Aaron Koblin: collective production

At this year's DLD, the thing that struck me most was the work of artist Aaron Koblin. His data animations were all over the place. What is beautiful of them is the way they use globalized capitalist activity to create collective artworks. Capitalism itself becomes the artist here, with its planes starting or the date sent out by the performance of Radiohead. His "Ten Thousand Cent" piece is Damien Hirst gone collective: Without knowing what they do, Thousands of people collectively draw a 100 dollar bill electronically.

An additional, very interesting insight this offers: The different modes of using the internet. Koblin, quite simply, pinpointed the amount of time users from different countries spent with the task of electronically drawing their part of the great work. People from the UK or Germany spent on average one or two minutes with it. People from Egypt, 31 minutes; from China, 23. There is a different relationship towards of internet activity here, and perhaps a different understanding of what a "task" is.

tschumi magic

What an amazing building. What an amazing non-building. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is everything that makes architecture so strong and so weak today. It is a building that is not really a building, for its core, its essence is the Parthenon temple on the mountain top, visible from every floor in the museum. What is more, with the third floor of the museum having exactly the shape of the Parthenon, the Parthenon sort of IS in this museum, some 400 metres away (my guess). Just as this building, the ultimate temple, is so present in architecture worldwide that its actual shape can only come as a disappointment.

What Bernhard Tschumi did here is remarkable. He managed to create a completely modern, functioning building that pays tribut to another building. To a building, that is, which is not just plain "old". The Parthenon is, in a way, before the time, before historical time. Most things we count as historical or cultural in one way or another took their start with the times of the construction of the temple. The Parthenon is beyond history, so any museum using him for historical storytelling has to fail. Tschumi anticipated this, and makes his building a celebration of just this failure, by nodding to the big P on the hill, to this magic, lose, obviously fragile combination of more-than-half-destroyed columns.

hassan and me

Scientists say that Africa and Europe used to be one continent. Probably they are right. Every day, ships start from Southern Spain, carrying one day visitors to Moroccan Tanger. Yesterday, one of them took me, too.

The landing of thousands of European tourists from Spain is creating in Tanger multi-level post-urban experience. The place I have been to was obviously a simulation—of a lot of things. The visitors are shown a program with the basic content "Tanger is not as bad as you might think". I was part of a group that was guided by the man mentioned in the headline, Hassan. He was a funny guy, which the group liked a lot. He repeatedly said things like "Tanger is nice", "we are nice people" and the like. The group obviously was pleased with that, too. I think they did because it also implicitly emphasized that it might also be otherwise. This potentiality of a thrreat was their wee bit of excitement, the chill of a potential danger. Of course, "danger" was nowhere to be seen. The whole one-day Africa experience for visitors from Europe seems domesticated to the point that at any moment, someone might just pull the plug and all the wodden-camel-sellers might just disappear.

the space above

Urban space in central Berlin is all about creating historical references where there were none. Rebuilding the Stadtschloss is a sign for the frantic search for an idea of the historical. It seems to be this spatial evocation of history that Allora and Calzadilla had in mind for their piece in the Temporäre Kunsthalle. Positioned at the future entrance of the Schloss, they artificially reduce the height of the hall to one third, creating a new, claustrophobic area. A nonvisible tapdancer is doing his performances on the upper floor. The dancer is representing the dance of history, haunting the Kunsthalle just as German history is hauting the area, because of and despite all the postmodern efforts to architecturally reprogram the city's collective memory.

artistic opium

When visiting a city, we are used to reading it through the eyes of its arts, its exhibitions and artists. In Shanghai, this is quite easy, and a rather difficult thing at the same time. On the one hand, the city has understood the tourist demand for a "gallery quarter", where nice-looking young locals sell something that can be hung to a Western wall and explained as the result of a certain city spirit. The area around Taikang Road in the French Concession area fulfills this demand. Loads of small, quite cute galleries here, together with arts-touristy amenities, such as the good breakfast café in the (hear the revolutionary undertone!) "Comune". A lot of the arts here is mostly affordable, although one is surprised by some prices: around 5000 euros for a piece that seems rather well-meant clearly shows that there is a thirst for stuff from Shanghai. A lot of the things at sale are dealing with Shanghai landmarks, mainly architectural ones, but also with the Chinese past. All this rather colourful, tastful, but, and this is the problem, at the borderline to kitch.

What about museums? Well, there is, as in all major metropolises, a Museum of Contemporary Art (which, laying open its own ambitions as much as the city's, calls itself "MOCA Shanghai"). Current show is on "Merging-emerging Art, Utopia, Virtual reality". Some of the artists there are in fact quite interesting, but as a whole, the show looks a bit too much as arts school teachers think it should. We are dealing with interactive media here? So lets give them some buttons to push, or an address to send a text message to, whereupon something happens. The least interactive piece is also the most impressive one: Zhong Kangjun’s "City" (2008), a skyscraper hypertropolis with steel models of towering icons from Shanghai, but also Beijing, such as Koolhaas' CCTV tower. All of them burnt, the world after an attack. You can walk through this model, thereby being confronted with the question whether the catastophe that happened to this city is not you, us.

