I went to Germany to see Robert Eikmeyer a curator Grizedale is working with. His interest is centred at the moment on totalitarian use of art, so he has been working on Hitler, Stalin, Marx, and is currently developing an exhibition around Disney and his totalitarian vision. The show will be happening in 09 at ZKM. We are planning to run a TV production studio within the exhibition – the upcoming studio at Rochelle in London is the prototype. After the - as always hellish trip through northern Britain and Manchester airport with the wild animals that constitute the Shitish public it was a blessed relief to join German culture on the TUIfly.com budget airline which was really good, very basic but nice and quiet with pleasant happy blond gay stewards – I would recommend this airline! Then to land in Stugartt and a civilized country - although the airport was rather full of German men in plastic stetsons returning from Ibiza - another gay thing I guess. During the trip I also visited Christoph Kellor the former the owner of Revolver publishing who has published several of Robert’s books. Christoph sold Revolver recently and bought a farm near Lake Constance. The farm has a licence to distill alcohol which is a rare thing and is lost if you do not distil for 3 years, so Christoph took to distilling Schnapps like a duck takes to water and now is making amazing high quality Schnapps as well as keeping going with his book production - now with JRP Ringier. Yes, and also renovating and developing the house, barns, gardens and land. I was amazed and awed, this is some energy way beyond my own. So we talked about the farms and Grizedale and maybe doing some projects together with farming. I thought about doing an open air conference with the energetic people like Christoph doing kind of Sermon on the Mount style talks, surrounded by animals and people, maybe 6 at once or maybe open air lectures to people working on the farm. Like during the haymaking weekend, like in Cuban factories, lectures on culture and Schnapps, bees and relational aesthetics - mmm. The Hay Lectures, the Potato Lectures, The Irrigation Lectures, could be a nice series?

Then I went by comfortable and quiet train to Berlin. I travelled the full distance without headphones (my usual block to bedlam) (5 hours) and was only annoyed once by a man on a mobile in the resturant car who kept shouting ‘choose’ – which for me is always a tough one - choosing. In Berlin I was met by Dan Sieple from Sculpturen Park and an aquaintance from New York – he was a member of The E Team before going solo. So I am in Berlin to help with the selection of the upcoming programme for the Scupturen Park run by Dan and his friends. The name is a kind of joke it’s not really meant to be a sculpture park - it’s maybe new kind of joke a little difficult to get at first. The park is in reality a series of empty lots, wasteland awaiting development, the artist/curators want to retain that quality, so the park has this limited life span and is only viable through negociation with various ever changing landlords. But as they say in the art world ‘it’s a great space’ it is also situated on the former militairzed zone between east and west. The selection panel makes for an entertaining couple of days, each curator or artist has selected 2 artists to present, so the standard is high. I make the most terrible fist of a presentation, still everyone feels sorry for the artists I present so they both get pretty well recieved. I find it impossible to get over the idiosyncratic proposal of Emily Wardil, it contains multiple references including a marriage of German prog rock and the complexities of Lovejoy and jokes about how short Ian McShane is – it is hard to explain the delicate nature of this cultural position vis a ve his cross pollinating Anglo-Germanic hair arrangements, the post reformation position of 70/80’s culture and the general grooviness of the proposal. Garrett Phelan’s proposal is a little easier on the international ear and fewer questions are asked. There seems to be amongst the German artist proposals an odd replication of everyday activity, like the proposal to clear a dead persons apartment and sell the contents in a Flea market, interesting enough but easily accessed as part of normal life. Where does it end, ‘I would propose ziz verk - vone zelected person each day valks from a specific apartment, the exact same route each day to another building, at the end of the day he retraces his steps, to the exact original position, every veekday he repeats zis action but at ze veekend he by his own vill changes ze zystem - he leaves later, goes to a different place or series of places chosen specifically by the person themselves – actually this is starting to sound rather good.
Taking the piss out of people's English is outrageous, the entire German speaking panel spoke in English just for me because I am such a moron that I cant even speak German. I was ashamed of myself.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 15/08/07 at 15:00 : 1 Comment

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