Hampstead Heath Tree Typology

Boundary Signal

Opening: 15 January 2009 | 16 January - 7 February 2009

Project curator: Fatih Aydoğdu

Participant artist:

2/5 BZ aka Serhat Köksal [Istanbul]
Ricarda Denzer [Vienna]
Martin Ebner [Berlin]
Mathias Fuchs [Manchester]
Bernhard Loibner [Vienna]
Bob Ostertag [Los Angeles]
Florian Schmeisser [Vienna]
xUrban Collective [Istanbul, Izmir, New York]
Arye Wachsmuth [Vienna]
Florian Zeyfang [Berlin]

In linguistics the notion “boundary signal / Grenzsignal” refers to the appearance of a sound which identifies the boundaries of sentences, words, syllables, or morphemes that have delimiting or detaching functions. The character of an entity which represents a morpheme’s boundary, indicated as /+/, consists of the fact, that the coincidence of position-based modification does not cause the expected transformations.

If we would derive this concept from the language to the Sound, we could describe a unit, that has a special tone signifying its communicative function of smallest elements of sounds and sound modification exists marking of a sound tact within communicative function.

Sampling is used becomes the concept, that as a programmatic imperative, on electronic music, architecture, biotechnology up to the collage-technics in the film and the politics, or even on socio psychological identity models. As an universal metaphor and contradictory model or as a technically mediated identical replication, Sampling sets an archive concept out, that evokes an idea of the historic originality. The reduction of Sampling on strategies and models of the archives as technological blindness, that appropriates itself apparatuses primarily on the plain subcultural codes, and the technical materialism, that treats logic of the apparatuses and the particularistic semantics of aesthetic codes with regard to the strategic utilization of archives, must be reconsidered and challenged and these create as a mutual revision instances.

The “Boundary signal / Grenz Signal” brings up for discussion not only the Sound as a possible communicative plain of artistic strategy and experimental field, that goes over the act of the speaking and the music, where rather sets also out a moment (time cut) with selected historically political situations seeing that the artists as a source material around attitude in regard to content and commentary the time events.

In Solidarity: New School is Occupied!

An Open Letter: Come Occupy a Building with Us…Now (december 18th)

Dear Friends,

We are writing to you from the inside of the New School Graduate Faculty Building on 65 5th Ave. We are occupying it. Right now. Literally.

Students of the New School University, along with our partners from other universities and groups – like NYU, Hunter College, City College of NY, CUNY Graduate Center, and Borough of Manhattan Community College, have organically risen up to demand the resignation of President Bob Kerrey, Executive Vice President James Murtha, and Board Member/torturer Robert B. Millard (he multi-tasks). We have come together to prevent our study spaces from being flattened by corporate bulldozers, to have a say in who runs this school, to demand that the money we spend on this institution be used to facilitate the creation of a better society, not to build bigger buildings or invest in companies that make war. We have come here not only to make demands, but also to live them. Our presence makes it clear that this school is ours, and yours, if you are with us.
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Ozur Diliyorum

1915′te Osmanlı Ermenileri’nin maruz kaldığı Büyük Felâket’e duyarsız kalınmasını, bunun inkâr edilmesini vicdanım kabul etmiyor. Bu adaletsizliği reddediyor, kendi payıma Ermeni kardeşlerimin duygu ve acılarını paylaşıyor, onlardan özür diliyorum.

Bishkek Notes

Last summer I participated to the ‘International Public Art Symposium’ in Bishkek. I know this is a late report but now I feel the necessity to include at our blog because I had to commemorate the painting that we used as the background image of xurban main site. I realized that I did not record the name of the painter at the time, I will put it here as soon as I find it…

During the course of the gathering I had the chance to meet many artists and organizers from ‘x-soviet’ region (ref: http://publicartbishkek.blogspot.com/).  We were asked to do a public art piece and I installed a work at the facade of the national art museum where I took the painting picture.  I am attaching the field report that is already published at the symposium blog:

“The Coalition Forces Are Pleased To See This Great Transformation”

imam@xurban_collective, June 2008

Spending time as a visiting artist is a privileged position, which allows a meaningful engagement with a complex spatial configuration. Prior to my arrival, I obviously had certain prejudices and expectations about the city of Bishkek. However I feel that having an assignment in hand and hearing introductory presentations by resident artists and organizers opened certain doors otherwise impossible to penetrate, thereby creating a salient guided perception into a new city enabling me to make a relatively healthy visual comparison with other locations that I visited over the past years. But I have to admit that two weeks is an extremely short period of time to come to serious conclusions about a place.

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Flowers from ‘Chinese Market’ in Bishkek

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Political/Minimal at Kunst Werke, Berlin

xurban_collective is participating to a group show called ‘Political/Minimal’ at Kunst Werke, Berlin. In addition to the installation, we produced a poster/brochure to be circulated freely during the course of the exhibition. To download, click: The Containment Contained, 2003-2007

Dates: November 30, 2008 – January 25, 2009

The exhibition Political/Minimal presents art works from the past forty years that are minimal in form and political in content.

