of pop icons; but within Cuba's fearless and rebellious undergound movement, they are also the defacto leaders, creating music whose cross-pollination of early American rap and Latin influences brings self-expression to its sharpest, riskiest, and most triumphant point.

Jauretsi Saizabitoria and Emilia Menocal are both children of Cuban exiles. They grew up in Miami, and now both live in New York City.


For a more cuban point of view I recommend Ruido (which means noise) by Cuban native Yoel Díaz Vásquez, a short featuring eight rappers from suburban Havana.

You can watch this one alongside six other works by Cuban filmmakers in the program CANDELA! Cuban side-tracks on Directors Lounge television

Without Charlize, but you get eight rappers instead of three

double density of experience
Joachim Seinfeld & Andreas Sachsenmaier


doppelte Erlebnisdichte
is the hard to translate titel of an exhibition by Joachim Seinfeld,
curator of Directors Lounge,
and fellow artist Andreas Sachsenmaier with whom he share a studio.




Joachim Seinfeld: Cyborg



Andreas Sachsenmaier: The Last Supper

installation with projection on the wall, video projector
DVD-player, loudspeakers, dimensions: variable; 2004
quotation from "Der Dämon und das Fräulein Prym" Paul Coelho"


A video projection shows an apparent image of „The Last Supper“ by Leonardo da Vinci in the church Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Different female figures are sitting and standing at a long table, all well-known prototypes, which we can see daily in the media. Around a female Jesus they act in repetitive movements, whose message appears familiar and strange at the same time.

The Last Supper along with The Garden Of Delights After H.B was part of last years Directors Lounge



Installation view Galerie Adlergasse

"doppelte Erlebnisdichte"
presents photographic works by Joachim Seinfeld and video installations by Andreas Sachsenmaier until march 24th.






Galerie Adlergasse
im Kulturverein riesa efau

Adlergasse 14
01067 Dresden

Nezaket Ekici Hullabelly & Veil Fight
at Feigen Contemporary


Schleierkampf/Veil Fight, 2004
still from DVD with sound, 3 minutes

With inimitable style, Nezaket Ekici takes up the tradition of her idol, Marina Abramovic, yet both textually and formally she shifts the emphasis in order to superimpose authenticity and artefact like x-ray images and thus illuminate questions of identity. »In her work, Marina Abramovic does literally everything with the body (...) I try rather to incorporate the body in the installation. I love the concept of the »Gesamtkunstwerk«. Born in Turkey, Ekici moved at the age of three to Germany, and still cannot say whether she had a German or a Turkish upbringing. »Above all, I had a very strict education, which I try to break out of by performing«. As much as Nezaket Ekici might try to escape this strictness, it also remains the major formal characteristic and criterion of her work....
The adventure of discovery lies between (cultural) proximity and distance. Nezaket Ekici elucidates this with the motif of »veiling«, a thread that runs through all her previous work. She dons countless layers of clothing; or completely wraps her body in raw meat, leaving only the narrow slit of her eyes uncovered. »To veil« is always simultaneously »to unveil«. Cultural patterns both conceal and protect at the same time. The cultural voyage in Nezaket Ekici's work is always a voyage of sensuous surprises that take the word experience literally: to the point of delivery, shortly before the next departure.
Dr. Hans-Jörg Clement


Nezaket Ekici, acclaimed installation artist of Directors Lounge 2005,
is currently presented in the exhibition "Blessed are the Merciful" curated by Jerome Jacobs of aeroplastics fame.
Feigen Contemporary
February 10 - April 29, 2006

Shadow Bag by Scott Snibbe


Shadow Bag, 2005
computer, projector, digital video camera, retroreflective screen, custom software

As a viewer walks within the beam of a projector, their shadow is captured and re-projected onto a screen with unpredictable variation. Sometimes there is no response, the projector is just pure light; sometimes their shadow immediately starts to come at them from the other side, mirrored; at other times, the shadow follows them. The responding shadow is sometimes their own and other times prior viewers. When the viewer intersects the replayed shadows it occasionally dissolves or collapses, like an empty bag. The title of the work refers to the Jungian notion of the body’s shadow as a “bag” that holds all of our psychic detritus. >
Scott Snibbe
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Exploring City Scape Berlin, Chicago, Hannover
Short films by Klaus W. Eisenlohr


The Sky Above Alexanderplatz (1996, 16mm, colour, sound from CD) 16min

Klaus W. Eisenlohr's works are concerned with the
spatial practices of filmmaking, and with the
body in architectural and urban environments. The
Sky Above Alexanderplatz and Local Time + 2 1/2
are explorations of the urban environment
strongly related to the artist's photographic
work on architecture. These earlier films
anticipate themes in his more recent video
project, realized during a two-year residency in
Chicago. Slow Space - The Interviews investigates
the intellectual debate over the value of public
space in the postmodern city, and features
conversations with artists living in Chicago. In
his latest work the artist explores the question
of change in urban space and the social
constitution of place in metropolitan areas in
Germany. In Stadtrandzone Mitte in Langenhagen
(Center of Urban Periphery at Langenhagen) he
worked together with youths on how they use
public space and interact in public.

Klaus W. Eisenlohr, long time member of Directors Lounge, curated urban research, a themed program about film, video and media work by artists who are concerned with the theme of urban development and public space for Directors Lounge 2006

Exploring City Scape
a special screening and discussion at the
Arsenal/Friends of German Kinemathek Berlin

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 4:30 pm. The artist
will be present. The screening is free of charge.

Arsenal
Potsdamer Straße 2
10785 Berlin
U/SBahn Potsdamer Platz

Shadow Chamber by Roger Ballen



Roger Ballen was born in New York City in 1950 and has lived in Johannesburg South Africa for almost 30 years. Beginning by documenting the small dorps or villages of rural South Africa, Ballen’s photography moved on in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s to their inhabitants; through the late 1990’s Ballen’s work progressed. By the mid 1990’s his subjects began to act where previously his pictures however troubling fell firmly into the category of documentary photography, his work then moved into the realms of fiction.
Ballen’s recent work enters into a new realm of photography—the images are painterly and sculptural in ways not immediately associated with photographs.
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ephemeral cities



In Spain one can find a linear city all along the coast built for tourism, a section of land that becomes the most crowded region in Europe, but just for a short time. It’s a city for only three months in summer, when thousands of people come looking for the sea and the sun. The rest of the year it becomes a ghost city, a city without any a function, with no people and no services. It has been growing and expanding since the 60's, and it seems it have no end. Sergio Belinchon shot an impressive photographic series that documents the development of this ephemeral coastal city.

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Final Address by Mayumi Lake

Poo-Chi (Action Cam Porn), 1999
C-print

japanese artist Mayumi Lake, who participated in the Directors Lounge 2005 with the poetic "To Sigma",is widely known for her Poo-shi-series, especially since she has been connected with M. Jackson


A quiete fifferent portfolio is her Final Address-series



Final Address (3553 Milwaukee), 2002
C-print , 20 x 24

For the past two years I have been collecting images of funeral homes. Funeral homes are the icon of the ultimate American way to finish one’s life. In Japan, there is no equivalent – funerals are usually held in public religious places, such as Buddhist temples, or churches. Here funeral homes exist as comfortable and relaxing spaces designed to ease your experience of death.I am obsessed with this formula and believe that “American funeral homes” fulfill my vision of the ultimate “American dream”.


Final Address (Interior/ Pink Room #9L ), 2002
C-print under plexiglas. 20 x 24

visit Mayumi Lake >