GALERIE UTOPIA

Berliner Zeitung 20.7.2010
Liebeserklärung an einen Bezirk
Die Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale füllt die Zwischenräume im Kiez und lädt zur Entdeckungsreise ein
von Michael Lutz

In diesen heißen Tagen ist Grillen der Hit. Aber wer würde vermuten, dass es in ganz Kreuzberg nur drei von der Stadt ausgewiesene Grillplätze gibt? Natürlich hängt trotzdem über jedem Park ein rauchiger Dunst, und Polizei und Ordnungsamt handhaben die Regelung zum Glück sehr lax. Doch als Marc Le Blanc und James Krone im Rahmen der Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale zu ihrer Performance "Bacchus Apotheke" einluden, wurde in einer Größenordnung gegrillt, die die Polizei nicht mehr ignorieren konnte. (...)
Am Abend des 3. Juli trafen sich am Landwehrkanal eine Handvoll Interessierte und staunten nicht schlecht, als sie Krone und Le Blanc im Begriff sahen, mit einem kurbelbetriebenen Grillspieß ein ganzes Lamm am Stück zu grillen. Ob das Eingreifen der Beamten ein Teil der Show war? Das liegt ganz im Auge des Betrachters. Denn die Kunst in den oft subtil platzierten Exponaten im Stadtraum und den verrückten Aktionen der Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale steckt manchmal in der Idee selbst. Jedenfalls gelang es den Beamten nicht, die Versammlung aufzulösen: Le Blanc und Krone packten ihren halbgaren Braten einfach zu beiden Enden der Grillstange und trugen ihn in die nahegelege Hasenheide, wo sich das kuriose Projekt fortsetzte. Ein anderes Beispiel für den informellen Geist der Ausstellung ist die von Raul Walch erdachte "Corner Bar", Ecke Oranien- und Adalbertstraße. Jeden Abend, gutes Wetter vorausgesetzt, improvisieren Walch und seine Freunde eine Bar unter freiem Himmel. Das Irritierende daran: Die Bar ist als solche schwer zu erkennen, denn es handelt sich um einen stinknormalen Stromverteilerkasten. Erst durch Walchs aktive Umdeutung wird das Objekt zum Artefakt und beginnt auf seltsam subtile Weise zu wirken. Ein schneller Eingriff im Vorbeigehen, eine subversive Betrachtung der Gegebenheiten, damit wollen die Macher der Schau den Großstadtbewohnern eine Ahnung von der Mehrdimensionalität ihrer Umgebung geben. Der Künstler Tjorg Douglas Beer, Jahrgang 1973, der zusammen mit der Kuratorin Anna-Catharina Gebbers die Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale ganz ohne Budget organisiert, fördert schon lange die Kunst im Viertel. Im Jahr 2008 etwa war er Mitgründer der im Graefe-Kiez gelegenen Forgotten Bar, in der eine Zeit lang allabendlich andere Ausstellungen zu sehen waren und die als das gemeinsame Liebhaber-Projekt eines großen Netzwerks von Künstlern und Kreativen des Viertels gilt. Auch die Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale ist so eine Herzensangelegenheit. Wenn man Beer darüber reden hört, klingt das beinahe wie eine Liebeserklärung an seinen Bezirk: "Die kulturelle Reichhaltigkeit, die starken gesellschaftlichen Strukturen und die Tatsache, dass Kreuzberg voll von verschiedenen Realitäten ist, haben zu diesem lokalen Projekt geführt. Im Grunde also genau die Dinge, die diesen Stadtteil so lebenswert machen." Mit der Bezeichnung "Biennale" wollten sich die Macher nicht in Konkurrenz zur parallel in Kreuzberg stattfindenden Berlin Biennale stellen. Vielmehr habe man sich dafür entschieden, um sich die Möglichkeit einer Fortsetzung offen zu halten, aber auch, um dem großen Umfang und der hohen Qualität der Ausstellung gerecht zu werden. Denn dass es sich hierbei um ein durchaus ernstzunehmendes Format handelt, zeigt allein schon die Künstlerliste: Neben vielen anderen sind Terence Koh, Marc Bijl, Olaf Metzel oder Christian Jankowski mit Arbeiten vertreten. Die erste Ausgabe der Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale heißt "Ayran und Yoga", was viel Raum für Ausdeutung lässt: "Es könnten zum Beispiel die Namen von zwei kleinen Jungs sein, die sich nach der Schule auf eine Entdeckungsreise durchs Viertel begeben," erklärt Beer. Und in der Tat sind oft ein gewisser Spürsinn und gesunde Neugier vonnöten, um die sensiblen Eingriffe aufzuspüren, die die Künstler zwischen Oranienplatz und Urbanstraße hinterlassen haben. Viele der über vierzig Arbeiten wurden in halböffentlichen Räumen und an unscheinbaren Plätzen platziert - auf Hinterhöfen, in Kiosken und Geschäften, an Wänden, Mülleimern oder auf wenig beachteten Grünflächen. Zum Beispiel "10 Animal Films" von Christoph Schlingensief, eine von Anna-Catharina Gebbers kuratierte Sammlung bizarrer Tierfilme: Im Ladengeschäft von "Aquarien Meyer" sind sie auf einem kleinen Fernseher zu sehen. Dort laufen sie den ganzen Tag und wirken ein bisschen wie das fehlende Element zwischen all dem Haustierzubehör, das es dort zu kaufen gibt. Denn die zehn kurzen Clips in dieser Umgebung zu sehen, bedeutet auch, die geradezu skulpturale Qualität all der Behälter, Tierschädel und Terrariendekorationen zu erkennen. Ein paar Schritte weiter, im Kopierladen "Trigger Copy", steht man vor einem über und über mit Zetteln behefteten Schwarzen Brett, zunächst nichts Untypisches für einen solchen Ort. Dass aber Malte Urbschat in seinem "Sheriff-Project" die Kommunikationsfläche für die Ergebnisse einer Recherche über nicht-tödliche Waffen und Verschwörungstheorien benutzt, übersteigert nicht nur die dem Ort immanente Ästhetik, sondern auch seinen ursprünglichen Sinn. Hier hinterlassen sonst Menschen ihre Nachrichten, Anliegen oder Bedenken. Die Aussteller selbst sind übrigens froh, bei der Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale mitwirken zu können. Keinen von ihnen musste Beer zweimal fragen, was kaum verwundert, schließlich kennt und schätzt man sich in einer Nachbarschaft wie dieser. In der Buchhandlung "Argument" ist das Werk "Turbokapitalismus" von Olaf Metzel zu sehen, eine Miniskulptur aus alten Zigarrenhülsen mit der Aufschrift "Independence", mit Klebeband zu einem Dynamitbündel arrangiert. "Das hier ist eine linke Buchhandlung, und die Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale ist ein selbstfinanziertes Projekt", sagt Besitzer Klaus Gramlich. "Selbstverständlich wird das unterstützt. So ist das in Kreuzberg." Verlängert bis Ende August.



Berliner Morgenpost 18.7.2010
Außerirdische sind in der Stadt
von Andrea Hilgenstock

Manchmal will er sich die Freiheit einfach nehmen. Zum Beispiel einfach bei Rot über die Straße zu gehen. Tjorg Douglas Beer ist da ganz unkonventionell. Er bewegt sich gerne sprunghaft fort. Er möchte nicht Sitz und Platz machen wie die Hunde im Friseursalon auf den Porträts eines Kollegen. (...)

Jener meint, die Situation eines Künstlers am Markt sei ähnlich der des folgsamen Vierbeiners. Tjorg Douglas Beer tut etwas dagegen, halb Angry Young Man, halb Ödipus.

Als fiebriger Netzwerker bringt er eigene Projekte ins Rollen, stößt Prozesse an, arbeitet mal im Alleingang und mal im Kollektiv. Gerade hat er die erste "Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale" mit Anna-Catharina Gebbers organisiert, einen sublimen Dialog zwischen Alltag und Kunst. Wie eine Schnitzeljagd führt die Spur durchs Kiez-Leben, an dem der 36-Jähige rege teilnimmt. Hier kann man suchen und finden, was man sonst im Kunstbetrieb oft vermisst: lustvollen Grips statt Langeweile.

