General

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!

> Istituto Divorciado
> Sex Tags

General

atb #16 | K2ao

K2ao, love, work and a space in berlin
K2ao, Klasse2aufbauorganisation München

Opening Saturday 5th July, 18 h
Performances at 18:30 h and at 22:30 h

Exhibition: 7th July – 23rd August

For opening hours please call ++49(0)179-9473040
closed: 16.-31. July

K: What was that supposed to mean?
For one, there were scenes like the ones we were in, those with the prostitutes or with the landlords, which could be interpreted as an everyday fashist behavior, as a critique of capitalism in general or of the art market in particular

2: On the other hand, there was the scene with the dancer, the thriving force, excess… rationally not understandable.

A: And then there was this text by Otto Gross – a scene that might point to possibilities of how to break through the vicious circle, how we could proceed.

O: Maybe the authors, that means K2ao, want to point to the fact, that we have to get rid of the tight armor that protects and confines us.

K: But who is K2ao actually?

2: Are they not equally exposed to the ruling order as we are?

A: In order to break away from our roles we have to confront ourselves with the reality out there. For example, I could be living over there and take you home with me.
O: Oh yes, that would be great – lets have a look whats been written about this in the script.

K: Yes, and there we can also look up what we should be saying about K2ao…

Dear Friends and Comrades, Families,
we would be happy to see you on Saturday, July 5, at after the butcher in order to entertain you with art.
‘Bohemia‘ is being typed into computers these days quite frequently, especially in Berlin, in order to justify a certain type of work that connects with a certain type of lifestyle quite nicely. In Munich we also had a bohemian scene at the turn of the millennium, the one before the last one, and because we think that this one was a bit more interesting, and because we come from there, we are investigating that phenomenon already quite a while. This inquiry seems to connect with other things in our heads and we call it work what comes out of it.
Its not only the Cosmic Circle, Fassbinder, Mary Wigman and ‘das Kapital‘ that reaches out for you and us in order to join hands – its also painting and what can be done with it here and now. One year after Giti Nourbakhsch we are back to Berlin, this time like always, with good work… the mise en scene is humming like a motor… Lichtenberg is glowing! To hell with you all!
cu

K2ao

General

atb #09 | Confiscated: Rolf Heißler

Curated by Joachim Baur

CONFISCATED: Rolf Heißler

Objects from the Prison
Curated by Joachim Baur

Opening: Friday, October 26, 2007, from 7pm

Exhibition: October 27 – November 17, 2007
open Thu, Fr, Sa 3 – 7pm and by appointment +49 (0)179 947 30 40

Sunday October, 28 – 6 pm conversation with Rolf Heißler
Thursday November, 1 – 7 pm conversation with curator Joachim Baur
(in cooperation with “Schnittpunkt Berlin” – exhibition theory & practice)

Rolf Heißler was a member of the German guerilla group, the Red Army Faction – RAF. During his 22 years imprisonment from 1979-2001 his mail was monitored and about 2000 mails confiscated. Using examples of these objects, this exhibition focuses on the struggle for control, for communication between ‘in’ and ‘out’, and the diverse projections under the conditions of isolation. The show throws an unusual – at least an uncommon – glance at the long history of confrontation between the RAF, the state and the political movement.

A red plastic clove, dried orange peel, countless pamphlets, mussels, dried flowers, sparklers, newspaper cuttings, posters, postcards, socks, a kid’s drawing, lavender… the most different things were sent to Rolf Heißler during his 22 years in prison but they all had one thing in common: confiscation. At first glance many items seem unimpressive, you might wonder, ‘Why was this sent’ or, ‘Why was it withheld’?
At second glance the conditions of isolation and solitary confinment can be discerned, as can the attempts to break through this closed circuit.
The objects are sediments of the prison regulations and visible witnesses of a panoptical / an omnipotent prison regime based on excluding sensual perceptions. They stand for persistent attemps to develop some sort of relationship and communication between ‘in-‘ and ‘outside’. They reveal manifold forms of projection – from the state declaring the most banal objects ‘dangerous’ to what the prisoner’s acquaintances thought would best meet his needs.

Almost daily, they demonstrate a long-standing, constant struggle for control: from the authorities over ‘law and order’ in jail – from the prisoner over his life. Heißler’s position as an acting subject within this conflict of censorship and confiscation is evident. Countless letters of complaint and a file listing and annotating all confiscations show his strategy of a ‘control of the control’.
Last but not least appear in these withheld mails – like in a multiple broken mirror – the social and political movements of the 80’s and 90’s with their themes, discussions and activities: international solidarity movement, squatting, anti-fascism, anti-war- and feminist movements, protest against census and social inequality.
On unusual terrain these objects unfold a complex triangular relationship between state, social movement and a prisoner from the RAF.

Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Kunst und soziale Fragen