Day 6
Artist and gallery visits.
Following a coulple of days discussing as a group methods of fundraising and grant proposal writing we ventured out into Berlin to visit a couple of artists and a project space.
Visits to artists, getting to know there practice, meeting gallerists and getting to know what kind of spaces inhabit the Berlin art scene is pretty much the main reason I applied to be on this residency. So for me this was the most exciting day so far.
The first artist we visited was Sam Smith. Sam is an Ausralia artist working in sculpture and video. I actually met him a few days previously at the welcome party at Node. The main reason for our visit was to view Sam’s new video work Film Without a Past, currently being exhibited at Altes Finanzant, Neukolln. Film Without a Past is the culminating product of a research residency period spent by the artist at the Helsinki International Artist Programme, Finland.
Using Aki Kaurismaki’s film The Man Without a Past, 2002, as a source for both inspiration and material, Smith removed scenes and almost all dialogue and re-shot parts of the film in the original locations. The resulting work is evocative and reflective, dealing with the themes of loss and erasure with great effect.
We next ventured to the Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance, or LEAP as it is more commonly known. For 18 months LEAP has been situated in a large commercial unit on the 1st floor of Berlin Carre, just off Alexanderplatz, with a fantastic view of the Fernsehturm TV tower.
We had an interesting and informative talk with co-founder John McKiernan. He talked about programming and funding strategies. Unsurprisingly their programme of exhibtions focuses, as their name suggests, on performative works and works dealing with exlectronic media. John also talked about the logistics of running the space and he emphasised the importance for them to own a lot of equipment. I proceeded to ask him if there were any other project spaces in Berlin that LEAP align themselves with and cooperated with in terms of sharing equipment to save money. I was very surprised to hear that, while there are other spaces that they admire in Berlin, there were none that they had a real connection with. This is a topic I intend to pursue whilst I am staying in Berlin and will revisit LEAP to get some more details on why they do not associate with other spaces.
Following that introduction to the space, we were introduced to artist Shingo Yoshida. Shingo is a Japanese artist who has lived in France for a large portion of his life. He is currently working out of one of the studios that LEAP have housed within their project space.
Shingo’s artistic practice is very interesting in terms of the way it is developed. Working in a crude, observational, documentary style of film making, Shingo thrives on what he referred to as ‘accidents’, occurrances that trigger something that otheriwse might not have happened. Previous works have involved research trips to the Amazon and a remote Chilean island. He is currently working on a tourist guide formed entirely from his own experiences and attempting to ignore any preconceived ideas about the locations he visits.
Although he speaks limited English, we spent the best part of an hour crammed into his little studio watching his videos and listening to him talk of his fascinating experiences. On that basis, Shingo’s guidebook is not to be missed.