Es gilt, Poesie und subversive Sprengkraft von 44 Künstlern zu entdecken, Tierfilme von Christoph Schlingensief bei Aquarien Meyer oder Olaf Metzels "Turbokapitalismus" in der Argument Verlagsgesellschaft. Initiator Beer ist mit von der Partie. Der Mann, der sein Ich gern in ein Wir münden lässt, hängte "Three Monkees" in einen Baum. Die "Soldiers on Acid", die wie Aliens auf den Ästen hocken, kann man gegenüber der früheren Psychiatrie vom Urban Krankenhaus in der Dieffenbachstraße sehen.

Eine Galerie für unterwegs

Mit seinem Forgotten-Bar-Projekt erregte der Wahlkreuzberger jüngst international Aufsehen. Menschen wie er, die festgefahrene Systeme verändern wollen, sind selten. Maurizio Cattelan lud ihn ein in die Tate Modern. "No Soul for Sale" lautete das Motto zum Londoner Jubiläum. Genau das Richtige für Beer, der mit seiner "Galerie im Regierungsviertel" den Verwertungskreislauf unterwandert und der Versteinerung Leben einhaucht.

"Die Glasbox tourt gerade", erzählt Beer und zürnt: "Jetzt reden alle nur noch über die Bar, aber wir sind nicht die Lach- und Schießgesellschaft!" Idee sei gewesen, mit dem Schaukasten in loser Folge Ausstellungen an verschiedenen Orten zu realisieren. Als Nomade hat der Norddeutsche, der an der Hamburger Hochschule flügge wurde, wo Wildwest vor Düsseldorfer Wertarbeit rangiert, selber Erfahrung. Vor seiner Berliner Zeit reiste er um den Globus.

Nirgends hielt es den Rastlosen länger als 14 Tage. Das hat sich geändert. Zwei Jahre will der prozessorientierte, an den Erscheinungen der Welt (nicht an sich selbst) interessierte Künstler in Kreuzberg noch dranhängen. Aus dem zwischen Bundespressekonferenz und Abgeordnetenhaus gelandeten Glas-Ufo ist eine sesshafte Schwester erwachsen. Erst in der Schönlein-, heute in der Boppstraße bittet Beer Kollegen zu abendlichen Auftritten in die Kult-Bar.

"Wir arbeiten selber als Produzenten und wollen nicht alles aus der Hand geben", sagt der gesellschaftspolitische Künstler, der kein Nischendasein lebt. Nach seinem Blitzstart 2006, Messen hier und dort, Galerien in Hamburg, Karlsruhe und New York, kam der Energetiker ins Grübeln: "Ich hab gemerkt, dass ich am Zappeln bin wie ein Angestellter." Der eigene Ausstellungsort schuf Besserung. Mal tun, was Spaß macht und nicht nur rackern für den Verkauf.

Link zwischen Affen und Aliens

Einen Fernsehsender habe man gerade gegründet - "The-New-World.TV". Die Produktion "The Green Valley Disaster", die in der Tate gezeigt wurde, wo er mit 25 Künstlern seiner Bar eine Gemeinschaftsinstallation entwickelte, wird zum Art Forum Berlin wieder laufen. Sie gehe davon aus, "dass es eine direkte evolutionäre Kette zwischen Affen und Aliens gibt", berichtet Beer, der sich in der Fluxus-Tradition sieht, aber durchaus ernste Denkanstöße vermittelt.

Wie schafft er das alles? Schließlich ist er auch Einzelkämpfer, der die Darstellung unerklärlicher Realitäten unserer Welt in packenden Installationen, Bildern und Objekten spielerisch ins Groteske steigert. "Einfach viel arbeiten und schnell sein", meint Beer, der sich einmischt, provoziert, um dem Absurden ein Gesicht zu verleihen.

Seine verschleierten Gestalten hinter Stacheldraht auf dem Bild "Salonu Istanbul/Observation Desk" oder die aus "armen" Materialen geformten Selbstmordattentäter im Dienste religiösen Wahns in "Tohuwabohu" speisen sich aus realem Schrecken und Staunen. Die genaue Beobachtung der als fremdartig empfundenen Wirklichkeit treibt den Gesamtkunstwerker um. Sie beginnt gleich vor der Haustür, im Multikulti-Kochtopf Kottbusser Tor.



Neue Zürcher Zeitung 9.Juli 2010
Von Künstler zu Künstler
Die erste Kreuzberg-Biennale in Berlin – ein spontanes Kunsthappening
von Sieglinde Geisel

«Kreuzberg ist der beste Stadtteil in ganz Deutschland », sagt der Künstler Tjorg Douglas Beer. Es gebe hier eine Gelassenheit, die er in New York und London vermisst habe, sagt er in seinem geräumigen Atelier, einer typischen Kreuzberger Hinterhof-Etage mit Gewölbedecke und Backsteinmauern. Als Künstler fühle er sich manchmal wie ein Angestellter, der Messen, Galerien und andere «Sekundärverwalter» mit seinen Arbeiten beliefere. Doch ab und zu wolle er die Dinge selbst in die Hand nehmen, «ganz direkt, von Künstler zu Künstler». Das war bereits die Idee hinter der «Galerie im Regierungsviertel» und der «Forgotten Bar» in Kreuzberg, wo die Ausstellung jeden Abend wechselt. (...)

Die Kreuzberg-Biennale, die parallel zur Berlin-Biennale stattfindet, funktioniert ohne Budget und ohne Bürokratie. Das Motto «Ayran & Yoga» spielt auf Gegensätze an, die in Kreuzberg auch in einem Gleichgewicht stehen: Einerseits gilt Kreuzberg weltweit als drittgrösste türkische Stadt (dafür steht der türkische Trinkjoghurt Ayran), und andererseits soll es hier die grösste Dichte an Yogastudios in ganz Deutschland geben. Anders als in den Ostberliner Innenstadtbezirken werde der Schickeria-Aufschwung in Kreuzberg durch die gewachsene Substanz der türkischen Einwanderer gebremst, so Tjorg Douglas Beer. Gleichzeitig treffen die Gegensätze hier schärfer aufeinander als anderswo in Berlin: Auf der Strasse begegnet man Menschen, die in Mülleimern herumstochern, doch ausgerechnet in Kreuzberg steht seit kurzem auch ein umstrittener Luxusbau namens Car-Loft: Die Bewohner können das Auto per Lift auf dem Balkon vor dem Schlafzimmer parkieren.

Die Kreuzberg-Biennale besichtigt man am besten mit einer Führung. Wer auf eigene Faust losmarschiert, wird viele Freiluft-Kunstwerke («kleine, feine Eingriffe», so Beer) gar nicht als solche erkennen. Die kopierten A4-Blätter mit Manager-Dialogen, die Franz Stauffenberg an die Mülleimer beim Fraenkelufer geklebt hat, unterscheiden sich auf den ersten Blick in nichts von den Zetteln der «Initiative Grashüpfer», die ihre Mitbürger bittet, den Müll nicht herumliegen zu lassen. Manche Installationen sind auch bereits verschwunden. Das mit Goldgürteln bespannte Badminton-Netz beim Landwehrkanal etwa, das James Krone nächtens mit Zement im Boden verankert hatte, wurde wohl von der Stadtreinigung entfernt. Die meisten der Sponti-Arbeiten, die eigens für die Kreuzberg-Biennale geschaffen wurden, sind ohnehin nicht für die Ewigkeit gedacht: ein mit Klebeband umwickelter Laternenpfahl, ein Busch, in den ein DJ frühmorgens nach dem Auflegen ein Tonband ins Gezweig gehängt hat, oder die Entrümpelung eines Ateliers. «For the Free» steht auf dem Stuhl, den Ingo Gerken am Kottbusser Tor zum Mitnehmen hingestellt hat.

