Anri Sala’s series Untitled (Maps/Species, 2018-2022) consists of diptychs which create a dialogue, within the twenty-four windows of the Passage de la Bourse de Commerce, between an an eighteenth-century zoological engraving with an ink and pastel drawing by the pastel by the artist. This cycle echoes the immense canvas marouflaged on the shoulder of the Rotunda. In the form of a leporello to be unfolded recto-verso, this book gives an account of this project in the context of its project in the context of its presentation.
Bernhard Cella’s sweeping pictorial documentary of convalescent men present us with an iconography of a century of medical progress and, by the same token, with a typology of the mise en scenes of soon-to-be homecoming patients. These staged pictures open up a counter narrative to that of vigorous, unscathed, and invulnerable masculinity. They invariably invoke calamitous moments, sustained injuries, the scars of war as well as the causes and circumstances preceding a fateful event that no camera was there to capture. Their insistence on calm, deceleration, casual gestures, and lightheartedness in the photographer’s presence cannot hide this fact. Or, as Paul Virilio put it, “images are ammunition, cameras are weapons.”
Temporary City is an exhibition that starts from the basis: the artist. No theme or curator is involved. During the course of one week fifteen artists worked in the Atelierhof Kreuzberg and challenged, negotiated and discussed their practices in order to use these as a base to develop an exhibition. Their works were presented on an architectural structure, an ‘obstacle’ designed for the show. The result of this process could be seen during the exhibition Temporary City Berlin 2009.
Artists: Anton Cotteleer, Ilke De Vries, Yoko Enoki, Paul Hendrikse, Anouk Kruithof, Nicolas Leus, Katrin Plavcak, Olivier Schrauwen, Nele Tas, Iris Van Dongen, Stijn Van Dorpe, Ada Van Hoorebeke, Tamara Van San, Sarah Westphal, Nada Sebestyén.
Texts, Introduction: Nele Tas; Exhibition Diary: Christophe Van Gerrewey; No Such Things as a Plan: Andreas Müller; St Curatus at the Crossroads: Christoph Tannert.
The 2023 edition of the Vilaine Fermière calendars have the theme of ‘death gods’, with references to antique, medieval and modern representations of different demons throughout the world.
Each copy is riso printed and bound by hand. Each page has 2 colors and the cover has 3.
In her exhibition ‘The Playground Talk’, closing her residency at Officina Neukölln, Romana Ruban creates the echo of a dialogue between kids that she overheard during a trip to Odesa. The playground chitchat consists of dreams about the neighbor’s car and is carved into a zine with simple but lighthearted illustrations. The linocut prints appeal to both the inner child and the responsible adult. With these kids’ quotes, the artist wishes to show not only a playful childhood and the joy of simple things, but she also wants to bring up a few questions. Are we dreaming in the right direction? What do we stand for in the end?
The idea for a zine came up in 2021, right after the trip, but was on hold. Officina’s residency for artists in exile gave new layers and meanings to the imprint of the peaceful past, as Romana fled Ukraine to Germany after the full-scale invasion of Russia.
‘Critical Designers’ produced by an increasing number of design schools are prompted to address social, political and environmental issues through their practices. Yet, who can afford to continue such effort after graduation?
In a dynamic style holding multiple voices, “Who Can Afford To Be Critical?” discusses the limits that affordability, class and labour impose upon the educational promise of holding a ‘critical’ practice. Why do we tend to ignore the material and socioeconomic constraints that bind us as designers, claiming instead that we can be powerful agents of change? In fact, where does our agency lie?
Instead of focusing on the dream of ethical work under capitalism, could we, instead, focus first on designers’ own working conditions, targeting them as one immediate site for collective action? And can we engage politically with the world not necessarily as designers, but as workers, as activists, as citizens?
With contributions by Silvio Lorusso, J. Dakota Brown, Marianela D’Aprile, Evening Class, Somnath Batt, Danielle Aubert, Jack Henrie Fisher, Alan Smart, Greg Mihalko and DAE students 2021/2022.
