barbie does the biennale

***
ah, so...

the berlin biennale party post.

but first, a word first about the biennale itself:

disclaimer: i am the first to admit that i am no expert on the berlin Artworld (nor any art scene for that matter) but whatever i do have to report to you comes from solidly reputable sources.

this year's biennale was called 'When things cast no shadow,' and was curated by Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic. it aimed to "bring together artists from different generations and nationalities in an exhibition by day and night that aims to trace the diversity of art practices today. eschewing a singular theme, form, or temporality, and determined instead by a critical engagement with artists' processes, 'When things cast no shadow' could be said to take the form of an open structure in five movements without a plot."

[ha! without a plot, indeed.]

the day part of the biennale took place in four venues and included mostly newly commissioned works by 50 artists, and there were also nightly events.

so...

i was going to write a clever and incisive description of the biting reactions that i have observed in relation to the overall tone and quality of the work, but i decided to make a comic instead (click on it to enlarge):



but as i said, i'm no expert - and if my comic appears a tad cynical, let me say that with all my heart i do believe that we all want to be moved, and i sincerely lament the fact that the work seemed to be lacking in this respect.

if you would like a humorous description of a couple exhibitions, here's a candid conversation that i overheard between two of my favourite artists reviewing the work that they had seen on the first day of the biennale:



okay. 'nuff said. on to the parties.

so for those of you who are familiar with this city, you already know that berliners LOVE a good pah-tay. combine this innate tendency with the thousands of international jet-set partiers that the biennale brought to town, and you get the makings for one crazy weekend.

i've documented short bites of the two days of parties (with a few pics of the recovery day for good measure) so that you can really get an idea of what it was like. i tried to capture as much of the 'atmosphere' as i could, and happily the visuals i was able to record turned out quite alright.

what i couldn't capture as successfully was the feeling of being smushed up against a bunch of strangers for almost two days straight. i cannot count how much alcohol was spilled on me during this time (i am beginning to understand why people in this city wear so much black) but it was actually lots of fun.

i present this story to you in 12 part(y)s:

(as usual, these are very short videos - only one is longer than 40 sec.)

BARBIE DOES THE BERLIN BIENNALE

DAY 1

party(y) 1: the bar



party(y) 2: the ballroom



party(y) 3: the hands



party(y) 4: the funk



party(y) 4a: clara with a c



party(y) 5: the nightcap



[sleep]

DAY 2

intermezzo: the dinner



party(y) 6: the negotiation



party(y) 7: cookie's



party(y) 8: um, where to?



party(y) 9: we're going where?



party(y) 10: the mall



epilogue:

so after all of this, i wanted to sleep for a very long time. and i developed a strange aversion to people. and alcohol. and lay in bed entertaining myself by making up german fortune cookie messages like, "you will soon achieve absolute knowing" or "nietzsche says: god is dead and you killed him".

anyway, later on sunday evening i ended up out for dinner with some extremely cool people - two very well-known fashion designers, as well as some curators and artists who were in town for the biennale (and the parties, of course).

we went to a restaurant called 'grill royal' which was extremely luxurious (in a berlin sort of way). i ate some very very yummy argentinean steak with four different kinds of homemade ketchup (blasphemy? perhaps...but it was sooo good.)

the restaurant was also interesting in that it had a bunch of charming but strange rooms, which inspired this impromptu photoshoot:









on the way home, six of us tried to squish into a tiny european car and i got two fingers slammed in the door. boy, does that hurt - plus it took about a minute to figure out how to get the door open again so that i could extricate my fingers from their uncomfortable situation...

michelle and mike were so very kind and got me some very fancy ice from their hotel which prevented any serious damage. but i will always make sure to be more vigilant when it comes to such closing automobile doors, especially after so many bottles of wine.

and on that note, i must get ready for games night # 2 at the funny farm! tonight i will be trying my "hand" at bridge for the first time...ha ha ha.

by the way - BEST LINE OF THE WEEKEND goes to the fabulous michelle, who, when asked at the mall party whether we were on the guest list pushed her way past the large german bouncer and with a lovely english accent responded:

"honey, we ARE the guest list".

(t-shirts are in the works. obviously.)

until next time,

eclectic electric barbie

barbie and the universal research of subjectivity

***
oh boy.

i regret to inform you that berlin barbie has fallen off the party train. she has just realized that since landing in germany, she has only spent one evening in. there is just too much for her to see and do here.

not that she is complaining - last night, for example, sitting at a table in one of the best restaurants in berlin eating some of the BEST steak of her life with fabulous, creative people...a shame that she could barely keep her little eyes open. but somehow she lasted until 2 am (an early night by regular standards) - and while today she can barely hold up her head (after having thoroughly exhausted the bienale afterparty circuit) deep down she is incredibly thrilled and comforted that the only reason she feels so schlecht* is because it's been so hard to pry herself away from such fascinating people, places and conversation.

and a night in, of course, allows her time and space to reflect on some of these conversations and places, as well as to show&tell you a bit about the work i've been experiencing.

the biennale actually opened on friday, but i need to catch up with you about thursday night first...this was the night that i actually saw some awesome work.