Der Hauptdarsteller der Biennale ist ohnehin Kreuzberg selber – und Kreuzberg ist phantastisch mit seinen Anti-Idyllen, seinen urbanen Überraschungen. In einem Spätkauf-Geschäft steht auf dem Kühlschrank ein altes Video-Gerät, auf dem Christian Jankowskis Kurzfilm «Die Jagd» (1992) gezeigt wird. Man sieht den Künstler, wie er in einem Supermarkt mit Pfeil und Bogen seinen Einkauf erlegt: ein tiefgefrorenes Huhn, eine Packung Margarine, ein Brot. «Früher mussten die Menschen auf die Jagd gehen, um sich zu ernähren, und heute kaufen sie sich alles im Supermarkt – nicht wahr, das ist der Sinn von diesem Film?», fragt der türkische Ladeninhaber. Genau so ist es.

Tjorg Douglas Beer schwärmt von der offenen Atmosphäre im Bezirk. Der Inhaber der Dönerbude neben der «Forgotten Bar» sei der beste Nachbar, den man sich wünschen könne. Bei ihm ist nicht nur der Schlüssel hinterlegt, er frage manchmal auch im Scherz, wann er endlich dran sei bei den Ausstellungen. «Döner ist auch Kunst!» Als er für die Kreuzberg-Biennale als Gastgeber angefragt wurde, hiess es, er könne in seinem Lokal keine Bilder aufhängen, auf denen Menschen oder Tiere dargestellt würden. Er bekomme sonst Schwierigkeiten mit der Kundschaft. «Das ist Theologie, verstehst du?» Doch wenn es sich um abstrakte Kunst handle, könne man darüber reden. Nun hängen vier Arbeiten von Arno Auer an der Wand über den Tischen, inspiriert von Skulpturen Erich Hausers.

In einer Kneipe mit dem vielsagenden Namen «Ohne Ende» hat der Künstler Thomas Helbig ein Schaufenster für eine Installation mit dem ebenso vielsagenden Titel «Stupor» ausgeräumt: Die Skulpturen-Fragmente erinnern an die Gliedmassen toter Tiere. Was anderswo leicht als Provokation hätte aufgefasst werden können, löst in Kreuzberg bei den Stammkunden Begeisterung aus. Hier trifft sich kein Alkoholikerproletariat, sondern gestrandete Kreuzberger Existenzen – ehemalige Intellektuelle und Revoluzzer, denen ein gewisser Sinn für Ironie auch im Elend nicht abhandengekommen ist. Heute sei übrigens die Putzfrau da gewesen, meldet die Tresenkraft. Um das Fenster zu putzen, habe sie das Kunstwerk aus- und wieder eingeräumt, und ausserdem hat sie ein Blümchen dazwischen gestellt. «Ist doch o. k. so, oder? Kommt ja nicht drauf an, wie man's hinlegt, ist ja sowieso cool.»



Tagesspiegel 28.06.2010
Biennale vs. Biennale Die dezenten Konkurrenten
von Anna Pataczek

Hinterhof, Spätkauf, Laternenmast: Die Kreuzberg Biennale ist perfekt in den Kiez integriert - und nicht zu verwechseln mit der Berliner Biennale. (...)

In einem Spätkauf in der Schönleinstraße hat der Besitzer den Fernseher zwischenzeitlich ausgeschaltet. Er könne den Loop nicht den ganzen Tag ertragen, außerdem die ganzen Menschen, die reinkämen, mit dem immer gleichen Satz, dass das doch eine alte Arbeit sei. „Keine Ahnung, kann schon sein“, sagt er dann, mit Kunst hat er nichts zu schaffen. Auf dem Getränkekühlschrank hoch oben steht der Fernseher, gezeigt wird das Video „Die Jagd“, inzwischen ein Klassiker des Konzeptkünstlers Christian Jankowski aus dem Jahr 1992. Man sieht, wie Jankowski ausgestattet mit Pfeil und Bogen einen Hamburger Supermarkt betritt, er erlegt Tiefkühlhähnchen und Toastbrot.

Mit unbewegter Miene zieht die Kassiererin alle Waren, in denen noch die Pfeile stecken, über das Band. „Kannst ja immer anmachen, wenn einer reinkommt und es sehen will“, sagt Tjorg Douglas Beer zu dem Mann hinter dem Tresen. Er ist Künstler, Betreiber des Kneipen-Galerie-Hybriden Forgotten Bar, in dem Kunst immer nur einen Abend gezeigt wird – und nun auch Organisator der ersten Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale.

Nicht zu verwechseln mit der Berlin Biennale, die zeitgleich läuft und ebenso Kreuzberg als Ausstellungsort für sich entdeckt hat. Die Namensverwandtschaft sei dem Umstand geschuldet, „dass wir dadurch die Möglichkeit haben, sie in zwei Jahren wieder zu veranstalten“ – so formuliert es der Organisator. Aber natürlich sei es schön, wenn Besucher der anderen Biennale auch zu seiner kämen. Wie dem auch sei, fest steht: Das Motto der großen Biennale – „Was draußen wartet“ – würde auch sehr gut zu der kleinen Konkurrenzveranstaltung passen. Wenn nicht sogar besser.

Viele der mehr als 40 Arbeiten verschiedener Künstler sind auf der Straße zu entdecken. Klangvolle Namen stehen auf dem ausufernden Übersichtsplan: neben Jankowski auch Olaf Metzel, Terence Koh, Christoph Schlingensief, Klaus Mettig, Ilse Melsheimer oder Gregor Hildebrandt. Diese Ausstellung ist eine Schnitzeljagd durch den Bezirk. Sie führt hinaus aus dem Galerieraum, feiert die Unabhängigkeit: Es gab kein Budget, es gibt kein Aufpasserpersonal, keine Pressestelle, und wenn das Werk kaputtgeht oder zerstört wird oder geklaut, dann ist das eben so. Oder wird vom Künstler persönlich ersetzt. „Die Kreuzberg Biennale ist auch ein Geschenk an uns selbst“, sagt Beer, der wie viele andere Beteiligte im Kiez lebt und arbeitet. Eine Jamsession für bildende Künstler, ein Spiel, ein Spaß. Poetische Momente für Passanten.

Wer die Objekte nicht findet, weil sie so sehr mit ihrer Unauffälligkeit kokettieren, ruft einfach die Telefonnummer auf dem Plan an. „Steht doch drauf“, sagt Tjorg Douglas Beer, „for any questions“. Führungen gibt es auch zu den Parkbänken, Laternenmasten, Copyshops, Buchläden und Hinterhöfen. Mit Beer als Begleiter grüßt man nicht nur den halben Kiez, es fällt auch immer wieder eine kleine Geschichte ab, wie etwa jene vor der Glaserei in der Graefestraße: In der Auslage versteckt sich das Kristallgebirge von Isa Melsheimer. Die Künstlerin werde schon darauf angesprochen, dass es da einen Laden gebe, der ihre Arbeiten kopiere, erzählt Beer. Die Anekdote trifft den Kern des Konzepts: Hier kann man Kunst finden, die da ist und fast schon wieder nicht. Auf der Grenze zwischen Camouflage und Provokation. Zwischen Ayran und Yoga – so heißt das Motto der Biennale.

In der Oranienstraße steht ein Schaltkasten. Der Künstler Raul Walch benutzt ihn als Bartresen. Wenn er da ist, gibt es Getränke aus dem Laden hinter ihm. Aber wann genau er da steht, weiß nur er selbst. Die „Corner Bar“ existiert nur, wenn Walch sie zum Leben erweckt. Daniel Knorr hat den Oranienplatz etikettiert: „Öffentlicher Raum – ein Jahr Garantie.“ Franz Stauffenberg beklebt Mülleimer mit Dialogen von Investmentbankern. Antonie Renard veredelt ein altes Fahrrad mit einem Sitz, der aussieht wie ein geschliffener Edelstein. In der Auslage einer Buchhandlung hat Olaf Metzel eine Art Vorstudie zu seiner monumentalen Skulptur „Turbokapitalismus“ gelegt, die vor über zehn Jahren im Haus am Waldsee zu sehen war: Ein Bündel Zigarrenhülsen mit der Aufschrift „Independent“ – hier zwischen zwei Abhandlungen über Globalisierung. In einem Fachgeschäft für Aquarien laufen Tierfilme von Christoph Schlingensief, die die Kuratorin Anna- Catharina Gebbers zusammengestellt hat.