Kink Gong (aka Laurent Jeanneau) was born in France in 1965.
He started making electronic music around 1995 in NYC, and in 1999 went to live with the Hadzas in Tanzania to record their music, since then he started to record the music of mostly endangered minorities in many different places, mostly in Southeast Asia. He lived in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and many other places. He also composes electronic music that includes and transforms those recordings. With a huge catalog of his work, he released music from the label such as Sublime Frequencies, Akuphone, Discrepant, and more.
This album is to celebrate the music I was involved in while living in Dali, Yunnan, China between 2006 and 2012. As usual with Kink Gong compositions, they contain all kinds of field recordings, mostly in Southern China, Laos, and Cambodia; local instruments that I play and electronic to melt them together, resulting in experimental soundscapes. Each element of the composition relates to this period with people (the dramatic voices of Hani or Yao singers) and spaces (park, jungle) and the long hours of creative enjoyment in our house by the Ear lake (Erhai) to put those elements together, using my neighbour (Li Daiguo)’s skill on pipa or new electronic toys I got around that time.
Our son was born in Dali in 2008 and this LP is called Ji Sang (literally translated as Lucky Mulberry Tree) after his name.
Side A – Fishermen Boats of Erhai Lake Electronic, Dali China 2010 + Punoy Mouthorgan, Laos 2010 + Khmu Man Voice, Phongsaly Laos 2010 + Metallic Boats on Erhai Lake, Dali China 2010 + Electronic, Dali China 2012 + Dong Niutuiqin + Woman’s Voice, Guizhou China 2012 + Electronic, Dali China 2011 + Hani Vocal Polyphony, Yunnan China 2011 + Chinese Pop Singer, Shanghai 2001 + 2 Yao Women’s Voices, + Frogs, Yunnan China 2011
Side B – Morsing Bimo Morsing Indian Mouthharp, Chennai India 1997 + Nuosu Yi Bimo, Sichuan China 2010 + Electronic, Paris 2000 + Santur Persian Dulcimer, Berlin 2017 + Nuosu Koxian Multiblades Mouthharp, Sichuan China 2010
– Pon Dao Flute Siem Reap, Cambodia 2003 + Electronic, Dali China 2008 + Mum 1 Stringed Bowed Instrument, Krung Ratanakiri Cambodia 2004
– Chengdu Park Electronic, Dali China 2008 + Park in Chengdu, Sichuan China 2008 + Pipa by Li Daiguo, Dali China 2011 + Nyaheun Mouthorgan + Voice, Champasak Laos 2006 + Lisu Chibeu Guitar, Yunnan China 2012
released December 2, 2022
All music recorded & recomposed by Kink Gong 1997 – 2012 Kink Gong plays Mouthharp, Mouthorgan, and Lisu Chibeu Mastered by Thomas Stadnicki Layout by 若潭 Ruò Tán
“I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad” is an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution. Invested in queer theory and institutional critique, she sets out to perform the artist “differently” through a process of negation and passivity, inadvertently causing her relationship with the institution’s curator to grow increasingly speculative and paranoid. Louwerens’ labor as tour guide, security guard, artist, hostess and researcher at different institutions begins to overlap and blend under the name of “performance.” “I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad” is a fragmented story of paranoid and reparative reading, script and utterance, exposure and vulnerability.
Pia Louwerens is a performance artist and researcher from the Netherlands, living in Brussels. Her research revolves around the becoming of the artistic subject, the I who writes, speaks and makes, in relation to the (institutional) context. From 2019 – 2020 Louwerens was working as embedded artistic researcher at a big research project, for which she was embedded in an art institution. Through this research she attempted to perform or practice the artist, and thereby the institution, differently. Her work usually takes the shape of a performance in which she speaks, switching between registers of the actual, the possible, the professional and the anxious artist.
For December 2022 Music Mix we hosted Broshuda on a two-day residence at Motto’s store. The artist created a mix featuring music from our latest arrivals.
