Day 17
Our Final Day of Studio Visits
First visit of te day was to the studio of Antoine Renard down in Neukolln. As we entered the space we were confronted by the very unusual sight of what looked like an array of hybrid Horse Chestnut/Venus Fly Trap plants taking their nutrients from energy drinks.
It was early in the day so maybe we could have been excused for thinking we were not yet at full processing capacity. But on further inspection what we thought we saw was in fact what we saw. The plants in question are highly toxic plants which naturally grow wild around Berlin; this crop had been cultivated from just one plant. The source of nutrients was specifically Halal energy drinks, straight from the can.
Renard’s work is multi-faceted, taking form through sculpture, video and photography, somehow combining topics as diverse as capitalism and sanitation. Popular culture comes into play through the reappropriation of ad-campaigns for said energy drinks.
Stephan Takkides (who also goes by the pseudonym Vokzal) was the next artist to welcome us into his studio. As his alias suggested to me, he once resided in Vauxhall, London. Now based in Berlin his work takes inspiration from his surroundings in Germany, the UK and also his native Cyprus.
Very softly spoken, at times I felt Takkides struggled to convey his feeling towards his own work. It was fortunate, in that respect, that I felt his work spoke for itself. In particular, his video piece, Umland, which takes the viewer on a narrative journey outside of the city to where previously inhabited sites have been taken back by nature. Led by a ficticious narrator, based by Takkides on a version of himself, we are taken on a cinematic exploration of Berlin’s outskirts. Long static shots absorb the surrounding while the narrator posits a history of the landscape.
The work itself could be seen as self referencial and it certainly reflects Takkides’s personality, perhaps even better than he could himself.
Spiros Hadjidjanos hosted our final studio visit of the day. Having read his website it was somewhat of a disappointment to see his work in person and to hear the explanation behind the work.
Tha majority of his work is based on the idea of data storage and transfer. While his website often goes deep into the detail of this subject area and how he is exploring it, in person Hadjidjanos’s explanations seemed shallow, incomplete and often without grounding.
I must admit that the problem with studio visits can often be that the visitors do not focus on the same works that the artist might have hoped. The first work we were introduced to, Network Sculpture, is a direct representation of data flow, using aluminium strips to represent the flow of data. The main, perhaps only, question that we could ask was ‘why?’.
It would be wrong of me to expect to like every piece of work of every artist we visit. Sometimes works need time to reveal themselves to you, and this is what makes this side of the curators role so difficult. On this initial reflection, Stephan Takkides’s work really stood out to me. Perhaps in a few weeks time I will look back and something will have clicked for me with the work of Renard and Hajidjanos. By then it will be too late.
