GUGGENHEIM BERLIN | BMW LAB

A Local Think Tank with a Global Perspective: BMW Guggenheim Lab Opens in Berlin




BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin. Design architect: Atelier Bow-Wow. Exterior view. Photo: Christian Richters © 2012 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab opened in Berlin, the second stop on the project’s six-year global tour. Offering free programs from June 15 to July 29, 2012, the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin is a temporary public space and online forum encouraging open dialogue about issues related to urban life.

A local think tank with a global perspective, the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin focuses on practical making and doing, with programs designed to empower residents with tools and ideas to actively engage in city change. The Lab is located in Prenzlauer Berg at Schönhauser Allee 176 in the Pfefferberg complex, a converted nineteenth-century brewery. The Lab is open Wednesday through Friday, 2–10 pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 12–10 pm. All programs are free of charge and will be offered in German or in English with German translation.

“We are delighted to open the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin and begin a vibrant period of public discussion and debate about how citizens can shape the cities in which they live,” said Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. “We look forward to welcoming residents from throughout Berlin as well as visitors from around the world to join us in this groundbreaking urban experiment.”

“Together with the city of Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum, we look forward to following the vibrant discussions to come at the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin,” said Frank-Peter Arndt, Member of the Board of Management, BMW AG. “During more than 40 years of worldwide cultural engagement, we have always believed in the value of public dialogue and the support of innovative and unconventional ideas. The Guggenheim is the perfect collaborator to provide and ensure an open forum for this critical, multi-disciplinary exploration of urban life.”

The BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin is presented in cooperation with ANCB The Metropolitan Laboratory.

BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin Programming
Under the umbrella of Confronting Comfort, the theme of the Lab’s first two-year cycle, programming for the Berlin Lab focuses on the importance of “doing and making” to bring about city change. The Lab explores issues of contemporary urban life, from infrastructure to technology to sustainability, through programs that encourage visitors to participate and share questions, answers, thoughts, and dialogue.

“The goal of the BMW Guggenheim Lab is to spark a conversation about the future of cities and to create a forum where people of all backgrounds can create and share ideas,” said Maria Nicanor, Curator, BMW Guggenheim Lab. “Berlin is the ideal city to develop the Lab’s philosophy further, precisely because of its deeply rooted system of citizen participation.”

Programs have been developed by the Berlin Lab Team (José Gómez-Márquez, Carlo Ratti, Corinne Rose, and Rachel Smith), an international, multidisciplinary group of innovators and experts led by Guggenheim curator Maria Nicanor, with contributions from local organizations. The schedule, which can be found on the BMW Guggenheim Lab website, will include more than one hundred events at the Pfefferberg site and throughout the city.

Programs concentrate on four main topics:

Empowerment Technologies (June 15–24)
José Gómez-Márquez, The Little Devices Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, and a pioneer in the field of health technology innovations, will lead a series of “do-it-yourself” workshops focused on building one’s own city by “hacking” and transforming urban spaces.

Dynamic Connections (June 27–July 6)
Rachel Smith, principal transport planner with AECOM, based in Brisbane, Australia, will lead programs focused on sustainable mobility and community-building.

Urban Micro-Lens (July 7–18)
Berlin-based artist and psychologist Corinne Rose, who works with photography and video and teaches at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland, will explore the intersection between psychology, architecture, and art with programs that address perception, communication, and emotions in city life.

SENSEable City (July 19–29)
Architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, who practices in Italy and directs the SENSEable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, will lead programs examining how new technologies are transforming the way we understand, design, and live in cities.

“The city of Berlin is proud to join the BMW Guggenheim Lab in advancing its goal of engaging the public to identify new ideas and strategies for the challenges cities face today,” said Klaus Wowereit, Mayor of Berlin. “The Lab is a pioneering initiative that encourages open dialogue and different points of view, and that’s what Berlin—one of the most creative and innovative cities in the world —is all about.”

