Four artist groups participated in a discussion panel at Sophiensaele in Berlin Mitte on September 16.Konsortium, a group of three artists, runs a project room in Düsseldorf, which they use to show their own works along with works by artists who they invite. Their horrible website features a group photo with all three wearing suits and a lot of photos of exhibition, most of them the same wall, taken from the same perspective, showing art that is made for being fixed to a wall. In short: They are a bunch of clowns who seem to think that they are doing something exceptional. The presentation of Konsortium was the caricature of a cocaine driven speech by 3rd level manager.
GlobalAlien is global, because its members have various nationalities. The group was started by students of a Rebecca Horn class and students of a Katharina Sieverding class, as one learned during Lizza May David incredibly boring presentation. How come that, had I imagined how a group of students of Rebecca Horn and Katharina Sieverding would present itself, I would probably have come up with exactly the kind unmotivated high school girl style of presentation that Lizza May David delivered. Choose your gurus wisely and don’t team up with other disciples, they are likely to have similar deficits as you have.
Andrea Knobloch und Silke Riechert form “Salon des Belles Utopistes” a group of two. They talked mostly about how they organize their collaboration and a little bit about the dynamics of collaborating. Their work may be interesting, there collaboration is very conventional. They are a Team and that’s fine, but who cares?
Only FiloArt gave an inspiring presentation in form of a narrative that played with the question of identity. It is not clear how many members FiloArt has and who they are. The Presentation was given by a synthetic voice and questions were answered via email. The story told in the presentation suggests that the group might consist of only one person’s various roles and aspects, but that is kept obscure.
FiloArt does not seem to have a website. This page has some information about the group. It would be great, if they would publish the presentation online.
One would have liked to see a group on the panel that truly works as a group and uses and investigates strategies of teaming up. One of the more interesting groups of the last 15 years, Superflex has shown how forming a group and using techniques and strategies from the corporate world can make a difference. Unlike Superflex the groups on the panel, maybe with the exception of FiloArt, seem to feel perfectly comfortable inside the art context and conventional exhibition practice. Their attempts to break out of it, if they exist, seem halfhearted, not thought through and naive.