Artists in Dialog

Alex Toland: Personal Dispersal Mechanisms.
An Interactive Urban Exploration.

Sunday, August 30, 2009,




gallery installation







interactive urban exploration



urban plants are 'adopted' by participants



a polaroid of human and plant is taken



back at Art Laboratory Berlin

Natural distribution mechanisms of plant species are often severely obstructed in the city. Tree sponsorship is a popular and effective way of re-greening city parks and streets. Individual sponsors become personally linked to individual trees while beautifying the neighborhood and creating new habitats for birds, mammals and insects.

Artist Alex Toland takes this idea a step further by creating species partnerships for a day and encouraging personal interspecies relationships as a potential distribution mechanism. As part of the series Artists in Dialog at ART LABORATORY BERLIN the artist will realize a collaborative walk and installation project by leading a group of Berlin residents through part of the green corridor along the Panke and make personal introductions between individual people and plants. (more information)

Artists in Dialog

Alex Toland: Personal Dispersal Mechanisms.
An Interactive Urban Exploration.

Sunday, August 30, 2009, 4pm
(starting at Art Laboratory Berlin)





The US-American Environmental Artist Alex Toland creates artistic works at the borderline of art and ecology, ethnobotany, and urban architecture.

For Art Laboratory Berlin on August 30, 2009, she will lead a group of Berlin residents through part of the green corridor along the river Panke and make personal introductions between individual people and plants. Along the walk each participant will “adopt” a species for the day, which will hopefully lead to a longer friendship between man and weed, future recognition of the species and further interest and communication with others about the value of urban nature.

At the end of the walk the human portraits will be installed alongside the plant receptacles and descriptions at ART LABORATORY BERLIN, visually linking human diversity to plant biodiversity as a cultural asset.

For more information see http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/
and http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-event-5.htm

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SAVE THE DATE: 2 October 2009
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Opening of the exhibition
Art and Law III
Seized - Critical Art Ensemble
& Institute for Applied Autonomy



More information to follow shortly

All images copyright 2009, Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz

Strike Anywhere
Screening of a new video by Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida
(2009, 32 minutes, English without subtitles)
At Artillerie (Exerzierstr. 10, 13359 Berlin) in cooperation with Art Laboratory Berlin

Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 9 pm
Introduction by Christian de Lutz, Art Laboratory Berlin
Followed by a discussion with the artists

At Artillerie (Exerzierstr. 10, 13359 Berlin) in cooperation with Art Laboratory Berlin

Strike Anywhere
Screening of a new video by Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida
(2009, 32 minutes, English without subtitles)

Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 9 pm
Introduction by Christian de Lutz, Art Laboratory Berlin
Followed by a discussion with the artists

artillerie and Art Laboratory Berlin are pleased to present Strike Anywhere for the first time to a Berlin audience, following screenings at the Luleå Art Biennial in Sweden and the Kran>>Film Space in Brussels. The latest collaborative work by the experimental filmmaker Benj Gerdes and the poet Jennifer Hayashida, Strike Anywhere is a video essay that takes as its point of departure Swedish “Match King” Ivar Kreuger, whose privatization of financial crisis management strategies bears a direct relation to late-twentieth century policies implemented by the IMF and WTO.

Between 1917 and 1932, Kreuger capitalised on shifts in global financial markets to control over 200 companies and establish matchstick monopolies in at least 34 countries. At the height of his success, Ivar Kreuger was worth approximately 30 million Swedish kronor (the equivalent of 100 billion USD today) and had matchstick monopolies in at least 34 countries. The project is both a prehistory of neoliberal economics and an allegory about social relations and desire in the wake of global capitalist expansion and excess. (more)

Ztohoven, Media Reality, television still, 2007


Artist talk with Ztohoven member Prokop Bartoníček following the screening and German premiere of the documentary On Media Reality, by Vladimir Turner (2008)




Opening of Art and Law II: Ztohoven - Media Reality, 29 May, 2009

The Prague based artist collective Ztohoven use their work, often interventions in public space, to scrutinise the creditability of mass media and advertising. In their action Media Reality, which took place on 7 June, 2007, they ‘hacked’ into the Czech weather channel ČT 2 and added the image of an atomic explosion to the live image of a mountain valley. The channel pressed charges under laws against “indecent behavior” and the “diffusion of false information”. In two separate legal actions members of the group were acquitted. At the same time, Ztohoven were awarded the first NG 333 prize for contemporary art from the Prague National Gallery, in connection with Media Reality.