“We welcome the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin to Prenzlauer Berg and are thrilled that the Lab’s free programming will address issues of particular relevance to the neighborhood and the city,” said Matthias Köhne, Mayor of Pankow. “The communities of Pankow and Prenzlauer Berg and citizens throughout Berlin will make an important contribution to the Lab and provide a special perspective to this global project.”

In addition to programs based at the Pfefferberg site, the Berlin Lab offers a variety of citywide explorations, such as guided tours, field trips, and walking workshops. Details can be found on the BMW Guggenheim Lab website.

Activities at the BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin will be documented on the project’s blog, Lab | Log, which also will feature interviews with BMW Guggenheim Lab contributors. The public is invited to join the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s dedicated social communities on Twitter (@BMWGuggLab and #BGLab), Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Foursquare).

Source: Guggenheim

thanks to: http://www.artandcointv.com/blog/2012/06/a-local-think-tank-with-a-global-perspective-bmw-guggenheim-lab-opens-in-berlin/

FRANCKE-KRAUSS | (IN)VISIBILITIES

Annette Krauss, Hidden Curriculum, 2012. Video still.

Andrea Francke and
Annette Krauss
(in)visibilities

26 June–28 July 2012

Preview: 26 June, 6.30–8.30pm

The Showroom63 Penfold Street
London NW8 8PQ
Hours: Wed–Sat, 12–6pm

T 0044 (0)20 7724 4300

www.theshowroom.org

Share on google_plusone

Share on emailShare

The Showroom presents two newly commissioned projects that address questions of (in)visibility in relation to how social structures and conditions are experienced in everyday life and made visible, or not, and why this is so. Both are produced within Communal Knowledge—an ongoing programme of artists’ commissions that involve collaborative research and knowledge-exchange within The Showroom’s locality, the Church Street neighbourhood.

Andrea Francke‘s Invisible spaces of parenthood: A collection of pragmatic propositions for a better future explores issues surrounding childcare in collaboration with local nurseries, childminders, children’s centres, and parent groups, and looks for new models and possibilities. This includes setting up a workshop in The Showroom’s gallery during the exhibition for visitors and workshop participants to test out DIY designs for furniture and play, some of which will be gathered through an open call. These ideas will feed into a manual, to be published in September.

Annette Krauss‘ Hidden Curriculum looks at unintended and unrecognised forms of knowledge that are part of learning processes and daily life within schools. Working with two groups of 15–17-year-old students from local schools in a series of workshops, videos have been produced that look at the invisible values and beliefs that accompany official learning processes, and the informal knowledge and normalisation processes that influence the way we know, see, and act in the world. The videos will be exhibited in a new installation in the exhibition.

Event: Spaces of EqualityMonday, 2 July, 7–9pm
Annette Krauss; Andrea Francke; and Dennis Atkinson, Professor of Art in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London explore ‘spaces of equality’ and notions of (in)visibility, leading from collaborative research between The Showroom, Goldsmiths’ Department of Art in Education and FLAG, Chelsea School of Art and Design.

Further workshops and discussions will be advertised on The Showroom’s website:www.theshowroom.org

BackgroundAnnette Krauss (born in Germany, based in Utrecht) is The Showroom’s Artist Fellow during 2012/13, researching notions of unlearning and (in)visibility. Her artwork employs performance, video, research, and pedagogy to explore the possibilities of participatory practices, performativity, and investigations into institutional structures in order to work/think through the questions: How do we know what we know? What do we see? What do we not see and why?

Andrea Francke (born in Peru, based in London) is part of the collective Making Do, who publish a magazine of the same title, and is developing The Piracy Project with AND Publishing, an exploration of the philosophical, legal, and practical implications of book piracy. She was a recipient of the Red Mansion Art Prize, 2011.

The Showroom is a space for contemporary art that operates on the intersections between art, research, and participation, focusing on collaborative and process-driven approaches to production, and enabling new work by artists who have not had significant exposure for their work in London before.