Wenn der Niederländer Marc Bijl einen Masten an der Ecke Wassertor- und Bergfriedstraße mit Klebeband umwickelt, dann ist das ein Minimaleingriff in den öffentlichen Raum. Und damit fast elitär. Denn nur wer die Codes kennt, die Programmzettel, die alle im Dunstkreis der Arbeiten hängen, erkennt auch die Kunst. Oder geht es darum gar nicht?

Ingo Gerken sammelt jeden Morgen auf dem Weg von seiner Wohnung in sein Atelier am Kottbusser Tor Dinge ein. Abfall, den Geschäfte hinausgestellt haben, Fundstücke vom Straßenrand. Seine Beute verändert er ein wenig, eine Papprolle bekommt rote Schlagbaumringel – und dazu üblicherweise den Hinweis aufgeklebt: Free. Dann stellt er das Ding zurück vor die Tür, zurück in den Kreislauf. Oft sind irgendwann die Teile weg, haben Gefallen gefunden bei einem Passanten. Ob sie wissen, dass sie ein Kunstobjekt mitgenommen haben?



Monopol online Interpol 18.06.2010
Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale
Es schläft ein Lied
von Elke Buhr

(...) Unter dem schönen Titel „Ayran und Yoga“ haben über 40 Künstler und Künstlerinnen den öffentlichen Raum zwischen Kreuzkölln, Urbankrankenhaus und Oranienplatz bespielt. Die Namen auf der Liste hätten auch einer offiziellen Biennale gut gestanden, von Terence Koh über Christian Jankowski und Isa Melsheimer bis zu Olaf Metzel. (...)

Entscheidender Unterschied: Die Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale arbeitet ohne Etat, jeder der eingeladenen Künstler realisiert sein Werk komplett in eigener Regie: ein großes Off-Festival selbstbestimmten Arbeitens. Dementsprechend punkten die Werke durch Idee und Witz statt durch großen Materialeinsatz. Das Prinzip ist den schnellen Eingriffen der Street-Art entliehen, die Haltung durchweg zurückhaltend: Es geht hier um die kleine Geste und nie um Formalismus, sondern immer um direkte Interventionen in die soziale Realität.

Gleich am Oranienplatz, wo der von den Ausstellungsmachern vorgeschlagene Rundgang beginnt, hat Daniel Knorr die Ansage „1 Jahr Garantie – öffentlicher Raum“ per Schablone an die Wand gesprüht: ein deutlich subtilerer Kommentar zur Gentrifizierungsdebatte als normalerweise in Kreuzberg zu hören. In der Graefestraße stellt Antoine Renard ein altes Fahrrad in einen Hinterhof, das statt des Sitzes ein Glaskristall hat: „The Jewel“ heißt das Werk. Terence Koh hängt in der Urban Straße jede Woche einen neuen Auszug aus seinem Online-Tagebuch an einen Baum (nachzulesen hier) und Gregor Hildebrandt wickelt ein Stück Kassettenband um einen Strauch am Urbanhafen. „Es schläft ein Lied in all den Dingen“ heißt die Arbeit.

Einer veritablen Skulptur am nächsten kommt noch James Krone, der aus Gürteln und Stahlstangen eine Struktur zusammengebaut hat, die ein Badminton-Netz darstellen soll. Ansonsten gehen die Arbeit eher ins Immaterielll-Poetische: April Lamm etwa stellt ein Schild mit der Aufschrift „This is a Single Sock“ in einem Teich in der „Japanischen Oase“ hinter dem Fraenkelufer. Der Rest der Socken-Geschichte ist Imagination.

Die Outdoor-Projekte dieser alternativen Biennale sind per Karte, anhand der Werkbeschreibungen und mit einigem detektivischen Spürsinn zu erlaufen und verleiten so zu einer urbanistischen Forschungsreise. Viele andere Arbeiten führen in halböffentliche Innenräume, und auch hier ergeben sich ungewöhnliche Einblicke: Abstrakte Fotografien Arno Auers hängen im Imren Grill in der Boppstraße, Isa Melsheimers wunderschöne Glasskulptur „Zwischengebirge“ fügt sich perfekt in das Schaufenster einer Glaserei in der Graefestraße, Christian Jankowskis bekannter Film „Die Jagd“ (1992), in demer mit Pfeil und Bogen in den Supermarkt geht, findet eine perfekte Heimat in einem kleinen Lebensmittelgeschäft, und Christoph Schlingensiefs Filme über Tiere konnten nirgendwo anders als im Aquariengeschäft an der Skalitzer Straße gezeigt werden. Und wenn Malte Urbschat die Ergebnisse seiner Recherche über neu entwickelte nicht-tödliche Waffen auf kopierten Zetteln an die Wand eines Copyshops hängt, dann spiegelt er nicht zuletzt die bestehende Ästhetik des Ortes mit seinen überbordenden Zettelwänden.

Als No-Budget-Veranstaltung auf Netzwerk-Grundlage ohne institutionelle Basis ist diese spontan und mit bewundernswertem Engagement aus dem Boden gestampfte Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale für viele der teilnehmenden Künstler eine Art Lockerungsübung. Gleichzeitig oder gerade deshalb hat sie immer wieder erstaunlich viel Substanz – und eine äußerst angenehme Art, ihrem Ort, nämlich Kreuzberg, die Referenz zu erweisen.

Ergänzt wird das Programm durch eine Serie von Abendveranstaltungen, Filmscreenings, Präsentationen und Dinners in Ateliers und Studios des Viertels.

Bis 31. Juli 2010 an verschiedenen Orten im Berliner Stadtteil Kreuzberg.



New York Times 18.06.2010
In Berlin, Finding Art in Unlikely Places
By Sally McGrane

Franz Stauffenberg’s “In God We Trust III,” part of the unusual Kreuzberg Biennale, which ranges across the neighborhood. The piece, which is taped to a garbage can in a local park, contains dialogue from an unproduced screenplay.Tjorg Douglas Beer Franz Stauffenberg’s “In God We Trust III,” part of the unusual Kreuzberg Biennale, which ranges across the neighborhood. The piece, which is taped to a garbage can in a local park, contains dialogue from an unproduced screenplay. (...)

This summer, the Berlin Biennale isn’t the only art show in town. Kreuzberg, long one of Berlin’s creative districts, is hosting the first-ever Kreuzberg Biennale, through August. Though it’s on a smaller scale than the city-wide event, it’s got plenty of edgy offerings — and in some unlikely places.

Kreuzberg’s version (berlin-kreuzberg-biennale.org) features 40 artworks set up within walking distance of Oranienplatz. Olaf Metzel’s study for his monumental sculpture, “Turbokapitalismus,” a bundle of Cuban cigar cases, lies in the window of a left-wing bookstore. Videos by the renowned director Christoph Schlingensief, including one featuring monkeys “playing” Nazis, can be found playing on a shelf in an aquarium goods store. In a corner grocery, the Hamburg-based artist Christian Jankowski’s film of himself using a bow and arrow to “hunt” food in a grocery store runs near the cash register. Other locations include the wall of a copy shop, a tree across from a sex shop, various garbage cans, and the neighborhood museum.

Organized by the artist Tjorg Douglas Beer, who also runs the Forgotten Bar, one of Berlin’s most active new exhibition spaces, the Kreuzberg Biennale has a decidedly local flair: At the former Café Jenseits, recently closed because of a rent hike, two sculptors stuck pages with the conversations they used to have over coffee to the wooden fence out front.

