hello all,
we’ll close this year with a collection of short films loosely based on dreams and fantasy, with classics from Chris Marker (La jetée), Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon), Alexander Alexeieff/Claire Parker (Night on Bald Mountain), Norman McLaren and possibly others.
Wed Dec 19th, 18.00h in Room 115
(or, if there’s a party again in the main hall, we’ll shift to room 143 next to the computer lab)
++ christoph

Too early:
Self Expression Post Internet
14.+15.1 10-17h R115 run by Janus, Martyn with some superfluous input from Hito
The (somewhat farcical) premise: That Abstract Expressionism is a useful correlative to describe the critical understanding of ‘post-internet art’ and its particular aesthetics, and more broadly the critical assumptions surrounding everyday use of the ‘social net’ as ‘self expression’.
This was inspired by a conversation with Czech artist Richard Nikl regarding the tendency of his work – like many others – to overplay its relationship to ‘Tumblr Aesthetics’ or popular internet trends. His response was simply “well, I try not to think about it too much, these are tools available to us today, and I just want to express myself”. But if, as with AbEx, this ‘self-expression’ becomes a generational ‘style’ we can ask about redundancy with so many similar practices. How many AbEx painters does the museum now need?
And as Greenberg’s ‘medium specificity’ has subsequently been critiqued for its failure to implicate the political contingency of art, so too the tools/interfaces online are, obviously not given as such, but contingent and specific.
Clement Greenberg is used as a prism through which to understand mid20thC American art – the reduction to medium, surface, the artist mark; and how this was taken up as a simplified rhetoric of authenticity and presence. Similarly, Seth Price’s ‘Dispersion’ can be used as a seminal text for this generation to understand the medium, surfaces/interfaces of contemporary media as a ground for projecting subjectivity amidst interconnectivity and appropriation.
The workshop is a comparative analysis of Abstract Expressionism and Internet Art, trying to speculatively extrapolate the future trajectory of ‘post internet’ art.
NOTES: — The post-internet artist – and of course the viewer too – are prosumers who act under the terms of web life. — The workshop will be filled with examples of different tropes of art making with or through the internet, etc. We won’t take the different specialized terms as default knowledge.
Too late (pls Till post MoM info on the blog, too):
16.12. – 11.30am – Hüttenweg 46 – PFF Pentecostal Church
Money on Monday No 2, Field Trip No 1
Money on Monday… ON SUNDAY!
What’s that?
Hell, yes! We cherish the day of the Lord and will meet at Protestant Faith Fellowship Church in Dahlem. “Oh, Lord ‘n Savior Jesus Christ, what can we learn from you?!”
Leadership – Community Building – Performance Skills – Mise-en-scène
In our transition from looking at the free market to scrutinizing institutions we’ll go where both ends meet – in the privatized sector of free churches, where a community is capital, the diocese operates like an insurance agency, and the preacher is the shepherd is the boss.
Where (IN-) CORPORATION actually means a whole lot of things
To make this trip infinitely productive we’ll look at the church’s service using Patrice Pavis’ Questionnaire for Performance Analysis (uuh, it’s semiotics and since it seems I can’t attach files on this site you can order the form right here: till.wittwer [AT] gmail.com).
Take a look at the questionnaire beforehand, print a copy and bring it along. Special regards to points no. 1), 6), 7), 8), and 11).
Facts:
Service Starts at 12.00 a.m. We’ll meet at 11.30 a.m. in front of the church. Bring your best behavior, the questionnaire and a private investigator sense for performance analysis.
How to get there:
Hüttenweg 46
 14195 Berlin
Near U3: Oskar-Helene-Heim
 Bus 285: Am Waldfriedhof
Be good. See you on holy Sunday.

it seems the end is nigh, so lets rather have a few beers now.
“In Moscow, an underground bunker built during the second world war for the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has offered its services: “We invite you to survive the apocalypse on 21 December in Bunker-42 on Taganka at 65 metres underground!” a note written in ominous red on its website cheerily reads.”
But, guhys, contemporary capital offers quite more surprising, no?
This bomb-proof shelter could be the most comfortable way to survive the Mayan apocalypse. Ron Hubbard manufactures hi-tech underground survival shelters – and has seen his business boom, from selling one a month to one a day in the past year.
Any catastrophe is an opportunity! US company Terra Vivos – “the underground shelter network for long-term survival of future catastrophes” – say its zombie-earthquake-and-pandemic-proof lairs offer all the comforts of a luxury yacht.
Also, other places: Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount XXx, in the east of the country, say that bookings are flooding in.
Mount XXX is thought to house a pyramid shaped structure left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago.
The mountain will then emit a powerful force field at the moment of Armageddon, protecting those close to it.
cheers

 
Wednesday Dec 12th, 18h in Room 115

8½ (Federico Fellini, I 1963, 138min)

“It was self-centered of me, I suppose, not only that my own ideas seemed more attractive to me, as our own ideas seem attractive to all of us, but I believed I could carry them out with greater feeling, I could stay with them and give them a unity because they were born of me, and I could achieve the greatest understanding and intimacy with my characters.”

Many thanks to Janus for this great real time mind map job!
Today: mapping around: “device”, “live”, “screen”, “black box”, “attention”, “show”

 

We are very proud to host Laura to our seminar: Guilty as Charged.