Led by curator Louise Shelley, Communal Knowledge is an ongoing programme of projects by local and international artists and designers that involve collaborative research with people who live and work in The Showroom’s neighbourhood, creating playful and experimental spaces for critical reflection on local issues, and how to think about change.

(in)visibilities is produced in the framework of COHAB, a two-year project with Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, supported by a Cooperation Measures grant from the European Commission Culture Programme (2007–2013). Communal Knowledge is supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, John Lyon’s Charity, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Arts Council England, The Showroom Supporters Scheme, and by Westminster Cultural Olympiad (Westminster City Council, BNP Paribas and Vital Regeneration), and Outset as The Showroom’s Production Partner, 2012.

For further information please contact Holly Willats: holly@theshowroom.org

http://www.e-flux.com/

CMRK EXHIBITIONS | GRAZ

CMRK

Exhibition view, Camera Austria. Photo: Christine Winkler.

CMRK exhibitions in Graz, Austria

CMRK is a network of four independent institutions for contemporary art based in Graz: Camera Austria, Kunstverein Medienturm, < rotor >, and Grazer Kunstverein.

DLF 1874 – The Biography of Images
Camera Austria
30 June–2 September 2012
www.camera-austria.at

Susi Jirkuff 
Rainy Days
Kunstverein Medienturm
30 June–18 August 2012
www.medienturm.at

Maribor Graz
Lesson 1: A temporary, improvised context of communication
< rotor >
30 June–21 July and 20 August–8 September 2012
www.rotor.mur.at

Gitte Villesen
I had no other choice than to jump from one pile 
to the other, as there was nothing in between
Grazer Kunstverein
30 June–25 August 2012
www.grazerkunstverein.org

Share on google_plusone

Share on emailShare

When an artwork joins a collection, it leaves the story of its creation behind. It disengages from reflections and decisions that had hitherto bound the work to its author. Factual information assumes the position of the original context: year, technique, dimensions, edition, inventory number: “DLF 1874“. As part of a collection (in this case, a public photography collection) it is subjected to a different logic of classification, systemisation, and historicisation. The work’s actual inceptive history is masked and remains the knowledge of the author: Which decisions led to the realization of a work of art? What was tossed aside? Who was involved? What other works were created in connection with this one? Which trips were taken?
In the framework of an exhibition the connection between the work and its author is re-established, enriched with contexts and references—the reconstruction of a “biography of images” of sorts ensues. In the exhibition, all of these biographies meet under specific conditions, contradicting or validating one another, intersecting with various regimes of meaning production—an inventory of ideas, projects, politics of representation, an inventory where the stories of their geneses may once again be told and put up for negotiation.

In the exhibition Rainy Days, Susi Jirkuff presents an intimate parallel universe beyond the media hype. Over a two-year process, Jirkuff filtered the flood of information and images she encountered in newspapers, on television, and on the Internet so as to utilise her impressions for her own purposes. Jirkuff forces a “hole” into the reality transported by the media, thus making visible an unseen, assumedly non-present everyday world. In the process, Jirkuff subverts the mechanisms of the mass media by translating its images with drawings into personal moments.
In three apartment-like cinematic settings, the protagonists—Mr. A., an artist in a rather bad mood, his neighbour The Bitch, and the curator Mr. C.—are declaring their sentimental microcosmos to be a general sentiment within society. Touring through the exhibition, a parallel narration develops between the figures—at times seeming to reflect a parable of the art scene—who ultimately fail to transcend their own private world in their dialogue. Rain patters onto the windows and evokes a sentimental feeling, a blues that Susi Jirkuff makes resonate in her image-world.

Maribor Graz presents an experimental setup in two European Capitals of Culture: Graz and Maribor. Each is the second-largest city in its respective country. And: to date, neither city offers training for visual artists on an academic level. Reflection on alternative knowledge and know-how transfer is also of sustained interest for art education and training.
An open, transnational process has been initiated wherein collaborative action leads to the activation of artistic and critical forces. The project thematises the social environment where knowledge transfer takes place, life in public space, and the city as an open page for artistic agency.

