Aram Barthol showed internet art in an internet café at Kottbusser Damm in Berlin. The concept is simple: Rent all computers and set the homepage on each computer to one of the featured art projects. For convenience distribute sheets with artist info and an exhibition map (most internet café have xerox machines and the workstations have numbers). Cheap wine and beer for the opening can be bought directly from the counter. As a side effect two cultures and very different urban communities is are brought together – after all this is not St. Oberholz where the frontal lobe of the digital bohème resides in a latte machiato rich bring-your-own-laptop-environment.

The way the staff at Kottbusser Damm 103 adjusted to the new clientele was the an art experience in itself. Of course the internet art was great too. Here are some links:

Dragan Espenschied / Education of the Noobz

Tobias Leingruber / Webmarker

vimeo Untitled

Recorded at Tempelhof Airport – until recently the airport closest to the city center of Berlin. The building is known as one of the first modern airports. The architecture is typical for the Nazi era and admittedly impressive. Today the building is used for fares and large events. The airfield is publicly accessible and used as a park.

Last Sunday I followed an invitation to witness an Art performance at Galerie M in Marzahn (for non-Berliners: Eastern outskirts with visually extremely cool socialist high rises that will take at least 50 years to become popular amongst Mitte hipsters and only under the condition that yuppies will invade Neukölln and Wedding before).

The performance exceeded the 15 seconds that it claimed to take through its title (15sec) by 2:30min. I did a bootleg recording with my cellphone from a safe position behind glass in the gallery’s entrance space.

Veoh More than 15 sec

Isn’t the tiny Smart on a leash sweet? To bad it couldn’t go wild on its own without a driver.

At the book presentation of “Updating Germany” by Raumtaktik (the curators of the German contribution to the Venice Biennial International Architecture Exhibition 2008) the term “Betroffenheitskunst” was brought up and kept coming back throughout the panel discussion. The term is used to criticize art that aims to cause empathy as an end in itself. At least this is how I understand it. In the context of architecture – which in one way or another is always about altering reality – the term does not seem to make much sense in my opinion. (more…)

On Monday, December 1, I will give a Talk at the Museum of American Art in Berlin Friedrichshain (Frankfurter Allee 91).

Reality Over
Überlegungen zu schnellem Geld, hoher Kunst, Computerspielen und anderen Spielen. (more…)