The fact that the city is Zhong's topic makes perfect sense. In Shanghai, you get the feeling that the urban and the artistic are two very different principles, acting upon each other, needing each other, but also fighting. And more often than not, the urban seems to win.

Interesting, then, that one apparent centrepoint of local artistic productivity is an ex opium den in Weihei Road. The arts, pushed to the very bottom of architectural representation. Loads of studios here, and galleries such as Stageback, currently showing "Five Shanghai Germans". The atmo in the 1930s drug madhouse, which used to be an auto parts warehouse in the recent past, is as laid-back as it is chaotic. The building sucks you in. Probably this is what has to happen if the arts are to represent and engage critically with the vibrancy as well as the superficiality of this city. More opium please!

shanghai brandcity

One of the first impressions in the hyperbusy streets of Shanghai is the omnipresence of brands. However, it is not enough just to claim that Shanghai is a city thriving on the economics of branding. It would even be insufficient to show that the city is branding itself strategically, although of course this is what is happening, and will be happening to a much greater extent next year, with the Expo taking global media presence. But the brand is not just an economic factor here, and not only one present within peoples' lives. Rather, the principles of branding are what defines and structures this city and its culture. The permanent visibility of Volkswagen logos in the mad traffic define the very experience of mobility. Amid the fascinating architectural interactions of skyscrapers in all imaginable forms and sizes, logos are what makes the cityscape readable. And with the frantic play of forms, it seems as if even the creation of architectural forms itself is following the abstract logic of the logo. The Oriental Pearl Tower, I would say, is in fact a logo as much as a building.

While the capitalist rank of the major mega malls might depend on the presence of Western brands, as a whole, it does not seem as if the West is the main point of orientation for Chinese capitalism. The well-criticized logic of Chinese brands copying iconic Western corporate creations, while certainly still happening, is definitely not all there is to the Chinese brand world. Fake Rolex watches here are offered to, and bought by, Westerners. To an extent, China seems to have lost the desire for Western brand imitations. Rather, it is creating its own brand world, with whole malls made up of myriads of apparently hilarious brand names such as "newtiful" or "Successful".

One is tempted to mock and criticize this world of ridiculous wanne-be brands. This, however, would in fact mean to blaim China for its lacking seriousness when it comes to branding. One could also try and think about this from another angle: What if this was an involuntary cultural reflection on the the brand game itself? What if the Chinese version of capitalism has understood that the frantic search for uniqueness in the brand world is always a bit desperate, and therefore ridiculous? What if this new capitalism will in the end be laughing about the seriousness of the late 20th century brand game?

When it does so, then perhaps from a position of ancient wisdom. Searching for an escape from the hyperconsumerist world in central Shanghai, rain and the purposeful design of the People's Park brought me to the Shanghai museum. And what did I encounter there, amid the rich collections of porcelain from the 15th and 16th century? Branding. The different dynasties marked porcelain products, signifying that they were from their time and had been made by their official producers. Each plate, each jar was given the official stamp of the emperor. To signal quality? Surely not. Rather, this "brand" mark connected the triviality of the individual concrete product with the holy sphere of the royal, and therefore, the divine. Branding as the distribution of the divine into the everyday physical world. Sounds very actual today.

the west is in us

You enter a room and watch comboys at a campfire. Beautiful, and seen in so so many movies good and bad. There is also a woman in front of a house, on another screen. And an outside view on an apparently deserted Western town. Then the Cowboys start talking.

This is a bit of what you see in Julian Rosefeldts video "American Night" that I encountered yesterday during Berlin Gallery Weekend at Arndt & Partner. Rosenfeldt, Munich-born, reflects surprisingly subtly on what it might mean to be American. He also has a thing or two to say about what the self-understanding of America means for all of us. In his work, not only in American Nights, he engages with the American myths, and with the nightmares of a superpower that has become vulnerable. (At one point, the Western town is attacked by "move move"-US-soldiers jumping out of a helicopter.)

The American nightmares in American Nights are our nightmares. We all have internalized not only Western myths, but also the neverending and never-winnable fight for the ultimate freedom. A fight most American movies, not only Western movies, refer to, honor and trivialize at the same time. Whether watching these movies or not, we have internalized their cultural fabric. This is why our internal America responds so easily to the strong pictures in Rosefeldt's videos. Of course it is all facade, he says, and shows this towards the end. But the facades in us are part of what makes us. And they are what makes us creative, Rosefeldt I think also wants to say, with many references to film history and Hollywood production modes.

He also refers to European film history. American Nights is the translation of a Godard film title. And the videos are shot in Almeria, the Southern Spain area that gave us the landscape for the Spaghetti Western, one of the few brilliant European deconstructions of American mythology.

torn grace

Is this place beautiful or ugly? Is it weird to live here, nice, or just "okay"? Interestingly, no one seems to ask these questions in "Cliff Hotel", Baabe, island Rügen. None of the up to 530 people sleeping here per night. (By the way, Rügen is Eastern Germany—just to be precise. Or rather, to be utterly unprecise? For what does that "Eastern" mean today, if anything? Is that information still, or the ultimate desinformation? )

Calling this huge place a hotel is not enough. Rather it is an own city, with hideouts, malls, hidden underground alleys, the whole lot. Getting lost here is as easy as in the postmodern hotel icon, the Los Angeles Bonaventure. Fred Jameson would just love it.