Gitte Villesen‘s documentary videos and installations can be perceived as portraits in the broadest sense: they explore the form in which individuals or social groups give shape to their lives within the framework of their cultural possibilities. Villesen illuminates how subjectivities are constituted in the everyday micro-politics of gestures, habits, and rituals that are in constant tension between norm and deviation. At the same time, she carefully avoids social generalisations by situating the practice of documentation itself as exchange and encounter—as a specific form of social interaction in which the forms of representation always become the subject of negotiation as well. Together with a new video piece co-produced by Grazer Kunstverein and the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, Gitte Villesen’s exhibition will focus on her most recent works, for which she has travelled to Gambia several times since 2008. On the whole, Villesen follows an ethics of documentation, which can be succinctly expressed through the words of writer Ursula LeGuin: “The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone.”

• More from CMRK

• Exhibitions in Graz, Austria: fall 2012

  CMRK

• CMRK exhibitions in Graz, Austria

  CMRK

• CMRK exhibitions in Graz, Austria

  CMRK

311 East Broadway

New York, NY 10002, USA

FANG LIJUN | GAM - TURIN

Fang Lijun, 2007.4.6, 2007. Oil on canvas, 180 × 140 cm.*

Fang Lijun
The Precipice over the Clouds

22 June–30 September 2012

GAM – Civic Gallery of
Modern and Contemporary Art, TurinVia Magenta 31 – 10128 Turin, Italy
Hours: Tue–Sun, 10–6pm
Last admission 5pm

T +39 011 4429518/630
gam@fondazionetorinomusei.itcomunicazionegam@fondazionetorinomusei.it

www.gamtorino.it

Share on google_plusone

Share on emailShare

Curated by Danilo Eccher

The GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino opens its summer programme offering its exhibition space for the first great solo exhibition in Italy of Chinese artist Fang Lijun (b. 1963; Handan, China; lives and works in Beijing).

An acclaimed artist in his country, Fang Lijun was one of the main exponents of Cynical Realism, a movement which developed in China in the 1990s focusing on the analysis of Chinese socio-political history in the 20th century, with a particular reference to the Cultural Revolution, up to the current economic boom, dealt with sharp and uncanny humour and irony.

GAM presents a momentous exhibition, bringing forth the artist’s rich and inventive figuration, with a selection of around 30 monumental works which belong to his recent production, from 2006 to today, showcasing some works never shown before or carried out especially for this exhibition.

Displayed in the museum’s two exhibition venues, the Exhibition area on the first floor, and the GAM Underground project on the underground floor, this exhibition welcomes the visitor with a powerful visual impact, and succeeds in recreating the imaginary worlds of an artist who has devoted his life searching for the union of Mankind with nature. The immense, whirling skies studded with insects and birds, mice, butterflies, often peopled with human faces, both joyful and desperate, are the first subjects the public will be confronted with. The paintings are magnificent, displayed according to impressions without following a chronological order, even if the peculiarity with Fang’s works is that they do not have a title despite not being Untitled, instead his production is marked by the date (sometimes only the year, or the year, month, and day). Hence, for instance, in 2005-2007 clouds open up forming a whirlwind vortex, swallowing up sleeping children who lean on faint seagulls created by the very clouds.

In the large 17-metre-long painting bearing the same 2005-2007 title the vortex is made of birds and billions of insects which tend to reach an undefined point on the horizon. Once more a child is the protagonist of 2007.4.6, a work chosen to be the guiding image of the show. A newborn plunged into dark water is desperately crying and is surrounded by colourful dragonflies, small but annoying creatures which may represent future trouble in the existence.

If on the first floor the skies and Mankind are predominant, the central room of the exhibition area introduces the theme which will then be analysed in the Underground Project, i.e. the intertwining between life and death.

