Happy New Year 2011

Art Laboratory Berlin wishes you all a Happy New Year 2011!

May all your wishes for health, love, happiness and fulfilling projects come true in the New Year.

We would like to thank all the artists who took part in our program this year. We would also like to thank all those people who made our program possible. And finally our thanks go to all our visitors and our virtual public for their great interest, the intense exchange of ideas and feedback.

May we all meet again at our next event – the opening of the show SOL LEWITT. Artist’s Books on January 21, 2011.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

& the Art Laboratory Berlin Team

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Art Laboratory Berlin wünscht Ihnen / Euch allen ein Frohes Neues Jahr 2011!

Mögen sich all’ Ihre / Eure Wünsche für Gesundheit, Liebe, Glück und gelingende Projekte im neuen Jahr erfüllen.

Wir möchten uns bei allen KünstlerInnen bedanken, die in diesem Jahr an unserem Ausstellungsprogramm teilgenommen haben. Unser Dank geht auch an all’ jene, die zum Gelingen aller Veranstaltungen beigetragen haben. Schließlich möchten wir natürlich unserem Publikum – vor Ort und virtuell weltweit – für das große Interesse, den intensiven Ideenaustausch und das Feedback herzlich danken.

Lasst uns wieder zusammenkommen an unserem nächsten Ereignis – der Eröffnung der kommenden Ausstellung SOL LEWITT. Artist’s Books am 21. Januar 2011.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

& das Art Laboratory Berlin Team

Stardust Boogie Woogie 29 October - 28 November 2010

Stardust Boogie Woogie - Vernissage 29 October 2010

Tania Antoshina, Alisa, you fly like a young girl from the series Alisa and Gagarin

Marcela Iriarte, The Insects



Jane Mulfinger, Sunset Most Popular II









a visitor dresses at Siouxsie Sioux as part of Jessica Voorsanger's work Imposture series - Siouxsie Sioux
all photos copyright 2011 Art Laboratory Berlin/ de Lutz & Rapp

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



Opening 29 October 2009 8PM
Exhibition runs 30 October - 28 November 2010, Fri- Sun 2-6PM and by appointment
Finissage with a reading by Mo Foster: 26 November 2010 8PM
Special event: 30 November 2010 A reading by Mo Foster at the
East of Eden International Bookstore, Schreinerstr. 10,
10247 Berlin-Friedrichshain - www.east-of-eden.de

When Andy Warhol declared that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, he probably didn't realized how true that was going to be.

In a very short time the media industry has made it incredibly easy for people to become famous. It is no longer necessary to have a particular talent, nowadays absolutely any one who is prepared by whatever means to be entertaining, can become a 'celebrity'. Then mass media, along with popular culture, will see that celebrities are consumed as spectacle giving them a package of meanings that has nothing to do with their intrinsic value.

This is particularly true today in Western countries where the boundaries between stars and fans have dissolved: a celebrity is such, as long as fan clubs, gossip columns and TV reality shows say so.

It all started with the personality cult as advanced by the Soviet regime. At last the leader was no longer somebody anointed by divine rights, but somebody who was the icon of ordinary people. The Soviet leaders and popular heroes were, in a way, the other side of the coin of the Hollywood star system - both embodied dreams of a better life.

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

-Francesca Piovano

Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots. Workshop 4.09.2010

Photos by Olga Shmakova. Copyright 2010

Artists in Dialog. Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Alex Toland

Myriel Milicevic

Photos 5 and 8 by Art Laboratory Berlin

All other photos by Olga Shmakova. Copyright 2010

Artists in Dialog: Alex Toland und Myriel Milicevic - Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Opening 27 August 2010, 8PM

28 August 2010 - 26 September 2010,
Fri-Sun 2-6PM and by appointment

Workshop 4 September 2010, 2-6PM
(registration necessary - info@artlaboratory-berlin. org)

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots by the artists Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic - the second exhibition in our ongoing series Artists in Dialog. Each exhibition in Artists in Dialog takes the form of a discourse between two artists, whose work has a common point of contact (e.g. aesthetics, theme or process). Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic both work on the border between art and life and environmental sciences. Toland considers the project 'habitat hacking' and Milicevic describes the project as 'reconstructing cross-species life worlds'. Together they have chosen the immediate area around Art Laboratory Berlin (the Soldiner Kiez) as a place to investigate interactions between the local human population and urban flora and fauna. The exhibition space will function as a laboratory for mapping, sketching, modelling and prototyping.