Maps are available online or at many of the locations for self-guided walking tours, and Mr. Beer himself will lead tours (reservations are highly recommended; email info@berlin-kreuzberg-biennale.org, or call 49-17-829-42675 to sign up), which take about two hours. During a recent tour, Mr. Beer jumped over a short fence in a park to straighten a piece of paper by a pond. This installation, called “This is a Single Sock (Ecce Socculus Singulus),” “points out a place that should be significant and possibly is,” Mr. Beer explained. “It’s great with zero budget things like this, with the art in such precarious places,” he added, continuing on his way. “Sometimes you have to check to see if things are still there.”



Tate Etc. Issue 21
1 January 2011
The white cube and beyond
Museum display
by Niklas Maak, Charlotte Klonk, Thomas Demand

In an age when installations, art environments, ‘scatter art’ and large-scale mixed media works are the norm, the traditional confines of the museum and art gallery spaces are continually under scrutiny. As a natural consequence, the methods of displaying art have transformed, but as three specialists in their field acknowledge here, historically there was more to a museum display than crowded pictures and pot plants, and this history is worth bearing in mind today. (...)

NIKLAS MAAK: Our experience of visiting museums and galleries is traditionally characterised by the quasi-religious atmosphere: nothing is to be touched, one is rather quiet and reverent, nobody laughs, it is eerily still, nobody is allowed to talk loudly. However, in one of the historic illustrations – Hermann Schlittgen’s Kunst und Liebe (Art and Love) – which you, Charlotte, show in the beginning of your book, the museum is a place of intense physical experiences and overflowing desires – a romantic space of lived physicalities, lived desires.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Yes. Since the end of the eighteenth century, when museums turned into widely accessible public spaces, they were apparently used not only to cultivate relations with objects, but also with subjects. Schlittgen’s caricature from 1885 ridicules this. It shows a man in a gallery as he is approaching a young woman from behind. He obviously fears that the woman’s mother, who can be seen in the background sleeping on a sofa, could discover them. She, however, assures him that her mother always sleeps especially well in museums. The man’s attempt at flirting in this venue does not seem particularly to surprise the young woman. We know that people went to the National Gallery in London shortly after it opened in 1838 in Trafalgar Square to have picnics or teach their children how to walk. It was simply a public space in the midst of the city that could replace the park on rainy days. When, I asked at the beginning of my research, did it become clear that you had to behave rather differently in the museum than in the park? How were the unwritten rules of conduct in a museum developed and communicated? The answer I now give in the book is that it happened indirectly, through the interior design and layout of the rooms.

NIKLAS MAAK: Did museums back then have guards or ushers keeping an eye on everything?
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Yes, they existed from the beginning, although there are stories of some galleries which prove that guards were initially unsure as to whether there could be any talking, flirting, or lounging around in public museums.
NIKLAS MAAK: And when does this cleansing process, leading us to the idea of the gallery as ‘white cube’, begin?
CHARLOTTE KLONK: The disciplining began at an early stage with the design of reverential entrance halls and exhibition rooms. They were sumptuously decorated, but weren’t intended to distract from viewing the art. Some people seem to think that nineteenth-century museums were full of plants, carpets and pieces of furniture, but this is a completely anachronistic idea. There were merely a few seats.
NIKLAS MAAK: You explain that the white cube was initially only a variance of a rich tradition of differently coloured rooms in museums around 1900. CHARLOTTE KLONK: The white cube has various roots which all finally come together in the 1930s in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Before and after the First World War, there was a desire to show pieces of art against a background with the greatest possible contrast to the dominating colours of the paintings. The Folkwang Museum in Essen, for example, hung the paintings of German Expressionists, dominated by heavy black outlines, against a white background. But a Rembrandt would have never been exhibited against this background. The valorisation of white paint was also supported by the architectural discussion of the time, in which hygiene considerations played a role: dirt shows, of course, more easily on white walls than on other colours. Then in the 1920s discussions in which white received connotations of infinite space started to emerge, mainly among Constructivist artists and architects. This coincided with temporary exhibitions becoming increasingly important in the museum, and with them the moveable partition wall and flexible groundplan.
NIKLAS MAAK: When did white assert itself as the wall colour?
CHARLOTTE KLONK: In Germany, interestingly, this takes place during the Nazi period in the 1930s. In England and France white only becomes a dominant wall colour in museums after the Second World War, so one is almost tempted to speak of the white cube as a Nazi invention. At the same time, the Nazis also mobilised the traditional connotation of white as a colour of purity, but this played no role when the flexible white exhibition container became the default mode for displaying art in the museum.

NIKLAS MAAK: I imagine different architectural types of museum would have different effects too – from classic, temple-like buildings such as the National Gallery in London or Schinkel’s Altes Museum (Old Museum) in Berlin, to later buildings such as Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) and Lichtwark’s Kunsthalle in Hamburg that increasingly opened up the exhibition space to the city. This development continues until art itself leaves its glass shrines behind and becomes independent of architecture in the public space.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Don’t you agree that opening a gallery such as the Altes Museum opposite the royal palace in Berlin in 1830 to everybody might have been a much more radical step than opening up the exhibition space to the city? How revolutionary by comparison are van der Rohe’s transparent walls in the Neue Nationalgalerie?

NIKLAS MAAK: But it has to be said that it’s an absurdly pathetic emancipatory gesture to say ‘let’s rebuild a temple just so that we can then open it to the public’.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: I don’t think that’s pathetic at all, because if you try to understand what a new kind of experience is created by doing so, then it is not a romantic but a revolutionary gesture. What had previously been enjoyed only by the king and his entourage was now suddenly made accessible to all.
THOMAS DEMAND: Accessibility for the public is one thing, but museums are also guardians of artefacts that are important for society. They are strongholds in which time and its destructive effects are suspended as much as possible. The much praised Neue Nationalgalerie, however, is the exact opposite of a treasure chamber. In itself it might be a big display cabinet, but it is hardly suitable to preserve things – these have to disappear into the basement.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: There are only a few exhibitions which have been successful in the upper room of the Neue Nationalgalerie. However, Thomas, yours in 2009/2010 worked. How did this come about?
THOMAS DEMAND: We didn’t want to create a homage to Mies, but we also didn’t want to install something contradicting the room and its requirements. Rather, it was about creating a temporary architecture radiating a certain naturalness without suggesting a neutral environment. I began my research to gain an overview of all previous exhibitions, but to my surprise there was no continuous archive. We painstakingly collected the information over one and a half years. I then noticed that the fixtures, installations and alterations allowed for a very exact chronological classification. In the 1970s, for example, quick-build walls with lamp systems had been fitted, just like those seen today only at dull industrial fairs. Possibly the most classic way to utilise the space stems from Mies’s office for the opening exhibition in 1968 with pictures by Piet Mondrian: hanging panels which are, however, rarely hung level as, depending on the temperature and weather, the ceiling arched or sagged. This is something you cannot see in the old photos. So during this exhibition, Mondrian, of all people, was always hung a few degrees off.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: But where did the wonderful idea of the curtains which you used as backgrounds in your exhibition come from?
THOMAS DEMAND: The only thing in the past radiating a certain timelessness in the Nationalgalerie which remained unchanged over decades was the background, the curtains. A plain curtain has hardly any chronological connotation. Curtains were around 500 years ago, and they still exist today. With the curtains, something else surfaced: I thought you could see this Mies building not only as a museum, but as a somewhat over-sized prototype of the modern bungalow. In the 1950s and 1960s life in the bungalow appeared quite open because the situation in the Federal Republic itself promised to be open and democratic. Then, however, people noticed that the neighbours were also building new houses, and that these were coming closer and closer to their property lines. Seeing as there was no need to be quite that open, curtains were fitted. We wanted to suggest to the approaching visitor that somebody lived here, and had done so for quite some time.

NIKLAS MAAK: You describe a way of exhibiting which reacts to the space in an extreme way. The history of museum architecture, however, is mostly one of building for artworks that are already there. We could, of course, debate whether what you have done is still an exhibition in the classical sense, or if certain forms of production have been amalgamated with a new form of display; whether the term exhibition has changed to such an extent that the rooms also have to change.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Is this fusion of production and display new? In my opinion this development begins on a big scale in the 1960s. Although there are forerunners such as Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau (Merz Building) from before the Second World War or El Lissitzky’s Abstraktes Kabinett (Abstract Cabinet) in Hanover, it is noticeable that in the 1960s more and more artists began to install project rooms and environments and fused production and display in happenings and performances. I see this as a reaction to the overwhelming displays that curators where by then creating. In the 1964 Documenta, for example, its founder and chief curator Arnold Bode hung the large abstract paintings of the German artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay above the heads of visitors in Kassel. It was an arrangement which obviously did not correspond with the artist’s intentions. After that, curators of contemporary art began to withdraw from the exhibition room. Often, the artists are now left to take the reins.