Death is indeed the main subject of some of Fang Lijun’s works, metaphorically represented as mice and bats (Untitled 2011) or maggots (2006.7.1), or confirmed by the presence of lifeless bodies, corpses of famous people, protagonists of the Chinese Cultural Revolution or of Tian’anmen Square repression. In 2010, a large painting displayed on the first floor almost 9 metres wide, one recognises among the dead Lenin’s face and the victims of 1871 Paris Bloody Week. However, these works maintain a glimmer of life, represented by the sun rising, by shiny jewels, or children and people celebrating.

The exhibition also features some new works finished in the weeks preceding the opening, such as2011-2012, a city of sky-scrapers enveloped in a dark fog, with one glimmer of dim light allowing to see the usual myriads of colourful butterflies together with dark mice and bats.

This exhibition is curated by Danilo Eccher, Director of GAM, and it is carried out in a successful cooperation with major Chinese institutions, such as the NAMOC (National Art Museum in Beijing) and the Misheng Art Museum in Shanghai.

Fang Lijun has displayed at over 100 exhibitions, including several solo shows at international museums like The Japan Foundation in Tokyo, The Staatliche Museum in Berlin, The Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. In addition to collective exhibitions at institutions like the New York MoMA, the SFMoMA in San Francisco, the IMMA in Dublin, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, he also exhibited at two editions of Venice Biennale, in 1993 and 1990.

His works are displayed in important international private and museum collections, including, for instance, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne—one of the first European institutions, together with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, to buy his works—the Saatchi Gallery in London, the MoMA in New York, and many other museums and institutions in China.

The catalogue published by Charta gathers texts by European and Chinese critics. A rich colour section, around 200 pages, is devoted to Fang Lijun’s entire artistic production, from the early works to the new ones displayed at GAM.

Media contactDaniela Matteu / Tanja Gentilini
T +39 011 4429523
daniela.matteu@fondazionetorinomusei.itufficio.stampa@fondazionetorinomusei.it

*Image above:
Fang Lijun, 2007.4.6, 2007. Oil on canvas, 180 × 140 cm.
The Aegidius Collection. Courtesy Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin / Beijing.

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements

ALIGHIERO BOETTI | WITHOUT WORDS

Without words

Ann Jones – Art and Writing

Alighiero Boetti, Mettere Al Mondo Il Mondo (Bringing the World into the World), 1975

There are three paying exhibitions at Tate Modern at the moment. The Damien Hirst exhibition is being widely advertised and has been the subject of a lot of media attention. Of the other two, the Yayoi Kusama seems to have generated the most discussion. Hirst is of course a household name and Kusama was already firmly in the consciousness of Londoners with an interest in contemporary art following Walking in my Mind at the Hayward Gallery in 2009 which was heavily centred on her work, indeed her polka dot wrapping of the trees along the South Bank ensured that her work also reached a signifcant non-art audience. The Hirst and Kusama exhibitions are also the ones making the most – visual – noise in the gallery, and while the Hirst was proved mercifully quieter than I had expected when I visited, they do seem to be attracting the bigger crowds.

There were things I liked about the Hirst – it was good to see those early works again and entertaining to stare in horror at the worst excesses of his more recent output – and I really liked the Kusama exhibition (at some stage I may well write about both) but it’s the other show – Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan – that I found by far the most inspiring.



Mettere Al Mondo Il Mondo (detail)

In the late 1960s, Boetti was part of the Arte Povera movement in Italy, making art from unexpectedly ordinary – poor – materials. Though Tate Modern staged a major exhibition of Arte Povera work from the 1960s and early 70s in 2001, and usually includes work by these artists in its collection displays, and though other Arte Povera artists have been the subject of notable exhibitions in London in the last few years (such as Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Serpentine and Pino Pascali at Camden Arts Centre, both in 2011), this is the first real survey of Boetti’s work here. And it’s quietly fascinating.

