atb #23 | Hüttendong

Tammo Rist, Amilcar Packer, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, s.a.b., Hanayo, Carola Spadoni, Gregor Gleiwitz, Neda Nanai, Tenko Nakajima, Jakob Schaible, Judy Ross, Heike Föll, Mario Caroli, Aids-3D, Steev Lemercier, Johannes Kullen, Thomas Kilpper, Baltazar Castor, Trygve Luktvasslimo, Clarissa Cody, Nina Hoffmann, Lydia Hamann, Timo Klöppel, Philip Wiegard, Marcus Randolf, Piotr Wolf, Voin de Voin, Nathan Peter, Dennis Kuhlow, Gerry Bibby, Gavin Russom, Clare O’Connor, Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton, Anders Clausen, Chelsa Cup, Thomas Noesler, Kandis Willians, Tom Witschonke, Endre Aalrust, Kathrin Sonntag, Felix Meyer, Johannes Raether, Robert Burghardt, Christophe Hamaide Person, Sarah Schoenfeld, Delia Gonzalez, Anton Stoianov, Benjamin Alexander Huseby, Adrian Hermanides, Jan Hammer, Denise Palma Ferrante, Brent Wadden, Yusi Etiman, Mariechen Danz, David Keating, Rein Vollenga, Yorgos Sapountzis,
are all coming to Jan Molzberger’s and Eli Sudbrack’s hut.

Photo by Mario Carloi

HÜTTENDONG

Opening: 13th November 2009 at 7pm
Exhibition: 14th November 2009 – 3rd January 2010
open by appointment +49 (0)179 947 30 40

endreaalrust.com
philipwiegard.com

atb #20 | tracer

Thomas Bayrle, Martin Feldbauer, Daniel Kohl, Harald Pridgar

Friday, March, 6th, 2009 from 19 h

at 10 pm live:
fendercuts sud
(Sergej Jensen, Stefan Müller, Mischa Schulze)

Exhibition: March, 7th – April, 4th, 2009
open by appointment +49 (0)179 947 30 40

tracer macht die Struktur einer Zusamenarbeit von 4 Leuten nach außen deutlich – die nach innen schon jahrelang funktioniert. – TB

tracer spürt einen Gedanken-Prozess auf, intern, und von Mensch zu Mensch – es ist sowohl linear als auch chaotisch. – DK

tracer legt Entwicklungsvorgänge dar die sich beeinflussen, zeigt was wächst, verzweigt, was verworfen oder nicht weiterverfolgt wird. – MF

tracer die Spanische Treppe hoch und dann rechts auf den Markusplatz einbiegen… – HP

tracer stelle ich mir als eine Art Navigationshilfe vor: in einer Gesellschaft der Vereinzelung als Suche nach den Potentialen kollektiver Prozesse. – TK (after the butcher)

atb #17 | IMPROVEMENT

Istituto Divorciado & Sex Tags

September 26, 2008 – from 6pm
Exhibition: September, 29th – November, 8th 2008

FREE SHUTTLE BUS TO VERBESSERUNG OPENING NIGHT
departing at 6pm from Galerie Sandra Buerguel, Hedemannstraße 25, Kreuzberg

then at 8pm from Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Mitte
PUNKTLICH! 22:00 uhr lebende musik mit NATRON
see Verbesserung infomercial video at KIM’s window
Brunnenstraße 10, 10119 Berlin

IMPROVEMENT
BY CORDULA DAUS

Often a small improvement precedes a great vision. Only for four days tiredly flew the flag of the United States of Brasil at the mast in November 1889, a green and yellow imitation of the northern Stars and Stripes, until Raimundo Teixeira Mendes designed a better one, after sketches by Auguste Comte. Since then a banderole with the positivistic credo “order and progress” is floating across the blue globe before the southern starry sky. A slogan that today could be easily improved. The rainbow flag however is an often varied symbol for diversity: Already the Incas have used it, their colours also symbolize the Jewish autonomous territory or stand for tolerance and sexual freedom. VERBESSERUNG shows even an entire rainbow machine – the trace of an action which paint has etched into the wall.
Instituto Divorciado and Sex Tags have created a veritable Wunderkammer for their show at After the Butcher in which the big and small scenarios of improvement meet and collide: political utopias and their catastrophes, time tunnel, egg-sorcisms, do-gooders and DIYers, bondage and de-bondage artists, deloused gals, obscene kangaroos and a self-reading books.
There is something hopeless to the idea of improving… There lurks the pettiness of correction, the wrecked optimism of the before-after. Where you have to improve something is not alright.
“The world becomes old and young again, but man hopes are always bettering” in 1797 Friedrich Schiller wrote. In 2007, Cheeta the chimpanzee becomes 75 years old and beats all records as oldest great ape, meanwhile in the industrialized countries people have an average lifespan of 80 years thanks to improved medical health care. Indeed the semantic field of the bettering ranges from zoological quality management, via personal well-wishing, to social, political and even global issues. But how about improvements within the arts?
Improvement in relation to art is irritating because it implies a measurability that, within the irrational area of aesthetics, art markets and their verdicts of taste, it seems to be out of place. Who improves what, wherefore and in what sense? At the latest since Hegel’s famous thesis of the end of art we could argue that art is free from its sacred mission and its belief in an upper — only artisticly presentable — truth and can address itself to the “lively presence”.
If art does not function anymore as a general ethical authority instance – which could then be compared with the normative notion of improvement? If at all, how could art improve without getting trapped in the rhetoric of the conditioners? And how would im- proved art look like?
In April 2009 the exhibition “Wir verbessern ihr Arbeit” (“we improve your artwork”) will follow at Galerie Sandra Buergel. Then Instituto Divorciado will intervene in the works of the invited artists. Sort of an encroaching curatorial approach — not only author — ship but the criteria for “good” art is at stake. “Give us your art and we’ll improve it”. A pragmatical service that spurns all metaphysics and promises to free the participating artists from their own work and ego. So forth with your art!

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