NIKLAS MAAK: And what do you think this means for the art museum?
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Whereas in the past the field of activity of a museum director was mainly the design of the interior, their main task today is to create a thematic framework for the exhibition. In the past, curators guided the viewing process in a sensory way through the decoration of the gallery rooms, whereas today this is carried out intellectually by providing a problem-orientated context. On the one hand, of course, the conditions of perception are more consciously acknowledged in environments created by artists, but on the other hand the framework of the exhibition space itself is pushed further into the background. For functional reasons, the artistic interventions make the neutral museum-container even more necessary than before. As every artist has different demands, so the guideline for architects and museum curators continues to be the creation of unarticulated, flexible and adaptable exhibition spaces.
NIKLAS MAAK: You describe this with a somewhat critical undertone. I have the feeling that you think something valuable has been lost. Could it not also be said that we are finally getting rid of highly problematic atmospheric rooms? You write, and I found this quite fascinating, that around 1900 even psychologists influenced the presentation of art – with rather grotesque consequences.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Cognitive psychology is one of those fields of discussion which was, at least historically, of great importance for the exhibition of art. The first director of the National Gallery in London, Charles Eastlake, preferred hanging paintings against a background of red material, something he introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century (previously walls in public exhibitions were mainly a greyish green colour). He was backed by the latest research into sensory physiology which examined the subjective contributions made by the eye itself in the process of seeing. Red was the only possible background colour for most paintings, as the interaction with the golden frames and the mainly cooler colours of the paintings themselves led, according to this research, to a harmonious effect in the beholder’s visual experience. Behind this was the thought that the eye required the triad of the primary colours, red, yellow and blue, to achieve a balanced perception. Instead of accepting a disembodied eye and hanging walls full of paintings from top to bottom, Eastlake endeavoured to move the pictures closer to the viewer by hanging them at eye level. This resulted in the gallery wall suddenly being emptier and its own colour scheme playing more important role. For the first time, the colour of the walls was explicitly up for discussion. As did most of his fellow contemporary gallery directors, Eastlake decided on red. Later on, around 1900, some gallery directors in Germany consulted the colour perception studies of the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt to create differently coloured frameworks for exhibits. Again, the thought was to make art more accessible from a sensory perspective.

NIKLAS MAAK: But this intellectual concentration also opens up room for interpretation which does not allow for overwhelming colour effects. THOMAS DEMAND: The idea behind this is not manipulation, but the need to vary the rooms’ atmosphere in order to emphasise the temporary nature of exhibiting and simultaneously to mark points worth remembering. What we should not forget is that the main focus of today’s curators is on the combination of objects in different media. The field of interest has become so much bigger and more complex, and curators already have enough work on their hands simply showing us things we would not otherwise see.
NIKLAS MAAK: I would like to resist the physiological patronising of viewers where curators force visitors into a certain perception. With due respect to all the great decisions Udo Kittelmann made, I do think that the colour rhetorics he recently came up with in the new display of the collection in the basement of the Nationalgalerie are verging on kitsch. When following his chronologically arranged history of German art between 1900 and 1945, the walls turn a dark brownish grey in 1933. The viewer enters a gloomy world and the awareness of the continuities dwindles. The Third Reich appears as a strange power outage in German art history.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Yes, but there are good and bad modes of sensory interpretation, just as there are good and bad intellectual contextualisations in exhibitions. What is important in my opinion is that the room is honest, so there is no patronising.
NIKLAS MAAK: When is a room honest?
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Well, as soon as what is being aimed for becomes obvious to the viewer. What remains too subliminal, for example, are the colour nuances in the new display of the collection in the Nationalgalerie. If visitors are not paying enough attention, they don’t realise that the white in many of the rooms is not actually white, but varies between shades of yellow and blue. Thus, there is a subliminal creation of different atmospheres. Even if viewers notice what is happening, they still do not know why. I think that’s manipulative.

NIKLAS MAAK: The white cube is itself a quasi-neutralised identification of art. It is a label. Whenever I see a dysfunctional industrial building of the nineteenth century is painted white I know – from now on there will be art here. These white signals are always forerunners of gentrification and urban development. Then again, many artists produce pieces which are extremely architectural. Whether it is Rirkrit Tiravanija who invents an entire village with houses built by artists, whether it is Tobias Rehberger whose Cafeteria in Venice not only decorated a room but also created an architectonic world, or whether it is you, Thomas, with your project for a Chinese house in Zurich. In all these examples, art produces its own arena of experience and emancipates itself from the notion of the exhibition as an introduction of a piece of art into a room. Maybe it is no coincidence that the architecture and art biennales in Venice are becoming in an absurd way increasingly similar. The main pavilion at the art biennale is dominated by the architectural bubble utopias of Tomas Saraceno, who has a degree in architecture, while at the architecture biennale the same space was dominated by Thomas’s Nagelhaus project.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Could you describe the Nagelhaus project more precisely please?
THOMAS DEMAND: We were invited to a competition to restructure what is currently a rather shabby square under a motorway bridge in a newly developing district in the middle of Zurich, and to brighten it up with art. The Escher Wyss Square is currently mainly characterised by prostitution, drug use and vandalism, at least at night. During the day it is a bus and tram stop used by thousands of workers. The city wanted architects and artists to reinterpret the urban space. My suggestions, which I developed together with the architects Caruso St John, initially consisted of two buildings that generate their own social space: a restaurant and a kiosk which were meant to stretch the square diagonally. After a while, my ideas for a specific building turned towards so-called holdouts, an architecture topos broaching the issue of the resistance of the existing against the new, for example the old lady who doesn’t want to leave her house so that a skyscraper can be built. I thought about the latest globally known case of a house in Chongqing which literally ended up standing on a tower when the excavation pit was dug around it. This story made for various chains of associations in a new context, eg memories of the tradition of the Chinese pavilion in European baroque which, as with the Chinese house in Chongqing, we know about only through hearsay. In my eyes, the resistance in China seemed to stem from a bourgeois need to defend the individual’s right against the big unknown investor. This is also a very Swiss conception of their own national character.
NIKLAS MAAK: But the reference to the house in Chongqing has led to misunderstandings…
THOMAS DEMAND: Yes, the motive for the house in Zurich should not be confused with the house itself. This is no different from Titian, just to give a simple example. When looking at his portrait of Karl V, you do not see an older ruler, but a Titian painting, and it is almost irrelevant whether the emperor really looked that way or not. The row provoked by our project revolved around the Chinese house. People wondered what Switzerland has to do with China (an absurd argument, by the way, as the whole of the world’s money is in Switzerland’s safes). But theNagelhaus was no Chinese house. It would have been built in Switzerland, it was a German-English idea and it is only indirectly linked to China. It follows, so to speak, incidents which have been transmitted via diverse media and therefore affect our image of the world and how individuals in this world act (or don’t).