so thursday night there were many openings around the city of various shows not directly connected to the biennale but coinciding with it.

i was happy to make the rounds, and will point out a few of the highlights:

the first opening i attended was an artist by the name of Warren Neidich, whose exhibition was entitled "Each Rainbow Must Retain the Chromatic Signature, it…"

i found his work quite interesting - especially the paintbrushes he did which are coloured with beautiful spectra based on the colours of the rainbows in historic european paintings - for instance, the work After Peter Paul Rubens, 1636, was made from the rainbow found in Ruben's painting Rainbow Landscape:

According to the science of optics, a rainbow is a physical phenomenon made up of seven colors arranged in a specific order. However, painted rainbows from different periods in art history appear quite different as they express the varying cultural and experiential circumstances under which they were created. These same changing conditions are reflected in the construction of the mind of the artist. Therefore, the representation of each rainbow is the result of the projection of this mind upon the canvas, which acts as a screen illuminated by that particular condition of the mind. The installation of these brushes highlights these differences and expresses the history and cumulative affects of cultural history on the mind as represented through the optics of art history.

but really, i think they're pretty neat:





(everyone was joking that my hair was painted with the one on the left...)

another part of the exhibition was a small triangular pavillion made of red, yellow and blue sliding doors which opened and closed more or less randomly as they reacted to people moving around and through the space - except for when someone stood absolutely still right in the middle of it, at which point they would all close.







anyway, after warren's exhibition, we went to check out a show at 'curators without borders' which is a nice gallery on Brunnenstrasse, a cool street with lots of galleries. the show we saw is called 'dark science' which "brings together work that probes our various cultural understandings of science".

there was one outstanding piece here by an icelandic artist by the name of Finnbogi Pétursson, called Dream 2005:

Finnbogi has worked for many years on poetic visualisations of sound. Carefully selecting tones, he has drawn, sculpted or created architectural spatialities in various ways. In Dream two sinus notes are produced in a darkened room. These tones unite in the middle of the room, generating a new kind of soundwaves, on the same frequency as the brainwaves that occur in a person who is daydreaming. With a bowl of water lit from underneath Pétursson paints the ceiling with a state of mind.

here's a little video i made of the piece - it's not perfect but it gives you an idea. imagine TONS of subbass rippling through your body as you watch it. it's quite comforting, actually. i stayed in the room for ages. it was very womb-y. i'd like one in my living room very much.



okay, so then we went to a gallery called program which was showing a very interesting work by a belgian artist named edith dekyndt called Present Perfect.

this was definitely my kind of work.

her big project is called "universal research of subjectivity" which i think is amazing, obviously.

but the first thing you see when you come in (even from outside) is a large black ball hovering around and moving ever so slowly through the space.



this, it turns out, is a piece called Ground Control, and it's basically an object which is inflated with helium and air such that the weight of the object and the composition from the gas allow it to remain a certain distance from the ground. i love it. it can go in my dining room along with the vibrating pool of water.

check it out:



another very striking piece here was a video called Martial M showing two hands doing something with some kind of substance. at first i was convinced it was a manipulated image, but it's not. see if you can guess what she's doing:



and the answer: she's playing with iron filings...

neat, huh?

the third piece of hers i found striking were the COOLEST looking helmets EVER:




and these you can actually touch (!) and put on and inside there's someone speaking and then a little screen that shows some cool visuals of the waveforms of the voice...

it's called Any Ressemblance with People, Dead or Alive, is Purely Coincidental, and the voice tells you a little monologue about various real facts/events of everyday life here and in space. i totally dig it.


so what do these projects have in common?

Any act of architecture is firstly an act of human intervention upon the natural world. Architecture, as such, is a form of inquiry; a system we construct for negotiating our relationship with nature...Dekyndt has of late turned towards examining natural phenomena as mediated by a careful, subjective gaze. As if to cast doubt on our assumptions of the laws that govern the cosmos, Dekyndt alienates these invisible forces – like gravity, magnetism and light – from their native epistemological context and opens them to questions within the framework of art. In fact, simply by making us aware of the constant presence of these forces, these unacknowledged conditions within which we conduct our existence, we become conscious of the subjective, circumstantial nature of our surroundings. What is unseen, unheard and unfelt is not all together absent – yet it is this absence, this spectral presence, that architects work to maintain within our built world. We almost never ask why buildings stay standing; we never question the loads and stresses that counter within their walls that keep them from crumbling. By putting natural phenomena on display, visitors become agents in their own, subjective inquiry of the aesthetic world. Thus, Dekyndt’s Present Perfect becomes a laboratory for colliding the empirical with the intuitive.
(in other words, she makes you look at ordinary things in such a way that they appear magical, and even though she never manipulates the images she makes you question what's real and what is not.)

i know, my dears, that this is a lot to read - and right now my head is swimming just thinking about the subjective gaze and epistemological inquiry. however, i can honestly say that this work was incredibly moving on a visceral level as well as being interesting conceptually. by far the most compelling work i've seen here so far...

but more about that in my next post (which will have more parties, less theory, i promise).

signing off...

electric space station zebra barbie