After a longer break Exile Gallery is reopening today at a new space in Berlin-Mitte and celebrates the reopening with an exhibition of a selection of photos by photographer Bob Mizer. As the founder of the Athletic Model Guild in 1945 and the Physique Pictorial magazin in 1951, Mizer was one of the pioneers of contemporary male nude photography and something like the inventor of the “Beefcake” aesthetics. According to the announcement text on the gallery’s website “Select Private Works 1942-1992″ tries to reveal a new side of Minzer, showing never exhibited colored pictures in which the photographer plays with his own male stereotypes and reveals his full abilities as a visual artist. The exhibition has been curated by Christian Siekmeier and Straight To Hell editor Billy Miller in conjunction with the Mizer Foundation. Below you find a little preview of the show and another series of pictures over at BUTT Online.
The new Exile space is located at 39 Köpenicker Straße, the opening will take place today, February 19, between 7 and 10 pm.
“Unknown (Marine)”
Vintage color transparency, c. 1973
Cibachrome print, 10.5 x 10.5 inches (26.6 x 26.6 cm), Edition of 3, printed 2011
“Tony Rome & Ron Nichols”
Vintage color transparency, 1971
Cibachrome print, 10.5 x 10.5 inches (26.6 x 26.6 cm), Edition of 3, printed 2011
The so-called rigourism of the “Berlin New Wave” is topped by by a Portugiese filmmaker who shot his second feature last winter in Berlin “Gropiusstadt” – Swans by Hugo Vieira da Silva will premiere at this year’s International Forum of the Berlin Film Festival.
A constellation of four characters rotates around the body of a woman who is in a coma due to reactions to chemotherapy. An ex-boyfriend who’s going through a midlife crisis and a teenage son who she’s never met are coming from Portugal to see her and live in her flat along with her transsexual thai roommate. What’s really stunning about the movie is the amount of non-communication between these four characters – none of them knows how to deal with each other. Director Hugo Vieira da Silva (who’s first feature Body Rice has quite a cult status in the film festival world) is focusing on their bodies – a troubled, sleepless body (father), a autoerotic, exploring body (son), a ghostly, transforming body (neighbour) and the coma body of the mother which seems paradoxically to be the most agile and alive of them all. A winterly Berlin, some scenes of surrealistic humour and a very slow pace add up to a hypnotic and drifting meditation on somatic perception and the free circulation of desires. Here’s the trailer of the movie, you find more background information on the Berlinale website.
In two weeks’ time, the first retrospective devoted to the Canadian collective General Idea opens at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. It pains me that I will not be able to attend, since General Idea were/are amazing and remain a big influence on my own art practice. But if you have the means to get to Paris then this is definitely a must-see. According to the museum’s website, “High Culture: General Idea” uses a selection of some three hundred works to provide a dynamically comprehensive overview of the œuvre . . . This non-chronological presentation covers the collective’s main areas of concern. Themes such as the artist and the creative process, glamour as a creative tool, art’s links with the media and mass culture, architecture and archaeology are addressed. Sexuality as the symbol of a social system to be subverted, and AIDS, as explored in the iconic, tentacular project of that name, are also considered.
“High Culture: General Idea. A retrospective 1969 – 1994″ runs from February 11 until April 30, 2011, at Paris’ Musée d’Art Moderne.
When you enter the contemporary Genet-exhibit in “Das schwule Museum”, Berlin, the first room is full of notes. Images of Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille and Jeanne Moreau cover the wall, accompanied by comments on their contemporary Jean Genet and real life encounters.
A similar construction of multiple background narrative can also be seen on another wall in the first room: Kids who went to school with Jean Genet produce small statements about “How He Was”.
Luckily, the multiplicity of the comments makes it hard to pinpoint Genet as THIS or THAT PERSON. But still, between funny and passionate, political and emotional comments one theme that is reoccuring gestures towards Genets uncannyness and how “how bad he was”, stealing, lying, fighting.
Even if it is impossible to dig deeper into most of Genets literary or theatrical works, as their most important format is text, there are moving moments, especcially when backed by moving images. The post-pornographic classic “Un Chant D´Amour” (1950) is projected on two walls in a room, featuring two prison inmates making love through a wall, while another floor takes its theme from a late Fassbinder interpretation of “Querelle” (1982), featuring various costumes, set fotos and a small tv which is screening it. The contemporary art though, which tries to relate or homage Genet is rather boring, it is clearly the different biographic materials like big fotos of Genets interaction with other minoritorian groups, as the Black Panthers or the Palestinians that stand out.
For queers in Berlin 2011 starts with two new parties that will both take place for the first time this weekend. Camp!, which will take place at Festsaal Kreuzberg tomorrow, is a very pop culture oriented event with music by acts such as Schwefelgelb, Kissogram and Electrosexual, while GEGEN, which is organised by queer activist and theorist Warbear has a more radical and political attitude. It will take place on Saturday at M.I.K.Z. Club (Revaler Str.99, corner Modersohnbrücke). Here’s Warbear’s GEGEN manifesto he has written to explain the approach of the event. Below you also find a video teaser and a “sound manifesto”. For more details check out the party’s Facebook page.
☯ GEGEN MANIFESTO ☯
Against yourself. Around queer narratives.
“Gegen” is a complex word in German because it has two opposite meanings.
Historically speaking it means “against”, signifying all the counter cultural movements since the very beginning of youth cultures but if you apply the word to time, it means “around”. One meaning is closed, defined in terms of space. The other is open and undefined in terms of time. In the contemporary moment the idea of “enemy” – in which a thought and an action can be identifiable as “against” – is not there and is not clear anymore as power relationships changed through the development of post-modernism. And this gave space to markets to regenerate themselves through the queer-counter cultural movements by producing an oligopoly of empty events repeating themselves until their fast extinction and in the same time by crystallising the institutionalisation of big “queer meccas” which exercise more and more power on the scene. This process is verifiable in Berlin as the incubator of new world trends in the arts of entertainment.
Nan Goldin, Self-Portrait in my Blue Bathroom, Berlin 1991
Exciting news for those in or around Berlin during the Berlinale (Berlin’s international film festival) from Feb 10-20: The American photographer and filmmaker Nan Goldin will be one of three members of the jury awarding the Berlinale Shorts awards this year. Nan Goldin was in Berlin last year for an exhibition of 4 of her photo projections at the museum C/O Berlin, and again just this past November for the opening of an exhibit (on display until March 28th) at the Berlinische Galerie of photos she took in Berlin from 1984-2009 (2/3 of which have never been exhibited before). If her participation in the jury is any indication of the quality and content of the films to expect, this should be a very exciting year for shorts at the Berlinale.
Also, here is a link to a decent booklet put out by the Berlinische Galerie about her current exhibit. I apologize for all of the ads at the end…
While “Plein Sud” (below) is definitely a summer movie, Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg” from 2007 is more of a winter movie which is due to the place it is dedicated to. The film is a very subjective, funny and at the same time tragic documentary about Maddin’s hometown Winnipeg, the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada and his relation to it. It interlaces memories of the director’s childhood (his mother is played by Ann Savage) and bizarre events of Winnipeg’s history in a very charming, surreal way. The release date of “My Winnipeg” for German cinemas was last week and I’m afraid there will be only a few theaters that will actually show it, but it’s also out on DVD since 2008 and definitely worth being screened on a smaller screen as well.
