Art Residencies

I have spent the past month thinking about what I would like to do to mark the end of my residency at the Berlin Office. The Berlin Office holds various functions as a space. It is first and foremost a shelter, providing artists with a domestic environment for the duration of their stay as a resident. It is also a studio, providing space for concepts and projects to be developed and realised. This layered function of space lends itself to the possibility of a site-responsive exhibition; the installed works responding directly to the apartments architecture. The show will examine how a site, with its history and context, resonates as a framework for a collection of artistic responses.

Each of the artists I have invited to exhibit have spent a duration of time in The Berlin Office; either as a visitor during my stay here, or as a resident themselves. As well as curating and exhibiting in the show, I will be opening my studio up to the public alongside the exhibition. The show will be exhibited in the apartment sometime in December, please keep reading my Blog and checking my website for updates.

www.victorialucas.co.uk

Experimenting with my ideas outside of an exhibition remit or deadline is something I have found to be quite challenging, as the absence of deadlines and tight schedules is something that I have not experienced in a long time. It is leading me to question my practice, my preferred lifestyle, and my aspirations as a practitioner. Moving here has been a challenging experience so far, in both positive and negative ways. One of my MA lecturers once said to me ‘On this course, you must pull your practice apart in order to reassemble it’. The residency at The Berlin Office is providing me with that same opportunity. 

I have been to a few art openings over the past couple of weeks. There were over 150 art openings on Friday 5th September in Berlin. Impossible to see all of them, but I managed to get around a few with friends on this very exciting and busy evening that marked the end of the summer break. We started at DAAD gallery, where artist Shimabuku had an exhibition entitled Sea, Sky, Language and so on. The most striking piece was a film of the artist flying a kite, which appeared to be a life-sized portrait of the artist himself. The figure drifted in the air, as if floating, before falling to the ground again. The artist uses elemental forces; recording the direct effect his actions have when interacting with objects and materials. The text accompanying the show suggests to the viewer that the work is striving to find a new poetical language, and that ultimately the works aims are dependant on the viewers interpretation of the visual imagery presented.

Five openings later a group of us arrived at Zwanzigquadratmeter (20 cubic meters). 20qm is an artist’s studio and project space in Berlin-Friedrichshein, consisting of two square rooms. Artists are invited to exhibit in the downstairs room, providing a living, office, or studio in the upstairs room should they need it. The artist exhibiting this week was Guillaume Pilet, presenting a series of prints and wall-mounted sculptures made out of baked dough. See www.20qmberlin.comfor more images.

Curator Eric Emery and Artist Guillaume Pilet stood in front of These Foolish Things, 2008.

Eric Emery, the curator of 20qm, had an exhibition opening on Friday night at Substitut on Torstrasse. The space itself was really interesting- the open space at the front of the building was a white cube space, with grey floors and big windows. Eric’s works were situated here; a fibre glass cast of a tree that had been involved in a car accident, spray painted the same colour as the car that had damaged it. Two wall paintings accompanied this work, spray-painted to represent the impact traces documented on the circuit after Ayrton Senna’s fatal formula 1 crash in 1994, and Jacques Villeneuve’s 2006 accident at the Canadian Grand Prix. The works were very stylish, constructed to perfection. The space and exhibiton continued up the stairs, and another environment completely contrasted the white cube space in the front section of the gallery. The space was raw, unpainted, and dark. There was a damp smell to the air, the perfect environment for the plants and earth that were exhibited as part of Aurelio Kopainig’s work. The tension between the rough architecture of the space and the natural artifacts infiltrating it worked extremely well. A slide show of images depicting trees constrained and controlled in city environments, presented in one of the small rooms situated at the back of the gallery, concluded this well curated show.

Other openings I have attended include the ABC Exhibition at Postbahnhof on Gleisdreieck. The old train station was a fantastic space and a great site for the show, which included artists such as Darren Almond, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Liam Gillick, and Carsten Höller. I wish I had gone back to the show after the opening, as it was very difficult to see or concentrate on a lot of the works due to the amount of people filling the space.

There is a fantastic art space near Kottsbusser Torr station called West Germany, which I have visited a couple of times now to experience their experimental music events. On Sunday I went there to watch a band called O Death- I was under the impression that I was in for a bit of death metal, but I was very pleasantly surprised when a ‘hillbilly’ folk band took to the stage and completely blew the crowd away. Please look them up- they are fantastic. http://www.myspace.com/odeath / http://odeath.net/ 

This week has flown by, partly due to the fact that I have had visitors this week, and also because I have spent most of my time on the phone to a company called Alice trying to get the internet in my apartment to work. I have however been working on a piece of artwork at the Natural History Museum on Invalidenstrasse this week, which has a good collection of taxidermy specimens that I have gained permission to film (see victorialucas.co.uk for work in progress images).

As a makeshift tour guide for my guests I have tried to balance the usual Berlin tourist spots with a bit of real Berlin for my own pleasure as well as theirs. The first night of my friends stay we went to the Sony Centre, which I am very fond of as a tourist site for the architecture and the relaxed atmosphere. We ate in one of the many restaurants situated in Potsdamer Platz before walking towards Hauptbahnhof train station, passing the Holocaust Memorial, Brandenburg gate, and the Reichstag on the way (A good route for new visitors). Other tourist trips include Ka De We (which was not my cup of tea); and a trip to the East Side Gallery, where I learnt that a restoration project is to Begin in Spring 2009 involving all of the original artists who painted this strip of wall back in 1990.