NIKLAS MAAK: You have never seen the house yourself. You have seen only a picture of it. It could be argued that what you do – building fiction with a relation to a picture anybody can see on TV, on Chinese TV – is a kind of exhibition in itself: building as an act of exhibiting a picture. This kind of exhibition means creating a space in which certain interactions become possible. It should also not be forgotten that this house was not meant to be simply a sculpture, but also a restaurant.
THOMAS DEMAND: Yes, we wanted to reinterpret the space and give it a social function. Every day thousands of commuters would have had to live with it. Our idea was also to incorporate a purely practical use: a restaurant, open around the clock. As far as we know, our competitors decided on solutions which followed conventional models that we know from the museum: stand in front of an artefact, look at it and continue walking pensively. That is possible as well, but a public space is subject to completely different requirements. It should also be added that this project demonstrated a co-operation that does not happen too often. It is neither a piece of art by myself, nor is it a house by Caruso St John – it is both at the same time.
NIKLAS MAAK: Charlotte, you wrote a book which begins with pictures and stories illustrating that people also go to a museum to flirt, to have picnics and to meet other people. Thomas, you planned a sculpture, a rebuilt after-image in which people could have had meals around the clock, something that is still very unusual in Zurich. Both cases deal with fundamentally different experiences and social rituals facilitated by art spaces. Thomas refers back to Gordon Matta-Clark, who questioned the museum’s space with his restaurant project in the 1970s in New York. For the general public, it still seems to be difficult to accept that art can be usable. To eat in an artwork appears not to be possible without questioning the legitimacy of the piece of art itself. The fact that a restaurant could have been built a lot cheaper was one of the things Thomas was reproached for in Zurich. It was impossible to explain to those people that it was a piece of art, and that the rules applying to it are different from those applying to a cheap snack bar. All that was said was that ‘the artist is building an expensive restaurant; that could be done for less’, instead of ‘hurray, we are getting a great sculpture which can also be used as a meeting place, as a restaurant’.

THOMAS DEMAND: I would like to point out that the idea of the restaurant was there first. Then came the question of what kind of restaurant it should be, what it should look like and what should be represented in its context. I do believe in anarchitecture parlante which cannot be reduced down to Disney. For the right-wing populist opposition which won in the end, the required disabled toilet was a point of attack. That way, art had lost right from the start. I believe we fulfil different needs. Politics always wins when it concerns itself with flower pots, climbing gardens and other folklore, not when it deals with art which cannot be reduced down to four-word sentences.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: But actually this is quite a big compliment. The Nagelhaushas forced the public to deal with it and with one another precisely because it is a piece of art and not just a restaurant, even if the mood was swung by right-wing populism in the end. At least there is something like a civic movement which considers the public space its own and therefore demands a voice and a veto in the matter. How can we achieve this in the museum? That is a public space as well.
NIKLAS MAAK: I think as soon as it is labelled ‘museum’, the thing itself as a space for a certain open exchange and discussion is clinically dead.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: That means serious debate can exist only in a public space itself?
NIKLAS MAAK: I think that the word museum triggers a specific cultural behaviour – devout, silent. I believe that exhibiting in a white cube is by now an exhibiting in both senses of the German translation, ausstellen – on the one hand a ‘showing’, on the other a ‘switching off ’ of aesthetic reviving energies. Whoever wants to allow for a different experience of space and art has to, as Thomas has done, build their own building, or invent other spaces such as the Berlin Forgotten Bar. This was opened by artists with the idea of having a different show every day. It represents an anti-museum and goes beyond the notion of what an exhibition is: namely that artists sit in a studio for two years, have an exhibition, then get back to their cubbyholes to create new pieces. At the bar, exhibiting suddenly meant to take a fragment, to discuss it for one evening, and then it is the next piece’s turn. This is a different understanding of displaying, and the Forgotten Bar was the first project to follow it through so consistently. It is not the finished work which is shown, but an idea, an approach.

THOMAS DEMAND: There are two aspects which should not be ignored. One is the function of the museum. It basically consists of publicly recognised quotation marks in which objects or activities can be understood as examples and therefore might lose direct relevance while, at the same time, becoming metaphorically charged. The other issue is that the Forgotten Bar reveals a certain mistrust in other possible activities within a museum. Consuming food or drink is obviously quite important, but this does not mean that creating a space in which food and drink will keep people long enough to indulge in the pieces of art is necessarily an alternative. Visiting a museum naturally has the tendency to become tiresome quite quickly. But this in itself is the challenge: to reactivate the exhibition space continuously.
CHARLOTTE KLONK: Yes, exactly. Why should art function only within the context of bars or restaurants? What is great about museums is that they are places in which we can publicly come together, sometimes even with complete strangers, without the need for joint eating, drinking or consumption as a catalyst for social interaction.
NIKLAS MAAK: All public spaces are almost always shaped by passive consumer behaviour. We go somewhere and buy something. But the question that remains is: is there another type of space that activates people differently, which, instead of making them a consumer, makes them actors within the public space?
THOMAS DEMAND: Tate Modern managed to add contemporary art to these passive types of recreational activities. Even if this was done only by creating a public space in the Turbine Hall where no entrance fee has to be paid.

NIKLAS MAAK: As soon as the museum is understood within the context of its etymological origin, we come closer to another concept. In classical Athens, themuseuion was no solitary building, but a quarter with many buildings to honour the muses, the ideal counter-image of the actual city, in which rules different from those of commerce applied. The world of commerce (handel) was here opposed by a world of acting (handeln). Maybe we have to go back to thinking of the museum in these terms. This is what your research, Charlotte, leads to, and what your art projects, Thomas, allude to. Maybe we need to move away from the notion of the museum as a temple of sacral, passive, exclusively contemplative viewing of art, which, of course, should continue to exist, and towards a counter-city as a public space, an open stage on which certain encounters and experiences can take place. A social experience of community which is not dictated by consumer behaviour. To me, such a museum seems to be one of the utopias in architecture and highly important for a culture which has to ask itself what the res publica in the light of dramatically changed social rituals and developments should be.





BERLIN ART LINK September 20 2011
Bucolic Field-Work. An interview with Tjorg Douglas Beer
by Marta Jecu

I met Tjorg Douglas Beer last year for a discussion regarding the Kreuzberg Biennial in his atelier, which had hosted some nights before its grand party of inauguration with all Kreuzberg friends, strollers, performers, bar and project space keepers, park and party goers. The interview finally span not on but in the biennial: Tjorg brought the talk on the street and parcoursing the neighborhood, made us see the invisible biennial in old shops with sculptures mingled in the ordinary display, ephemeral constructions up in trees, art videos on the surveillance cameras of tobacconists, mysterious urban vestiges in bookshops between the books, message boards sunk deep inside a zen pond nobody knew existed in the yards behind the Kanal, films with animals by Christoph Schlingensief shown in the local amphibian pet shop. (...)
The works seemed not punctually dis-played in open air, but making sense only in geographical relation to each other, connected by shortcuts that you didn’t knew before in Kreuzberg. The same night, the tiny Forgotten Bar Project in Boppstr. 5 inaugurated an exhibition for a night, in a movement that instead of consuming, is releasing free space, by constantly refreshing the frameworks and preventing the infrastructure to swallow its own subject content. The above discussion has been updated with new infos on recent projects, which Tjorg Douglas Beer conceives now in/from Athens.

Tjorg Douglas Beer was born 1973 in Lübeck, grew up and studied in Hamburg. His work is shown in Kunstverein Hamburg, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Kunsthalle Wien, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, Tate Modern, London, X-Initiative, New York, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, with solo-shows in Kunsthaus Hamburg, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Stadsgalerij Heerlen, Contemporary Art Institute Sapporo, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.
He initiated projects like the GALERIE IM REGIERUNGSVIERTEL BERLIN, THE FORGOTTEN BAR and AYRAN & YOGA – The 1st Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale 2010.

Interview

MARTA JECU: I was thinking to have a focus on your vision on Berlin, as you formed it on one hand by curating and organizing exhibitions, galleries, street events here, and on the other hand regarding the urban organisms and configurations in your paintings. We could think about the real city, Berlin and especially Kreuzberg, the part in which you mostly intervene, but also on an imaginary Berlin, or an urban experience of an internalized Berlin, which you work upon in all your projects.

