Last Friday the opening of a new exhibition of works by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge I recently featured here took place at the Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery in Berlin-Kreuzberg. “SPILLAGE … Cut-Ups as a way of L-if-E” shows collages by Genesis of the last 20 years, many of them have never exhibited before in Europe. Mrs. Breyer-P-Orridge attended the opening herself via the internet – she was interviewed by Pop-Group-founder Mark Stewart (see below, that’s me in the back). The exhibition is a good alternative to the rather unspectacular double exhibition by Marc Brandenburg and Leigh Bowery at Contemporary Fine Arts which also opened last week. More detailed information about it on the RGG blog.
New-York-based artist Thomas Eggerer is currently showing some new work at Galerie Daniel Buchholz, the gallery of artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Isa Genzgen. The exhibition consists of both some bigger paintings, which, as the exhibition text point out, show “figures in ambivalent spaces that are both expansive and limiting” and a bunch of smaller collages which I posted below. You get a complete overview on the exhibition on the gallery’s webpage.
Quatres Revus is an “independent and contemporary magazine micro trade fair”, organised by Entrisme, face b, Kaiserin and Poli, four small magazines that are published by people from Paris. It takes place this weekend at Exile, an art space in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Alexandrinenstr. 4, so if you’re around and if you still don’t have plans for the rest of the day or for tomorrow, mabye this could be a nice little event to stop by. It’s open until 10.00 pm today and from 12.00 to 6.00 pm tomorrow.
This saturday evening the opening of Bruce LaBruce‘s new exhibition “Helter Skelter” will take place at Peres Projects, Berlin. La Bruce will not only be presenting several prints of photographs he took of Francois Sagat during the shooting of L.A. Zombie, there is also going to be a screening of the movie itself in its latest cut (which is supposed to be pretty close to the the final version). And if you’re not the kind of person who is impressed by attending an official European premiere of a movie you may have your little personal premiere by meeting the real Francois Sagat who will also be around. Could be pretty crowded. More about the exhibtion here.
There are not many reasons to visit the Berlin Fashion Week, but I can offer the Berliners amongst you at least one: Tonight the movie “Comrade Coture – Ein Traum in Erdbeerfolie” is going to be screened at the so-called “Kino Showroom Meile”. The film is a documentray about a a group of independent fashion designers from East Berlin and premiered last year at the Berlinale. It takes place in the eighties, a time when you hat to be pretty inventive if you wanted to come up with your own fashion creations – a lot of materials weren’t available in the GDR and by the leaders of the state fashion was seen as part of the loathsome individualism of the western societies. The movie is shown at 8.30 pm at the FC Magnet Club in Mitte, after the screening two of the designers are going to talk about the movie. (Thanks, Warbear)
While his new zombie movie is getting a lot of attention these days, the fact that with “The Bad Breast” a new theater play by Bruce La Bruce is going to be premiered in Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer on Thursday seems to have slipped through people’s minds (especially mine). The reason could be that this time LaBruce is not dealing with hypermasculinity, but with something like the opposite: on the website of HAU he describes the play as his own way of dealing with the “female melodrama” and with the woman’s relationship to her secondary sexual characteristics: ” ‘The Bad Breast’ is an intellectually-intoxicated mixture of psychoanalytic theory, feminism, classical european cinematic art and the melodrama ‘made in Hollywood’ (The whole [German] text here). The play is shown daily from Thursday to Sunday at 8 pm. It’s both in English and in German.
During the past few months I’ve been part of a group that organizes a filmfest called Villainz. It’s a 4-day series on the queer villain in fiction film taking place from November 12th to 15th. To describe the aim of the event I wanna quote from the proposal a friend of mine: “Villainz will create the unique opportunity for attendees to watch and discuss a diverse collection of films, and to consider topics relating to the creation, history, impact, control and diversity of queer images in cinema. Questions to consider will include: What are the different ways of presenting and interpreting the villain in films? How does the “queer villain” impact a diverse public? What value is there in discussing the impact of vilifying queers in film on health, politics, culture? How are technical qualities of film manipulated to nuance presentations of villains? How do these films inform about historical social attitudes and cinematic representations? In what ways might we want to control these images, or the ways that they are dispersed and interpreted by society?” Interested? Click here for the program or/and join our Facebook group.
Starting tomorrow, Berlin’s arsenal cinema presents “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World” an event everybody here seems to be really excited about. It is not only a retrospectice of Jack Smith’s work, but also some kind of a festival: “With performances, films and videos, slide presentations, exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and discussions, we look at the gender-bending and genre-breaking works of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and other avant-garde artists of the 1960s, from a number of angles. The work of Jack Smith is juxtaposed with recent works of numerous international contemporary artists. A special guest is the legendary drag performer and underground superstar Mario Montez, who on this occasion will appear in public for the first time in thirty years.” The whole announcement here.
This is an event I’m organizing with some friends at the moment. It’s going to take place at different cosy venues in Berlin. More about it soon. Or join the newsletter: queervillanz@yahoo.de!
PHOTOGRAPHY: Thanks to Anal Magazine I found out that from tomorrow on a gallery in Berlin-Charlottenburg called Johanna Breede Photokunst is going to show an exhibition of pictures taken by German photographer Herbert Tobias. Tobias bacame famous in the fifties for his fashion photography but also did really beautiful and exciting black and white portaits, some of them I posted below. He died in 1982. I honestly don’t know too much about him but it seems like he was a really interesting person and some kind of an activist, so check out this page devoted to his live and his work to find out more about him. The opening of the exhibition takes place at a funny time by the way: tomorrow morning at eleven.
Photomontage by Bauhaus student Hajo Rose. Shown at “Bauhaus – A conceptual model“, Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau. Taken from the catalogue of the exhibition.