Laura Poitras is a filmmaker whose elegant and illuminating documentaries capture the lives and intimate experiences of families and communities largely inaccessible to the American media. Following an early career in experimental film, Poitras turned her attention to contemporary social issues, offering insight into complex topics with a unique cinematic lyricism. Her signature work, a trilogy of feature-length documentaries about America’s post–September 11 war on terror, explores the human consequences of military conflict abroad from unusual vantage points, reflecting relationships she forges over months and years of close interaction. My Country, My Country (2006), filmed entirely by Poitras while working alone in Iraq, paints a compelling portrait of Dr. Riyadh, a Sunni physician running for political office in Iraq’s first democratic election, and of a country seeking peace and stability under American occupation. In The Oath (2010), filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, Poitras contrasts the stories of Abu Jandal, a former jihadist and bodyguard to Osama bin Laden, and of his brother-in-law, Salim Hamdan, who became the first man to face an American military tribunal. The “oath” in the title refers to Jandal’s initial allegiance to Al Qaeda and his subsequent renunciation of it following 9/11, but it also alludes to the pledge of loyalty to the United States of an FBI interrogator who testifies before Congress against enhanced interrogation techniques. The final film of the trilogy, shot in the United States and as yet untitled, focuses on the personal impact of prolonged international conflict on those abroad and at home. In these and other works in progress, this courageous filmmaker is chronicling some of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century, particularly the war on terror.
Laura Poitras studied filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and the New School. Her additional works include the film Flag Wars (co-director, 2003) and the video installation O’ Say Can You See (2011). Her films have been shown at such venues as the Sundance Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, among others.

Cinema and Painting (I) by Stefan Hayn –
The seminar will be partly in english and in german –
Dates in room 115, HA 133 19., 25., 26. of January and 1. of February, starting at 12:00 Saturday, 19.1.2013, 12:00 -17:00 •
Presentation Stefan Hayn and introduction „Cinema and Painting“ • Students’ positions, discussion • The filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer (DVD), also in relation toward Straub-Huillet
Friday, 25.1.2013, 12:00 -16:00 • Discussion of the cinema screening of Dreyer’s GERTRUD on the previous evening • The American postwar positions in painting (especially AbEx and PopArt) in relation to the developments in cinema (texts by de Kooning and others) • The filmmaker Emile De Antonio (his film will be screened afterwards in the Arsenal)
Saturday, 26.1.2013, 12:00 – 16:00 • Discussion of PAINTERS PAINTING (the previous evening in the Arsenal) • What was cinema, what was painting from the sixties up to now? Dreyer, Novelle Vague, Pop-reception in Europe • Preparation of the screening of Markus Nechleba’s MALEREIEN UND GRAVIERUNGEN (PAINTINGS AND ENGRAVINGS) at the Arsenal
Friday, 1.2.2013, 12:00 -17:00 • Discussion of Markus Nechleba’s Film PAINTINGS AND ENGRAVINGS • Cinema – painting – new media? • Where/how does painting exist today? Painting in fictional films and in documentaries? Where/how does cinema exist today? • Discussion/summary and perspectives of a probable continuation of the seminar
Dates at cinema ARSENAL, Potsdamer Str. 2 24., 25., 26. of January, starting at 17:00 (in time) The cinema screenings are a necessary pre-condition for the seminar! The ARSENAL will offer a reduced combined ticket for 9.- €. •
Thursday, 24.1.2013, 17:00 GERTRUD by Carl-Theodor Dreyer (116 min, 35mm, b/w, danish original version with German subtitles, 1964 – VERY RARELY SHOWN!!! •
Friday, 25.1.2013, 17:00 PAINTERS PAINTING by Emile de Antonio (117 min, 16mm, b/w, engl. original version, 1973) •
Saturday, 26.1.2013, 17:00 MALEREIEN UND GRAVIERUNGEN (PAINTINGS AND ENGRAVINGS) by Markus Nechleba (73 min, DigiBeta, german-french Original versíon with engl. subtitles, 1998) Markus Nechleba will be present for the discussion at the Arsenal.
Cinema and painting (I) „In Dreyer’s film GERTRUD nobody dies.“ (Wilfried Wiegand) Even in early Straub-Huillet films the uncanny (men) are shot (by women). Maybe Wiegands sentence points out the unsettling point of GERTRUD, but also of some of the late Straub-Huillet films. Whereas the men/women, witchery/inquisition relationships are developped in a more complex way thoughout the two lifeworks. What does all that have to do with painting? Morton Feldman says: „The Abstract Experience cannot be represented. It is, then, not visible in the painting, yet it is there – felt. In the same sense that Kierkegaard said the religious ‚dethrones’ the esthetic, one can say that the Abstract Experience in Gustons paintings dethrones the visible masterpiece before us.“ Analysing GERTRUD, PAINTERS PAINTING (by Emile de Antonio, USA 1972) and MALEREIEN UND GRAVIERUNGEN/PAINTINGS AND ENGRAVINGS (by Markus Nechleba, BRD 1998) we will try to reflect in a wide variety and rather basically on today’s production and reception of pictures. What’s the relation between cinema and painting? * many thanks to Graduiertenschule für die Künste und die Wissenschaften and Einstein Stiftung Berlin (Stefan Hayn)

 
“Werckmeister harmóniák” (Béla Tarr, H 2000, 145min)
Wednesday, Dec 5th, 18h in Room 115
“When you watch my movies, please don’t speculate. Just trust your eyes and listen to your heart.”—Béla Tarr