More unique Berlin experiences included a trip to my local market, which is full of fantastic foods, fabrics, and jewellery; a nice evening stroll along the canal to a bar/ restaurant situated on a boat named Josephine, where we ate really great food in a lovely atmosphere; and also a night out in A.bar- a great little bar in Neukölln that has live music every Wednesday evenings. This week it was a cabaret duo; two women dressed in red, singing and acting out German sea chanteys from what we could gather- very entertaining and great fun. Last week I went to the same evening event and watched two solo singer/ songwriters perform, and it was a treat to get something so varied this week. 

I also dragged my friends along to see the Babylon exhibition at the Pergamon museum, on museum Island. I particularly liked the section of the show devoted to artwork based on the Myths surrounding Babylon; works from Douglas Gordan, Cindy Sherman, and William Blake featured in the show. www.smb.museum/babylon 

Part of the Relics and Regeneration exhibition at Holy Trinity Church, Leeds.

4th August - 14th August 2008 Open Mon- Sat 1-5pm
http://www.artsattrinity.co.uk/
 

Installed on the alter in Holy Trinity Church, States of Change comprises a series of films shot in and around the church before a major re-development project begins.  As the buildings are pulled down around the church, the exhibition presents moments that evoke both nostalgia and anticipation.

The sound of the tower Pendulum is projected in to the church, implying the buildings constant presence while the city below changes with each moment acknowledged.  The central film records the clock mechanism present in the tower, and the surrounding images capture the minutiae and essence of a place that has been lost to time.

Untitled (Reclaimed) 2008

Part of the Yorkshire Sculptor’s Group Exhibition entitled More Things In Heaven and Earth at Durham Cathedral.

http://www.yorkshiresculptorsgroup.org/
 

Two plinths, constructed out of two old doors, sit site-specifically as items of furniture within the Cathedral’s Nave. Apertures, situated in the top of the plinths, provide the only access to the films presented within, visible only to the inquisitive viewer.
The focal point in this series of recorded moments is the many doorways situated within the Cathedral. Visitors are captured moving in and out of this sacred space; the camera positioned so that only their feet are visible. This archive of transient movement creates an ambiguous work, which is open to the individual and their own conceived level of spiritualism.

See photo album for images

I’ve been thinking about ways in which we use our bodies to physically mark out the passage of time, and pacing is something I haven’t been able to get out of my head. The act of pacing is often carried out when a person is anxious or if one is contemplating; marking out the momentum of thoughts through the physical act of movement. It’s almost like a pendulum, a repetitive motion that visually marks a distance of time and space.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective at the Neue National Gallerie. I’d been reading about his Theatres series in David Green’s Marking Time: Photography, Film and Temporalities of the image, so viewing them was a real treat. In Theatres, Sugimoto captures an extension of time within one single image- setting up the camera in front of a cinema screen and leaving the shutter open for the duration of the film showing. Thousands of images are recorded and ultimately lost during the photography films lengthy exposure, the photograph becoming a record of this transient existence which is now lost to time.

Today I cut up strips of paper, laying them out on my studio floor. I rubbed graphite in to the soles of my feet and began pacing up and down the paper, recording the repetitive act as I walked. The paper now holds a transient moment, recording the duration of time I spent pacing.  It has a presence; it says ‘I was here and now I’m not’. Just like a photograph. I think I would like to repeat this act of pacing in a gallery space as a performance, leaving the paper in the space once the performance is over.

Hello There! My name is Vicky, and ive recently moved to Berlin from the UK to undertake a 5 month art residency at The Berlin Office, which is a little arts organisation based in the Kreuzberg/ Neukölln area. I started my art career in the wonderful city of Wakefield, West Yorkshire; and when I was asked to set up a blog to record my experiences by Richard Wheater, the Studio Development Officer at Westgate Studios in Wakefield, I thought id give it a try.

So, the Berlin Office. They have a little website that was set up by previous resident Jen Delos Reyes, which you can view at http://www.jendelosreyes.com/theberlinoffice/. Its a great little apartment in a fantastic area of Berlin, and comprises two studios in which artists can live and work, a bathroom and a kitchen. I will be staying in the apartment until January 2009, and i’m just getting settled again having moved out here on the 19th July, and then having to come back to the UK two weeks later to set up two exhibitions in Leeds and Durham.

My first two weeks here before popping back to the UK were quite difficult. I seemed to lose a bit of confidence as i became overwhelmed at the thought of living in a big city and not being able to speak the language. I took some lessons ealier this year, and some of the phrases have come back to me, but the thought of having a conversation in German seemed impossible. Since i got back to Berlin this week I feel more positive about being able to get on alright here. I feel that my vocab is broadening everyday, and I hope to take more lessons so that little things like going to the shop isnt something you have to rehearse.

Last night I went to the Glasgow School of Art Opening at the Artnews Project space in Mitte. There wasnt anything that stood out as being amazing, but i did meet an Italian artist called Bruno who has lived here for 5 months, so it was interesting to talk to him about his experince of Berlin so far. We went to another opening down the road at Invaliden1 gallery, which had a really interesting show by an artist whose name ive forgotten, but who worked mainly with paper- ill possibly write about this when i more information to hand.

Im in the Staatsbibliothek on potsdamer strasse, which i think is one of the most impressive libraries ive ever been in (although the Brotherton Library in the University of Leeds comes a very close second). Im working on my website at the moment… watch this space for úpdates.

Tschüs for now.