Wunschgarten is a series of dialogues: betweenthe artists and the local community, between city dwellers and nature, between urban planning and urban wilderness. As cities creep further into wild landscapes, the wild moves into cities. Urban habitats are places where plants and animals take up residence alongside people. Too often though, space for nature is sealed off by concrete constructions, resulting in a marked divide between the space occupied by humans and the rest of the biotic community. The Wunschgarten is an exploration of the city's wild features and creatures, and a vision of utopian measures that reach beyond existing mitigation schemes and municipal green-space planning. The city becomes a garden of unexpected edible opportunities and ideas to incubate and explode. The first offshoots of the Wunschgarten are found poking out of sidewalks and courtyards in Berlin's Soldiner Kiez, where the artists have redrawn the natural and urban landscape as a map that connects the area's human, animal, and plant populations. A common ground for interspecies exchange is found along the Panke and its lush riverbanks that spill out into the surrounding neighbourhood. (more information)

Evolution Haute Couture
Talk und film screening mit Dmitry Bulatov
01 Juli 2010, 19h


Garnet Hertz (USA) "Cockroach-Controlled Mobile Robot", 2006

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to present a collection of documentary films about artworks recently created using the latest twenty-first century technologies: artificial life, robotics, bio and genetic engineering. The screening has been organized by the curator and artist Dmitry Bulatov in conjunction with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Kaliningrad branch, Russia).

The films document artworks whose medium is living or lifelike matter, and the properties of living organisms and technologically reproduced artefacts are combined to produce the method. Art created under these new conditions of post-biology - that is, under conditions of artificially generated life - cannot avoid making this artificiality its explicit theme. We are thus again confronted with the question of the relationship between art and life in a completely new context defined by biological and abiological creations, works, and beings.

This collection is the first comprehensive overview of the current stage of contemporary techno-biological art. It provides a panorama of artistic strategies for granting and withdrawing the gift of authenticity. The analysis of these strategies opens up new possibilities for creative production and cultural commentary. In 2009 the Evolution Haute Couture project won the National Innovation Prize (Moscow, Russia), awarded annually for achievements in contemporary visual arts.

The film screening also coincides with the first volume of the anthology Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age. Edited by Dmitry Bulatov. Book plus two DVD-ROMs collection (45 video documentaries), KB NCCA, Kaliningrad, 2009. (ISBN: 978-5-94620-054-7). This publication is supported by The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, The Ford Foundation (The Moscow Office, Russia), The Dynasty Foundation (Moscow). Web site: www.videodoc.ncca-kaliningrad.ru/eng/

SCREENING PROGRAM

Bill Vorn, Emma Howes, Jonathan Villeneuve (Canada) "Grace State Machines" (7'40")
The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A): Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (Australia) "NoArk" (7'51")
Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha (The Netherlands) "Morphology / Face-Shift" (10'45")
Ken Rinaldo (USA) "The Autotelematic Spider Bots" (10'56")
Stelarc (Australia) "Extra Ear: Ear On Arm" (5'12")
Joe Davis (USA) "Making Fire" (10'25")
Marcel-li Antunez Roca (Spain) "Epizoo" (3'21")
Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen (The Netherlands) "Tickle Salon" (8'16")
Julie Freeman (United Kingdom) "The Lake" (5'00")
Laura Beloff (Finland) "The Fruit Fly Farm" (8'42)
Marta de Menezes (Portugal) "DECON" (9'00")
Paula Gaetano Adi (Argentina) "Alexitimia - an autonomous robotic agent" (7'08")
Paul Granjon (France) "Sexed Robots" (4'18")
SymbioticA Group (Australia) and The Potter Lab (USA) "MEART - The Semi Living Artist" (7'28")
Floris Kaayk (The Netherlands) "Metalosis Maligna" (7'26")

The screening will follow a short introduction by Dmitry Bulatov, and afterwards there will be a panel discussion with Dmitry Bulatov, Elena Ryabkova (Museum of the World Ocean, Kaliningrad, Russia), and Christian de Lutz (Art Laboratory Berlin).