So, this thing is a city—but a hidden one. Cliff Hotel, which used to be a hostel for the GDR "Zentralkommitee", seems to be ducking away in the woods between Baabe and Sellin. It is trying to make itself invisible—although its geographical position is in fact amazing, directly by the sea, some 50 meters high. Its geography creates that ultimate fetish of seaside tourism: the "great view". Still, Cliff Hotel is hiding: hiding its shape, and hiding its size, a performativity that has a lot of grace to it, compared to the blunt hyperpresence of similar mega structures in Western German sea resorts (think of the hideous Timmendorf, or Travemünde).

Cliff Hotel, did I mention?, is an architectural legend. This is because of its magnificent swimming pool, designed by GDR star architect (yes, there is such a thing) Ulrich Müther. Müther, known for his concrete shell style, has created a bunch of wonderful modernist buildings, most of them on Rügen, where he comes from. He is also famous for being one of the prominent victims of Western German post-Wall architectural triumphalism. One of his coolest, the Ahornblatt in Berlin Mitte, had to make way for a thinking of meaningless construction efficiency.

Good that the pool of the Cliff still stands. Is it because visitors like it? A lot of them probably don't care much. None asking whether the pool is nice or ugly. No one asking whether the hotel is ugly, too. I couldn't say myself, although I certainly find it fascinating. Could give tens of examples of bad interior jokes though, like a big ape greeting new arrivals. But as a whole, the place is so torn, representing so many failed economic-political ambitions that surviving them is justification enough to be. And with a lot of questions no longer asked, the hotel develops something you don't find often: a thoroughly relaxed atmo, a spirit of not caring, which ultimately creates a strange kind of friendliness. All the slightly ridiculous old ladies from Berlin or Hamburg, at first trying to represent a lifestyle slightly posher than their own. Does it matter? In the end, not to them, not to the other visitors. Not to the sea. And certainly not to the architecture. So they stop pretending. And have a swim.

simulacra dancing

What a place. One square, you turn around and are captured by the full intensity and scariness of Berlin's architectural desires and dreams. All the ideas of national grandesse, of wanna-be Paris.

The Unter den Linden 1 Bertelsmann house, reevoking the idea of the grand boulevard, a boulevard that never was. And this thin plastic wall, sponsered by an energy company, reminiscing the Schinkel Bauakademie. Beautiful Prussia, 2D quote of style and simplicity, counterprogram to the fat and disfigured Schloss.

Then, the Temporäre Kunsthalle, expression of an arts scene in need of bright colours in order to feel itself, particularly in times of the market going bust. And yes, lest one forgets: the old Staatsrat of boring old GDR, integrating in a near postmodern pastice way the front gate of the Berlin Castle. (Hm, why could it not simply remain the sole castle memory? The whole area is already haunted by the Schlossghost, unnerving shadow of a huge building that has never really been the center of the city, and that will never be, even when the Las Vegas reconstruction will have been finished in some 20 years time).

Finally, the counterprogram. Friedrichwerdersche Kirche, for me the world's most elegant church. So much stronger than the other semi-architectural games at this place. So real that in this area of simulations, it does not quite fit in. In fact, it fits in nowhere, too stylish for a church. Hence, it is not used as a church, but has to function as a shy and slightly emparassed exhibition space for 18th century statues. Which it does with great grace.

And who else would be looking at all this but the man Schinkel. What he thinks of it he does not tell. Probably finds it amusing more than anything else.

the wolf is at your door

Been to Berlin Zoo today. I must admit I am a great fan of zoos. Whenever visiting a new city, I try to find out whether there is one, and here I am, staring with fascination at all the poor ones, amit bored children and parents trying madly to remember what they have heard about just this weird Lama thing some years ago. After all, this is a place to spread knowledge, they seem to think.

Apart from that, with all the emphasis on knowledge and the necessity to learn, people foremostly want to fight their bad conscience. Bad conscience is what zoos are made of. This is colonialism pure and simple, the whole world brought to the Western metropolis. And then there's the animals. The question, always thought, sometimes made explicit: are they ill? Such small cages. And this is not their natural habitat, is it?

Of course it isn't. And not only because zoos aren't in Africa, but also because they are in the city. The zoo is an essentially urban concept. The urban here is creating and integrating an urbanized version of wildlife (not only or necessarily from Africa). In Berlin, the urbanity of the concept zoo is becoming particularly strong. For here, the zoo is engraved deeply into the urban structure. The zoo is dominating the inner city of West Berlin. The station is called Bahnhof Zoo. The zoo is the city here.

In general, I think the zoo is a fitting metaphor for life in contemporary cities. Everybody watching everybody. Lify is taking place largely behind virtual or real gutters. The idea of an escape is always there, but everybody too lazy to eventually doing the great escape. And then, there is the occasional act of frantic mass murder.