Besides showing the work Media Reality and related court documents, Art Laboratory Berlin will present the German premiere of the film On Media Reality, which documents the legal and artistic aftermath of the action. (more information)


Vladimir Turner, video still, On Media Reality, 42', 2008.

Artists in Dialog: Paola Yacoub

Paola Yacoub's Presentation is the first of Art Laboratory Berlin's new series of artists talks, presentations, performances and events:
Artists in Dialog

Paola Yacoub will present a running thread through various works, mainly photographs and montages, produced in different geographical areas ranging from Southern Lebanon to Berlin via Sweden and China.The common point is skepticism as it was introduced in visual arts in the U.S.A. at the beginning of the 20th century.

In a fast food restaurant 'Beautifull Heart' in Shenzhen, China, a flat screen continuously transmits news and entertainment channels. Information becomes like decoration. One looks at the screen only from time to time, often not at all, and rarely with attention. We do not know if we agree on postures in front of the screen and on what we see.

A dialogical encounter between two video clips of the same screen in the same fast food restaurant but at different moments were made by Paola Yacoub and by Yao Zhiyan.These plasma screens in fast food restaurants and cafés show the social modality of a contemporary gaze.

Paola Yacoub is a graduate of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, and currently a PHD candidate in visual arts at Goldsmith's college, London. Among other venues she has exhibited in the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennale, the 2003 Venice Biennale and was part of the DAAD artists program in 2004/2005 in collaboration with Michel Lasserre. She lives and works in Berlin.

Lecture by Maksim Neroda (CAT)











The exhibition Monstration shows video works and documents of this and other actions and reflects the public reaction by legal documents and mass media reviews. Maxim Neroda, one of the founders of the group, presents in his lecture the series of 'monstrations' and also additional actions by CAT.

Art and Law I: CAT -Monstration

Art and Law I: CAT -Monstration

Opening 20.02.2009, 8PM
21.02.2009 - 29.03.2009
Sat. und Sun. 2-6PM
(also Fri. 27.02. and 27.03., 8-11PM)

The CAT (Contemporary Art Terrorism) collective from Novosibirsk creates situations in public space, which lay bare the absurdity of the way in which political power functions. Unprepared passers-by were drawn into the process of creating critical artistic statements. For organizing a May Day monstration - a counterpart to a classical May Day demonstration - in which marchers carried individual banners with apolitical, often poetic or non-rational slogans, the artists were sentenced to pay a fine. The exhibition Monstration shows video works and documents of the public reaction by means of legal documents and mass media reviews.

29.11.2008 - 04.01.2009
Curators from East and Central Europe III:
Mari Laanemets
Hier wäre das Leben leicht
(There, Life Would Be Easy)

Opening: Friday 28.11.2008, 8PM
Hours: Sat. and Sun. 2 - 6PM;
closed 27.12 and 28.12.2008

Hier wäre das Leben leicht (There, life would be easy) The exhibition revolves around issues of design, of the construction of surfaces we are surrounded by in everyday life: from textiles to texts, to street and city. One of the underlying intentions of the exhibition is to reflect on how these formal constructions organize our behaviour, give our lives a scheme, a program, and on the sedimentation of ideology in forms.
Participating artists: Kadi Estland, Anton Koovit, Sirje Runge, Killu Sukmit, Tere Recarens and Florian Wüst.(more)