The works reference Minimalism and formally delineate themselves with it. They are characterized by two- or three-dimensional shapes such as circle, square, sphere, or cube. However, the focus of these works lies not on geometrical abstraction or pure aesthetics. On the contrary, ecological, social, economic, and ethical statements are their conceptual framework. The works’ titles, materials, or context of production refer to larger narratives.Political/Minimal finds its points of departure from the tension between the self-referential aesthetics of Minimalism and the often outspokenly critical nature of artistic practice.
ADEL ABDESSEMED
FRANCIS ALYS
MONICA BONVICINI
TOM BURR
ANNABEL DAOU
EDITH DEKYNDT
FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES
HANS HAACKE
MONA HATOUM
DAMIEN HIRST
ALFREDO JAAR
DEREK JARMAN
TERENCE KOH
KITTY KRAUS
KLARA LIDEN
TERESA MARGOLLES
KRIS MARTIN
COREY MCCORKLE
HELEN MIRRA
MUCHEN & SHAO YINONG
SARAH ORTMEYER
SETH PRICE
GREGOR SCHNEIDER
TINO SEHGAL
SANTIAGO SIERRA
TARYN SIMON
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
XURBAN_COLLECTIVE
AARON YOUNG

Curated by Klaus Biesenbach

Accompanying to the exhibition, a catalogue will be published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, containing texts by Klaus Biesenbach, Michael Archer, and Jenny Schlenzka (ed. by Klaus Biesenbach, German/English, 23 x 23 cm, 145 pages, 44 color ills., 28 b/w ills., 29 Euro, ISBN: 978-3-941185-07-4).

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin
www.kw-berlin.de   www.berlinbiennale.de

Weitere Informationen / Further information:
Denhart v. Harling . T +49. 30. 243459. 42 . presse@kw-berlin.de

Almaty Notes

At the beginning of July, I visited Bishkek for a public art symposium organized by B’sek Art Center. (Please see the detailed report at the symposium website http://publicartbishkek.blogspot.com/.)  After finalizing my work, I decided to visit to Almaty, which is 3 hours away from Bishkek.

The road to Almaty was an inspiring experience with towering mountains on one side, and endless steppes on the other, thousands of kilometers of smooth surfaces, like the sea—somewhat wavy, sometimes rough, offered an amazing unobstructed view. It would be fascinating to stroll through this landscape, day and night, very calm… Perhaps next time, for another occasion!
I was fortunate that prior to my visit to Almaty, Defne Ayas introduced me to the artists and curators based there, which made my short visit very enjoyable. Alexander Ugay was a very kind to host. We quickly realized that we share many common issues although situated in very different part of the world. Together with him, we visited some art spaces and various other parts of the city.
It was obvious that Kazakhstan is undertaking a big renovation project—as roads, signs, and buildings are being refurbished—things looks much newer than Kyrgyzstan. Renovation is not a radical break from the past (at least in architectural terms) it is a reformation of an existing structure, it can be used as a strategy to readapt spaces for different uses and it may add new functionalities, etc…

The National Museum, like the one in Bishkek was built in Soviet times and holds a relatively rich collection of paintings and sculpture. It was nice to see that there are cultural producers, like curator Yulilya  Sorokina, developing exciting new programming. However it was sad to hear that it was very hard for her to bypass strong conservative state bureaucracy and her operational freedom is extremely limited, if not censored! Like the whole country, the museum is also under renovation. In front of the building there were newly constructed fountains, which seemed very foreign in relation to the main building. It was like a forced marriage, modern architecture with a neo-conservative backdrop. It is a counterfeit addition because when you get closer to the fountain, you realize that it is made out of fiber similar to the ones in Las Vegas and pretending to be stone. Whether you like it or not, you have to appreciate that soviet architecture and its urban design has something very consistent about it. You see these new additions all over in Almaty, some of them built by Turkish construction firms, perhaps that is why they looked familiarly intimidating to me. For instance, an Eifel tower in front of a building is signaling marvelous developments in Astana, the new capital, constructed from ground up, 1000km north of Almaty. It is as though a puzzled dream is actually being realized as an eclectic phantasmagoria.
This is the new status-quo, preserved by an authoritarian market economy, so called “patriarchal neo-liberalism”. Alex was rightly pointing out that the abundant Kazak natural resources have a negative effect on its livelihood. Wealth earned from gas and petroleum is not shared and kept by the few (oh how surprising!). As production sites close and creative productivity is all together left out from the public agenda, people are transformed into mere consumers, totally dependent on outside production. Like oil rich Arab countries, money from natural resources is the negation of actual creative production, it permanently alters the quality of labor, replaces it with cheap or expensive imports, and the general culture is transformed so that it can serve the kitschy taste of the nouveau-riches. That is why perhaps this new poverty of  x-soviet countries is coming from their absolute richness of their natural resources, like a curse needed to be overcome. That is why we, together with other cultural producers around the world, have enormous intellectual responsibilities to fulfill, like fighting this ugly authoritarianism(s).

By imam@xurban_collective

Under Pavement Life

Istanbul Tree Typology

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