TJORG DOUGLAS BEER: For a start I would like to tell you a bit about the relation between my own work and the projects I´ve been doing with others. Since I have been a student in Hamburg I`ve been dealing with situations and phenomena that I´ve gotten in touch with in real life. I`ve always seen art more as a field to turn these situations into scenarios, like musicians or writers are doing in their texts or songs, rather than behaving like a pseudo-scientist, chasing with big efforts achievements for the further development of art history.
After having experienced a few very interesting years in the art world, as a young artist, including lots of traveling, parties, fairs, I`ve moved to Berlin, which was a place that I expected to give me more freedom and concentration for my work than for example New York was doing. After having lived in Berlin for two years (that for some reason made me behave like I was still in New York – meaning that I was running around Berlin like crazy from opening to opening to opening, to party to party to party, to clubs and bars), I realized that there had to be a change. I was living in Kreuzberg and had very nice working conditions and I loved the neighborhood, due to its great and intense mix of different cultures and people.

In 2007 me and some friends started GALERIE IM REGIERUNGSVIERTEL. It was a lightbox installed in the area of government administration in Berlin. And we wanted to use it as a flexible tool to do exhibitions with people whose work we appreciated and show in the art context their work that emerged from real life experiences. In 2009 after having done several projects with GALERIE IM REGIERUNGSVIERTEL I came to the point where I wanted to have a small bar in Kreuzberg, since I thought, that this should be a focuspoint for our activities. We opened THE FORGOTTEN BAR PROJECT, where we showed 60 exhibitions in 2 months. In 2009 I reopened the FORGOTTEN BAR and since than we have shown more than 200 exhibitions including more than 2000 artists in one and a half years. This place functioned like a never ending jam session. Almost every night there was another opening and it was becoming a place where you meet people, but also a place where you can find professionally successful works.
This time of intense cooperation with lots of friends and colleagues has led to the decision to do an exhibition in larger scale to celebrate Kreuzberg, our life and work situation and our time of working together. The biennial had to create a common meeting place for the people that generate here in Kreuzberg their work, with the people that interpret it and the people that come to see it, in the very environment where this art was emerging. We called it AYRAN & YOGA THE 1ST BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE. We didn`t have any budget for it, so we decided to concentrate on realizing it in a simple way: We installed about 50 artworks in the Kreuzberg city landscape wherever the artists found spots they liked. The biennial showed that spontaneity, sensibility and swift timing are possible. The works exhibited were mostly very fragile and almost not recognizable without knowing about them. We gave guided tours along the route of works.

The BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE was also an attempt to minimize the effects of the structures that intermediate art and that intensify more and more. Art has indeed a very peculiar mechanic: the writers that write, the collectors that collect, the photographers that make photos, the gallerists that sell, the gallery assistants that have a job at the galleries – all these art intermediators are very hard to get a grasp on, while doing your art.

But why did you call it Biennale? Is it because it takes place one time in 2 years or because you want to create a relation to the Berlin Biennale, with which it took place at the same time.

At least we intend to let it happen for a second time in 2012. The title Biennale is only a formal denomination and a formal value designation for the substance of this exhibition, whereas the title Ayran und Yoga is an ironic manner to comment upon the realities here in Kreuzberg. We can imagine Ayran and Yoga being two boys living in this part of the city, that grew up here and go together to primary school, but which originate from very different places. Ayran and Yoga is the reality here, two possible poles of the reality we are in here, it represents a field of tension, one between many others here in Kreuzberg.

Old neighborhoods, with long phases of development in the history of a city and with interesting social situations, are suddenly surpassed by people with more money than the rest of the population, or from people that suddenly realize that their properties in that place are much more worth. As a consequence everything will change and the originar population will have to move to other neighborhoods. But that is normal and everywhere like this, we can only hope that here in Kreuzberg the culture that emerged in the last decades will not develop in this direction in a very fast tempo, like it happened in other Berlin neighborhoods. Commenting in this direction, is not about expressing self-sufficiency regarding the situation and the place we live in, but about taking into account reality. This is also the thematic field of the BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE. From this point of view, I was talking about Ayran and Yoga, the two boys going to school and strolling together on Urbanhafen.

Our idea of a Biennial was also getting together a lot of works in the open space of the city. Than another urban reality emerges. When you see works, that you initially knew from the gallery, and experience them now here in open air, the works open up in a new way and they provoke new ways of thinking and sometimes what we find is a very simple, poor/unassuming quotidian poetics.

How do you see the role of the individual and his actions as potential in the city and as part of the structures that surpass him. What is the role which the thinking processes of the individuals have in shaping the city and in which respects he and his imaginary are conditioned by the urban structures themselves?

The world we live in shapes the people very often not really in a positive way. Living conditions make people develop in ways that are not fortunate to more than a minority. On the other hand it is people who define these conditions. I have worked on these phenomena in several bigger works and exhibitions. For me there is no other perspective than the one that the human being is nothing else than a failure in evolution. The size of the human brain in relation to the body size is bigger than in any other creature, humans are developing systems like religion, philosophy, politics and science, which are amazing constructions to try to understand, structure or organize the world and the position and life of the human in it, but if we look at what is happening on this planet, we can only say that these systems are all not coherently functioning. I do not see that the humans are on their way of making this place better. It is rather more the opposite: the world without humans would be a paradise and too often humans turn it into hell. It is a decision that we all have to make: deciding in which way we want to go and take as much energy as possible to stop fitting into the conditions and realities in which we find ourselves and which are defined by corrupt or mistaken thinking and motivations. It is everybody’s responsibility to decide whether we produce more mutation or stop mutants shaping more mutants.

How are these processes in regard to you and Berlin, personally?

Berlin is just a place that has provided a lot of space and reasonable living conditions for artists and other young people to develop their life. I do not think that there is a big difference to any other social situation on this planet. The problems are the same everywhere and it is more a question of character and personal strength to influence the world around us in a good way, rather than arranging ourself with the realities that are “given”.

Talking about your projects which you organize, for instance the BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE and the extra exhibitions in art fairs, you where talking about the need to show more fragile or delicate works of other artists friends and to place these group shows in the art market whose economic values are actually connected to stability and persistence. Besides that your paintings are also very fragile and delicate, what are the roles of fragility and perishability for an urban culture like that of Berlin?

The main problem is that so called values in our world are measured in Dow Jones Indexes, Taxes, selling prizes for artworks and so on. Real values are forgotten. They are discriminated as idealistic bullshit and do not play the role they should, to preserve honorable living and thinking circumstances. In years of an uprising art market, gallerists were selling artworks to whoever was willing to spend whatever amount of money, they made their deals, instead of educating the buyers as potentially interesting collaborators. This attitude is the same that has driven the whole world into the disaster of the last years, a disaster that started in the financial world.

Any interventionist initiative can be seen like curating the city, forming a space in the urban space, with the same elements, but according to new rules. Regarding Berlin, what curating practices should take place to give expression to potentials that are not yet manifested?

What curating means I have not understood until now. I have only seen a development that generates hundreds of people having studied for example cultural management or other academic constructions in which most of the people coming out of these “Kaderschmieden” (i.e. educational institutions reserved for future political power-holders or protégées) have learned a certain way of dealing with art that unfortunately forgets the necessity of existential values, which should in fact be the basis of appreciation. Instead we are confronted with 25 year old interns that pretend “to have eaten the wisdom with the ladle” (i.e. all at once, without criteria) and try to clone/copy mega-curator’s attitudes from Biesenbachs and Obrists. The misfortune is, that these people often have the intensity of a piece of dry bread and then start telling artists how to do their work. The worst example seen in the last years was the exhibition BASED IN BERLIN. These people should either do some interRail holidays and take a lot of drugs to find themselves, or work as what they are: interns.

What is needed are people with character and personality, but these are rare.
Besides these things there is always fortunately a big range of people trying new things and finding niches for fantastic projects. Fortunately I have managed to create my own network of adorable and intense people that gives me a lot of independence from all these instances and the freedom to do whatever I want, without the need to arrange myself with this kind of circumstances and people. For me the time in Berlin is finished for now. I went to the two artists bars more than enough times. GALERIE IM REGIERUNGSVIERTEL is now GALERIE UTOPIA and working elsewhere. THE FORGOTTON BAR PROJECT opens in Athens this September and next year we will be back in Berlin for THE 2ND BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE.

A Berlin utopia?

An Utopia for Berlin would be to close down all galleries and bars and breed sheep and goats and let them curate the next BERLIN KREUZBERG BIENNALE.