Boetti is can’t just be defined as an Arte Povera artist though – he rejected the definition in the early 1970s – so that although Game Plan opens with work that is seen as falling within that movement, the show also is primarily based around his later work which defies such categorisation. The work is interesting in many ways and for many reasons and as usual I’m not going to attempt to do more than write about a couple of works. There was a lot here to like though so there’s every reason to suspect I’ll come back to Boetti again; the maps in particular seem likely to work their way in here at some point and I reckon Boetti may creep into a post about artists using other people to make the work. For today though I’s all about Boetti and the biro. And commas, I especially liked the commas.



Boetti made a number of works using biro inclusing a series of large scale drawings – for want of a better description – based around text and called Mettere Al Mondo Il Mondo (or Bringing the World into the World) which include the alphabet at the top or side of the work with a mass of scrawl. The only legible symbols are the commas, white space cut into the sea of blue biro, which punctuate the space and, in conjunction with the letters at the side or top of the page, allow the work to be decoded and become the text of the title.

The scale of these pieces is part of what makes them work so well for me – I’m not sure I’ve come across other examples of biro drawings on this scale, but they’re to be encouraged in my book – but the real fascination is in Boetti’s use of pattern and code, something that recurs throughout the exhibition. There is something mesmerising about these works that comes in the main from the intensity and repetitious nature of the marks and the negative space of the commas that punctuate the space.

Aerei, 1989

Elsewhere in the exhibition there are other works that have much in common with the biro text pieces – there are key approaches that Boetti used repeatedly – including other large scale biro pieces such as Aerei (orAirplanes), and biro sky wildly overcrowded with planes of many types.

Boetti’s work uses systems, patterns and codes in a way that is absorbing and at times funny. The work is highly conceptual but though the hand of the artist is generally absent nonetheless the work has real warmth. This is a show that gave me a lot to think about. This is work that speaks quietly but it’s well worth listening to.

Thanks to:    http://imageobjecttext.com/2012/05/09/without-words/

YAN PEI-MING | NANTES

Yan Pei-Ming, Autoportrait.*

Yan Pei-Ming
Un Jour Parfait /
A Perfect Day

Beinaschi and Rubens invite
Yan Pei-Ming
15 June–19 September  2012

Chapelle de l’Oratoire – 
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes
Place de l’Oratoire
44000 Nantes, France

www.museedesbeauxarts.nantes.frFacebookTwitter

Share on google_plusone

Share on emailShare

The artist, Yan Pei-Ming, invited to present his work in the Chapelle de l’Oratoire, has chosen to emphasise the museum’s remarkable collection of Baroque paintings.

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei-Ming moved to Dijon in 1980, where he attended the School of Fine Arts. Famous for his Mao portraits, characterized by large formats painted in grisaille, the artist is known for a gestural painting, expressing passionately the features of its models.

During his residency at the Villa Médicis in 1993, he created a monumental piece of art, inspired by a Chinese tale, The 108 Outlaws, depicting the people around him in Rome and all of those who came by to visit him. In this way, he mixed up, with talent, the past and the present.

For his exhibition in Nantes, Ming will finally bring an old project to life. Indeed, even if he is not familiar with Christian culture because of his origins, he has been exposed to it frequently since his arrival in France. Thus, he was hoping to find a suitable place to carry out his large self-portraits which express an attitude of meditation. The Chapelle de l’Oratoire is exactly the sort of place that can accommodate such paintings. Confronting the museum’s Italian and Flemish masterpieces, Ming continues his analysis of occidental heritage, which he began at the Louvre where he took La Joconde as a subject, while conceiving and developing the landscape in which Leonardo da Vinci placed his model.

The Chapelle is open (from 15 June to 19 September) daily except Mondays from 10am to 7pm. After 19 August, daily except Tuesdays from 10am to 6pm.

Press contactsVéronique Triger: T 02 51 17 45 40 / veronique.triger@mairie-nantes.frAdeline Biguet: T 02 51 17 45 85 / mba.communication@mairie-nantes.fr

*Image above:
Yan Pei-Ming, Autoportrait.© Yan Pei-Ming, ADAGP, Paris, 2012. Photo: André Morin.

www.e-flux.com