More information:
http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/home_eng.htm
http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-events-archive.htm

This project is presented in cooperation with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Kaliningrad branch, Russia).

Artists Talk by Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to invite you to an artist talk with Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck in conjunction with our current exhibition Artists in Dialog: 2^-1/4-n/2 x 2^1/4-n/2 . The artists will talk about the project as well as other works they have done before.

"We have been invited to take part in Artists in Dialog, a new concept for an exhibition series initiated by Art Laboratory Berlin. Our contribution is a project, which can partly be described as an exhibition, and as an office/workshop. Within these settings, we have set up a system of rules for ourselves for engaging with the surroundings of Art Laboratory Berlin in Wedding, the exhibition space in itself and our individual practices.

"We have chosen to work with the A4 paper as a material and with a certain limited amount of office working tools, thereby creating a range of elements and projects to be displayed in the gallery.

"Working ad hoc and dealing with the unexpected limitations of the working tools in the office, we have started working on various projects that take their starting points in themes that we usually work with in our individual practices, but also where we think we can meet or clash - such as memory, history, traces, tags and surfaces as well as the standard vs. the individual." (Heidi Hove & Jens Axel Beck, Berlin, Mai 2010)

Both Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck are interdisciplinary artists, whose practice includes sculptural objects and installations as well as architectural, spatial and social interventions. A point of convergence in their work is a focus on daily life and the public and private spaces that we daily travel through. Their work examines how we navigate and organise ourselves in the world. Through simple and diverse manipulations, the daily and the recognisable are brought out of their regular condition. Thus common and ordinary objects are manipulated, copied and placed in new connections for the purpose of changing the meaning or perception of how we look and deal with these in our daily lives. In addition, humour plays an important role in their work, and it is often used to start a dialogue with the viewer.

Artists in Dialog

2^-1/4-n/2 x 2^1/4-n/2
Heidi Hove & Jens Axel Beck
29 May - 27 June, 2010
Artist talk 12 June, 2010

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to invite you to the exhibition 2^-1/4-n/2 x 2^1/4-n/2 by the Danish conceptual artists Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck – the first exhibition in our new series Artists in Dialog.

(more information)

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to invite you to the exhibition 2^-1/4-n/2 x 2^1/4-n/2 by the Danish conceptual artists Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck – the first exhibition in our new series Artists in Dialog.

Each exhibition in Artists in Dialog will take the form of a discursive examination between two artists, whose work has a common point of contact (e.g. in aesthetics, theme or process). The exhibition will be based around each artist interacting with the other's artistic position. It is our intention that their artworks come together not through a series of traditional curatorial (and hierarchical) decisions, but that the artists, working together, find a specific form of display for their own and each other's works. Thus, this form of exhibition as dialog will present an additional phenomenon: both artists will take part intensively in the curatorial aspect of the project, breaking down traditional barriers between artistic and curatorial production.

The exhibition title 2^-1/4-n/2 x 2^1/4-n/2 is the formula for calculating the dimensions of the paper sizes in the ISO A series. At Art Laboratory Berlin the A4 will be the basic element for building up the exhibition. Literally speaking, the exhibition space will take form as a laboratory and office setting, where the artists will gather material and information from the Internet. Different materials will be printed out and copied on A4 paper. Both artists will go through each other's pile of papers and choose material for presentation. Their working progress will begin in the week before the opening (28 May) and continue in the days thereafter.
(more information)

Exhibition views from
OFF FENCE. Art on the Californian-Mexican Border
http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-17.htm


works by Michelle Chong, Luis G. Hernandez and Ed Gomez.
(All photos in this post by Tim Deussen/ fotoscout.de)


Find Yourself Here, by Michelle Chong
(also at http://michellechong.com/findyourselfhere/)


Americanista, by Ed Gomez


Los, by Luis G. Hernendez


Caution: the Freeway Interventions by Camilo Ontiveros


Caution: the Freeway Interventions by Camilo Ontiveros


TRANS-poster by Michelle Chong


Tijuana Girl Crossing by Katya Gardea Browne


Tijuana Girl Crossing by Katya Gardea Browne


(All photos in this post by Tim Deussen/ fotoscout.de)